What all three of the above car manufacturers, and others like General Motors and Toyota, have in common is that they are leveraging the rapid evolution of smartphone technology - rather than trying to build new Internet devices into their cars.

Today Mercedes-Benz announced "mbrace2," which connects web apps and smartphones to its vehicles. It will include new apps for Facebook, Yelp and Google Local Search. There will also be iPhone and Android smartphone apps that enable users to track car usage, control door locks, see diagnostic information and more. Mbrace2 is expected to be available in 2013 editions of Mercedes-Benz cars.

Audi

This week at CES, Audi announced new features for its Connect system. Audi defines Connect as "networked mobility" for its cars. The new features include a seven-inch 3D screen, improved control wheel and integration of LTE (Long Term Evolution, designed to handle large amounts of data). The A3 will be the first car to get these upgrades, but not for another 18 months or so.

What's more interesting is the next generation of Audi's heads-up display (HUD), which can project information onto the windshield just below a driver's normal field of vision. it reminded the New York Times of the film Minority Report. The system can be used by passengers as well as the driver, for example to look at travel routes.

Ford

Perhaps the car company doing the most with web and smartphone app integration is Ford. The American firm first introduced Internet technology inside its cars with Sync, launched in 2007. Sync is voice-activated technology which connects your smartphone and MP3 player to your car's dashboard and steering wheel. There are currently 4 million Ford cars in North America that have Sync running. The latest evolution of Sync is called MyFord Touch, a "cabin tech" system which we covered at last year's CES. Ford recently announced free upgrades for MyFord.

At CES, Ford announced a new hybrid car called the 2013 Fusion. One of the main features in this car is the integration of Sync and MyFord Touch.

According to Ryan McGee, a technical expert at Ford interviewed by Technology Review, "with Sync we empowered the driver [and] our next leap is into empowering the vehicle." It hopes to do this using Internet technology. In other words, making cars smarter. Use cases include fuel optimization, predicting your travel route on-the-fly, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication (which could help reduce crashes, among other things).

Smartphone as Car Component

All of the systems we discussed above - mbrace2, Audi Connect and MyFord/Sync - are enablers of smartphone applications and content. In other words, the smartphone becomes a component of the car via its connection to the dashboard system.

It still feels like early days for these technologies, but Audi's futuristic heads-up display is an indicator of where the car manufacturers will eventually take us.

This year there were a number of worthy contenders for Best LittleCo. Square, Evernote, Flipboard, BetaWorks, SoundCloud and Tumblr (again) have all had cracker years. So our winner must be something pretty special, right?

Other startups were earlier to launch with a cloud service for files, but since launching to the public in September 2008 Dropbox has gone from strength to strength. 2011 has been its best year yet, as millions of consumers turn to online file management to access their business and personal files across devices.

We also named Dropbox as our #2 Consumer Web Product of 2011, behind only Google's Chrome browser.

Dropbox has 87 employees, according to its About page. The company was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, two MIT students "tired of emailing files to themselves to work from more than one computer." It now claims to have 45 million users across the globe.

Earlier this year, Dropbox was named 5th in a list of the The World's Most Valuable Startups, with an estimated $4 billion value. The only 4 companies ranked above Dropbox were (in order of valuation): Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter. None of those 4 would qualify as a LittleCo, using our benchmark of 100 employees.

Why Did Dropbox Become So Popular?

Dropbox has successfully tapped into two huge trends on the Web over the past few years:

1. People now access the Web on multiple devices; including the traditional PC, smartphones, tablets like iPad, Netbooks and more.

2. As Web-connected devices proliferated, it became increasingly useful to use cloud computing services for file management.

Other startups have attempted to tap into this huge market opportunity as far back as 2006, when ReadWriteWeb named Sharpcast (now known as SugarSync) as our Most Promising Company. Dropbox also competes with the big cloud computing players, such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com. Its smaller competitors include the afore-mentioned SugarSync, as well as Box.net, Ubuntu One and Wuala.

Although Dropbox is the market leader, it still has work to do. Our ReadWriteCloud team recently compared Dropbox's collaboration features with competitor Box.net - and found Dropbox wanting. Dropbox has also experienced some growing pains this year, with security issues and an unpopular change to its Terms of Service.

