I’m using a lot of computers, both PC’s, Windows-servers and since recently a MacBook with the Snow Leopard OS. When that’s also your case, your may be looking for a way to synchronize your digital assets, so that you always carry them with you.
Sync docs
For 1,5 year or so I am using Windows Live Sync (sync.live.com). This Microsoft tool, formerly known as FolderShare, is a free file synchronization app for synching your files and folders between two or more computers. I mainly use for syncing my documents and favorite (portable) tools. By the way, most tools come from Scott Hanselmans’s Ultimate Tools List.
Browser Bookmarks
I also used Live Sync for syncing my IE bookmarks. But since I mainly use Firefox (because of the great add-ins), syncing IE is not enough. I was looking for a way to sync my bookmarks between Firefox and IE, with all my PCs and Mac. Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) does this for you! It’s available as add-on for FF (Mac and PC), plugin for IE and Safari (Mac). I heard that Chrome support is coming soon. The Firefox version also securely syncs FireFox’s password manager! Well, that makes live much easier!
Mac and PC
I sync my photos between my Macbook and PC with Dropbox. I could do this with Live Sync of course, whether it not that Live Sync doesn’t work on Snow Leopard. For some people, Live Sync is even more important than the upgrade to Snow Leopard. So I started trying Dropbox and I’ll love it. Only the 2 GB limit sucks (more GB costs money).
Passwords and KeePass
Passwords are another thing. Because the internet is still an insecure place and good initiatives like CardSpace and OpenID are still not mainly accepted, every internet site asks you to sign-up and sign-in over and over again. A good advice: never use the same username/password for every site! I use KeePass (download here), a password database with 1 master password that gives you access to all your other sensitive information. For every registration, I add a new record to KeePass. KeePass is free and open source. I have to admin I’m doing a double administration: I add entries to KeePass, then use FireFox and let FireFox remember my passwords as well.
And the great thing is: you can sync your password database by using Live Sync or Dropbox. And the later versions of KeePass support synchronizing multiple versions of the KDBX-database files. Ideal for when you got multiple versions due to offline usage!
For Mac users, there is KeePassX. It’s the ported open source version of the Windows-based KeePass for Mac, Linux and Windows. Unfortunately KeePassX is behind in features compared to the Windows variant and also doesn’t understand the newer KDBX file format. So KDB-files for interoperability and KDBX for advanced features. Here’s how you do both.
As of version 2.09 of KeePass, KeePass has a good trigger event system. You can do many things with it, like making an automatic backup of your database to a second location. But today I discovered there is also an ‘Export action’. This is what I’ve done:
- Open KeePass 2.09 (or newer);
- Go to Tools, choose Triggers…;
- Choose Add…;
- Give your new trigger a name and make sure Enabled and Initially on are checked;
- Choose Next. In the Events tab, choose Add…;
- Select the event Saved database file and choose OK
- Choose Next two times. In the Actions tab, choose Add…;
- Select the action Export active database. Specify a file path e.g. C:\Dropbox\KeePass\database.kdb. The documentation about how to specify the file format is missing, but specify KeePass KDB (1.x). Other inputs are accepted but won’t work later on.
- Choose OK and choose Finish.
If you now save your KDBX-password database, you’ll get a KDB export in your dropbox folder. Automatically. And dropbox synchronizes this to your Mac.
Note: Don’t make the Mac leading so don’t edit or add new passwords on your Mac. The information will be lost during a future export + sync.
Music with iTunes Home Sharing
Apple came with a very nice feature in iTunes 9: Home Sharing. It lets up to five computers in a single household share movies and music files more easily. You can access and play music and movies on each iTunes from every other iTunes PC. This only works if you are signed-in with the same Apple ID on each computer. iTunes also comes with built-in synchronization. It automatically transfers new purchases from other users' libraries to your own computer and vice versa. For non-purchased content you have to manually press a button called Import.
iTunes Home Sharing works nice, but I doesn’t let you synchronize your playlists :-(. I have to figure out if I can use Dropbox for that.
For me this works perfectly! I have all my pictures, music, documents, bookmarks and passwords synchronized. Now with 3 PC’s and 1 Macbook.
Hope this helps,