I've been using Google Sync for a couple years before iCloud came along. Here's a video that got me started.
Showing posts with label sync. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sync. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Thursday, December 2, 2010
How to sync your iPad with Linux | Linux User
This article originally appeared in issue 94 of Linux User & Developer magazine.
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Even if you are not a technology buff, it’s hard not to notice how the iPad has taken over the world of gadgets. Before its launch, the iPhone and the iPod touch had a similar impact and they are visible just about everywhere you go. All of Apple’s portable devices use iTunes to synchronise their information with a computer, and iTunes is only available on Windows and Mac systems. So where does that leave Linux users like you and me? Thankfully it’s not a lost cause – let’s take a look at how you can get the maximum out of your fruit branded mobile device on an Ubuntu desktop setup. You’ll also be pleased to hear that all the solutions that we look at here will work on your Apple mobile device without the device requiring to be jailbroken.
You’ll have to forgive the obligitory disclaimer however – all the software and syncing solutions discussed in this article are not built or approved by Apple, and therefore cannot be guaranteed to work as intended. Now, on with the guide…
Required resources
libimobiledevice The project that allows you to sync your iPod, iPad, or iPhone to your Linux machine
Handbrake For converting videos from one format to another
Fuse File system This allows read-write access to your Apple devicesInstallation
1. Getting libimobiledevice
Both Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.1 support the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad out of the box. This is using the libimobiledevice project, which is hosted here. You can visit the project’s website and download the source code, along with that of the supporting packages. Ready-made binaries for several popular distributions are also available from this website. However, the easiest way to get hold of the libimobiledevice packages is by using your distribution’s package management system. For example, Ubuntu Linux and openSUSE have the software in their official repositories. Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.1 users can skip the next step.2. Installing on Ubuntu 9.10
Although Ubuntu 9.10 does not ship with support for the Apple devices, you can set things up reasonably easily. Launch the package source manager by going to System>Administration>Software Sources. Click on the Other Software tab and then on the Add button. Now add the line ‘ppa:pmcenery/ppa’ as the source. Save it and hit the Reload button to reload the repository information. Now launch the Synaptic Package Manager and install the package ‘libimobiledevice0’. Note that you will need to restart your computer for the installation process to complete correctly.3. Installing libimobiledevice for everyone else
If you have landed on a computer which does not have libimobiledevice pre-installed and you can’t find it in your distribution’s binary repositories, you can always download the source release of libimobiledevice and compile it yourself. First, make sure that you have the development tools required for compiling packages installed. Download the source package from the libimobiledevice project website and extract it to a temporary location. Get into the source directory and execute the following commands:./configure make sudo make install4. Plug and play
When you have set things up, you should plug your iPad, iPod or iPhone into your Ubuntu computer. Connect it with the USB cable that you got with your device. When you plug it in, you should see two windows pop up, like the ones shown in the screenshot below, and your device’s icon appear on the Desktop. The two window panes will ask you which applications you want to use to view and manage the photos and the music on your device. The list that will appear depends upon what applications you have installed on your computer. If you see this screen, you should be in business. Let’s proceed and see how you can manage the music, photos, video and other data on your Apple device.
Continue to page 2 – working with your music
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via linuxuser.co.uk
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Never Sync Your iPhone with iTunes Again [Sync]
Never Sync Your iPhone with iTunes Again
iTunes can be useful, but it can also be a huge pain. If you've ever used it for sync you've likely experienced problems. Fortunately, with the help of a few apps, you don't ever have to sync with iTunes again.
Photos
Regardless of how you want to view your photos and how you want them on your phone, you have quite a few options. Recently we looked at how PhotoSync for Lazy makes for quick, automatic photo syncing with your Windows PC. Photo Sync is a cross-platform solution that lets you wirelessly copy your photos from your iPhone's camera roll onto your computer. Apps like Dropbox are a good way of syncing photos cross-platform as well, but viewing on your iOS device isn't all that great since the Dropbox app doesn't provide any kind of thumbnail previews. You can flick through photos one by one, however. If you're a Flickr user, Photo Wallet will sync your Flickr photos wirelessly (called Photo Pad for iPad users). iPicasa does the same thing for Picasa users. While not every single base is covered with photos, chances are you use a service that'll easily let you avoid syncing your photos with iTunes.