Overall though, Dropbox has firmly established itself in the minds of millions of consumers as the number one online file management service. Its regular users (including this author) love Dropbox's simplicity and intuitive user interface.

Do you agree with our choice for Best LittleCo of 2011? If not, tell us in the comments who you would've chosen.

The categories vary here from browsers to cloud drives to mobile apps and more. But all of these services redefined a core use case for the Web, and some of them invented activities we didn't know we needed. Here are our top 10 Consumer Web Products of 2011:

This year, Google decided to make Chrome the most important Web browser in the world. It rocketed upwards in market share, now neck and neck with Firefox in the #2 browser spot, and if anyone can take down Internet Explorer, Google can.

Chrome released new features at a blistering pace this year. Its core mission in 2011 was to focus on Web apps. Google has renovated its Chrome Web Store for apps, as well as the New Tab page, where Chrome Web apps are launched. It's blurring the line between Web and native applications.

Some developers are working on a tablet-based version of Chrome that could bring the browser and its Web app ecosystem to all kinds of devices. Chrome in the Android ecosystem would be obvious, but the latest Google app for iPad looks just like Chrome, too, Web apps and all. Sneaky, eh?

Upcoming features include new APIs for text-to-speech and advanced audio features. Just this month, Google bought Apture, which could bring media-rich contextual search into every page in Chrome. And multiple accounts are coming to Chrome soon, so users can easily carry their browser data with them across devices.

Thanks in large part to the passionate work of outside developers, Chrome (and its open-source Chromium code base) is even influencing the way the Web in general works. Chrome and Firefox developers are working together on Web Intents, standard protocols to let independently developed Web apps communicate with each other. It's also pushing a new image format to make the whole Web faster by reducing the file size of images.

Browser choice is a personal matter for users, but no other browser comes close to Chrome's influence on the state of the art.

2. Dropbox

Dropbox is hot, and this year cemented its importance. By choosing a metaphor with which most computer users were already familiar, Dropbox has become a key player in the consumer cloud. It's a folder that syncs to the Internet. That's all there is to it. People and teams use it for backup as well as for syncing files across devices.

Its flexibility has also allowed Dropbox to become the back-end - the file system that wasn't - for exciting new apps and services, especially on mobile devices. Amazing life-hacking services like 1password use Dropbox for syncing. So do all the great third-party text apps for iOS, which doesn't have a native Google Docs client like Android does. There are even experimental blogging tools and website hosting services built on Dropbox.

Is Dropbox really the world's 5th most valuable startup, as Business Insider named it this year? We don't know yet. It has had some hiccups, such as a privacy scare earlier this year. But we also learned this year that Dropbox turned down a nine-digit acquisition offer from Steve Jobs in 2009. That's confidence.

3. iCloud

After being rebuffed by Dropbox, Apple set out to build its own file syncing between Macs and its iOS devices, replacing the embarrassing MobileMe desktop syncing service. iCloud shipped with iOS 5 in October of this year, and it's an effort to be even more basic than Dropbox. It's not even a folder; it just pushes files along behind the scenes, so your stuff is just there when you open apps to use it, whether on Mac OS or iOS.

It can sync contacts, calendars, media, documents, and even settings, as long as this syncing is written into the app. Apple's own apps use it, and though third-party apps haven't done much with it yet, they will. The first full third-party implementation of iCloud shipped just yesterday in iA Writer for iPad and Mac.

The service has more kinks in it than Dropbox, and it's not cross-platform. But this it's-just-there syncing paradigm will form the backbone of Apple's vision of computing, and that vision is infectious. The iPad and iPhone are selling in huge quantities, smashing Apple's own estimates. Even Macs are gaining marketshare. 2012 will be a big year for Apple, and iCloud will be the Web service that supports it.

If you use Apple devices and haven't set up iCloud, here's how to get started.

4. Kindle

We're used to thinking of the Kindle as a product, a device. But this year, Amazon made clear that Kindle is a service, not a product. Unlike Apple, for whom software is the service that sells profitable devices, Amazon will break even, or even take a loss, on each device in order to put its media and retail services in users' hands.

Kindles are just windows into Amazon's stores. You can save $30 on your device just by accepting ads as your screensaver. And this year, Amazon added the 7-inch, full-color Kindle Fire to the family, expanding the Kindle service to video, music, magazines, games and apps. It builds on the existing Amazon Prime video streaming service and its Cloud Drive for music.

