Remarks, like PDF Expert, offers PDF annotation and filling tools, but it’s a much more streamlined tool than that app, with a focus on making it easy to mark up and share documents, as well as create your own notes and notebooks independent of any pre-existing PDFs that can also be marked up and shared with other Remarks users for collaborative work.

Remarks is that rare beast among PDF tools, either on or off the iPad: it features a simple, straightforward interface and everything work very quickly, with speedy response times for turning pages, adding notes, and basically anything else you’d want to do. Tools, including pens, highlighters, preset shapes and text entry, are clearly labeled with simple icons, and there’s no visual clutter or wealth of unnecessary options to distract you from what you actually need to get done.

Sharing may be one of Remarks’ best feature. Using email, you can easily share documents with other Remarks users, including annotated PDFs and notes created in the app itself. But in an upcoming update, Readdle is planning to introduce Dropbox, Box.net and other cloud storage sharing options, too, making it even more convenient for doing collaborative work.

Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard or stylus, Remarks is even more useful. It features effective accidental touch or wrist-detection, meaning you can write naturally with a stylus without worrying about drawing in the wrong place, and regular Mac key shortcuts like Command+C, Command+V and Command+A work with keyboard text input.

Remarks allows flexibility in creating notes and notebooks, allowing you to rearrange pages as you add them or after the fact, but it doesn’t overwhelm with options like other iPad notebook offerings. And since it’s also a full-fledged PDF annotation tool, and one that can be used collaboratively, it’s probably one of the most versatile iPad apps for students, and a fairly inexpensive one at $4.99.

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Distraction-free editing with WriteRoom

Hog Bay Software puts out a great distraction-free text editing app title called WriteRoom. Available on the iPhone, iPad and Mac, WriteRoom removes all menus, toolbars, and other user interface distractions from your view.

While it’s nice that WriteRoom works on all three platforms, you don’t want to get stuck worrying about which device holds the latest version. Enter DropBox. With DropBox, you can access your files in WriteRoom over the internet from each device. While WriteRoom on iOS natively supports access to DropBox, WriteRoom on OS X will require the use of the DropBox Mac client to help keep your files organized, but that’s a free download that’s easy to set up.

If you tend to leave your apps running on all three devices, one thing that you may need to do after making edits on your iOS device is select “Revert To Saved” from the File menu as you switch back to OS X. Going the other direction, the iOS version of WriteRoom will pick up on the edits you have made on OS X as you switch between active apps.

Unlike with  a few other DropBox-based text editors for iOS, I’ve also found that WriteRoom is capable of making edits when there is no network connectivity. There’s even a “Sync All Now” button on the DropBox configuration page for iOS devices. This will trigger a sync operation, and ensure that all of your devices have the edits you made while disconnected.

Save keystrokes with TextExpander

Smile’s TextExpander, which is also available on the iPhone, iPad and Mac, is another great tool for cross-platform productivity. Making every keystroke count, TextExpander has a user-configurable library of witty abbreviations that are used to replace the text as you type. It’s a little like a supercharged autocorrect. You type an abbreviation like “brb,” for example, and TextExpander will replace the abbreviation with “be right back.”  On OS X this works with all applications, as it is a system-wide service. TextExpander Touch for iOS depends on other app developers to support TextExpander’s API in order to bring in its abbreviation replacement features. Luckily, WriteRoom is one of many apps that support TextExpander’s iOS API.

TextExpander can handle more complex situations as well.  You can use it to insert the current date in any format you choose, and you can also control where the cursor will be placed after the abbreviation has replaced the text you’ve typed.  This is accomplished by placing a pipe character (“|”) in the definition of the abbreviation. Books like “Take Control of TextExpander,” websites like Alex Poslavsky’s snippet repository and even a video tutorial series can all teach you how to use TextExpander to its full potential.

Managing your abbreviation libraries on DropBox

Once you have TextExpander installed and enabled on your iOS and OS X devices, you will want to start selecting and defining what abbreviation libraries you want to use. You can use your own, but you can also grab predefined libraries in the app itself. Some even use TextExpander to automatically correct common misspellings and typos. Once you’ve decided which abbreviation libraries to use, you’ll want to keep them in sync on every device you type with. And that’s where TextExpander’s DropBox integration comes into play. You can configure TextExpander to sync its database of abbreviations to DropBox, so that any new abbreviation you define on your iPhone, will also be available for use on your iPad and Mac.

Not only have the developers of these solutions created great standalone products, but they’ve also created a collection of apps across all Apple platforms, which is the real key to creating lasting value for Mac and iOS users.

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Plays better with others

Elements introduces a ton of exporting/publishing features with the latest update. Now you can send your files as e-mails (inline or as an attachment), publish directly to Tumblr and Facebook, and send to Evernote or iTunes. My personal site is hosted on Tumblr and I use Evernote a lot, so I love those features in particular, but all of those listed alleviate the pain of getting files off your iPad.

New publishing options in Elements.

My only problem with exporting/sharing/publishing is that the new selections are limited, and buried under confusing menu choices. Choosing Export lets you send the file to Dropbox, Evernote, and iTunes, but only as an HTML or PDF file. I think Elements would be great in a classroom where the full-screen, no frills interface is perfect for capturing lecture notes, and Evernote is a great repository for class notes and materials. But being limited to exporting only HTML or PDF files is a hassle. The workaround to sending text to your Evernote account is to use Element’s inline e-mail feature to send the note to your Evernote address.Sending files to other services needs to be consolidated. Instead of choosing export, PDF, and then Evernote within Elements, it would work better if I chose export, Evernote, and then the format (and create a text note needs to be there).

Element continues to support Markdown, however, making it an excellent general editor for blog posts. Also, the app developer is looking into support of Markdown formatting when you export a PDF file. If this feature is implemented, it may become best way to create a file with footnotes.

