If you work and play on multiple computers in the course of a week, keeping your important files in sync can be difficult. The day may come when you’ve got access to all of your files and data straight from the cloud, but until that day, a solid file syncing application is just what the doctor ordered. Read on for a closer look at the five best file syncing tools as voted by our readers.
Mac OS X only: You already know you can select text in any application on your Mac and drag it to the Desktop to create an instant file with its contents in it. The MacTipper Blog takes saving text snippets to the next level with the Clipper service, which sends text to a file saved in a “Notes” folder in your home directory. Download Clipper and save it to ~/Library/Services/ (you may need to create that directory, I did), and log out and back into your Mac. Then, from any Cocoa application, you can select Clipper from the Services menu to save selected text to Spotlight-friendly, dated plain text file. This method is slightly better than the drag-and-drop approach because you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it; but it does not work with Firefox (Clipper is grayed out), which is a huge bummer. Clipper is a free download for Mac only.
Save Selected Text To a TXT File [The MacTipper Blog]Windows only: If working with minimized thumbnails sounds more convenient than multiple Alt+Tab clicks or taskbar hunting, Microsoft’s Scalable Fabric tool might be right up your alley. The system tray utility lets you set a kind of force field around your desktop—whether that’s one screen or two—and any windows you drag to an area outside your chosen area get minimized to thumbnails on the screen’s edge. That can be pretty convenient if you’re rocking two monitors or have a good deal of screen space. The app allows for colour customisations to tell your work apart at a glance, and while the sound and animations are a little dated, the basic concept seems to work solidly. Scalable Fabric is a free download for Windows systems only, and requires the .NET 1.1 framework. Microsoft Scalable Fabric [via Download Squad]
Alex at the Google Operating System blog hears word that Google Calendar and Gmail will have Gears-supported offline modes in about six weeks, and a few users have already seen accidental offline prompts. Intriguing news, to say the least. Photo by NOTICIAS-TIC.
YouTorrent, the BitTorrent search aggregator with a great interface that proved too popular to stay online with a, er, laissez-faire attitude about legality, has re-launched as a meta-search for legal downloads. Grabbing results of verified legal or open-licensed downloads from Jamendo, BitTorrent, Mininova, and others, the site moves as quickly as ever, lets you sort results by relevance, date, or feed statistics, and offers previews of audio files through the Bitlet streaming tool. It’s not quite the hyper-organized bazaar of torrents it once was, but if you’re looking for something that might be genuinely free to grab, YouTorrent seems like a great place to start. YouTorrent [via TorrentFreak]
