This is a blatantly computer (and Mac) related post. If you have no interest, move along.
A fellow seminarian at StL and Mac user asked how I keep the family computers and phones in sync with each other. Most of this is Mac-based but might be adaptable to the PC realm. First, I tried Apple’s MobileMe and was not impressed. For a newbie, its good solution. For the geeky crowd, its too limited. So, my solution is to use other free or inexpensive solutions. Over the last day I did some more tweaking that has helped significantly.
1) I host my website/blog with iPower. Today I’d use Dreamhost. Both are low cost web hosting providers. I prefer WordPress over the iWeb blog templates. Plus with FTP/MySQL support you can do almost anything. Cost: $60/yr
2) Mail is hosted by Google. I use IMAP on the home desktop, laptop, and phone. Mail stays in sync everywhere (including sent and and drafts.) Cost: Free
3) Address Book syncs between Google and all the Macs/iPhones. A hack is necessary to get this working on Macs without an iPhone synced. http://lifehacker.com/393855/enable-google-contact-sync-without-an-iphoneipod-touch Cost: Free
4) For calendaring, I use Google’s CalDAV support on the Macs and Exchange support on the iPhones. We have a collaborative family calendar and then individual read-only calendars. Exchange support is limited to five calendars (for me: Chris, Anne, Family, Work, Seminary). Cost: Free
5) Photo hosting is a combination of Flickr for archive/public sharing and DropBox for sharing between our various computers and family. Plus direct uploading from iPhoto’09 makes sharing a cinch. Cost: Free (or $25/yr for Flickr Pro)
6) For backup, we have onsite backup using a Drobo and offsite using a combination of sources. iPower and Dreamhost frown against using their shared storage for backup. I have a few archives there for long term storage. For synced backups, I use Mozy Unlimited (https://www.getdropbox.com/home). Cost: $60/yr/computer.
My franken-system of iPower/Google/Flickr/Dropbox is $85 with unlimited photo storage and 2GB on the Dropbox. If you take into consideration the unlimited Mozy accounts, things look pretty good. $205/yr for unlimited backup, unlimited photo storage, high transfer limits, interchange on calendaring, sharing of contacts, WordPress, and full sync.
Compare this to $150/yr for MobileMe’s limited storage and backup (+$50/20GB/yr!), problems with downtime, and iWeb’s limited blog templates.
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