When I initially decided to write an article on how I’ve organized my life, it started out simple and straightforward. Touching on the basics of organizing personal, freelance and work life. From this I’ve branched out into multiple articles and in the end decided it would be best to write a series on the entire process I’ve gone through and frankly still going through.

I’m going to start off with the most important aspect in my opinion and that’s synchronization and backups. I’m adding backups into the mix simply because it goes hand and hand with syncing files. I’ve tried to explain as much as possibly and in detail how everything is setup, while not getting to long winded. Simply because I will be going into more detail about each application and/or service that I’ll touch on below.

I will also be working on a full diagram that will be included sometime through the series. This diagram will be a much better representation of what I’ve setup, how it syncs back and forth and how all the backups work. It will also include all the hardware I utilize and where it is used.

Synchronization & Backups

So let us begin this series with the synchronization and backup applications that I’m using. I’ll try to include as much detail about each particular application and/or service and why I’m using it. I’m starting with these two types of applications and/or services for a good reason, this should be number one on everyones list to get in place and keep it working!

I have lost very important files in the past because I didn’t believe that hardware failure or data loss could happen to me. Guess what? It did and it can. Since then I have put barriers up to keep it from happening again and I’m happy to report that I haven’t lost anything in a very long time.

Windows Live Sync

Windows Live Sync (FolderShare) is a free application developed by Microsoft that allows for folder synchronization. This is your first line of defense against data loss, granted you need multiple computers for this. Currently I have a workstation at home (Mac Pro) and a mobile computer (MacBook) that I use while at work. Windows Live Sync is integral to my setup and a must have for daily operation.

A few things to note about this application/service.

• You can only synchronize 20 folders total.
• Each folder cannot contain more than 20,000 files.
• File size limit of 4GB
• Sync does not work with mapped network drives.

Currently Windows Live Sync supports:

• Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 or later
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later
• Windows Vista
• Mac OS X 10.5
• Mac OS X 10.6

With the above limitations it would appear that this might become a problem. Truthfully, I’ve been using it for over a year now and I haven’t had any problems with the limitations listed above. Microsoft simply put these in place to keep from killing the servers that Windows Live Sync run on, most will not need to exceed the above.

Back when it was FolderShare it had far more limitations than it does now, it would appear now that any file type can synchronize. When it was FolderShare I had many problems syncing PSD’s and other “uncommon” filetypes as Microsoft put it. I will go into more detail on Windows Live Sync later in this series, I’ll also go into what folders I sync, why and the benefits of doing so.

Dropbox

Dropbox has probably been one of the most useful application that I’ve started using. It’s a really simple concept and it only makes sense to utilize it. Now I know most of you are probably thinking, why use Dropbox if you’re using Windows Live Sync?

It’s simple, you’re not using up your 20 folders, you’re not tapping the 20,000 file limit, you’re creating a backup point and you’re also able to access the files anywhere. Windows Live Sync is more of a “configuration & database” synchronization solution. I don’t use Windows Live Sync to sync “work” files, such as documents and images.

Reasons why I’m Using Dropbox

• Works on the major operating systems; Mac, Linux & Windows. (No particular order here…)
• You can run it on all of the major operating systems and it will sync between them.
• Paid and free accounts.
• Automatically syncs, no starting or stopping. Run a small app all the time and it handles the rest.
• Backup point.
• Accessible online, anywhere with web access.
• Each referral grants 250MB more space.

*** Please use the link above if you plan on signing up for Dropbox. It helps to grow my free account so I won’t have to pay for an account, doesn’t cost you anything and helps me keep rolling. Thanks in advance. ***

Mozy (Free)

Mozy is a great backup solution. I’m mentioning this because I currently use Mozy for backups for work files. I do not prefer Mozy, or didn’t I should say. The application was clunky and didn’t seem to handle large backups (100GB+). I am using the free version which is limited to 2GB and it seems to be working just fine now, I haven’t needed to restore any files so I can’t attest to that just yet.

Basically I only backup my Dropbox with Mozy. The only items that go into Dropbox are related to my current full-time job. Which do not come close to hitting the 2GB limit. Mozy is similar to Dropbox with their referral program as well, for each person that you refer to Mozy you’ll get an extra 250MB’s of space added to your free account.

