Bookmarks, Contacts, Tasks, Calendars and Events in sync with fruux, but still looking for a solution for your files? Box.net and Dropbox might be worth a look. If you are looking for an iDisk replacement, you might see their services as a welcome addition to fruux.

• Box.net recently announced their iPhone application.
• Dropbox: Store, Sync and Share your files online, launched some weeks ago

(fruux is not affiliated with Box.net or Dropbox)

Well - not exactly free beer. We just wanted to catch your interest. And obviously it worked.

Here is a brief summary of the topics we are currently working on.

basic features:

• signup and modify your account via client application
• deploying additional sync servers (we thought about using google app engine, but currently gae is no final product and has no ssl support. anyway we have a working beta of the fruux server running on gae. if google starts production mode and adds ssl support: we are already prepared)
• addressbook group syncing
• webapplication (manage your contacts on the go)
• social features (described here)

maybe basic, maybe pro features:

• ical syncing
• preferences syncing
• safari bookmark syncing

pro features:

• external sync plugins
  • google contacts plugin (sync your contacts with your gmail / google apps contacts)
  • google calendar plugin (sync your ical calendars with your google calendar

Although all of the above is work in progress, you wont see everything right in the next release!

We’d rather like to hear what features you would like to see in the next version of fruux! What features are most important to you? Are there any additional features you’d like to see in the next version of fruux?

We are looking forward for your comments, your posting on our fruux @ facebook page and/or your emails.

UPDATE:

Maybe we should postpone our google contacts plugin? Apple added iPhone <-> Addressbook.app <-> google contact syncing with 10.5.3 (via: Google Mac Blog).

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.