How do we keep it all together?
I’m sitting here looking at the new Apple iPhone 4 and I’m thinking to myself, do I want this or the Ipad?
But what i want has nothing to do with it, it’s how do i plan to keep all my devices in the loop and up to date with all my data.
I personally use my laptop, desktop and 4-5 mobile smart phones. How the hell do i keep track of what’s on what. Here enters the cloud.
First-my emails are all synced up server side. No matter what device, they all support MS Exchange Server. This allows me to jump on any device and have all my emails synced (Inbox, Folders and everything)
Calendar-Synced as above.
Contacts-Haven’t figured out how to seamlessly do this yet. Centrally, they are stored on my laptop. When i switch a device, i sync with Outlook on my laptop and it copies over the contacts.
Here comes the hard part, Data-Files, Pictures, Word Docs. Currently, i can only keep my iPhone, laptop and desktop in sync with a service called DropBox. I use this for generic things and nothing sensitive. It’s a cloud based service that gives you 2GBS of online space. They beauty, the have a Desktop and iPhone application. Simply put, saving to a folder is simply enough and it gets replicated to the cloud and all other machines instantly. Privacy is the issue here. I’d like to pay for a service as DropBox, but offers more in terms of encryption and fully controlled by the end user.
And there you have it folks.
Food for thought-in a world where there are single and convergence devices-how do we keep it all together?

TSnomad