Final thoughts

Right now, I’m using Pages as my editor of choice for iOS and OS X because of the ease of using the same file on both platforms and because iCloud will allow me to seamlessly (I hope) sync files in the background. Am I going to change to Elements thanks to this major update? Pages is still likely to be my go-to tool for general use, but for Tumblr posts and Evernote entries, Elements gets the nod. This is also still a basic plain text editing tool. There are zero formatting features. No bold or italics, no paragraph styles. For my needs, this is fine. If you need to bold files without using Markdown, this is not the tool for you. Still, Elements looks like the easiest way to get text into a format I’m going to want to quickly get at on my desktop thanks to its new sharing features, which at least merits a spot on my primary home page.

Forced Dropbox usage for basic file systems remains a downside. I’d much prefer if the app stored files in its own sandbox first, and then integrated with Dropbox as an option. I’ll have to suck it up with Dropbox, though, at least until Elements incorporates the upcoming iCloud document syncing feature. Elements looks like the easiest way to get text into a format I’m going to want to quickly get at on my desktop. I expect iCloud to have a huge impact on iOS text editors on the whole, so I can’t wait to see what developers do with it when it arrives this fall.

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Instapaper. After watching Steve Jobs demo the new Reader function in Safari, Instapaper developer Marco Arment famously tweeted a one-word expletive in response. Like Instapaper, the Reader tool does make text-heavy pages much easier to read on the iPhone and iPad, but Instapaper does much more than just that. It saves files for reading later across pretty much any platform, and allows you to download them to local storage so that you can check them out even when you’re without a connection. Instapaper also works great with third-party services like Evernote, and it’s hard to imagine Apple’s offering will be as strong in that area.

SMS. Oh, how quick people were to proclaim SMS dead. We’d be free from the cost of alerting our significant others we were running late. While iMessenger’s iOS-to-iOS “free” sending is indeed a boon, I text with exactly one person who has an iOS device. To add insult to this injury, I text her so infrequently I’ll see no text savings. It may be anecdotal, but considering the trajectory of Android in the U.S., it’s also representative of the experience of many others. SMS won’t be felled by iMessage alone.

Camera +. For quick pics of my cat doing something stupid, iOS’s native Camera app being accessible from the lock screen will make it go-to app for quick sharing. However, Camera+ will still sit on my main screen for primary picture-taking. Camera+ is an app designed by a professional photographer, and brings tons of great enhancements not offered by the stock iOS 5 alternative.

OmniFocus. While this one hasn’t specifically been proclaimed dead, the Reminders app covers a lot of what basic users need it and other to-do apps for. I don’t deal with much project-level stuff, and I could probably just enter  my school, work and writing assignments into Reminders. (Plus, the new location feature is actually pretty darn cool). What I live and die by in OmniFocus, though, are due dates and forecasting that let me see at-a-glance the big picture of what I have to do and when. So long as to-do apps can provide compelling features that aren’t available in native offerings, users will remain interested.

Dropbox. Dropbox is actually likely to get more of my money now. Jobs was vague on how Documents in the Cloud will work when it comes to OS X and Windows. Dropbox still seems like it’s going to be my go-to place to shove a document I need to share or access from different PCs. Also, having gotten burned by iDisk syncing issues before, Apple is going to have to earn the privilege of keeping my mission-critical files on iCloud. It is, after all, the company that brought me MobileMe.

Zinio. At first, I thought Zinio was a goner — assuming I could transfer my subscriptions to Newsstand. A Twitter exchange with Macworld’s Jason Snell educated me that Newsstand isn’t a true service, but rather “a place where apps (like Zinio and Daily Reader) can live.” Here’s hoping Zinio has an update at iOS 5 launch to take advantage of background downloading.

Instacast. It’s a little unclear how podcasts will work with the Wi-Fi Sync / iCloud stuff. My gut tells me it’ll work the same way it currently does, meaning you’ll have to manually fetch new episodes. On a cellular network, this usually just isn’t going to happen, because episodes tend to be over 20 MB, especially when dealing with video. Instacast is my go-to podcast fetcher now. I love the badge that pops up telling me I have a new episode, and I can download new episodes even on a cellular network.

I’m very excited about iOS 5, especially since it looks like it’s bringing me lots of great new functionality, while still giving me a place for my favorite apps. How about you? What “dead” apps will still live on your iOS device, and which do you think will be genuinely replaced?

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Let me guide you through a number of solutions that allow you to sync data, contacts, calendar, and notes between your iOS and Mac devices.

Data Syncing

iDisk: Apple’s MobileMe is the only all-in-one solution I’ll be mentioning. However, data syncing via iDisk is the service’s biggest flaw. Frankly, it’s too slow for quick syncs. Even uploading one file can result in a several minutes’ worth of sync-time. Uploading a ton of data can be intolerable. I’ve also run into a ton of sync errors, where my local and remote iDisks get so far out of sync, I end up needing to start from scratch, forcing me to figure out on my own what didn’t get synced to Apple’s servers. That said, for small amounts od data the iOS app is a great way to share content while you’re out and about. Also, the iOS iWork suite natively connects to iDisk for file management.

Dropbox: Dropbox is the gold standard for data syncing. It just works. The basic account gives you 2 GB of storage, which is probably fine for most people. They do offer 50 and 100 GB solutions as well. The sync is near-instaneous, and Dropbox also allows you to restore deleted files via the web. I really can’t remember ever having have an issue with Dropbox. You can use DropDAV to allow WebDAV access to your Dropbox account so it will work with iWork on iOS devices. Dropbox also has an API available, so text editing apps like Elements and PlainText can access your Dropbox directly.

