Sharpcast Launches SugarSync - Full Sync Between Web, PCs & Mobile

Today Sharpcast is launching an invite-only private beta of it's much-anticipated Project Hummingbird product, with full public launch to follow this Spring. The product has been re-named SugarSync and with it you will be able to sync and backup your files and media across all of your computers, the web and mobile phone. Sharpcast CEO Gibu Thomas described this to me in an interview as "the holy grail".

ReadWriteWeb was given exclusive early access to the beta of SugarSync. As well as the first look, we have 1,500 beta invites for our readers (details at the end of this post).

At the end of 2006 ReadWriteWeb named Sharpcast as our Most Promising Web Company, because it was solving a big problem - syncing data across Web, desktop and other devices. At the time we wrote that "if Sharpcast can successfully roll out its Project Hummingbird in 2007 - which will sync all types of data - then it will be hitting a very sweet spot in the world of Internet-connected data." Well it's a bit late in arriving, but today we can finally check out if Sharpcast lives up to its promise.

SugarSync was built on a platform called Sharpcast Universal Synchronization Platform, which Sharpcast plans to make available to mobile phone operators and others. Sharpcast claims that SugarSync is "the only comprehensive synchronization service that offers real-time sync and backup of your data across all of your computers, the web and your phone." The SugarSync beta is, we're told, only a subset of what the platform will eventually do.

Sharpcast first made its name in 2006-07 as a sync manager for photos. That was always meant to be a proof of concept of the more extensive file sync functionality. With SugarSync, you download a desktop app to your computer(s), but you can also access it online at sugarsync.com and on your mobile at m.sugarsync.com.

Mobile access in general has been beefed up, with special mobile applications for different media types. In the beta, there is a downloadable gallery application for photos, enabling you to (for example) view and share your Picasa photos from your phone, or wirelessly sync camera phone photos back to your Vista gallery. Currently there are mobile apps available at m.sugarsync.com for Blackberry and Windows Smartphones; with J2ME, Symbian and Brew clients in development. Mobile apps for music and video syncing/streaming are coming soon too.

The private beta SugarSync is Windows-only at this point, but the Mac version is coming soon and will certainly be there on public launch. Linux will also eventually be supported.