I use multiple devices on a daily basis and I own most of them. Most of us are in that boat ! Transferring and synchronizing data between these devices is becoming less of a head ache with Dropbox and Google Contacts. Photographs, contacts, files are easily synchronized between my devices and I have them where I go. But when it comes to sending a short piece of text from my PC to device like a phone number or URL I am stuck. Below are a few scenarios I face
- Send a number via chat on PC. The number is easily accessible on my phone, even though its available on google contacts.
- Open a map route on my phone that I chalked out on google maps on my PC
- Call a merchant who I looked up on JustDial.com
- Call potential customers/applicants who send their number via email which I read on the PC
- Send an SMS with content available on the internet, which I've looked up on my PC
- Play a video on a tablet that I just saw on my PC to show it to my folks
I used Chrome2Phone but its restrictive in a sense since I have to open up Chrome and press a button to send any data. I wanted a simpler lazy way of achieving this. Some way where I do not have to perform any extra action, and its just available. After much hunting for an already available solution, I decided to build an app that would take care of most of my requirement.
I had a simple requirement set
- Synchronize text - URL's, numbers, YouTube video; between the PC and my multiple Android devices
- Lazy, simple, no brainier way of doing it
- Simple setup. I didn't want to connect to a peer-to-peer network when I move from office to home
- Low bandwidth
- Fire and Forget ! No need to revisit the app once its installed.
The solution was to synchronize the clipboards of my devices for text data. But the challenge was to make it work fast without draining my already pathetic device battery. The service should use push notification, work over 3G/wifi without the need to setup a local network just like how chat clients work, not interfere with my current task, should not have any major explicit action to do like fire up an app just to send data.
The end result was ClipboardSync. An android app that has a PC client. No restrictions on number of installs. Low processing and battery usage on the device and PC. Minimum bandwidth usage. And yes - Fire and forget. You install it once and then forget it ever existed. It does the required work without the necessity of you manually starting or verifying that its running. I've been using it for quite a while now and decided its time to let others save a few nerves and easy their lives.
The application is available to purchase on the android market - Link. Other details can be found on the website ClipboardSync.in