*** Again use of the referral link is very much appreciated. ***

Carbonite

Carbonite is my backup everything solution. They charge yearly, but so far have been well worth it. If you have multiple computers you want to backup with them, register for one first and they may give you a half off for another. When I first signed up, they did that for the two computers that I paid for. With Carbonite I simply backup everything on my Mac Pro and my wife’s iMac (Family photos & videos).

Carbonite is one of those backup solutions that you install, setup and forget. The $54.95 that they charge a year is for an unlimited amount of backups. Currently my Mac Pro has 280GB backed up with 150GB in queue. My wife’s computer currently has 100GB backed up, so that’s a total of almost 400GB backed up with Carbonite, with no problems thus far. I have more computers than my workstation and my wife’s iMac, so to get around having to pay for multiple accounts I use Crashplan on all my other computers and I have an extra 500GB hard drive installed on my Mac Pro specifically for my other computers. Which brings me to my next backup solution.

Crashplan

Crashplan is one of those setup and forget backup/sync solutions. I’m mentioning it because I currently use Crashplan as a backup point for my other computers that do not have direct to web backup accounts, such as Carbonite or Mozy. With Crashplan I can setup a “host” computer and then each computer that runs the Crashplan software can connect to the host and backup there needed files.

Crashplan allows for multiple backup points with as many computers as you’d like, these backups are all encrypted. So if there were three computers using Crashplan, all three could be a backup point for each other. Computer one would have two sets of backups on the other two computers in the configuration and vise versa. So in my case, my MacBook and my servers backup critical files to my Mac Pro. Those backups are then backed up yet again on Carbonite.

Crashplan also allows you to backup with your friends and/or family. So if your buddy that lives in another state installs the application, he can send you a friend code and you can backup to his computer. I do this with a buddy of mine that lives near me, this way I have another remote backup point.

Time Machine

Of course no backup system would be complete without a Time Machine setup. Currently I utilize two Time Machine systems at home. One is specifically setup for my Mac Pro and the other is attached to an Airport Extreme Base Station which services all the wireless macs in the house. My Mac Pro has an internal 1.5TB hard drive that is used to backup the dual 250GB RAIDED drives that the OS and applications run on as well as my 500GB repository drive where I store all my work files and downloads.

The drive that is hooked to the Airport is a 500GB My Book. The My Books are outstanding external backup drives, I actually own three of them; two 250GB and one 500GB. The 500GB that is hooked to the Airport services my wife’s iMac and my MacBook.

Xmarks

Xmarks is kind of a life savor in my opinion and probably one of the coolest applications I’ve used thus far. The reason that I’m mentioning this one is simple, I use bookmarks for everything. I also utilize multiple browsers, mainly for testing websites and how they look in each, but also for speed reasons as well; Safari being faster on my MacBook than FireFox.

With Xmarks you simply install a FireFox plugin, or download a small app for Safari and setup an account. Currently Xmarks supports the following browsers:

• FireFox
• Safari
• Chrome
• IE

As far as Chrome and IE are concerned, I’m not sure what is needed to sync those. I would assume it would be a standalone application such as Safari, but since I don’t normally use them I wouldn’t know. I would highly suggest visiting their website and going over their feature list. Xmarks is MUCH more than a bookmark sync application. This is the main feature I use of Xmarks but there are MANY MANY more things it can do, most of which you may find very useful.

Conclusion

In the next bits to this series I will be outlining in more detail how I utilize each of the applications/services above. I’ll also be going into more detail the small bits of my synchronization and backup system. This is the first of many articles to come on my entire setup.

So we recently finished our demo with Kate McLeod over at Streamtime. We’ve very impressed with the way the applications runs, functions and the features that it has. We really haven’t had a chance to go through it as much as Kate did with us during the demo. So when comparing Streamtime with Studiometry I thought they were very similar in features and function, but now I see that Streamtime has FAR FAR more features and functions than Studiometry and is definitely a winner over Studiometry in my book.

Don’t get me wrong, Studiometry is a great application and it has its place, but that place isn’t with us and what we need in our company right now. Streamtime defiantly is however and we’ll be looking into getting a license or two with them in order to expand our company. Streamtime is probably the end all solution for any design, development or IT firm out there that handles large scale projects or on-going clients. The price tag is a bit steep for us right now, but the price does seem to be justified as you are getting a license for the FileMaker Server and getting client applications to connect to that server.

