Oliver at MobileCrunch has a long post today about Sharpcast, currently a photo tool that synches data effortlessly across desktop, web and mobile interfaces. Each time you log in to any device your data is synched automatically across all of them and the mobile user interface looks exactly like the desktop interface. Sharpcast’s synchronization technology, the company says though, is set to change the way more than just photos are worked with. Oliver calls it a “Universal Push Synchronization Engine” and says it’s like Blackberry technology but for every kind of data.
With $16.5 million in funding from investors like Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Selby Venture Partners and Sigma Partners, Sharpcast is in a good position to move ahead with its vision.
Synchronization across multiple platforms is much easier said than done, just look at the RSS space. If Sharpcast can take the next step beyond photos it could become a very important technology.
Very cool. I’d probably use it if it was able to sync more data than just photos.
http://www.findmotive.com
Noah,
We’ll get beyond photos soon, and in a way that we feel pretty sure will delight folks like you. In our first phase (a.k.a. the ‘living in a cave’ phase, when no one knew who we were), we were completely focused on getting the core technology to work and that phase lasted over 2 years, so we are finally at a point where we can showcase the fruits of our cave living. Over the last 8-9 months, we have been busy deploying the core technology in the context of the photo application as well as extending it to other data types.
We are just scratching the surface, so please be patient with us. We are completely committed to doing this right. Before the year is out, you should see us extending support to other platforms and data types as well as web-enabling and mobilizing existing applications to create an experience that was heretofore unavailable to the average consumer.
Cheers,
Gibu Thomas
CEO, Sharpcast
Awesome! Thanks for replying to my comment. That shows me that you really care about user’s opinions.
This is nice for syncing photos between desktops , but for mobile?
as you know mobiles has small storage and if i have 1000 photos on my desktop , and you synced it to my mobile i will start having issues , mobile storage will full , it will become slow , etc.
How about option for deciding if this photo should be synced to my mobile or just desktops?
..
My opinion: Sharpcast is everything Picasa should be.
Faisal,
You raise a great point and hits the heart of the issue of why it is over-simplification to call what we do synchronization.
On a mobile phone, we keep the meta data in sync. So, the list of albums, number of images in each album, etc. When you click on an album, the application requests the server to send down a transcoded image big just enough to fit the screen resolution (in the future, you will be able to set favorites to lock something down in cache), so it is really fast compared to a web browser, where you’d have to type in a URL on a tiny cell phone key pad, navigate to the right album, and download the whole file. If you take a picture on your camera phone, the full file is of course synced to the server.
There are a lot of other nifty things we have done to overcome the limitations of the small devices, but as a user, all this is completely transparent to you. To you, you have access to your full workspace everywhere regardless of what device you are on and whether you are online or offline, and you pick up where you left off.
It is still in alpha, but if you have Win Mobile phone today, you can try it out. Thanks for your insightful comment.
Noah, thanks for your kind sentiments. I always say that a startup is the triumph of passion over reason, so yes, I do care
Cheers,
Gibu
oh, in spite of all the reasons above, we call it sync anyway, because it is hard enough to explain what we do without inventing a new metaphor. close enough
my flight is about to take off and i have toothpaste and deodorant to get rid off, so bye.
gibu
Interesting.
One more option is to create a mini-browser , whereby the user can view small thumbnails of his photos and request the one he wants to view by clicking on it , this is also not synchronization , and will definitely require unlimited GPRS plan , in which the operators in my country doesnt offer:(
With regards to the word synchronization , i think the word ” sharing ” is not bad.
any way thanks for replying and have a nice trip.
Doesn’t FolderShare do this, for free, pretty well?
The greatest power of this tool seems to be instantly syncing pictures from a WiFi enabled camera or camera phone to a server, rather than the other way around. That would be useful in eliminating the need for massive flash memory, though the prices of memory continue to drop. Now if we could only get WiFi enabled Video Cameras, which would instantly sync with a server we would never have to change tapes again!
Looking forward to the product release,
Hey Skeptic,
Foldershare is a peer-to-peer files syncing solution. It can keep your My Pictures folder staying in sync between multiple PCs as long as both devices are online and connected. To find out how Sharpcast is different
- Think about the difference if Picasa stayed in sync across multiple machines and the web
- and you had the full-functionality in offline mode and the changes were automatically synced
- and your entire workspace (not just files, your captions, album structure, buddy list) was automatically backed up and the only thing you needed to migrate to a new PC is install the software on a new PC and login
- and changes you made on the web automatically synced back to all your machines
- and you had a powerful ‘push’ synchronization experience on your mobile a la a Blackberry
- and if this experience wasn’t limited to Photos or Sharpcast provided applications, but could be extensible to other data types and existing applications.
There is more, but hopefully you get the idea. The easiest way to validate this all of course would be to try out our free beta of our first product, Sharpcast Photos at http://www.sharpcast.com. It is still a work in progress obviously, but you will understand what I am talking about. There are also more products coming down the pike.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Gibu Thomas
CEO, Sharpcast