What an awesome idea for anyone with two computers, or who is crazy about having their files backed up: Dropbox. The skinny: you have a folder on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux!), changes to which are tracked. Any time a file is added, deleted or modified, the changes are immediately reflected not only on the company’s online server, but also in any other computers that are connected to your account. To improve the speed, only the fragments of files that are changed are actually transmitted. Furthermore, all of your files as well as a backup of every modified version is available online through their interface.
Other features they provide: you can make files publicly available and provide people a link to download it (no more clogged email messages with too-big files); you can upload a file to your dropbox through the web interface, so again, no more emailing files to yourself when you’re away. They have a video on their website which demos all the features. They give you 2GB free, or 50 for $99 a year (if you like to move around media files, or large amounts of word documents, I guess).
I got set up yesterday — it pretty works as advertised, syncing files between my Ubuntu linux laptop, and my Windows XP desktop. There was an extra step for me on Ubuntu — I installed their dpkg, but I had a problem where it wouldn’t sync, and I had to download another dropboxd package (I can’t find the forum link now, but if you search for the exact error message on their forums, you should find it).
As a side note, Foxmarks has probably the best & smartest support site I have ever seen. Ever. It seems to be run by a company getsatisfaction.com.