Videos
Although you might think video's more difficult, it ends up being pretty easy. You can either use Dropbox to sync and save physical copies of video files on your iPhone or you can use video streaming applications like StreamToMe, AirVideo, and Libox (our overview) to watch your video (that's stored on a home computer) anywhere you have a decent connection.
Music
Music is really where the most concessions come in, but you do have options. While, again, Dropbox will let you save files, that will get annoying fast when you have thousands of songs you want to store. StreamToMe will let you stream your music from your home machine, or you can use any of the several great music streaming services that have iOS apps (some of which are free). Unfortunately, though, if you want true music sync without iTunes you'll have to resort to jailbreaking your iPhone and hacking together a syncing process without iTunes using WinAMP and ml_ipod.
Podcasts and Spoken Word Content
Other Information
For contacts, calendars, email accounts, tasks, and notes, you can always make use of Apple's $99/year MobileMe service or just use Mail2Web instead. There are plenty of individual app alternatives, however. Air Sharing lets you transfer and view files over Wi-Fi. Dropbox lets you access anything you keep in your always-syncing Dropbox, with the option to save files directly to your iOS device without trouble. Simplenote is a great option for syncing plain text and Evernote can handle richer text with graphics. The list goes on and on because there's really no shortage of apps for wirelessly syncing documents and similar content.
Got any great ways of breaking away from iTunes while still satisfying your syncing needs? (You know, besides getting an Android.) Let's hear 'em in the comments.
Send an email to Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com.
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Friday, October 22, 2010
Sync Hotmail With Your iPhone or iPod Touch with Exchange ActiveSync
Would you like to get your Hotmail email, calendar, and contacts on your iPhone or iPod touch? Here’s how you get Windows Live content synced and pushed to your iOS device for free via Exchange ActiveSync.
While Hotmail has remained one of the most widely used email systems for years, it has not always been the easiest to sync with your programs and mobile devices. This year, however, Microsoft has given the entire Windows Live suite an overhaul, and Hotmail has gained a number of new features. Among those is support for Exchange ActiveSync, which lets you get your email, contacts, and calendar pushed to your mobile device. As soon as you receive a new email, it’ll automatically show up on it, and any changes you make to your accounts will be synced with your online Hotmail account. This can work with a wide variety of modern smartphones, including Android and iPhone, so here we’ll look at how you can add Hotmail via ActiveSync to your iPhone.
Please Note: In this article we’re using a 3rd Gen iPod Touch running iOS 4.1, but this will work the exact same on any iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 2.0 or newer.
Adding Your Hotmail Account
If you’ve never added an email account to your iOS device, simply open the Mail app to get started. Alternately, add a new email account from your Mail settings. Select Microsoft Exchange to get started adding your account.
Enter your Hotmail email address as both your Email and Username, then enter your standard Hotmail password and a description for your account. Leave the Domain field blank. Mail will now try to verify your account. Do note that this will work with all Hotmail accounts, including those on international domains, alternate Microsoft domains such as @live.com or @msn.com, or with Windows Live on your own domain.
After a few seconds, the screen will refresh, this time showing a field for Server. Enter m.hotmail.com in this field, and then Mail will verify your account again.
Now, choose if you want to sync your contacts and calendars as well. If you do, press On, then press Save.
The Mail app will now open in your Hotmail inbox, and will sync your messages automatically. Do note that, by default, it will only download emails received within the last 3 days, so if you don’t have any recent messages in your inbox, you may not see any messages at first.
Your Hotmail emails will automatically be pushed to your device as they’re received, so you’ll never have to worry about not getting your emails.
You’ll immediately see your Windows Live Calendar in the Calendar app, and any changes you make will be synced back with your online account.
