If you work or play from multiple computing devices - laptops, desktops and/or mobile phones, Sharpcast can be a killer productivity tool and an excellent way of keeping all kinds of files syncronized. In a very basic sense, it’s like IMAP for all your files.
Sharpcast came out of beta and released a 1.0 version of their photo synchronization application today. Sharpcast Photos syncs the photos you add and edits you make on your desktop, web, and mobile phone in real time.
The new version now allows you to collaboratively edit your photos and galleries, also in real time. Collaboration consists of the ability to share files and read/write privileges in public or private folders along with real time chat built into the client.
The demo I saw of Sharpcast’s real-time syncing is quite impressive, pushing file updates to all the platforms in under a second. Edit a photo in their application, on the web, or your desktop, and the changes are instantly pushed to each location. But Sharpcast isn’t trying to be the next Flickr, rather, the photo syncing application really a demo for their file syncing API. In the specific case of photos, whole photos are stored in each location, with edits to the original photo represented as meta data directions on how the to render the final version.
They currently have a broader file syncing application, Hummingbird, in the works. Hummingbird will handle syncing for all file types. It is essentially the same animal as the photo sharing application, but with fewer bells and whistles. Hummingbird will note and push your updates to your other platforms, but won’t carry out the same real-time updates of the photo product. To avoid the problem of two people making concurrent edits to a file, they will have to be saved, and then opened elsewhere to make changes. While Microsoft Word does support editing concurrency, Hummingbird does not currently support it.
Sharpcast took $13.5 million in financing last March.
I have a question: Let’s say I add a new photo from my phone to my pc and i want to put it on my site. I still have to wait for it to upload the old way right?
i doubt sharpcast can shake flickr’s pillars- it’s simply not positioned to
their editing tools isn’t that awe-inspiring
as for their sync technology making changes to all the places your content resides on - i’m not exactly seeing the light on that
the co.s concept focus seems kind of diluted
I just tried the service and its quite impressive…
Yep, it looks pretty sharp. I just tried out the site too and it works just fine. If they’re not competing with Flickr, though, then who is the market? How do they define it as they go along?
Sharpcast is also setting itself up as a technology company, ready to license it’s syncing platform out to application developers. Sharpcast Photo and Hummingbird are products in their own right, but also help show off the technology. They’re definitely moving beyond photos.
After promising a lot, the Hummingbird approach seems underwhelming - if the documents are not updated in real-time, isn’t this just like Foldershare or any other point-to-point file replication system?
Also, if files have to be saved and then updated, how are conflicts avoided - one person might be editing a copy of the document at the same time as another….not having concurrent editing solves only part of the problem but this sequential editing approach does not seem to solve the problem of working off wrong versions as changes could get lost in the interim (between the save and update events)…
Given that Hummingbird was announced/demoed several months back at the Web 2.0 expo, when is a general public beta of the product expected?
Yup, interesting business model here. A good syncing tool will become a necessity. Once you start to use it, you can’t live without it.
So how much data will they host for FREE?
I just hope some one comes with a similar software to sync blogs. I have multiple blogs and I want to keep all my readers updated, then what do I do.
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
Nice looking system for sure
From what I gather the upcoming hummingbird sounds a lot like Beinsync which has been out for many months now. And it doesn’t sound like they’ve got their act together on handling file conflicts (really, who edits photos collaboratively??). I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what it can do.
Hi Nik,
Thanks for the post. I have a couple of clarifications to make:
Re: your comment, “In the specific case of photos, whole photos are stored in each location, with edits to the original photo represented as meta data directions on how the to render the final version.”, here is how the system works: For any pictures you put into Sharpcast via any Sharpcast client, we make a copy of the original to our server, which then serves as the master backup. We never alter this image or the source file on your PC, even when you make edits (which are non-destructive). Synced clients on various devices work in a “cached mode” to give you snappy, quicker-than-broadband, and offline access to your stuff.
The distinction I make, while somewhat technical, is important because you don’t necessarily want to physically replicate your entire My Pictures folder from the file system on your home PC to the only your work PC or vice versa, but you want to have a user experience as if it were, and always have an easy option of physically replicating the files if you wanted to.
Re: Hummingbird, I don’t want to go into too much detail yet, but it is built on the same platform as Photos and therefore will eventually have a similar user experience with the all-in-one syncing, sharing, backup and collaboration capabilities. Of course, it will also have other things like versioning, intelligent conflict resolution, etc that a product like that needs.
I will also provide a Q&A response to some of the other commenters questions or comments:
Q. Are you trying to compete with Flickr?
A. No. Flickr is all about community and we are all about seamlessly bridging your various islands of data so you don’t have to manually manage multiple fragmented collections of your photos (digital media) on various devices and online services. A lot of us at Sharpcast use Flickr and if anything, we view Flickr as an important island in our lives we’d like to build to bridge to with our platform.