SugarSync: This service the potential to be a nice alternative to Dropbox. For starters, its free model gives you 5 GB versus Dropbox’s 2 GB. For  $99 you can get 60 GB of storage while Dropbox only gives you 50 GB for the same amount. But there is no WebDAV support, even via a 3rd-party tool, which may not be an issue if you’re unsure or unwilling to use WebDAV access anyway. However, the big difference is in how you determine what folders sync. On Dropbox, everything in your Dropbox folder is synced automatically; SugarSync requires you to use a desktop program to determine what folders sync. Overall, I found SugarSync’s interface a little cumbersome.

How I do it: I use both iDisk and Dropbox. Rapidly changing files (work, writing, business, school, etc.) are stored on Dropbox and I use DropDAV to make sure I can access the files using iWork on my mobile devices if I need to (for most of my text needs, I use Elements). Dropbox gives me the sync reliability I need, along with a rudimentary backup solution. Large or infrequently changed files (e-books and the like) are stored on iDisk. This gives me mobile access to the files, and I don’t have to deal with an overly-complicated sync system.

Contacts and Calendars

Frankly, syncing contacts and calendars is one of the easiest things to do. Address Book and Mail in OS X both natively sync with MobileMe, Google and Yahoo and when you add your accounts to your iOS device you can choose to sync both contacts and calendars. You can also add your Yahoo and Google calendars as sync calendars in iCal on the Mac.

How I do it: I’m a MobileMe subscriber, so I use that. It may not be free, but it keeps things simple.

Notes

For me, there are two different types of notes. I’ll make a note about something I need to get at the store, or a quick thought in passing, or the name of a book I see in a bookstore. Then there are more formal notes: the type you make during a meeting or class. Especially on iOS, there are almost as many note apps as there are flatulence simulators, so I’m going to focus on a few of my favorites.

Apple’s Notes: All iOS devices ship with the Notes app, which you can use to sync notes with any email account you have on the device. Notes is a nice little app for the basic things, but not great when it comes to long notes. While often derided, I actually like it quite a bit, especially since the notes sync happens during mail fetches. However, if you don’t use the Mail.app on OS X, it’s limited in its appeal, because while the notes will show up in Gmail, for instance, you can’t edit them.

SimpleNote: This aptly-named app has a nice, clean interface. It doesn’t natively sync with a dedicated desktop notes software (you edit notes on the web), but on their download page the app’s developers do list some programs and web extensions that do support the service.

Evernote: This is the big boy of note-taking apps. It’s great for collecting mass quantities of research notes, clipped web pages, graphics, the unabridged version of The Stand and that rusty kitchen sink in the basement. I don’t find it all useful for quick notes, and I don’t think that’s its focus. It is also a great collaborative tool letting you share notebooks.

How I do it: I use Notes for the minor, short notes and Evernote for all my project and class notes. PDFs from school get imported to a dedicated Evernote notebook for that class. The shopping list I’ve been handed goes into Notes.

The Future

Apple needs to get its act together for mobile syncing. The Wall Street Journal reports Apple is beefing up MobileMe, complete with the introduction of the oft-rumored wireless iTunes sync. One of the things keeping the iPad from being a true, untethered mobile solution is a better cloud system from the mothership, so let’s hope these latest reports prove true.

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The Xmarks developers offer alternatives, but the only one they can suggest for Safari users is Apple’s  MobileMe service. As MobileMe costs $99 a year, subscribing just for the sake of syncing your Safari bookmarks is a bit costly. If you use any other browser, there are free alternatives such as Firefox Sync and Chrome Sync.

I’ve seen some weird and wacky ways of syncing Safari bookmarks, including emailing yourself every time you change your bookmarks, or simply “remember which bookmarks you’ve added and add them on the other machine(s),” neither of which are helpful. I’ve discovered a much more useful method involving Dropbox. It’s not as automatic as Xmarks was, but it gets the job done.

There are two ways of doing this: one uses a free download called SymbolicLinker, and the other uses Terminal.app. I’ll start by going through the steps for using SymbolicLinker, then I’ll talk about the Terminal method.

Using SymbolicLinker

1. Download SymbolicLinker. It can be found on MacUpdate. It’s not an application, but a Service you can install, which adds a new option when you right-click an item in the Finder. To install it, simply double-click the SymbolicLinker.service icon.
2. Get Dropbox. You can sign up for free. A free Dropbox account gives you 2GB of space. Obviously you can skip this step if you already have Dropbox.
3. Quit Safari. Safari will get confused if you start messing around with its files while it’s still running.
4. Create a ‘Bookmarks’ folder in Dropbox. It doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you remember that it’s for your bookmarks.
5. Move the Bookmarks file from Safari to Dropbox. The file is called Bookmarks.plist and is located in [your Home folder]>Library>Safari. Make sure you move it rather than copy it over.
6. Create a symbolic link to the Bookmarks file. To do this, right-click Bookmarks.plist and choose Make Symbolic Link, which is the new option added by SymbolicLinker. Now drag the new file, ‘Bookmarks.plist symlink’, back to where you found the original file. Rename it back to ‘Bookmarks.plist’.

You can now re-open Safari to check that all your bookmarks are still there and that they work properly. Next, repeat these steps on the other computers you want to keep in sync:

1. Download and install SymbolicLinker. Do this exactly the same way as before.
2. Sync the computer with Dropbox. Make sure the new Bookmarks.plist file is completely downloaded before continuing.
3. Quit Safari.
4. Create a symbolic link to the Bookmarks.plist file in Dropbox. Delete the Bookmarks.plist file in Library>Safari and replace it with the symbolic link, again renaming it to simply ‘Bookmarks.plist’.
5. Reopen Safari and check it works. It should work first time, but if it doesn’t, retry the steps, and make sure Bookmarks.plist has a capital ‘B’.

