Sync everything with Conduit

Keeping your documents and files in sync between multiple computers is a tough challenge as it is, but there are other factors that make this task even more difficult. Nowadays, documents and files are not only stored on a desktop machine or laptop, they are quite often dispersed over different web-based services and applications like Flickr, del.icio.us, and Gmail. Conduit is a unique synchronization utility, which can help you to keep stuff on your laptop in sync with myriads of web services as well as other machines.

Conduit is written in Python and PyGTK, and you can install the latest development version of it from source code. You can find the installation instructions on Conduit’s website. But if you don’t fancy the idea of fiddling with the source code, you’ll be pleased to know that there is a .deb package available at Getdeb.net, while Mandriva Linux includes Conduit in its official software repository.

Conduit’s main window consists of two panes: the left pane contains a list of supported services (called Data providers), while the right pane (called Canvas) is used to define synchronization rules. Even in its current form, Conduit supports quite a few data providers, including ever-popular Tomboy, F-Spot, Box.net, Flickr, Gmail, and others. Of course, Conduit is capable of syncing individual files and folders. When working with different data providers, it’s important to keep in mind that not all of them support two-way synchronization, and a tiny blue arrow next to each data provider icon helps you to determine whether the syncing can go both ways or not.

Figure 1: Conduit’s main window

To see Conduit in action, let’s create a simple synchronization rule that syncs Tomboy notes to a folder on your USB stick. To do this, click on the folder item in the Data providers list and drag it onto the Canvas pane. Right-click on the added Folder item and choose Configure Item. Select the folder you want to keep your notes in, and press OK. Drag then the Tomboy Notes item onto the created group, and the rule is ready. The connector arrow between the two items indicates the synchronization direction, and you can switch between one-way and two-way syncing by right-clicking somewhere in the group and choosing the appropriate option. To see whether the rule works properly, right-click on the group and choose Synchronize Group (Tomboy must be running during the sync).

Conduit saves the notes as plain text files formatted using Tomboy’s markup, and it has a few clever tricks up in its sleeve. Since it supports two-way syncing, all the text files you create in the specified folder are added to your Tomboy Notes. More importantly, you can sync your notes with Backpack, a popular web-based note-taking tool. In fact, you don’t even have to create a separate synchronization rule for this. Instead you can add a new item to the already defined rule. This way you can sync your notes with the folder on your computer or a USB stick and Backpack in one go. To be able to use the Backpack with Conduit you have to provide your Backpack API key, which you can find in the Account section of Backpack (look for the Show the API key link).

Figure 2: Conduit Properties window

As any synchronization tool worth its salt, Conduit provides a way to resolve synchronization conflicts, and you can configure its behavior in the Edit → Preferences dialog window under the Configuration tab.

Using the bundled data providers, you can do much more than just keeping your notes and documents in sync. For example, the RSS data provider supports file enclosures, which makes it a perfect tool for downloading podcasts. Simply create a synchronization rule between an RSS feed and a local folder, and you can use Conduit to download the latest podcasts. Conduit can also come in rather handy for managing digital photos. If you use F-Spot, you can create a rule that syncs them with your USB key as well as Picasa and Flickr accounts. You can even set up a synchronization rule that syncs photos between different photo services.

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