In fact, if you have multiple calendars in your Live Calendar, all of them will be synced with your device. Calendars added from iCal files or auto-generated by Hotmail will be shown as Read-only, but your main calendar will be fully editable. You can choose to turn off any of the calendars if you wish.
Your Hotmail contacts will also now show up in your Contacts app, and all of your contact groups will be synced as well.
Change Your Default Hotmail ActiveSync Settings
If you’d like to change your account settings, open up the Settings app and select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
Here you can change a wide variety of settings about your Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps. If you need to change settings in your Hotmail account, select it from the top.
You can change your account info, turn on or off Mail, Contacts, and Calendars syncing, choose the number of days to sync and the folders to push, or delete your account.
Alternately, from the first Mail Settings screen, you can choose which address book and calendar are used by default. If you change these to use your Hotmail account by default, then any new contacts or appointments you add will automatically be synced to your online Hotmail account.
Hotmail worked great with Exchange ActiveSync, and definitely is a huge improvement over syncing via POP3. Plus, Hotmail has also improved their mobile webpage, so if you still find yourself needing to use Hotmail.com in the browser, it’ll work good, too.
If you’re still using Outlook on your desktop, check out our article on how to sync your Hotmail account with Outlook 2010 so your mail, calendar, and contacts will be on your iOS device, your PC, and the cloud.
via howtogeek.com
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
How to Keep Your Workflow in Sync Across Computers [Productivity]
How to Keep Your Workflow in Sync Across Computers
Between home and work desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones, you have several digital workspaces in your life. Here's how to keep them all effortlessly organized, so you can spend less time fiddling and more time getting things done.
Most of us deal with multiple computers nowadays; we work from home, from the office, and even at the local coffee shop. You may have any combination of a desktop computer at home, a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a laptop at work, a netbook for couch surfing, and other number of machines you have to deal with regularly.
Unfortunately, you can end up spending a lot of time trying to keep your digital workspaces synchronized—apps, layouts, organization methods, or whatever other computer customizations help save you time—defeating the purpose of setting them all up in the first place. Here are some of the best ways to keep your workspaces as closely synced as possible, so when you move from one to the other you can pick up right where you left off.
Note: If some of this feels familiar it's probably because we've covered most of these methods separately before; this goal of this guide is to bring them together in one place to help you set up a synced system.
The Tools to Keep it All Together
First, you need a way to sync your data across machines. For most of these examples, I'm going to use the popular file-syncing utility Dropbox, mostly because it's simple, free, and it's what I use. If you have, say, an Amazon S3 or Windows Live SkyDrive account already, you could use something like previously mentioned Gladinet to mount that storage as a virtual drive and go from there. With this space set aside, you can store important documents, files, and portable applications (if you're a Windows only user), so even if you find yourself working from a computer that isn't one of your usual machines, you'll still have your pre-organized digital workspace wherever you go.
Also, while it may seem archaic, you can always make do with a regular old flash drive—they're cross-platform, inexpensive, don't require syncing, and your computer will immediately have access to your data every time you plug them in (although Windows users may need to assign it a permanent drive letter or mount it to an assigned folder). With that out of the way, let's get started syncing.
Keep Bookmarks, Open Tabs, and Passwords Synced with Browser Extensions
While browsers like Firefox and Chrome have started incorporating their own synchronization tools, I always find myself coming back to third-party tools like Xmarks (for bookmark sync) and Lastpass (for password sync). The biggest advantage to using these third-party tools is that they work with pretty much any browser on the market—so even if you prefer to use Firefox on one computer and Chrome on another, or you decide to switch browser loyalties down the road, you can still keep everything synced. Furthermore, tools like Xmarks and Lastpass always seem to be ahead of the game when it comes to syncing—for example, Xmarks can sync open tabs between computers—a feature unavailable in most browsers—and Lastpass has the ability to automatically log you in to every site you visit—which you wouldn't get if you just synced your passwords with Chrome or Firefox's built-in tools.