The Terminal Method

Using Terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal) achieves exactly the same thing, using the same method, but just doesn’t involve any downloads. For this example, I’m going to put the Bookmarks file into Dropbox>Safari, but it works for any folder. Just switch out the file paths in the Terminal.

1. Create your folder in Dropbox. Again, doesn’t matter what you call it.
2. Move the Bookmarks file into Dropbox. Once again, you need to make sure that you’re moving the file and not copying it, otherwise you get an error saying that the file already exists.
3. Navigate to the Safari folder using Terminal. This can be done by typing (or copying and pasting):

cd ~/Library/Safari

4. Create the symbolic link. Do this by entering the following into Terminal:

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Safari/Bookmarks.plist Bookmarks.plist

5. Restart Safari.

The Problem

Unfortunately, the problem with changing the Bookmarks.plist directly is you have to quit and reopen Safari in order to update the bookmarks on each machine. It’s still definitely a lot easier than remembering the bookmarks you’ve got and adding them to your other machines manually. Also, it doesn’t cost $99 a year.

I’m sure that there are a whole bunch of other methods, perhaps using Automator or maybe another service similar to Xmarks, which accomplish the same task. If you know about any of those, please share below.

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For my setup, I use an older Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT paired with an EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens and a monopod. I also use a MacBook Pro to handle image processing and file uploading (though you don’t necessarily need that much power). The software I use is a simple mix of the stock Canon EOS Utility (PDF), Apple’s built-in Automator, and the Dropbox Client for Mac.

Through Canon’s EOS Utility, the naming convention used for saving the images in the transferred to the folder on the Mac is configurable.

This technique saves considerable time, considering the alternative would be syncing the images at pre-determined intervals and manually moving files around on my file system. Even though I share a Dropbox photo folder, I typically don’t specify that location as the “Destination Folder” that Canon’s EOS Utility uses to save files to. Instead, I save files from the camera to another folder that I set up in Automator as an Action Folder. This intermediary Action Folder resizes the images and copies them to the Dropbox folder for instant upload to a shared folder in my Dropbox account. When Canon’s EOS Utility offloads the images from the camera to this folder, the workflow I created (detailed below) will execute.

To create this Folder Action, from the Applications folder in the Finder, launch Automator and select the “Folder Action” template. Folder actions are workflows that are associated with a folder. Any items dropped into that folder will cause the workflow to run. Once the folder action has been created, set the “Folder Action receives files and folders added to” as the location that the Canon EOS Utility is offloading the images to. This will start the process.

Next, add the following Actions to the Folder Action:

1. From the Library, select a “Copy Finder Items” action located within Files & Folders.
2. Set the “To” to some temporary location that images will be resized within. Do not use the Dropbox folder location in this step, as the full size images will be copied and then resized.
3. From the Library, select a “Scale Images” action located within Photos.
4. Set the “To Size (pixels)” to 1024.
5. From the Library, select the ”Add Text to Finder Item names” action located within Photos.
6. Set “Add Text” to _1024x682 “after name.” This will add a suffix to the end of the file name indicating that the file has been resized.
7. From the Library, select another “Copy Finder Items” action located within Files & Folders.
8. Set the “To” to the local Dropbox location that images will be uploaded from.

Each time you press the silver shutter release on the Digital SLR, the resulting image file will automatically be transferred to the Mac, resized, renamed and uploaded to the Internet!

Thankfully, Hazel is becoming my electronic assistant that just takes care of these tasks for me. Simply put, Hazel takes the idea of mail rules and applies them to the entire system. At its core, Hazel is a watchdog. You tell it to keep an eye on a folder, and if certain criteria are met, perform an action. We’ve covered Hazel before, but I wanted to focus specifically on combining it with Dropbox.

I have a rule set up to watch an e-books folder in my Dropbox folder and import those otherwise-forgotten files into iTunes. Since I leave my MacBook on a lot, when I get home the files are already imported. Even when I’m on my MacBook this is handy. I just throw the e-book into this folder and it’s a fire-and-forget solution.

Evernote is a central tool to my workflow. Research materials, presentation images, class notes and materials all go into Evernote. However, because of Keynote’s integration with iPhoto, it’s also beneficial to have images in both places. I’m always keeping my eye out for images I can use in presentations. One nice feature about Hazel is you can have it execute Automator workflows when a certain condition is met. So, if I throw an image into my Dropbox Photos folder, I can tell it to automatically add the image to both my Evernote and iPhoto libraries. This is very handy when combined with the iOS app. If I’m researching a story and take some snaps with my iPhone, I can use the Dropbox app to upload the photo, and Hazel will do the rest.

I also have  a Dropbox “landing folder” for documents I want to add to Evernote. Goodreader on iOS can write to Dropbox. Using the “open with” feature I can easily get most files into Goodreader, which can then write them to the landing folder. Hazel will take care of importing them to Evernote.

I’m also finding it handy to get files off my Boot Camp directory into the cloud. I’m not really in the mood to set up Dropbox on the Windows partition — even though Dropbox can be set up to only sync selected folders, I’d rather not have it installed. So, the directories I want to get the contents copied into the cloud, I just have Hazel set up to monitor that folder as well and copy the files to Dropbox.

Hazel has a free, 14 day trial and will set you back $21.95 when you get it. I’m finding it’s proving indispensable when I put a file on Dropbox, but want to do something with it after it’s up there.

“As part of an update to the MobileMe web applications, you can now access Find My iPhone directly from the MobileMe toolbar.” Doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t) but it’s a nice touch that makes Find My iPhone easier to access. (Previously the feature was confusingly tucked-away in the MobileMe Settings page.) Also handy is the use of a new URL users can enter into a browser to go straight to the Find My iPhone functionality: me.com/findmyiphone.