The Kindle Fire also introduced Amazon Silk, a cloud-accelerated Web browser that uses browsing history to predictively pre-load Web pages for faster browsing on slow, handheld devices. Amazon has always known that load time can make or break a sale, so the Kindle service is designed to make buying, watching, reading and listening through Amazon as convenient as possible.

5. Evernote

You may not know it yet, but Evernote will be around for a while. In fact, its CEO wants it to be around for 100 years. It's another syncing service, but it's not like the others above. It works across platforms, unlike iCloud, and it works inside files, instead of agnostically pushing them around like Dropbox.

Evernote lets users create and store rich-text files, images, to-do lists, whatever kinds of little files they need, and it syncs to all their devices. It packs impressive technology like optical character recognition, letting users snap pictures of notes, receipts or business cards and capture the text. It offers handy services like web clipping and an Instapaper-like service for saving articles for later. And it offers standalone apps and browser extensions, letting users access it however best fits their workflow.

What's next for Evernote? If you have an idea, build it yourself. Evernote is building a 100-year platform to let its users capture anything and access it anywhere.

***Next Page:** Five services that changed the way we find and share stuff on the Web this year.*

6. Spotify

Spotify made a big leap this year, marrying Facebook's new Open Graph platform and becoming the way to share music with Facebook friends. Facebook's transformation this year brought us the concept of "frictionless sharing," in which users share their activity with their friends just by doing it, without having to click a 'Like' button.

Spotify has come to exemplify this model, sharing a soundtrack of its users' music habits with all their Facebook friends. Thanks to Facebook, Spotify's usage skyrocketed this year.

As Sean Parker told us at Web 2.0 this year, Spotify's social model works for the music industry, which has long sought a way to enable sharing while still generating some profits. Not every label has loved the changes, but Spotify will be fine; Facebook's base of 800 million users is too big to ignore. For some, Spotify's frictionless sharing is too much, but for now, it's redefining music on the social Web. Next year, we'll see how it holds up to Google Music on Google+.

7. Instapaper

Instapaper brought the concept of "content shifting" to the iPad, which is changing the way we read (it's on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Web, too). Instapaper's basic function - saving articles for later - has inspired imitators, including the synced Reading List service from Apple itself and the new Evernote Clearly feature.

There's also Read It Later, a full-featured competitor that, unlike Instapaper, offers an Android client. But Read It Later's users shouldn't get too comfortable with the product as they know it; its big announcement this year was that it had taken on venture funding. That means big changes are coming. Instapaper, meanwhile, is a (mostly) one-man operation that is funded by the most basic business model: make a neat thing and let the people who like it pay for it. That means Instapaper is developed for the people who use it.

Instapaper shipped a major redesign in version 4.0 this year, making this app into a first-rate, iOS 5-ready place to gather all one's saved reading and just read it without distractions. Check out our interview with Instapaper creator Marco Arment for his views on Instapaper, iOS and the future of reading.

8. Flipboard

Flipboard is another app that's changing reading, but it's doing so by emulating and enhancing a reading experience we've had before: the magazine. The secret is that it's basically just a feed reader with a nice interface. People thought RSS was dead, but they were wrong. All it needed was the iPad and the Flipboard team.

Flipboard didn't ship a ton of new features this year, but two of them are quite significant. The first was full-page, magazine-style ads from luxury brands on major publishers' feeds. This signaled that publishers are happy with Flipboard's engaging format and will keep letting users pull their content. The second was Flipboard Accounts a single sign-in for Flipboard that means that Flipboard for iPhone is coming. It also means that multiple people can save their Flipboard setups on a single iPad.

9. Google Maps

Surprised to see Google Maps on a best-of-2011 list? Don't be. This was a huge year for Google Maps. It has long since set itself apart from the pack as the best way to navigate with the Web, and it made some major improvements this year.

Google Maps went high-tech. It got an integrated weather layer in the desktop version. It got 3D route views and zooming 3D Street View transitions. It got a drawing layer that lets developers build interactive, graphical applications on top of Google Maps, and it got voice-powered search for places in the desktop version of Chrome.

