My wife and I have been spending a lot of time managing digital photos we have taken over the last 8 years and I realized I needed to get lined up with an online backup and sync service to really take advantage of all of this digital content. I asked my Twitter followers for some advice and received several responses for various services. A couple of service providers actually reached out to me after my Tweet (you gotta love Twitter for this kind of response) and sent me more detailed information. One of the services recommended to me that I signed up to test out is SugarSync, primarily because they have a fantastic client for the Google Android platform and look to have support for most smartphone platforms. It seems that my decision to try them out was timely as they just announced a couple new features last night, support for upload by email and 500 GB plans.
New features
The first new feature is the capability to upload attachments by email. This feature lets you forward attachments to a special email address where SugarSync will automatically take the attachments and place them in a special dedicated folder. The file(s) will then be instantly available on all synced devices too. This capability should help eliminate some work on your end so that you do not have to open the email, download the attachment, and then upload/sync the attachment to your SugarSync account. You can now simply hit forward in your email client and have the attachments uploaded quickly to your account.You can provide unique email addresses to family, friends, and colleagues to so they can upload photos and documents to your SugarSync account and thus synced to your computer. Again, this new feature saves steps for you and your friends.
You can also use SugarSync to help clear out your inbox and stay under your allotted space by having the attachments sent to your SugarSync account and then delete the original email. BTW, SugarSync scans all of these email file attachments for viruses and files such as .exe., .cmd, and .bat are not allowed to protect your data.
The second part of last night's announcement was the unveiling of larger capacity accounts. The cap before was 250 GB and now you can purchase double that amount if you need that much space. 500 GB is available for $39.99/month or $399/year. Personally, this is way more than I need, but it is nice for consumers to have options for storage capacity.
Cool existing features
Prior to the announcement about these new features, there were a few things that have me quite interested in SugarSync. One of the major ones is the recent Android update that lets you sync local content (from/to your microSD card) and stream your SugarSync content to the Android device. There is also support for Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and WinMo devices so I am not really going to be limited with an account.In talking with SugarSync representatives, I learned that they also have some social networking support so you can quickly share photos stored on their servers to Facebook or via a public link that you can share with family and friends.
Lastly, I like that you can select ANY folder to sync with SugarSync so you are not limited and can work how you want to work and still get your data synced and backed up. BTW, you can get a free 2GB account to try out and that is what I am doing right now. I plan to soon purchase a year subscription to a higher capacity plan though.