The web-based Contacts has been tweaked to resolve a problem that occurred when exporting multiple contacts at once, but by far the most Update Love was lavished upon long-neglected iDisk.

The Apple knowledge base article lists the following updates and improvements to iDisk:

• New Public folder page located at http://public.me.com/membername now matches the look of me.com and supports drag and drop of files between folders (when enabled for visitors)
• Allowing visitors to upload, move, and delete files on your Public folder can now be set from www.me.com/idisk
• An iDisk Public folder password can now be set from www.me.com/idisk
• When logging in to a password-protected Public folder with a web browser, entering the generic username “public” is no longer required
• Adds ability to connect to another member’s Public folder while viewing your own iDisk at me.com

I’m happy to see the addition to iDisk’s web interface of drag and drop functionality, but I have to confess it makes no difference to me at this stage. I simply don’t use the web-based version of iDisk very much if I can help it – it’s too slow, cumbersome and unpredictable. I’ve all too often found myself several-folder-levels deep into iDisk, digging around for a file or three, and suddenly discovered the interface has stopped responding to my clicks. Almost at the same instant I realize things have ground to a halt, the page automatically refreshes itself, dumping me back at my iDisk root folder. That’s frustrating. The language I use in those moments reflects just how frustrating.

In my experience, the poor performance and functional unpredictability of iDisk are the only things about it that are predictable. I don’t know anyone who has had a better experience. Ah well. At least it looks better now.

I’m hardly bowled-over by these updates, but I appreciate they’ve been made. As a paying subscriber to MobileMe, it’s nice to see that Apple remains committed to improving the service. At $99 a year for a single user licence it’s not fabulously expensive, and while a lot of people feel it’s still too pricey, it falls far short of the costs of most hosted Exchange servers. Apple touted MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us” and, while a shaky start didn’t do the service any PR favors, I’ve been using MobileMe’s over-the-air sync/push services from Day One with (mostly) satisfaction. Generally speaking, it works.

But I’ve stopped using iDisk because it’s a joke. Stingy storage capacity and horribly slow, flaky performance means I learned long-ago to stop hoping for iDisk to be a dependable cloud-based data storage and sync solution. (Try saying that five times fast!) Today I use DropBox instead of iDisk. And while DropBox is quite ridiculously priced there’s no arguing it’s the no-brainer alternative to iDisk.

But, as they say, “Half of something is better than all of nothing” and I’m glad to see I’m getting some added value for my $99 membership fee. Even if I don’t use it.

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Of all the file syncing solutions available, one of the most popular is Dropbox. As one of the solutions that is also cross-platform compatible, many Mac users have embraced Dropbox as a more reliable and robust solution than other alternatives, like MobileMe’s iDisk. Diehard Dropbox users can now rejoice as the Dropbox team is at it once again with the release of a native iPhone app, allowing users to access their dropbox on the go.

For a while, Dropbox has provided users with an iPhone-optimized web site for accessing their contents on the go, but that left many users desiring more. Even with 3G speeds, web browsing through Mobile Safari is not as fast as an application that can read/write to its own resources and sync with a server.

Native App, Native Features

With a native application, the Dropbox team has managed to provide full access to your dropbox contents as well as several interesting iPhone-specific features.

One of these is the ability to take photos or video directly within the application (or use existing content on your device) and have those photos synced to your dropbox automatically. Dropbox then gives users quick access to generate an email with an appropriate link to view the content and share it with others.

The application itself is very usable and functions like most other native apps. As expected, you can delete items from your dropbox just as you would an email (swipe to delete). To prevent users from experiencing lag (as would have happened with a web app), the application caches a copy of the directory structure once you’ve viewed it at least once. (This later is re-synced if changes occur elsewhere.)

Typical application file types that are supported on the iPhone (images, PDFs, Keynotes, Pages documents, Word documents, etc.) are all supported within the application. Word documents even support copy and paste! If you have video files that are of a supported type (QuickTime and the like), they will also stream from your Dropbox. For those who love sharing content, just like the aforementioned photos, a mail icon in the lower left corner allows users to generate emails for any content stored on their dropbox.

Dropbox also supports a “Favorites” feature which allows you to sync your favorite files directly to your iPhone, even further speeding up response time. To favorite a file, simply tap the star icon at the bottom of the screen when viewing the file.

A Few Shortcomings

One little complaint that I have is that Dropbox uses its own picture browser. As such, when I load an image, I’m unable to pinch to zoom like what happens when browsing photos elsewhere on my phone. Support for the accelerometer is present, though, as rotating my phone allows the photo to reorient itself. I’m assuming this is just a bug and something the Dropbox team will work out in a future update.

Another interesting piece that is missing is the fact that Dropbox supports Growl on its desktop version. Though it may be annoying, some users may be wishing for push notifications for any updates to their dropbox. Again, as this is an initial release, this is something that could come in a later update.

Dropbox is a free download from the App Store but does require a valid Dropbox account. Users can sign up for a free Dropbox account (limited to 2GB), and there are paid options for greater storage (50GB or 100GB). As someone who has used Dropbox for over a year now, it’s a very robust solution for file syncing and in my tests, a lot more stable than MobileMe’s iDisk. If you’ve used Dropbox or the new Dropbox app and have thoughts on the matter, tell us your experience!

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According to Kaplan, future publications of the sketchbook will remain largely the same except for a few minor changes suggested by current users, like perforated pages or different page sizes. “Customers love the look and feel of the book, that it lays flat, and it’s one place to hold all their designs,” he says. “Future modifications will no doubt be slight.”