It went international, adding over 40 new country domains, graduating a big class of crowdsourced maps to the live map, and fully adopting Google Map Maker contributors as volunteer moderators.

Most importantly, Maps went local and social. It's now integrated into Google+, so users can share places and directions right into each other's streams. And it has continued turning the screws on Yelp by displaying Google Places recommendations right on the map. Finally, just today, Google Maps has begun to bring mobile maps inside buildings.

Google has put lots of work into making its Maps the best on the Web this year. And that's good, because...

10. Siri

It may not seem like it yet, but Apple has built its end-run around Google into iOS 5. While Siri is only available on the iPhone 4S for now, that's just a software restriction; Siri is a cloud-based service for which the device is but an interface. Google chairman Eric Schmidt admits that Siri is a threat. Siri is just a beta for now - and unlike Google, Apple doesn't use that label lightly - but it already looks like the next generation of search. In 2010, when asked why Apple bought the voice search startup, Steve Jobs replied, "They're not a search company. They're an AI company."

That's true; Siri is built on DARPA-backed research into artificial intelligence. It's not just onboard voice search, which iOS already had. It's a Web service, calling back to Apple's data center to process and understand each request. It uses Apple's cloud computing power to process the meaning of the query and find the most meaningful results. Apple isn't trying to do search as we know it. It's building a service that knows better than we do what we're searching for.

Siri is an "assistant." It takes dictations, it sets reminders and it looks things up for its user. If the answer is not on the iPhone or in Apple's cloud, it will search the Web as a last resort.

But tellingly, it uses Yelp for local business searches, one of Google's key businesses. For now, Apple still uses Google for its Maps app, but Apple bought a 3D mapping company this year. When Apple has its own maps, which mapping service do you think Siri will use when you ask it (her?) for directions?

Conclusion

One major theme of this year's top 10 was content. We aren't there yet, but these services are starting to figure out how to make Web content into a real economy. Another was syncing, which goes along with that. Now that we can have our stuff on all our devices simultaneously, it's worth more to us.

But most of all, the trend this year is toward integration. The winning services have started to think they've got the Web's problems figured out, and they're trying to build it all in.

That's our Top 10 Consumer Web Products of 2011. We'd love to hear your reactions or if we missed your favorite service. Sound off in the comments.

One of the leading Internet companies of this era is essentially a hard drive in the cloud. Dropbox, by some measures the world's 5th most valuable startup, makes it easy for you to sync files across devices. There are other, similar services too. Or you can go completely virtual by using an online office suite like Google Docs. In this article we outline some of the ways that you too can use the cloud to store your files.

I polled my Google+, Twitter and Facebook followers about which cloud services they use for file storage. Many of them mentioned Dropbox. Here's how I myself use Dropbox, probably a fairly typical use case:

I have a group of mainly business-focused folders on the hard drive of my desktop computer. Prior to Dropbox I would either send them to my laptop computer via FireWire (a high speed cord that connects one Mac computer to another) or by emailing important documents. This was both inefficient from a time perspective and also meant that my two computers quickly got out of sync.

Now, I simply connect those key folders on my desktop hard drive to Dropbox. This does two things: 1) it essentially backs up all of those files in Dropbox's cloud; 2) it enables my laptop to download all of those files from my desktop, using Dropbox as the middleman. I can also choose to download the files onto my iPhone and iPad, although because of limited storage I simply download individual files from Dropbox as I need to.

The beauty of Dropbox is that you're using the cloud as both a backup for your files and a conduit to sync files across devices. You don't have to rely on the cloud though, for example when you're offline. That's because the files are optionally downloaded onto the local machine, which I do on both my desktop and laptop (but not for my phone or iPad).

You get 2GB of storage for free on Dropbox, then premium plans start at $10 per month for 50GB.

Google Docs

I use a mix of desktop and online office software, although still with a bias towards desktop software for the heavy stuff (such as monthly statistics in an Excel spreadsheet for ReadWriteWeb). But it's possible these days to go completely Web-only for all office software. Google Docs is the most popular online office suite.

John Pozadzides, the CEO of web analytics software Woopra, told me on Google+ that "ALL new documents I create are done in Google Docs unless there is a specific requirement otherwise." He cited the collaboration features of Google Docs, noting that more than 80% of his documents are shared with others. But the key benefit to Google Docs is that John can access his documents "from anywhere there is a Web browser."

