Hello, readers. We are moving swiftly into March and next week will be the official start of Spring (cue applause track). I, for one, am looking forward to it. If you’ve had a great amount of snow like we’ve had in the Washington DC metro area, I’m sure you are awaiting the arrival of the vernal equinox, too.
- Image via Wikipedia
Recently I was discussing a CD project work flow with my business partner. The conversation was specifically about transferring large projects (on the order of 10 or more GBs) back and forth to edit in both studios, or even to work on remotely. The regular method is to physically visit each other with flash drives to exchange these large files – an inconvenience and potential waste of time. The same applies to me having access to files at work when needed.
Enter the convenience of cloud computing as a time saver. Shortly after the discussion, I came across an article written by New York Times technology columnist, David Pogue. He wrote about a little known FREE service called Windows Live Sync. You can read the article in it’s entirety here.
While there are similar technologies based on the cloud (DropBox, Google Wave, etc.) that allow transfer and access of files, Windows Live Sync appears to allow for instant editing and syncing between the same two files on different computers. All for free. An excerpt from the article explains it like this:
“You designate one folder on Computer A, and another folder on Computer B. Then Sync keeps them synced with each other, magically, over the Internet, with no effort on your part. Add, change, or delete a file on your laptop; you’ll find it added, changed, or deleted on your desktop. Edit some chapters or spreadsheets on your Mac at home; you’ll find them edited the same way at work.”
From a time management standpoint, the sync function reduces the time it would take to maintain congruency between files. While the obvious time saving merits are real time editing and syncing, along with the elimination of a physical file transfer, there could be many other ways of making the file maintenance process easier. Of course, the downside is the possibility of NOT having net access, but then again…that’s an obvious consideration in using Windows Live Sync versus a non-internet process.
I’ve been meaning to look into Google Wave as an addition, or maybe even a replacement, to my usual suite of tools, but haven’t set aside the (…ahem…) “time” to so as of yet. One thing’s for sure, Google Wave has a lot of bells and whistles, but in my opinion, the easier way to get the job done is the best way!
I’ll be checking out Windows Live Sync for sure.
Have a great day.
- Microsoft’s Free Sync Service (nytimes.com)
- What is Google Wave? (macworld.com)
- Why I’m Always Promoting Dropbox (technobabbl.es)
- Internet Survival Guide for Traveling Where Privacy Isn’t Respected (lifehacker.com)