The opportunity to work with Apress came about after Kaplan “threw the idea out there and they jumped on it. Amazon did a great job but they don’t offer the same impact. I like the PR and advertising [opportunities] the new company offers.”

Apress announced the deal today at the 360 iDev Conference in Denver, CO, and gave out books to everyone in attendance

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I’ve spent most of my career working in IT Operations, a good part of which I’ve spent thinking, “Really, what’s the worst that could happen?” A year or so ago, I asked myself, “What’s the worst that could happen if my MacBook died?” It was a pretty sobering question.

I work full time. I also freelance, go to school, and write fiction part time. The best case would be the failure was during a rare moment of idleness, and I could suffer the loss of a computer without breaking a sweat. But what’s the fun in that? Data disasters don’t strike in moments like this; instead, like a formulaic movie plot, they happen when you’re not only on deadline, but one you’re really late on. Planning for a system failure I pray never happens has led to what’s admittedly an overly cautious backup strategy. Most people think they’re being very cautious if they’ve got a secondary backup method; I’ve got a tertiary backup.

My primary backup is Time Machine, and it has served me well through the usual accidental data deletions. While the interface drives me a little batty, Time Machine is an excellent backup method. Hourly, I’ll hear my drives spin up and can smile knowing the drivel I’m writing is safely backed up. Every now and then I’ll get the dreaded Time Machine backup error, but either forcing the backup or just waiting for the next cycle works fine.

Time Machine, though, only works when I’m attached to my USB devices at home. I use my laptop at work and at school, so if I need to do a restore when I’m not at home, Time Machine is useless. Not only that, if my house burns down, I’m out of luck. As a secondary backup, I use Mozy. Now, the first backup is extremely long; depending on how many gigs you’re backing up, you could be looking at a week’s worth of time uploading data. Once that’s done, subsequent backups are very speedy. It only backs up changed files, so you’re not uploading hundreds of gigs of files every day. It’s easy to configure your backup sets — you can either tell it to grab your Documents, Pictures, Music folders, etc., or you can go deeper and tell it to backup (or exclude) specific folders. Mozy also runs in the background when your Mac is in an idle period.

My secondary computer is a PC. Each of these backup schemes work as long as my Mac is intact or I have another Mac to restore to. Time Machine obviously is Mac-only, but while Mozy works on Macs and PCs, the file that’s restored is a .dmg file. While I could find a way to break into the .dmg file, part of my worst-case plan is, “OK, my Mac is dead and the only way I can make this deadline is to keep working on my PC, STAT!” There are three folders (School, Freelance, Writing) that I have deemed Crucial National Assets. Without immediate access to those folders during a State of Emergency, I am completely and totally hosed.

To solve that worse-case scenario, I use Dropbox. Dropbox simply uploads what I want to a web page, where I can grab files from any other computer, Mac or PC. The one drawback is it likes its files to reside in a Dropbox folder on my Mac, but I got around that by creating symbolic links to those three folders I really care about. Dropbox grabs their contents and uploads them.

An important part of any backup routine is testing data validity. Periodically, I’ll do test restores from Time Machine and Mozy, and verify from my PC that I can access the data on Dropbox. While you’re likely to only need them in case of emergency, it’s important to know if you have to break the glass and use the tools they’ve been doing their jobs all along.

What is your backup strategy?

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The job listing called for a “Camera Project Manager” whose responsibilities include driving “the design, development and integration of camera modules across iPhone and iPod,” the operative phrase there being “and iPod.” If it turns out to be true, the addition of a camera would allow future iPod touch users to use the many camera-dependent apps currently available for the iPhone, and would further narrow the gap between the two devices. Readers should note that the listing has been changed since, with iPod references removed. This could be the correction of an error, but more likely, Apple realized they were tipping their hand.

While few (if any) other portable media players currently on the market offer a built-in camera, this past week saw the North American release of the Nintendo DSi, which now offers music playback, built-in web browsing and not one, but two cameras. The update to Nintendo’s wildly successful DS console is seen by some as an answer to Apple’s inroads into the mobile gaming arena, especially with the introduction of DSiware, which will basically be an app store for the DSi. Adding a camera to the iPhone could be a move on Apple’s part to position it even stronger against the DSi and the upcoming PSP refresh, about which very little is known at this point.

All I know for sure is that if Apple were to give the iPod touch a camera (and video recording capability), in addition to the recent line-in support and external speakers, there are very few devices either released or planned in the PMP or portable gaming category that could come close to matching it.

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Many Mac users are fortunate enough to have more than one machine. Whether it’s a home desktop and laptop, or a home and office machine, it can be very useful to keep some form of continuity between the two systems. This is easy enough to do with individual files — simply using an online service such as Dropbox or Syncplicity to keep everything synchronized between two machines. But what about applications?

This article will explain how easy it is to keep many popular applications in sync between more than one computer. It doesn’t involve putting all your data on ‘the cloud’ — you still have a local copy if a service closes down for any reason. The steps outlined work for the applications noted here, and may well be applicable to a different piece of software you’d like to keep synchronized. We’ve previously written how to achieve something similar for your iTunes library, but will now take the idea a little further, extending it to other apps.

How Does It Work?

Every application on your Mac has some form of preference or library file — this is where all your application data is stored. What this solution proposes is to store this file on the Dropbox server, rather than simply as a local file. It means that whenever the file changes on one computer, the change is automatically copied across to another machine. When you open the app on another Mac, everything should look the same as you left it previously on the other computer.

Is It Secure?

Dropbox is an extremely secure service, encrypting your information before transmitting it across the Internet. In addition, it supports file ‘versioning’ — this means that if you find that your application preferences are accidentally corrupted or overwritten, it’s simple to revert to an older version through Dropbox. If anything, placing your application library or preferences in more than one location is safer that relying on one sole computer.

