Slingshot: Keeping your Files & iTunes Library in Sync

1217 days ago in Articles, Contributors, Essential Apps, Reviews by John Fuller | 3 Comments

If you’re like me, you’ve got multiple macs and are constantly switching between them. There are a few things that I like to keep the same across both computers. Slingshot, an app from Martian Technology, promises to take care of this.

Slingshot works through publishing folders, or iTunes playlists, and then subscribing to these folders/playlists on other machines. You can also set up the published folders to receive updates from subscribed machines. In simpler terms, you can have the same files on both computers, without having to manually exchange files. The frequency of updates are extremely flexible, ranging from by the minute, a set number of hours, or daily. Manual updates are also an option.

The interface is extremely simple. There is a large field containing a list of subscribed stuff, published stuff, the time of last update, and the time for the next update. To the left, are two large buttons – Publish & Subscribe. There are also three smaller buttons – Folder Info, Stop Subscribing, and Update Now. It’s not the most gorgeous application I’ve ever seen, but It’s straightforward and gets the job done.

One of the key things that I like to always have with me is my music. I keep my music organized using iTunes, and Slingshot has the ability to subscribe and publish iTunes Playlists. It’s extremely simple and easy to do, the same way that you would publish and subscribe to published folders. I have, however, had a slight problem. It could just be me, but for some reason a select few songs and videos are duplicated – a lot. Even after deleting them, they continue to duplicate. Sometimes, the playlist disappears completely from my iTunes library. The songs still remain, but the playlist is empty. I’ve sent an email to Martian Technology Support, but haven’t received a reply.

It works quite well. I have it set to update 1 iTunes playlist and an array of folders every minute. It does so in the background, without my ever noticing it. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t hog up too many system resources, but it may differ on older or less powerful machines. Finding published folders and playlists is also simple. My only problem has been with the duplication of certain iTunes files.

Martian Technology also advertises SlingShot as a backup utility. You could have your mac send backups to an old computer or file server on your network. When sending files back and forth, two security measures are taken. For starters, you can password protect any playlist or folder. Slingshot will also apply 256-bit AES encryption on the network.

Thankfully, Martian Technology has a reasonable licensing policy. You only need to buy a $29.99 copy to enable Slingshot on all of your personal macs. There is also a discount available when purchasing Slingshot with Lifeboat, another product from Martian Technology. A 30 day trial is available as a download from the website.