Streamtime Work Flow

Basically the work flow within Streamtime is very similar to how we do things in our company currently. It simply gives us a central location to store all of that data and information. It’s also a central place to retrieve all of that data, run numerous reports and gather any information we’d like out of the application with a few clicks of a mouse.

I’ll list all of the features that we’ll use within Streamtime below. There are more features than what is listed, this is simply what we’ll use and in the order that we’ll use them.

• Contacts
  • Correspondence
  • Notes
  • Maps
  • Directions
  • Active Quotes
  • Active Orders
  • Work in Progress Jobs
  • Invoices
  • Budget
• Job Quoting
  • Tenders & Orders
  • Tasks
  • Quote Notes
• Job Tracking
  • Job Schedule
  • Tasks
  • Task Schedule
  • Task Gantt
  • Projects
• Job Invoicing
  • Job Details
  • Invoice Summary
  • Quote
  • Time & Materials
  • Purchase Orders
• Live Reporting (This is where it gets fun)
  • Client Contact Report
    A report that shows the details of correspondence items which have an active reminder event found within the date range specified.
  • Client Contact History Report
    This report shows the correspondence history for a contact.
  • Sales by Sales Code
    An invoice sales history returning cost price, sell price and gross profit for each Client Manager by Client Sales Code.
  • Sales by Client
    An invoice sales history by client showing Client Manager, total costs, sales and profit.
  • Client Budget by Month or Year
    A summary report of the clients budget screen in Contacts for a specified client by month or year.
  • Quoted vs Actual vs Invoiced
    This report gives the totals from the Job Invoicing Summary Screen listed by Job showing totals for Quotes, Time and Materials plus PO’s and invoices that have been generated against a job over a date range.
  • Quote vs Actual
    Allowing you to compare quoted Time and Materials and Costs to Actuals and see how effectively your staff are quoting and working on jobs.
  • Timesheet Weekly Summary
    This report shows a staff members timesheet for a seven day period from the start date specified.
  • Timesheet Billable vs Non-billable Summary
    This report shows the total hours and percentage spent by each staff member on billable and non-billable work in the date range searched.
  • Company Profitability Report
    This report shows a break-down of the income for each cost matrix CAT.
  • Client Profitability Report
    This report shows a break-down of the income of each Client by cost matrix CAT.
  • All Client Income Report
    Utilize this report for a summarized understanding of what your client returns.

Overview

As you can see from the above, just for the main features we’ll be using in the application, that it has a massive amount of features and functionality. We feel that it will be a perfect fit for our company and will allow us to budget, quote and manage projects much more reliability than we have been before, not to mention we’ll be able to be more accurate with our estimating and quoting in the future. We’ll have access to all previous jobs and be able to go through and copy items and expenses over as needed to new jobs that require the same type or amount of work.

All in all we feel that the application contains everything that we need in one and will make things much easier for us in the long run. Again the price point is a bit steep for some, but there is still a lot that comes with the application to combat the price. Maybe they would be willing to work with us on the price or give us a discount, who knows. Only time will tell.

We have an appointment scheduled with the Streamtime people for Friday at 11AM EST. They will be showing us the application, inside and out. We’re very excited about this, as we’ll have someone that knows what their doing show us the application and all the features that are contained within it. I’ll be reporting here once we’ve gone through the demo with them and our thoughts on the application, features, functionality, work flow and overall speed.

Personally I feel that Streamtime will end up being our choice over Studiometry. But only time will tell as we have yet to use Streamtime anywhere near as much as Studiometry. Both seem to boast pretty much the same features and functionality, so only time and usability will tell which one will win over my team and I.

If anyone is interested, here is a link to the Streamtime Demo they offer on their home page.

I’m also going to be going over a few of the applications that I personally use for my day to day tasks, to-do’s and projects. I’ve used a number of different applications in the past and while most seem fairly good and work out for the most part, there have only been a few that I’ve stuck with. I still haven’t pinned down one that I really want to use, nor have I got a good management system in place for personal productivity. I am however working out all the kinks with what I’m using and trying to get a good system in place. Once I’ve done so, I’ll outline an entire mini-eBook on the subject and release it here for everyone to download.

My goal is to eventually write a full eBook on the subject. What I went through, what I’ve tried and what failed and worked for me. Along with the final system I decided to use in the end. So without divulging too much information about the eBook and digressing too much from the topic at hand, I’ll leave it be.

