SparkleShare

The cross-platform, free to use and user friendly SparkleShare application comes in handy if you need to keep your data in sync and if you want to collaborate with others, say the members of your team. The application will create a special folder on your computer and store projects in there – said projects will be synced automatically to their various hosts (choose between your own server, Github, and more) and to the SparkleShare folders on the computers of your team members.

From a “get it up and running” point of view, the nice thing about SparkleShare is that it is available on multiple platforms. You can use it on Microsoft’s Windows operating system (anything from Vista onward), on Apple’s MAC OS X (Snow Leopard and newer editions are supported), and open source operating system Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and other distros).

While SparkleShare is running, you will see an icon in the system tray, icon that you can use to open the special SparkleShare folder, to access your existing and create new projects, and to view recent changes. From this point of view, using this application is similar to using another application that you may be familiar with – Dropbox. From the Dropbox icon in the system tray you can also easily access the special Dropbox folder.

When you launch SparkleShare for the first time, you are presented with a “Welcome to SparkleShare!” setup wizard that will briefly explain how the application works. You will be informed that the application will create a special folder on your machine, folder that will keep track of all your projects. Then you will be informed that files added to your project folders will be automatically synced with the host and with your collaborators. When you create a new project, you can choose one of several hosts: your own server, Bitbucket, Github, Gitorious, and The GNOME Project.

SparkleShare is released under a GNU General Public License, meaning that you can use it for free for as long as you want. Do consider making a donation if you enjoy using the application and want to support its development.

SparkleShare is a very handy collaboration tool that’s offered for free and is available for multiple platforms. What more could you ask?