While Xmarks' bookmark syncing and Lastpass' password syncing are pretty self-explanatory, one of the best features for managing multiple workspaces is Xmarks' ability to sync open tabs. Thus, if I'm working in my home office and need to get out of the house for awhile, I can just quit my browser, move to a coffee shop, open up my laptop and hit the "Open Remote Tabs" button in Xmarks' menu to pick up right where I left off—even if I'm in a different browser than I was before.
Sync Your Application Preferences Between Machines
If you happen to use different browsers on your different computers, there's no easy way to sync your extensions and preferences, since they're just plain not compatible with other browsers. That said, it's really easy to sync your extensions, preferences, and pretty much everything else (and this method will often work with more than just your browser). Chrome already syncs bookmarks, form data, preferences, extensions, and more, but with a bit of work, you can also sync your application preferences for apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin.
We've featured multiple ways to do this in the past, but the best method for syncing application data across computers is to sync your app's actual profile folder (the second method mentioned in the video above). You can, for example, sync Firefox bookmarks, profiles, and extensions using Dropbox as previously described. This method will not only sync your extensions, but your history, bookmarks, saved passwords, and pretty much everything else related to your browser preferences. If you use Firefox on all your machines, this method mostly negates the need for things like Xmarks and Lastpass, though I like to keep them around in case I end up on another computer. They shouldn't interfere with the synced profile folder.
The same basic method will work for a number of different applications. While most of the work we do nowadays is in a browser, many people still use email clients such as Thunderbird or IM clients like Pidgin, and manually keeping everything in sync can be a pain. Thunderbird and Pidgin have profile folders that can cross platforms just like Firefox, so you can use Dropbox to sync their profiles across all your computers as well.
Keep Your Music Library Available Wherever You Go
For some, music helps boost your productivity, and lots of you have told us that you prefer to listen to music while you work. The online music streaming route is always a quick and easy choice, but if you have more obscure music or you find it easier to browse your own library, you've got ways of doing that, too.
Above we detailed how to sync application data for your favorite programs, but it's a little bit harder to sync your entire music library wherever you go. If you have enough space in your Dropbox account or your preferred storage service, it's pretty easy (with a few caveats) to just sync your iTunes library with Dropbox (we'll go into more details on syncing iTunes with Dropbox in another post). If you don't have that kind of space, though, there's another way to go about it.
Since my Dropbox account only covers a few gigs, I just bring my music with me on a portable device. If you're an iPod and iTunes user, you can always just plug your iPod into your computer and listen to it from there by expanding the iPod's entry in the sidebar and clicking on "Music". While it isn't perfect, I've found that this more than covers my music needs when I'm not at my main workstation.
If that's not your cup of tea, you can store a subset of your library on a flash drive, or on your smartphone's SD card (though you'll need a bluetooth headset for when people call you you don't want to disconnect it from your computer in the middle of your work). Most music apps (even the excruciatingly slow-on-change iTunes) have a "watch folder" feature, from which the app will auto-update your library. It may work differently in different applications (iTunes, for example, automatically moves any music you add to its watch folder); I've found Songbird's works exactly how I want it to. I just set the watch folder to wherever I'm storing my music, and then whenever any songs are added or removed from that folder, Songbird will automatically update the library. It's a little "dirtier" than just syncing your entire library, but it gets the job done and allows me to take a piece of my library with me wherever I go and browse it from the comfort of a simple interface.
Do the Best You Can with What You Have
If you're in the more difficult position of working on a system that doesn't allow you to install applications, sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do the best you can. You can make portable versions of many applications and run those, if your workplace allows it. This doesn't necessarily allow for all the above methods, but Xmarks and Lastpass will still work with little intervention.
While we focused a lot on the applications, preferences, and layout of your workspaces, remember that your technology is not the end all be all of your productivity (sometimes pen and paper is the simplest way to take everything with you). Your productivity depends a lot on the way you manage your workflow: things like staying focused and dealing with information overload and multitasking are potentially huge bottlenecks, too. These tools and tricks will certainly save you time day-to-day, but they won't do a thing if you lose good work habits as soon as you pick up and move.
Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.
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