About Syncplicity
Computer files are unruly creatures. They make you go out of your way to back them up. They demand you remember to copy them to USB drives or email them to yourself so you have them handy. They don’t like being deleted or overwritten and will never come back if that accidentally happens. And the big ones – the worst of their kind – don’t fit everywhere (especially email!) and make sharing them or collaborating on them with others painful at best, impossible at worst.
That’s why we created Syncplicity. Syncplicity puts an end to all the hassles that surround your files and your data, protecting them and ensuring you always have them everywhere you need them – without doing a thing.
Syncplicity backs up all your files, keeps them synced and up-to-date across all your computers and computers of people you’ve shared them with, allows you and your friends to access them online (even if your computers are turned off), and can even sync them with Facebook and Google Docs.
In other words, the days of copying, burning, emailing, uploading, downloading, and especially losing your files are now nothing more than a distant memory.
Take a look at our About page and poke around our Forums to get to know the company better. We started Syncplicity over a year ago with a vision to simplify today’s tedious nature of dealing with files. Our passion is finally becoming reality.
We designed our service and our product with privacy and security in mind from the very beginning. Take a look at our comprehensive Privacy Policy that covers not just your personal information, but also all the data you’re storing in your Syncplicity account. And click here to read a bit about how we encrypt and secure your data from start to finish.
Security
We take security very seriously. From the very moment they leave your computer, your files and information about them are transmitted using the same encryption methods banks and government institutions use (SSL). In our datacenter, each file is encrypted using military grade encryption (AES-256) before it is stored and the random key used in the process is then sent off to an entirely different location as an additional security precaution. When someone requests a file, elaborate verification steps at multiple layers of the system ensure that someone is truly authorized to do so.
Synchronization
A conflict arises when multiple people edit the same file at the same time. Syncplicity handles this safely by detecting such a situation and doing what we believe makes sense the most – it downloads all the conflicting versions and lets you decide which one to keep. Syncplicity doesn’t care when the changes were made or who hit Save last, all that matters is what version of the file was being edited on each computer (so you can finally forget about overwriting someone else’s changes either because you’re in a different time zone, because your computer’s clock is off, or because you hit Save just a fraction of a second later).
The file that you edited on your computer will remain unchanged in its current form. All the conflicting versions will appear with the same name, but with a few pieces of information appended to it so you can tell them apart. The extra information tells you who edited the file, on what computer, and when (for example: Resume (edited by Joe Doe on Home PC @ 5-12-08 2-15-00 PM).doc).
Before Syncplicity syncs anything, it looks over all the files in your folders to learn a bit about them. If it sees the same files on both computers, it will do nothing – its job is done! If it finds files that exist on one computer but not the other, it will synchronize them. And finally, if it finds files that have the same name but different contents, it will consider them conflicted and resolve the problem using the mechanism described in the previous FAQ.
Definitely not, just like it doesn’t re-upload any file you’ve already uploaded.
Using Syncplicity to keep multiple computers in sync is just one function of our service. Syncplicity also continuously and instantaneously backs up your computer, keeps previous versions of your files, and stores those you’ve deleted, as well, just in case you want to get them back. You’ll have 24x7 access to all your folders on your My Syncplicity page, even if your computer is turned off or disconnected from the Internet. And sharing folders with photos or work documents (you pick) with friends or colleagues will be a snap.
If you only want to back your folders up, share them, and access them online, open the Folder Synchronization & Sharing window, pick the folder you don’t want to synchronize, and click the “Backup only” link. From this point onward, Syncplicity will leave the folder on this computer entirely alone and will only upload files from it as they change or get created.
It does and it uses the default proxy settings of your computer (the ones you may have set in the Internet Options control panel). If your proxy server requires you to authenticate with a username and password that’s different from what you used to log in to the computer, enter your proxy server credentials in the Proxy Settings window accessible after clicking “Configure Syncplicity”.
Sharing
When you’re sharing a folder with someone, the folder on the other person’s computer will always look exactly the same as the folder on your computer. If one folder changes – for example, because a new file is created, changed, or deleted – the other folder changes a moment later. The two will always be exact replicas of each other and Syncplicity sees to it that it all happens instantaneously and safely.
That’s why the sharing feature can be so powerful. You no longer have to email photos and videos a couple at a time or send links to low resolution versions on the web – just share the folder instead and the other person will automatically get them. Long gone are days when you had to email documents, slide decks, and spreadsheets back and forth with your co-workers as you incorporated feedback and edited them together – just share the folder instead and everyone will always find the latest version right on their computer.
You can – Syncplicity allows you to make your sharing buddy a Collaborated or a Reader. Collaborators can edit, add, and delete files at will. Readers can only open them.
Just right click on it, expand the Syncplicity menu, and click Share with others. Type in the person’s email address and hit OK a couple of times. That’s it! If you’d later like to remove someone or switch someone from Reader to Collaborator or vice versa, click the Syncplicity tray icon, follow the Manage and Share Folders link, and select the folder in question.
Nope! All they need is a Syncplicity account so we can make sure they are who they say they are. The online My Syncplicity File Browser is a great way to browse, open, edit, and then upload files in any shared folder.
Other
Absolutely. In the My Syncplicity File Browser, a light version of our logo appears in the upper right corner of each file icon. If you click on this icon, you'll see a list of all the revisions that file has undergone and that have been synchronized by Syncplicity. You can revert that file to a previous version and update it on every computer or just download the previous version on its own.
You can find those online in the File Browser's Recycle Bin or by clicking the Show Deleted Files button while browsing a regular folder. Note that if you delete a file on one computer and that file gets subsequently deleted on all your other computers, you will likely find that file right in the other computer’s very own Recycle Bins (we never delete or overwrite files, we always place them in the Recycle Bin). And if you don’t, you can always rest assured it will be in your Syncplicity Recycle Bin online.
Once Syncplicity backs up your data, restoring your data is just like synchronizing to a new computer. Install
Syncplicity on the new computer and tell it what directories to synchronize. The client will notice the directories are
empty and begin downloading your data. Pretty soon, your new (or recently restored) computer will have all your data.
Take a look here (requires login).
Our tape measure ran out before we got to his torso. Your guess is our best guess.