Existing Solutions

Many of the applications which are bundled with your Mac are able to sync through Apple’s MobileMe service — iCal, Address Book, Mail, Dashboard and Safari Bookmarks for instance. This works great, and you might not need to use the Dropbox strategy for those applications. I’d recommend sticking to MobileMe for these, as it ensures syncing works well with your iPhone or iPod as well as between Macs.

Getting Started

The first step is to create a Dropbox account if you haven’t already. You receive 2GB of storage for free — probably enough for most simple applications — but you can upgrade to more if you’d like to keep a more data-heavy app in sync. The next step is to locate the library file for that application. For the purposes of this walkthrough, I’ll be using Things, a popular task manager.

The location of the library for Things is at:

User > Library > Preferences > Application Support > Cultured Code > Things

The path is likely to be similar for other applications, and a few examples are shown later on.

Moving Files and Syncing with Dropbox

The next step is a little more complicated. Essentially we need to do two things:

1. Move the library into your Dropbox folder
2. Create an ‘alias’ to tell Things where to find the new library location

First, close the application in question — ensure that it is completely shut down. Before you do anything, back up the library or preferences file — I can’t stress enough that you should make a copy of the file(s) you’re planning to move, to ensure that if you make a mistake at any point you’re able to simply put them back as before.

The next step is to move the library to your Dropbox folder, usually User > Dropbox. It should sync as normal.

At the moment, when you open Things it will still look for the library in the original location. This is no good, and we need to create an ‘alias’ in place of the library to point Things to your Dropbox folder. This takes three steps:

1. Right click the ‘Things’ folder in your Dropbox area, and click ‘Make Alias’
2. Move the alias which is created (represented by a folder with an arrow) to the original location: User > Library > Preferences > Application Support > Cultured Code
3. Rename the alias to whatever the original folder or file was called, in this case simply ‘Things’

Here are a couple of screenshots showing a ‘before and after’ view of our library folder:

Showing the original Things folder, before we moved it to Dropbox

After moving the original folder and replacing it with an 'alias', this is what you should see

Opening Things should now work as normal, with the application automatically being redirected to the new location of your library.

Setting Up Your Second Computer

You then need to follow the same process on your other computer. Providing you don’t have any information in the application, delete the library file and create an alias from your Dropbox folder in the exact same way.

I wouldn’t recommend using both computers at the same time as you’re likely to lose data, but moving from one to the other (and closing Things each time) should ensure that your data is kept in sync wonderfully!

Other Applications

Things is simply used as an example here. A few other applications, along with the location of their library/preferences data are:

• Camino: User/Library/Application Support/Camino
• LittleSnapper: Simply alter the library location in the app preferences
• 1Password: Change the library location in the app preferences (more info
• iTunes: See our walkthrough
• Bento: User/Library/Application Support/Bento

Conclusion

I hope you’ve found the walkthrough easy to follow and feel confident to experiment with syncing application preferences and data between your Macs. Providing you always back up your information first, there’s no harm in trying the process out with any of your favorite apps.

I’d be interested to hear how you get on, and do let me know which applications you end up syncing on a regular basis!

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Get your spoon and prepare to swallow a whole tub of awesome because we’ve got the freshest picks from the App Store to stuff in your mouth.

Before we get in to the latest releases, I’ve got a couple of interesting picks from the week’s Apple news.

First big thing, file sharing has been activated for MobileMe. Great news for users of the service, although when it comes to sharing files I’m a big fan of Dropbox – it’s packed with features, more so than MobileMe’s option, and integrates with OS X seamlessly.

Next up, Microsoft is joining the high street retail fray. Fresh from Wal Mart, David Porter is now onboard as Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores.

A potentially profitable suggestion came from JB in TheAppleBlog’s comments: “They could put a McDonald’s inside to attract customers!” If that does happen, I’ll take my Windows Vista with a large cola and a side-serving of disappointment. Only joking, I don’t drink cola.

In this week’s roundup I’ll be looking at Harvest Time Tracker, Room, Kern and Flickit.

Harvest Time Tracker (free)
Being a freelancer I’ve got to keep track of my time, particularly which of my clients are making use of it — Harvest is a fantastic tool that keeps the brain-ache out of this task. The iPhone Web App does the job for me, but now there’s a streamlined native iPhone app dedicated to keeping track of time and tasks. Plus it’s totally free, so users of Harvest and those looking for such a tool should grab it now.

Room (free)
I’ve stayed in an array of hotels this year, tweeting my adventures across Europe, and yet for all the comforts that come from being a globe-trotting freelancing journo, I’ve hit on a major problem: there comes a point when the ever-changing rooms become a bit of a blur. This aptly-named app solves that problem, allowing you to enter a room number which — and here’s the excellent feature — is displayed as a badge on the app icon. A clever solution to a recurring problem.

Kern (99 cents)
I instantly fell head over heels for this game, created by U.S. design-studio FORMation, the folks behind color-matching iPhone dueler EYE vs. Eye. Kern is kind of a typographical take on Tetris as you slot individual letters in to different words while the leading rapidly shrinks. A super smart concept for a game which fellow designers in particular will adore.

Flickit (free)
This is the iPhone Flickr uploader to beat all others. The app has all the essential features — shoot within the app, batch upload, tagging and more — plus it really does look like it could have come straight out of Cupertino: designed purely with the user in mind. It’s totally free and I don’t know why — this is the sort of app that most Flickr users would certainly shell out a few bucks for.

That’s all for this week, I’ll see you next Saturday for more apps and more chat. In the meantime, drop by the comments and let me know which apps you recommend.

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I thought that might get your attention. Well, boatload might be an exaggeration, although how about 8GB of free storage space? More importantly, how about they support either the Mac or the iPhone?