So as most of you know, we’ve been testing out studio management applications to try and find one that suites all of our needs and fits our style of working. We’re currently looking into Studiometry, but have recently found Streamtime and have decided to take a good look at it as well. Streamtime caught our eye mainly for the fact that it utilizes a FileMaker Server/Database. This is a good thing for us as we use other things that utilize FileMaker databases. (Bento)

We have only used Streamtime for a short period of time, but are very impressed with the sheer amount of features built into the application. The application seems to have just about everything that Studiometry has and even a bit more. The application seems to function ok, but it doesn’t “feel” like a native OS X application, such as Studiometry. But it does have pluses compared to Studiometry, such as a “splash page” which is a personal landing page for the user of the application and displays just about any pertinent information that the user would need, right there first and foremost.

To me, having a splash page that contains all the information you’ll need to get started with your day; tasks, to-do’s, notes and reminders. Is a BIG plus and it’s something that I need in my work day as much as possible. I tend to steer away from the things that need to get done, but seeing deadlines and what needs to be done NOW only helps to keep me on track.

Streamtime also seems to have a bit more on the reporting side, which is another big plus for us. Mainly because we provide our clients reports on every aspect of their project from start to finish. Normally on a weekly basis our clients will receive an average of 2 – 4 reports, depending on the type of project or the length of the project.

The gantt charting system is pretty slick in my opinion. I love the ability to slide and move time blocks around for each employee or freelancer working on the project. Makes scheduling and assigning time much faster, easier and even enjoyable. It also makes it easier to read who has what scheduled and for how long.

As with Studiometry, Streamtime has the ability to export all financial information directly to the accounting software of your choice. We have always used Quickbooks, our CPA has as well. So this makes it easier to export/import over the correct data and keep our books looking good, without having to do double the work.

Streamtime also has multi-platform support, so it will work on Windows and OS X. This is great for us, as I mentioned in the Studiometry Overview, we utilize multiple operating systems in our studio and having the ability to run the application on Windows and OS X aids us tremendously, as some of our developers prefer Windows or Linux over OS X. Sadly Streamtime has informed us that they will not be supporting Linux.

Over the past few days we’ve been toying around with an application called Studiometry. We’re going to use it for a few more weeks before making a decision on purchasing it for our company, but during that time I’ll be putting it through its paces and reporting back here.

So far we’re very pleased with the application, it is a bit confusing at first and seems like there are FAR too many options and that all of it will never bed used. But if your studio needs something that can encompass everything from the start to the end of a project and everywhere in between, Studiometry is really the end all solution. (For the most part) We don’t have to get rid of any of the other software we’re using either, such as Quickbooks. All of the financial information input within Studiometry can be exported and imported into Quickbooks or sent directly to a CPA. (Proffered)

There are a couple of things that put us off about the application, but I’m sure a simple request and a little patience and the developers over at Oranged.net Software will implement them. Currently there isn’t a “review” page, something that shows all of the current to-do’s, what’s coming due, overdue invoices and so on. I’d really like to see something such as this implemented into the application.

The other thing that seems to be missing, or maybe it is just my lack of experience with the application, are split payments. We normally work with clients on an on-going basis on projects that could take month to complete. During which time we normally invoice an average of 4 – 5 times and receive multiple payments during each phase of the project. Currently if we assign a payment to one invoice and it is more than is needed for that invoice, the extra amount can’t be split and placed on another invoice. It simply shows a negative due balance and nothing else can be done with it. This makes things a little harder and we’ll most likely have to manually input split payments to correct the issue, which takes longer for us and causes more work for our CPA.

Other than the above, we’re still very pleased with the application and expect it to be a great addition to our studio. The most interesting portion of the application is that it networks very well within the studio. We run multiple machines, all running different operating systems, virtual machines and so on. Being able to run the application on OS X or Windows is very nice and the fact that they all meld well together, syncing perfectly and work with the native applications for that OS are a big plus for us. We’d still like to see a Linux version, but I’m not sure that will happen anytime soon. Most of our developers prefer Linux, but they also have access to Wine or VMs when needed, so it isn’t a huge problem for us but could be for others.

Useful Links

• Oranged Software Home Page
• Studiometry Home Page
• Studiometry Feature List
• Studiometry Training Videos