As we become increasingly mobile and rely on one or more computing devices other than our desktops and laptops to manage our communications, data, and schedules we run into the problems of data portability and synchronization across these various platforms.
The portability issue concerns being able to move our schedules, notes, databases, and other digital content between these devices while the synchronization issue addresses how we do this … do we have to do it through applications such as iTunes, through a manually driven process, or can it be transparent and automatic?
You can use generalized data synchronization systems to deal with these problems. For example, last week in Gearhead I discussed one of my favorite tools for cross-platform data synchronization: Dropbox.
Dropbox, which runs on Windows 2003, XP, Vista, W7 (32 and 64-bit), OS X 10.4 or later, Ubuntu 7.10+, and Fedora Core 9+ and there are also apps for iOS v3.1+, Android OS 1.5, and Blackberry OS 4.5+.
This covers a huge swath of content transfer needs but fails in one important respect, it isn’t as tightly bound to the majority of applications as you might want: Most applications will need to be configured to use the Dropbox folders and true synchronization – where versioning and concurrent update resolution are effectively handled – is usually not available.
The reality is that each type of content we have to deal with really has to have its own cross-platform support and its own inter-platform synchronization. Moreover, for many types of activities we don’t actually need actual inter-platform synchronization at all; we can leave our data online in a service and interact with it through channels such as e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking services.
A good example of such cross-channel communications data management capabilities for a specific content area can be found in a service I’m really impressed with called Producteev.
Producteev is a task management system that is available as a Web application that can be accessed through e-mail, Google’s Gtalk, Yahoo and Windows Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Twitter, and supports natural language interaction that is really impressive.
Using any of these channels you can you can add, modify and remove tasks as well as receive and act on task notifications.
Producteev aims to encompass all of the spheres of your activities supporting, as it does, multiple workspaces that allow you to partition your plans for home, work, and whatever other activities you please.
If you are a fan (or maybe acolyte would be a better term) of the Getting Things Done methodology then you’ll love Producteev; it is considered by many to be one of the better GTD support systems available.
To support Producteev across platforms the service also has free iPhone, Android, and Blackberry applications.
Producteev offers its services through four levels of accounts. The free account allows for up to two users with 100MB of file storage with no support, while the Plus service ($5 per month) adds standard e-mail support and SSL security.
Premium service ($20 per month) provides 500MB of storage, unlimited users, and priority e-mail support and the Platinum level ($30 per month) ups the storage to 1.5GB and adds report generation.
What Producteev delivers in an “always on” world is a change in how we think about cross-platform access to our content and shows that it can be met and managed by centralized, multi-user, remote Web applications for a reasonable price.
