This kitchen needs a better synch

"It's always a distribution problem." And you can quote me on that ...

We are going more and more towards "Web 2.0" applications. This is compounding a problem. It was already hard enough to find applications that would permit data to be synched between multiple copies and locations. Road-warriors have had some success with synchronizing their desktops and their PDA. But our needs are becoming more complex. We need to be be as productive on the road as when we are sitting in our main office, and if T-Mobile would have you believe that Wifi is ubiquitous, the reality is not even close. I won't even discuss working on the plane or while waiting 4 hours at the Passport Office (guess where I am right now ...) Even if the planet was plastered with Wifi antennas, it would still be necessary to be off the 'net once in a while.

Road-warriors use their laptop a lot and being able to synch todo, calendars, contacts, and general notes, as been possible for Outlook users, and now OSX users via .Mac (which is total crap, IMHO). iSync is definitely a good idea, but falls a little short to synch things like RSS readers, outlines (think OmniOutliner), general folders, source code versions, iTunes libraries, blog drafts, multimedia libraries (think Delicious), IRC logs, keychains, and such.

Now compounding this is the fact that, more and more, applications must be accessed via the Internet; and that's the front-end itself... If Microsoft has its way, it will even be impossible to *use* your computer unless it reports back to Redmond's mothership to "validate" its license.

I cannot understand why no synchronization standards exist. I guess it is too complex of a problem.
Each app needs to document what it stores and how. It has to be in a structure that can take being modified by third party apps, say XML. The structure has to have time-stamps and IDs linked at the atomic level. Then we have to create a language in which we can express a structure to scan for and a sub-structure to modify in order to synch two repositories. Preferably, the app must support re-scanning of its databases or configuration/status files.

These are problems that have been solved for Calendar apps for the longest time. Now a calendaring app cannot survive unless it offers some form of iCal support and synchronization. Developers selling commercial-ware and share-ware need to realize that they can double their sales by integrating proper synchronization capabilities in their save formats. If your app can be used both on a laptop and a workstation, then this applies.