Walt Mossberg has a review today
of Sharpcast sync service.
What sets this service apart is that no only will it sync with PCs, it will sync
with your cell phone. Specifically, Walt used a Treo 700w for his
tests.
Now, a small Silicon Valley start-up called Sharpcast is introducing an
impressive, free service that synchronizes data among PCs, phones and a Web
site at lightning speeds. I tested Sharpcast for several weeks, and found that
it works really well.
The service is limited to photos right now, which means it’s more mashed
potatoes than gravy:
With Sharpcast Photos, any change you make to an album of
photos on one of your devices is replicated within seconds on your other
devices. If you add a photo to an album on your PC, it shows up within seconds
on your phone and on your Sharpcast Web page. If you rotate a photo on the
phone, the same photo is rotated within seconds on the PC and Web page. If you
delete a photo on the Web page, it’s immediately deleted on the PC and the
phone. And if you take a photo with the camera on your Sharpcast-enabled
phone, it will show up in seconds on your PC and your Web
page.
It’s not a huge leap from instant replication of modified photos to instant
replication of spreadsheets, Word docs, etc.
You can also share your albums with other Sharpcast users, and receive
shared albums from them.
Sharing = collaboration. MS’s next version of SharePoint will be mobile
enabled, but there’s a large buy-in and overhead, not to mention connectivity
issues. Instead of sharing a photo album, imaging sharing a project
folder. By the time your plane lands, you have the updated files on your
phone, and will get them as soon as you connect your laptop to the
Internet. Sweet! And, probably with less overhead.
Planned improvements include sync of contacts, appointments, etc. Not
such a huge issue for me, since we have an Exchange server, but very useful for
a lot of people I know.
Full story at http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060713.html.
The possibilities are exciting–this is definately a company to watch in the
near future.