So while Dropbox is the best of breed among file sync and storage services, if you want to take it one step further you can attempt to cut out the middleman completely and create and consume files within Google Docs (or other online office solutions like Zoho and ThinkFree). It's not yet possible to completely eliminate local files. Colin Lovett told me on Google+ that he uses Google Docs and Photos "for everything except my raw audio and video files," for which he uses Dropbox to store.

Other Options

It's worth mentioning Evernote in this discussion, although it doesn't specifically market itself as a storage and sync service. It started out as an online notes tool, but now allows you to upload many different file types - images, audio, documents and more. I'm a daily Evernote user myself (I pay for the premium service), but so far I use it mostly as an online notes and planning tool.

Other options include SkyDrive (Microsoft's solution), CloudApp (a trendy Mac app favored by RWW hacker Tyler Gillies), Bitcasa (which is getting a lot of Valley hype for its "infinite storage"), SpiderOak, Box, Wuala and SugarSync.

If you're a developer or more technical than the average bear, check out our recent ReadWriteCloud post: From DevOps to NoOps: 10 Cloud Services You Should Be Using. Or you can build your own Cloud Drive!

Which Cloud Service(s) For Files Do You Use?

Whichever solution you go with, cloud storage of files is increasingly becoming a necessity for consumers. Even if you only have one personal computer, chances are you use other computing devices - at work, school or maybe even the good old Internet Cafe.

If you're new to this, I'd advise to give Dropbox a whirl. 2GB of storage is plenty to get started on. If you're an old hand already, let us know in the comments which tools and systems you use.

The big question is: can Apple finally get sync right? Apple promises that iCloud will integrate "seamlessly with your apps, so everything happens automatically." It's absolutely crucial that Apple delivers on that promise, because sync is a key part of the multi-device world that we now live in. Perhaps for the first time since Android appeared on the scene to challenge the iPhone, Apple is at risk of losing customers if iCloud fails.

Ultimately MobileMe just didn't offer enough, particularly as it wasn't free. I have refused to pay for such a limited sync service over the years and many others felt the same. Apple is already directing MobileMe users to transition to iCloud.

As for home sharing, it has (for me at least) been buggy and far less than seamless.

From October 12, iCloud will be Apple's main sync solution. Cue strummy guitar music...

Why iCloud is Crucial to Apple's Future Success

iCloud sounds like a great sync service. But, for once, this is an area that Apple has a lot of stiff competition in. If iCloud turns out to be a glitchy dud, then Apple is at serious risk of losing customers to Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others who have developed sync solutions.

As a user, it's becoming increasingly important to have a seamless and dependable way to access one's content across devices. Apple is vulnerable on this front. For example, if I continue to find it frustrating to access all of my network's content via my iPad, then I might be tempted to go and buy Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet - which syncs your content via a cloud service similar to what iCloud promises. If I enjoy Amazon's tablet and media sync experience, then I probably won't buy the next version of iPad. I'm just one person, but imagine that scenario multiplied by millions of current Apple users (and extended from Amazon to Android, Microsoft and other Apple competitors).

There is reason to be concerned about whether iCloud will measure up. As developer Mark Berger commented via Twitter, "I don't think their [Apple's] attention to IT systems/data is quite in the same league as their hardware design." Certainly my own experience of Lion OS X, Apple's latest OS, has been less than optimal - including, notably, in regards to home sharing.

Wait And See...

The proof as always will be in the pudding. And Apple has made many delicious puddings before.

iCloud will become available on October 12, so we will find out for sure then. Let us know in the comments whether you're confident that Apple can get sync right with iCloud

But let's face it, this valuation of Dropbox cannot be relied on. That $4 billion is mostly derived from fat cat VCs competing for a hot deal. It's far more important to ask: who is using Dropbox currently and is there anything in the use cases that justifies such a high valuation? So I asked the tech-savvy RWW community just that.

1. People now access the Web on multiple devices; including the traditional PC, smartphones, tablets like iPad, Netbooks and more.

2. As Web-connected devices proliferated, it became increasingly useful to use cloud computing services for file management.

