Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with synch

apple divices willfully ignoring each other!

genmonster — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:25:33 -0800

itunes refuses to see my ipod- again! I've got a 1st-gen ipod touch, a macbook, and the latest version of itunes- but the three won't play nice... This happened to me a few weeks ago, I reset the ipod, completely deleted and reinstalled the latest version of itunes (including that all those tricky 'mobile device library' bits that are hard to find) and it synched. once. now itunes is ignoring my ipod again. can you help me fix it for good this time?

Synch me up

kestrel251 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:54:07 -0800

How to best keep my Mac laptop & desktop synched? So I have a Mac laptop (MacbookPro running 10.4.11) & desktop (um, not sure; I'm on the laptop now). I go back and forth between them. In some periods I'm mostly using the laptop, and in others mostly the desktop. I try to keep them mostly synched up -- every now and then I start up the laptop in "target disk mode" via firwire, and drag and drop.

But that's tedious, requires work on my part (feh!), and is totally fallible. E-mail isn't a problem. But word docs, .pdfs of articles, pictures, and music? Big problem. The two computers are definitely not totally in synch. They don't even have all the same folders. Is there a way to fix this, other than a horrible marathon manual transfer session? What software is available?

Ideally, the software would
a) recognize when two files with the same name are not the same (think older/newer versions of a document)
b) recognize when two files with different names are in fact the same (think .pdfs that got saved with different names)

I apologize if this is a dumb question... I searched older questions, and googled, but everything I came across was several years out of date. This makes me suspect that there is some obvious new solution. I don't have an Apple Time Machine -- I suspect that might be a good idea after I sort this out, right?

Thanks!

Be free, Belkin Mouse. Freeeee.

spec80 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:57:32 -0800

Why is my new wireless keyboard working, but not the wireless mouse it came with? Players:
Old Belkin Wireless Keyboard and Mouse (not sure of exact model - but the receiver plugs into a USB and ps/2)
New Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave (keyboard and mouse, receiver plugs into a USB)

I unplugged the old Belkin stuff, took out the batteries and plugged in the new Logitech stuff. It looks like the receiver is synching to both the keyboard and the mouse but while I'm able to use the keyboard, I'm unable to use the mouse.

I've tried restarting the computer. I called Logitech support and he had me synching and resyching and powering up and powering down, etc. I've looked online and I don't think I am searching correctly. Right now, I am using the new keyboard and the old mouse. I can't find anything on my add/remove programs about Belkin in case I needed to uninstall something.

I don't think it's the mouse because this is the second new Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse in 2 days that I've had this problem with. I have called my IT department and put in a request but it usually takes a few hours for someone to come by.

What am I doing wrong that the mouse isn't being recognized?

How to twin/synch hard disks in order to avoid crying bad in case of unexpected failure and no fresh backups ready?

lion — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:53:35 -0800

Does it exist for consumer use? A storage device made by two (or more) twin synched separate hard disks, one for normal use and the other one for backup just in case something goes wrong? Or a software doing the same thing with two (or more) external hard disks? I would like to know if I can buy a product like the one I'm going to describe.

Premise: I have a laptop, and it uses its internal SATA hard disk.
I have a lot of stuff on it, and I have no time - and never will have - to backup everything, every day, on DVDs, external USB hdd, etc.

I would like to be very unlikely to lose some data (or everything).
I know some day the internal HDD, or the laptop, will fail. It's electronics. There are mech parts. It simply won't last forever, it's normal.

Ok, so: I would like some kind of device, which I could connect to my laptop and see it as a normal hard disk, a storage device.
But, it should be a special one: e.g. it should be composed by at least TWO separate hard disks (but it would be nice to have the possibility of adding as many as I can buy).
Let me call them the "main" and the "backup" disk.

The main disk should be used as I normally do with the internal SATA disk. But, there should be some kind of controller synching whatever changes on the main disk, on the backup disk.

This way, if laptop brokes, I still have all my data on the external disk. And if the main disk fails, I still have everything on the backup one: so I can replace the main with a new hard disk, press a (hardware or software) button, and everything from backup to new main is copied, and they start synching again. Or, if the backup fails, I'll replace the backup disk, press a button, and voila'.
And, if the device controller breaks, I can pick one of the disks and put it in a usb external disk case and continue working as nothing happened (or until I buy a new one of this kind of special device).

I don't know if my explanation is understandable, but I hope you got the idea and you know something similar I can buy.

Another solution, if you know of one, would be a software solution which I should configure for the same business, telling it two (or more) external hard disks I want to use as main and backup devices.

Or, if you can suggest some kind of hacker solution for Windows XP, with rsynch and such things, it would be ok too.

Free software would be appreciated, but eventually if some good commercial solutions exist don't exclude them.

Thanks

Who owns rights to the use of the song in Film?

mary8nne — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:48:06 -0800

Can someone please explain how to get Synchronization Rights to a Cover Version of a song? Or who would have control of whether you can use a cover version in a film. For example, in say the Life Aquatic parts of the sound track use Seu Jorge cover versions of David Bowie songs (sung in Portuguese).

So who's permission do you need (who do you pay) to use a recording like that in a Film (I assume, TV, DVD, etc are the same)?

What other programs besides Muvee auto producer match video to the beat of the music automatically?

bostonhill — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:16:31 -0800

What other programs besides Muvee auto producer match video to the beat of the music automatically? (I realize premiere/vegas/ffc do this manually but I am specifically looking for an auto program) I am looking for a program like Muvee autoproducer that will take still images and synch them to the beat of the song.

