GIZMO
One problem with the portability of the modern gizmo is that you can end up with lots of different versions of the same thing. Start working on something in your office, put it on a flash drive, revise it at home, take it on the laptop and do a bit more work on it during a trip… suddenly you’ve got about four versions of the same thing floating around. Same applies to your photo library and music collection.
A system called SugarSync aims to fix this. The idea is you can synchronise your files across all your computers, and even some smart phones. It puts the latest version of any file on all your computers, and also keeps an archive of the files you can get to through a web site using a password. Make a change on your word document , and save it, and the same changes are replicated on all computers you’ve synched it with. The actual linking is done through the internet: when you make a change it is first uploaded to SugarSync’s own servers, which then send the revised version to your other computers too, and they’ll take effect next time you log on. It’s a very handy backup method too.
The version on sale in the states offers a free trial and then charges for file storage (US$25 a year for 10 gigabytes, and there are bigger storage plans too); the charge is in US dollars but in every other respect it doesn’t really matter where you are. Software itself is free at www.sugarsync.com.