Sugarsync +1, Dropbox -1 – Sugarsync Rocks, again

I was just chatting to a mate this evening, and wanted to share a few photos from yesterday’s flying with him.

Now, I finally paid out for a 50GB Sugarsync account – not for me, but for my wife. I decided Sugarsync was the best way to collaborate on, and backup, our photos for the moment, so whenever we take some new ones, we put them in a folder shared from her account. Unlike Dropbox, it doesn’t count against both of our storage allocations, so only one of us need the extra space – and I put it against her account.

However – while most Cloud file systems allow sharing a directory, I didn’t realise Sugarsync allows you to share individual files. Not file, but fileS. And not ‘Send to email’, but share. I Ctrl-clicked a few photos from the batch to show my friend, right-clicked, Share with Sugarsync, and it opens a web browser with the list of photos to share, where I can put his email address. Click. Done!

Compare this to Dropbox where:

• You have to nominate a root Dropbox folder
• You can only share directories
• You can’t selectively share files within those

One point to Sugarsync.

 

However – those restrictions are not why Dropbox stores ‘-1′. No – the reason for that, is the complete inability to create folders in the mobile (iOS) app….

I’d just been playing with Notability on the iPad, and saw that, like everything, it can sync a folder with Dropbox. Cool! OK. I’ll enter my Dropbox details, select a folder to sync my Notability notes to.. OK, I don’t have a suitable one – I’ll create a new one.

Ah.. I can’t in the Notability-Dropbox UI. OK – I’ll open the Dropbox app, and do it there…

No… not there either… Hmmmm….

 

Nope. Not anywhere. No way. You’ll have to go back to your PC for that, mate. Or the web UI.

 

It never fails to frustrate me how Dropbox restrict their service. Yet, they got in there with their API, and they’re the de-facto standard for app cloud sync. They’re not going away. And yes, they do have some awesome technology and robustness in syncing, hash comparison and partial sharing, deduplication, etc. that the other services just can’t match; I assume they have the patents pending for those. But while I’ll use my free Dropbox account for all my syncing apps, I’ll continue using my slightly ropey, but always flexible, Sugarsync account for my work.

 

Anyone seen any ultimate hierarchical information organisers around here

Occasionally, when I get some breathing space, I scout around to see whether anyone’s written the nirvana of information organisers that I’ve been looking for, for a few years now. My current stop-gap solution is Treepad, as I mentioned here.

However, what I really need is:

• Hierarchical structure!
• RTF/HTML text/images/etc
• Seamless cloud sync
• Offline PC / Web / iPhone clients
• All my information, where I can find it, when I need it, in a manageable form.
• Ideally, selective sharing/collaborating of branches
• Today’s wish item: org chart support!

No-one has yet managed it. Treepad does OK, but has no mobile clients or cloud sync. Google Docs, Evernote, and a thousand other note tools, do it all.. except Hierarchies. No people, Hierarchies are not dead. Just because most people can’t organise their information worth a damn and just want to Hadoop-search everything, doesn’t mean I can’t organise myself as much as possible.

Mediawikis are very close, if you create your own hierarchy, but a pain to manage.

So… folks, seen any perfect info tools around these parts?

 

Skype Screen sharing – doesn’t work

Hmm… Interesting little problem here.

My Mum’s running Skype 5.1.0.104 on Windows XP. She told me that she couldn’t share her screen in a call, because it was greyed out.

I logged in using LogMeIn, and set up a Skype call with myself on my Win7 x64 laptop. I went to View->Share your screen, and saw that it wasn’t greyed out. However – clicking it yielded… nothing. No shared screen. No error.

Annoying. Of course, Googling for this problem doesn’t really find anything useful.