I am thinking of making a new feature for sharing the FEDiary database among computers. I would like to get your feedback on this.
What I would like to do is a central internet location that is secure where with a click of a button your FEDiary database will be uploaded to. Then on another computer, with a click of a button it will be downloaded to.
So if you use the FEDiary at work, home and laptop. When you are done entering your information for the day, you simply click Upload. Then on the next computer you use to log your FEDiary data, you click Download, which gets the latest version of your database. You make your changes—followed by an upload click when you are done.
The entire upload/download click can be automated. So once you enable the automatic upload/download. When you close the FEDiary, the database will automatically upload. And when you open the FEDiary on the next computer, it will automatically download. There will be nothing that will need to be done, the database will be completely current on all your computers—at work, home, laptop, desktop.
Of course, the database will be encrypted, compressed and uploaded to our secure online site. And only you can download and access your FEDiary database.
This function will, of course, require and internet connection.
One thing to consider is that keeping a secure online storage and all the uploads/downloads per user, would probably require a small monthly maintained fee of something around $1.50 a month.
This feature will be optional and can be achieved for free by the FEDiary Backup & Restore utility with a USB Key or a network drive. But a USB key would need to be carried around with you. The Internet Upload/Download will allow you to be free of carrying anything with you.
Please reply with your comments on this feature. Would you like to see this done?
Tomer
TG,
This sounds like a great idea. I’ll post some thoughts below. Please keep in mind that I am not criticizing anything.
1) Many other web sites provide this feature for free.
2) While I’m certain you’ve thought of this, I thought I’d mention that the software would need to be intelligent enough to determine A) what to do in the case a connection to the internet data is unavailable; and B) which version of the database was most current. Obviously, if the local database is more current than the internet databasek, you would not want the software to perform an automatic update and overwrite the local database with the older internet database.
3) This brings into question something I just e-mailed you about: how many computer are we licensed to install the software on using a single unlock key?
4) Some work sites restrict users’ use of the internet and/or the web sites they can visit (or the information they can download). There are a lot of Blocked sites where I work.
5) Some work sites block the use of USB storage devices. Of course, if we can save exports to the local HDDs, then we should be able to e-mail ourselves the exports or find some other way to get the data between two un-related (work and home) systems.
6) I haven’t had the opportunity to check out the software yet, but if the software allows for multiple users, will this feature transfer each user’s information? Is the data for multiple users stored in a single database? If the data from multiple users are stored in separate database files, I would assume that the upload/download process would function only after a user logs into the software (and therefore a particular user database has been identified).
Thank you for considering this feature and asking your customers for feedback. It will be interesting to see how many people would appreciate this feature.
I would like the feature, but am less likely to use it if there’s a monthly fee involved as I’m computer-savvy enough to find a way to export the database and take it with me.
JKW