Q. Why should I try Sharpcast Photos?
A. Sharpcast Photos is designed to automate all the “un-fun” things about managing your Photos like uploads, downloads, backups, etc and give a reprieve to users who are tired of the user-experience offered by traditional online photo sharing sites who hold your original images captive, don’t give you access to them to save them or print at home, send you compressed versions of the original images you uploaded without being upfront about it when you order a DVD for safe-keeping,etc.
Instead of a world where desktop photo applications and online photo services act as two distinct worlds, glued together at best by an upload tool, Sharpcast perfectly marries the two universes with our sync platform and the results are quite delightful if you believe the people who have tried the service. Upload a picture to the web, it automatically shows up on all your PCs, create an album on your home PC, it automatically shows up at work, take a picture on your camera phone, it shows up on the web and all your PCs, buy a new PC and login to the app to have everything restored exactly how you left it on the old one, make some edits and share an album when you are offline and have it automatically taken care of the next time you come online, etc. It is all completely automatic and transparent — you don’t even press a sync button. We joke that it is the photo application for lazy people — in other words, people who don’t want to “work” to “manage” their photos.
It has all the features that most people want in their photo application, like editing on the desktop, printing online, etc, but it also has some really cool new features like Group Albums, Photo chat, etc that our sync platform enables.
Q. Who needs collaboration for Photos?
A. Anyone who has ever been to a party or a wedding where multiple people took pictures and struggled to get original photos to each other
Q. What makes Hummingbird different from P2P file syncing solutions like BeinSync or Foldershare
A. It is server based, which offers it some inherent advantages over a P2P solution. It is platform-agnostic, so you could have Mac at home, a PC at work and a Linux tablet you use on the road working seamlessly together. It supports mobile. It is a lot more than replicating files from point A to point B.
Q. When can we expect Hummingbird to be available?
A. We are actively working on this product and expecting the first public release to be the middle of this year. If you can find us some more smart (and nice) developers, that timeframe can be shorter. Much as I wish it was available sooner, there are only so many hours in the day and we are all feeling pretty ragged with all that we already have on our plate with Photos 1.0.
Q. Why should I care about Sharpcast/What is special about it?
A. Sharpcast is all about creating the most delightful and simple experience to manage your data across your various devices and applications and services, online and offline. We are pioneering a new hybrid user experience of “connected” desktop apps (and mobile applications) working seamlessly with browser-based online apps, glued together by a real-time sync engine. The user experience similar to how in a corporate email (MS Exchange) environment, Outlook desktop client works with Outlook Web Access thru any web browser and a Blackberry.
Ultimately, Sharpcast is about simplicity more than it is about everything we do, whether that is sync, backup, sharing or collaboration. Almost everything that our products/platform does, you can accomplish with existing tools and enough work, just like anything you can do with a Tivo can be accomplished with a VCR and enough mental fortitude. But, as the amount of digital media accumulated in your life increases and the number devices and applications in your life increases, your management chore will become exponential. And just as there are people who swear by their Tivo and can’t imagine how they lived before they had one, there are enough people who have *tried* our product who seem to love the simplicity of not having to worry about the myriad hassles of uploads, downloads, emailing files to themselves, manual backups, manual syncs, reducing or removing the constraints of how fast they can accomplish things based on the speed and availability of their bandwidth and so on.
We obviously have a long ways to go, but we believe there is a place for a solution like ours for people who want to accomplish the common things that they they want to do with their photos (or digital media) without having a degree in computer science or embracing the the rigor and organization of an accountant’s life. These are the same people love their Tivo (or DVR), people who pay for a monthly Netflix subscription when it would be a lot cheaper to rent on-demand from Blockbuster and return the movies on time.
Q. How do you plan to win over your skeptics?
A. By building delightful products that simplify your life. In the 3+ years that we have been hacking away at this and in the 12+ months that we spent trying convince any VC to fund us, it is the only thing that has worked for us.
Thanks for your time and your comments. I would encourage you to try out the product to make an assessment for yourself whether we have indeed succeeded in building a simple or delightful experience. If you like it, please help spread the word. If you don’t, please tell us why and we will work to make it better. You can always email me directly at gthomas [at] Sharpcast [dot] com.
At some point, I will post a video of the user experience on our blog at http://www.sharpcast.com/blog. Alternatively, if you have Real Player and 15 minutes to spare, you can go to the link below and see a 10 month old demo for the D conference hosted by Walt Mossberg (http://d.wsj.com) — it will give you the basic idea, but the product is a lot further along.
http://tinyurl.com/32tvad
Cheers,
Gibu Thomas
CEO, Sharpcast
For those that are curious, Robert Scoble posted a demo video of Sharpcast Photos on his blog:
http://www.podtech.net/scobles.....age-photos
and a more general overview of Sharpcast’s vision here:
http://www.podtech.net/scobles.....-file-sync
Hmmm…This doesn’t seem like a new application, the only innovation being the real-time updates. Microsoft’s FolderShare is similar as are a number of products over at SnapFiles.Com.
If you want great file sync’ing between machines, check out http://www.foldershare.com. It’s software that just works. Best part is, after they were bought by Microsoft, all of their services are free.