AppFlow

 

 

The standard digital life these days is very complicated!  You carry a phone in your pocket, USB drive on your keyring, a Laptop in your bag and an iPad in your right hand.  At home there’s a Mac on your desk, and a PC ‘just in case’ that’s been stuffed under the desk to prevent embarrassment when your fellow mac geeks arrive.  What you really need to do is keep everything in sync.

When it comes to keeping everything in sync, the modern world provides us with quite an arsenal! You’ve got the likes of Google, MobileMe and ActiveSync that all do their bit in keeping devices on the same wavelength.  There is, however, a big problem with all of these services, they are quite specific.  What we need is one, central application to keep all files in sync: Enter SyncMate.

Syncing

Syncing is no new concept.  Apple iDevices all sync through iTunes, meaning that your iPad, iPhone and Mac all have the same contacts, calendar version and latest podcasts.  You can take syncing further and easily enable Address Book’s syncing to Google or MobileMe, but this still leaves several devices out of the action.  What about those of us that have a non-apple phone. (Shocking, I know, but some of us are on a student budget!)

SyncMate streamlines the whole syncing experience and sits in the background keeping contacts, calendars and even photos or files in sync between all of your devices.

 

Set Up

Unlike services like MobileMe that only sync to a specific brand of device, SyncMate can sync to many, many different devices.  Macs, PCs, Windows Mobile, Nokia Phones, Android Phones and even your PSP device.

One of my favorite features is that of being able to sync to a simple USB flash drive.  This means that you can use it for taking podcasts with you, or making sure that all of your files are the most up-to-date version.

Once set up, your device sits at the top of the app with a nice (customizable) icon.  Syncing your devices is as simple as hitting the big ‘Sync Now’ button.

If you’d prefer not to have to press the button, AutoSync can be set up in the plugins section for each device.  It offers a lot of fine tuning options to make sure that your devices sync exactly when you want them to, without any hassle.

The Downside

As much as this sounds to be a lifesaver, a certain amount of caution should be used when syncing anything.  While testing SyncMate, I managed to wipe all of my contacts from cyberspace, and had to restore from my iPad, just because of one wrong button!  From my experiences, you should always employ ‘Think before you Sync’!

I also found SyncMate to be quite naggy be default.  Though the nagging can be turned off in the preferences menu, it seems unnecessary for a default.

In addition, SyncMate lacks compatibility with older Windows Mobile Devices, and non-Nokia, non-Android phones.  Though I understand there aren’t many people that fall into this category… I do!

Conclusion

SyncMate is a nice little application that can be used to keep your mobile life in sync.  It can be used to sync almost anything to almost any device.  This makes it an excellent companion for anyone that uses many different mobile devices which, in the 21st century, is almost everyone!

A free version of SyncMate that only syncs Contacts and Calendars is available.  Alternatively, the Expert version that syncs almost everything (including your stickies from one mac to another!) is available for £27 from Eltima Software.