As part of any backup solution, having offsite storage is pretty key these days to protect your data. Recently, I was looking at free alternatives to MobileMe and/or other paid storage services on the Web. I wanted to see which of these services integrated with Apple’s product line (Mac and iPhone). When I say integrate, I mean drag-and-drop, simple interfaces that do not require me to sign-into a web service to use.

Of the many out there, here is what I found. Please note, two of the four services mentioned here are beta, so please use them at your own risk. Also note that two of these four services are provided by technology startups and you can’t be sure during these economic times just how long these businesses might last. Thankfully, all four services are great in their own way so I highly recommend each.

Box.net

Box.net’s offering is a little different than the others. With their Lite account, you get 1GB of storage, 256bit SSL security, the ability to share folders (for collaboration) and directly connect to your data from other Web services such as Piknik, Scribd and Zoho. One of the negatives to this service is that there is no Mac client. All file uploads must be done via the site.

However, what makes Box.net unique is that it supports the iPhone with a free application via the App Store. Thus, you can manually upload documents to the site and then view them on your iPhone. Very handy, when compared to some of the other paid iPhone applications that allow you to copy files from your Mac to the iPhone. In addition to viewing your files, you can also upload photos from your iPhone to Box.net.

Although the Lite account is great, as mentioned you only get 1GB of storage. Further, there are some other restrictions to this plan, including: 25MB file size limit, advertisements, no version history and a 10GB/month bandwidth limitation.

Box.net offers other plans for semi-reasonable prices. Their Individual plan is $8/month which includes 5GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, removes the ads and provides version history. Unfortunately, this service is much more expensive than the alternatives below so I can’t say I recommend paying for the additional storage unless you really need it.

Dropbox

Dropbox (currently in beta), offers a very simple online storage service. Using Dropbox, you get 2GB of free storage. To start, you sign-up for an account on their site and then download the Dropbox software.

Dropbox installs a menu item and via a simple wizard asks you to specify where you want to store your files. Once you specify the folder, Dropbox is ready to go. You can then drag-and-drop files that you want to backup/sync to their service. It is that simple.

Similar to Box.net, you can specify files/folders to share with others. This can be done via the Dropbox web interface. I wish it could be done with their Mac client, although maybe that is something they will offer on their roadmap.

Dropbox has a unique feature in that if you store your photos on their service, they provide a URL for others to view these photos. This is similar to Flickr and other photo sharing sites. Here is an example:

In my case, I created the Dropbox folder on my desktop on both my home and work Macs. I then began to drag-and-drop files I wanted to backup. When the files were finished uploading on one computer, the other computer immediately began to download the files. Dropbox’s simple synchronization works extremely well. And, if you have Growl installed, you can see when changes/updates have occurred.

With the free account, you get 2GB of storage, photo sharing, 256bit AES security and no advertisements. If you want more space, there is a 50GB option for $10/month (or discounted to $99/yr). I highly recommend Dropbox as it is a great tool for online storage (and photo sharing). To round out the service, I hope that Dropbox adds backup software to their offering.

Mozy

Of the online storage sites mentioned here, Mozy is the most comprehensive. With their MozyHome free account, you get 2GB of disk space. Further, it isn’t a service just about providing disk space in the cloud, it is also a free backup tool. In fact, that is Mozy’s primary purpose — offsite backup. Once you create your account, you then download the software which installs a menu item.

Next, Mozy initiates a wizard to help you define which items you want to backup. As you can see in this screenshot, one of the neat things Mozy provides is pre-configured backup sets. You can also define the files and folders you want to backup as well. Mozy’s UI is very flexible.

Once you have selected the options you want to backup, you click Save Configuration and Mozy begins to backup your files. You can define a backup schedule as well. Mozy supports Growl status updates, which is pretty handy for seeing when a backup has completed. And, if something goes wrong (hard disk failure, etc.), you can restore your files with ease using Mozy’s simple interface.

As you can see, I specified quite a few items to backup, as 2GB goes a long way when storing files and office-like documents. I did not specify any media files because my Aperture library is over 10GB by itself!

Of course, with all of this positive stuff, there is always a trade-off. You do not get to manually drag-and-drop files into a folder and have them automatically backup. Instead, you must always use this interface. And, your files are not available on other computers. You might be able to install the software on another computer, sign-in with your credentials and then initiate a restore process. However, I haven’t tried it so your mileage may vary.

Included with the 2GB of storage is 448bit blowfish security (or 128bit SSL security) and the great backup software. If you choose to upgrade to the MozyHome Unlimited plan, the cost is approximately $5/month with unlimited storage and no bandwidth constraints. If you need online storage with automated backup, then MozyHome is your service.

Live Mesh

A newcomer in the space, Microsoft Live Mesh (Beta) just announced support for their Mac client. Live Mesh is Microsoft’s all-in-one synchronization service.

When you sign-up for Live Mesh, you get 5GB of free storage. Live Mesh works very similar to Dropbox in that you install a client, select the folder for storage/synchronization and then begin copying files to the folder. Again, like Dropbox, I installed the software on both my home and work Macs to synchronize/share files.

With the Live Mesh account, you get 5GB of free storage, no advertisements and 128bit SSL security. There are currently no upgrade plans available.

Of course, Live Mesh isn’t just about syncing files, it’s about syncing files and data across multiple devices (PCs, Macs, Phones and more). We’ll have to wait and see how this evolves and if Microsoft plans to support the iPhone in their grand synchronization plans.

8GB for Free

With these offerings and utilizing their free accounts, you get a total of 8GB of free storage! For any Mac user looking for some offsite storage that leverages the Apple platform, I recommend using all of these services as you really can’t lose.

If I have missed any other free offerings that have Mac/iPhone clients, please comment below.

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