Back me up, Scotty!

sprocket87 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:02:02 -0800

Recommend a good tool to remotely backup/synchronize large folders to my home NAS. Here's what I have:

- Laptop with 100+ GB music library; misc documents, photos, and other data that needs backed up
- Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 750GB at home (supports pretty much everything - rsync, (S)FTP, WebDAV, etc)

Here's what I want to do:

For my MP3 library (100GB, 20k files, 4k folders) - mirror or synchronize any changes from my laptop (remote at work) to my home NAS. I've tried a TON of apps already with varying degrees of success. The major problem seems to be that to do a mirror, the apps have to perform a full "audit" scan of the destination (NAS) share to see what needs updated/copied. Problem is, with 20k files, that takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r, at least using FTP or WebDAV.

Ideally, I'd like a real-time backup app that monitors some selected folders (like My Music) and kicks off an automated upload for any changed files. This (a) makes it fully automatic and (b) [in theory] faster - doesn't have to synch each time, just upload based off a good known synch. Problem is, I've yet to find the right tool to accomplish all these things correctly.

Note: I'd be happy as a clam to use rsync, which the ReadyNAS supports, but I'm sending from a Windows client and my options are limited. I've been racking my brain trying to get DeltaCopy to work, but it keeps timing out when attempting to connect to the NAS. I have port forwarding, etc, working fine on my router, so I can't really figure out why rsync is failing.

Note 2: The ReadyNAS does have optional support for SSH and Telnet, I believe, but it involves some trickery to get working and I think it might void my warranty...

I think my Blackberry is assuming I'm Buck Rogers and I'm going to make it to the 25th century.

rileyray3000 — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:14:45 -0800

Everytime I sync my blackberry with Outlook 2007 my task due dates get screwed up. By at least 500 years. Really. Is this a problem with outlook or does Microsoft know about my plan to get cryogenically frozen at some point? So here's the specifics: I have a T-mobile Curve model blackberry (though it also happened with my pearl), Outlook 2007 (though it also happened with Outlook 2003) and windows vista.

Basically I usually put my tasks down with no due date. When I do this, and when I sync, it changes the dates on the blackberry and on the outlook to something like "due Dec 13, 2347."

Granted, when I PUT due dates in, I have no problems. But when I add a task to be done quickly (usually on the fly on the blackberry) and I DON'T put in a due date, the next sync, it tells me I should get it done by the time the aliens take over.

So what's the deal? Anyone else have this problem

managing synched itunes libraries

kingfisher, his musclebound cat — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 08:07:56 -0800

I have a powerbook, an external hard drive, and more music than will fit on my powerbook. I would like to keep a single organized library on my external hard drive and have a subset on my powerbook. I can do that easily enough -- but when I add iTunes to the mix . . . and I want to add iTunes in for the song ratings and playlists, I know of no way to manage it. In a sense, it would work like the iPod : Computer relationship, but instead it would be Computer : External Hard Drive (but with some uploading).
So let say I have 100 gb of material on my external drive. I have 30 gb on my powerbook. Most is from the ext. drive library but some material is new. On my machine iTunes has all the songs in its library. Now I want to synch. Send up the new music, drop some albums, gather a few more. While keeping all iTunes data.
Can this be done?

Upcoming.org to Outlook to Palm?

tpl1212 — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:04:44 -0800

I use upcoming.org to keep track of concerts and club nights I am or may be interested in going to...and I just got a new Palm Tungsten e2, which i've synched up with Outlook on my WindowsXP machine at work...i'd love to be able to feed the Outlook calendar the iCal file from Upcoming.org (thus, synching it up to my Palm). In a perfect world, I would love to be able to tell Outlook's calendar to pull information and dates from my iCal feed on upcoming.org (via the webcal://upcoming.org/calendar/my_events/.... URL for my events), thus populating my Outlook calendar with these events...and finally updating my palm with them when I synch them.

Thing is, the only way I seem to be able to do this would be to download the iCal file to my HD and then manually updated Outlook with it (and I don't even know if I can do this...I am admittedly not as learned in iCal as I should be)...but this seems tedious if my events on upcoming.org keep getting updated (hence, i'd love to plug in the iCal address to always keep whatever synching is done up to day).

Can Outlook 2003 SP1 (windows xp home sp2) populate its calendar with events from the web as described above?

What's the easiest way to synchronize text files between two computers?

hansbleep — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 17:56:04 -0800

I maintain lists of to-dos and other information in a lot of text files. Currently I've been having to shuttle them between work and home via my FTP server, which is about a five step process and rather annoying, espcially when Dreamhost is slow. What is an easier way to synchronize text files between two Windows XP machines that are NOT on the same LAN... with a big emphasis on EASY, preferably two steps or less?

Excel Spreadsheet Updating

ajpresto — Tue, 11 May 2004 13:01:41 -0800

Excel query. I have two Excel spreadsheets that I want to have automativally update each other. But, the format that they are in is generally incompatible. These are used as scheduling documents for the place where I work.

One spreadsheet is very wide. It lists each individual person at the top and their personal schedule below it. It lists breaks using "ONE" as the first half of a 30 minute block, "TWO" as the second half of a 30 minute block, and "LONG" as the entire 30 minute block.

The other spreadsheet is much less wide. It has 7 days listed and three columns. One is for "LONG" one is for "ONE" and the third is for "TWO." In each column, each person's name is entered in the appropriate block as defined in the first spreadsheet.

Can I get those two to talk to each other? Can I tell the first spreadsheet that if the word "TWO" is in a certain field to put the name of that person in another field on another spreadsheet?

Looking for remote bookmark management across several PCs

monju_bosatsu — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:10:24 -0800

Now that I have a Real Job, I'm stuck working between two home computers and two work computers, all Windows systems. Bookmark management has become a nightmare. I'm looking for some sort of remote management system where I can combine all my bookmarks and manage them in my webspace, so I can access them from anywhere. I'm up to about 1500 categorized bookmarks, so a mostly automated system would obviously be preferential. Any ideas?