Startups have attempted to tap into this huge market opportunity as far back as 2006, when ReadWriteWeb named Sharpcast (now known as SugarSync, a Dropbox competitor) as our Most Promising Company. So Dropbox isn't the only file sync service around. Some of the other products mentioned in my informal survey were SugarSync, Box.net, Ubuntu One and Wuala.

However it's Dropbox that has emerged to become the leading file sync service, since launching to the public in September 2008.

Daily Users

Most of the feedback I gathered from Twitter, Google+ and Facebook indicated that Dropbox is a product that is used not only daily, but multiple times a day. That's always a great sign for a startup.

Mickey Mellen is a heavy Dropbox user. Mellen told me via Google+ that he uses Dropbox about 100 times every day. He has over 40,000 files in his Dropbox account, totalling over 30 GB in size. "It's simply my primary drive," he said. "Every file of mine goes in there, so that every device of mine (desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, phone) has access to it."

Tori Cushing said that she uses it daily, "all through the day." She has "just about all of the folders on my computer on Dropbox."

Dylan Bland is another daily Dropbox user. He uses it as a "default directory for a lot of important saves." He added, "we also use it at work to share common files."

Campbell Yule tweeted that he uses Dropbox "all the time, many, many times a day." His main use case is "for file sharing across locations."

ReadWriteWeb's own Jon Mitchell is a heavy Dropbox user. "Nearly all my primary workflows sync across devices using Dropbox," Jon remarked. Writing is of course Jon's occupation and he told me that he works "entirely in .txt files that save to a Dropbox directory that I can get to and work on from any device."

David Acklin said that for him, Dropbox is "always running, always backing up."

Both Personal and Business Use

The responses suggested that Dropbox is being used for both personal and business file sharing. Michael Schade uses it to store personal files, although he said that many of his business files have "moved to Google for easier collaboration."

But Dropbox is getting a lot of uptake for business collaboration, too. Ben Kepes said that he uses Dropbox multiple times a day, for "collaborating on docs across timezones and geographies."

Professional photographer Gareth Robins uses it every day for a variety of uses, including a shared folder with his accountant and another with his photographer assistant. He also uses it to deliver photos to his clients. He puts the photos in a Dropbox folder and shares the link with them.

My friend Emily Davidow told me on Facebook that she uses Dropbox "regularly for multiple shared projects."

Less Frequent Users

Others use Dropbox less regularly. I myself am in that camp. I currently use Dropbox to save files (mostly PDFs) that I want to read on my iPad. However I'm interested to expand my usage, now that I've heard how others are using it.

RWW writer (and part-time musician) John Paul Titlow tweeted that he uses Dropbox about weekly, "for household file-sharing, exchanging sound clips w/ bandmates and sending very large files occasionally."

Kim Sherrell told me on Google+ that she uses Dropbox "once in a while." She noted, "I'm reluctant to share resources when I'm editing or working on big files."

Workflow & Ease of Use

As Brian Ries rightly pointed out, how much you use Dropbox depends on how integrated it is in your workflow.

The ease of use of Dropbox was another factor that people commented on. "Dropbox just works," remarked Bill Kirby.

That's an important point, because syncing in the modern Web is too often an irksome process full of glitches. Indeed ever since I "upgraded" to Mac OS X Lion, I've noticed that home sharing (Apple's way of syncing your iTunes account across devices, among other things) has been very buggy.

Like any startup that is scaling up fast, Dropbox has its challenges. Dave Parry, an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, blogged earlier this year about privacy concerns. But overall, the feedback I gathered from Twitter, Google+ and Facebook was overwhelmingly positive. Many respondents said that they use Dropbox multiple times a day, for both business and personal file sync and sharing.

Big Market - And So Far Dropbox is Delivering...

File sync and sharing is a potentially huge market, which we identified back in 2006 when we named Sharpcast as our Most Promising Company. Dropbox has become the leader in this space, due to its generally frictionless service and excellent usability. Indeed, its usability across multiple devices is probably what has kept it one step ahead of cloud computing giants, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Whether it's worth $4 billion is another matter. Judging on the product alone though, Dropbox has carved out a great niche and it has a good chance of becoming a very valuable company. Let us know what you think of Dropbox's value, in the comments.

