While we are readying the system for a broader betatest our pixelguru Martin spent some time on the icon of our client application. The journey started of course with our logo.

Adding some gloss and depth… adding some details and glow… adding more depth and a typical system preferences icon shadow… well yes - it’s not ready yet, but sufficent for our upcoming beta.

The following screenshots show the current look and feel of our application.

Our icon still needs some optimization for different resolutions and sizes.

fruux is meant to simplify your digital life. When syncing different devices and services you might run into troubles called sync conflicts.

Just think about the following scenario:

1. you modified one of your contacts phonenumbers on the go via the (not yet demoed) fruux webapplication
2. then you modified the very same contacts phonenumber on your laptop (lets assume you had no internet access while doing this)

The outcome of this example is a sync conflict. The fruuxServer and your local system now contain different phonenumbers for the same contact. As the system has no idea which phonenumber is the correct one, it just asks you.

Reviewing the sync conflict gives you a nice dialogue (left side shows your local addressbook, right side shows the data from the fruuxServer). Now it’s really easy to choose the correct contact, by just clicking on the correct card.

After choosing the correct card you just restart the sync via the “Sync Now” button and immediately both your local system and the fruuxServer are in sync again.

It’s been a while since our last post, but it was worth the wait. This screencast shows the first demo of our sync client including a graphical user interface. The video shows the following steps:

• empty database on the fruuxServer
• the content of the local addressbook
• installing and running the client
• fruuxServer database in sync with local addressbook
• changing a name in the local addressbook
• syncing again
• fruuxServer database in sync again

Just some comments:

• yes the gui isn’t very pretty yet and we have to add our logo
• the screencast shows just first- and lastname in the database of the fruuxServer, but of course all other entities have been synced as well. the system is able to handle all the custom entities!
• there is no public betatesting yet, but hopefully soon

Looking forward for your comments.

This screencast shows a very early version of our sync client. So far there’s no graphical user interface. We just wanted to share this video with you as a little non-vaporware proof.

What actually happens in the video is the following:

• the client uploads the local addressbook to the server
• the local addressbook is deleted
• the client runs again and fetches all the previously uploaded records from the server

Even in this early version we already support every entity of the addressbook, including the custom entities.

Just in case you wonder, why the client fetches all the records from the server during the second run instead of deleting them on the server as well (this is what would happen in a real sync): we cheated a bit. the second time the sync-client is invoked, it gets a special parameter that forces the client to rebuild the addressbook with the data stored on the server.

First of all my appologies for so many days without any sign of life from the backstage! We are still extremely busy behind the scenes, but as we don’t want you to lose sight of our work, here is the next post (b.t.w. thank you for all your feedback in this early stage!). In my last post I presented one of the main concepts of fruux - synchronizing data with the fruuxDatabase and other computers. Thats the foundation of the whole system.

Staying in sync with all your different devices is of course very important and thus nice to have, but not really beneficial if you are syncing outdated data all the time. your friends, family and business contacts move from one town to another, get new emailaddresses, new phone numbers etc.

this is why we are adding functionality to fruux, which will allow you to connect your virtual (business)card with the addressbook of your contact (and the other way round). nontechnically speaking that means: you and your contact will always have up-to-date emailadresses, phonenumbers, adresses etc. of each other - automatically. your addressbook will maintain itself in the future. of course you’ll have comprehensive privacy settings for each connecting to another user (like just sharing your business contact details or just sharing your private contact details, etc.).