I have a fascination with Information Technology. In one way or another it has touched all of our lives. It impacts us economically, as well as culturally as we see the affects it has on the world through social networking.   I love the way it makes life easier, even though it can sometimes cause some frustration within the household.

 

The most recent tool that I am using in a hope that it will improve my life is SugarSync. This application is an on-line backup, file synchronisation and sharing tool. I currently have it installed on a mac, a desktop PC running Windows, an Android phone, along with a laptop and virtual machine under WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) both running Linux.

 

The closest most of us get to the ‘cloud’ is either accessing our e-mails on-line or viewing and uploading photos to Facebook. Occasionally  someone might use an on-line application such as Google docs. What this tool aims to achieve is provide you with some on-line storage that backs up your files to the internet, and if you wish it, synchronise them between all your devices. The purpose being that all your files are at the most recent revision and available wherever you have an internet connection.

 

From personal experience the main benefit I gain from it is that my current writing is safely backed up to the internet, and is updated across my devices so that I am always up to date.  Also all the photos and videos from my phone are also backed up and available to me from my devices where they have been duplicated. All my files are available to me through any browser. I can also send a link via e-mail to my friends so they can download large files from their internet browser, rather then clogging up their inbox :).

 

Features that I have not used include media streaming, and group collaboration tools, but feel free to comment on your experiences if you have used them.

 

One warning that I would give would be not to use this as your sole backup tool. Because of its ease of use it could be tempting to just leave it up to SugarSync to do the work. However anything can happen and usually does. So  keep an off-line local backup of your files as well for piece of mind.

 

If you want to give it a go yourself, you can get 5GB for free, along with an extra 500MB from using my referral link, from here:

 

https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=ehpsrgs9vrhaa