This issue is only going to get worse, as more and more devices get connected to the Internet. John referenced several separate instances of not fully baked cakes... er, products. Those issues are magnified when a lot of imperfect products are connected together in a network, whether it be a home or work network - or the Internet at large. Plus those products run on software that is never perfect and is always being iterated on (an Operating System, as probably the biggest example). And did I mention the problems with syncing data across different devices?

Suffice to say that I run into these minor annoyances with technology regularly; and so does everyone else.

Imagine though when your house is filled with objects that connect to a network. It won't just be your computer(s), smartphone, tablet and TV. It'll be your lighting system, appliances like your toaster and many more household objects. Not to mention the roads you drive on and the city buildings you walk into. Everything will be connected to a network.

That's a lot of not fully baked cakes!

I don't have any immediate solutions to offer for this, but it's something that UX designers and companies like Apple and Google will be struggling with as the Internet of Cakes Things becomes a reality.

Got a recent example of technology frustration to share? Vent it in our comments...

Image credits: purplemattfish; Meredith_Farmer

Just before I started writing this, I was attempting to sync data from the online note-taking app Evernote. I had made some notes on my iPad Evernote app while in a cafe, where I didn't have Internet connectivity (I'm a premium subscriber to Evernote, so I have offline access to my data). When I attempted to sync up that content to my Evernote desktop app in my home office, it didn't immediately update. I refreshed... then again... no sync. Perplexed, I moved onto another activity and then checked again 5 minutes later. By then the changes had synced up, but the delay was disconcerting.

However last night I could not get a friend to show as 'online' in imo.im, despite having been chatting with that person moments before using Facebook on my PC. After struggling with this for 5 or so minutes, I switched to Friendly and managed to re-establish contact with my bemused friend. That may've been a bug in imo.im, but regardless it was another example of things not syncing as they should.

How Syncing Across Devices Works

Syncing usually involves using the Internet as the central 'hub' - with apps and/or devices being 'spokes' that connect to the hub. Evernote's approach is fairly typical:

All of your notes (unless stored in a local -- that is, not synchronized -- notebook) are synchronized to Evernote on the Web. Evernote's servers house a copy of all synced notes because all of the Evernote client applications, both mobile and desktop, connect to Evernote on the web to get the latest version of the notes for each user.

Evernote's service and software applications are arranged in what's called a "hub-and-spoke" configuration. This means that every single sync operation that takes place will involve Evernote on the web (the "hub"). For instance, if you initiate a sync from Evernote on your desktop computer, any new or updated content will be uploaded to Evernote on the Web so they'll be ready to be downloaded when any of your other devices initiate a subsequent sync.

Specialist Sync Services

So far we've been talking about sync as a feature of web services, but there are also specialist sync services. Dropbox is probably the most high profile in the consumer market, but another is Sharpcast, which ReadWriteWeb named as our Most Promising Company of 2006.

We chose Sharpcast back in 2006 because it was "solving a big problem (syncing data across Web, desktop and other devices) and also is an integral part of many different trends that will be popular in 2007 and beyond - mobile, rich media, a world of multiple devices, and more."

While we were right about the trend towards multiple Web devices - and that was before the iPhone was unveiled in January 2007 - things haven't quite panned out for Sharpcast. It's not because syncing became unnecessary. In fact it's a must-have feature in all apps that work across devices, particularly those with an offline component such as Evernote and Instapaper. Sharpcast had an opportunity to establish itself as the sync glue for other web apps, but it didn't manage to pull that off. Instead, the likes of Evernote and Instapaper built their own sync solutions.

Sharpcast is still plugging away, but now it competes with Dropbox and others as primarily an online storage service. Sync is one of the main features, but it's no longer enough on its own.

Sync Remains a Problem

Evernote is one of my favorite apps (here's an interview I conducted last year, which outlines how the product was created) and most of the time the sync works well on it. But syncing in this day and age should be completely hidden from the user. I notice some kind of sync issue with Evernote every week or two. It still has work to do.

More generally, I am constantly coming across issues where things don't sync up properly between devices. Skype has probably been the worst offender for me over the years - for example, adding someone as a Skype contact on one computer and then not seeing that person display when you log into another computer. To this day, I continue to come across that 'bug.'

What have been your experiences of sync? More importantly, have you come across any promising new sync solutions?

HP held a big press event in San Francisco yesterday but not to show off a tablet, a phone, or a printer.  The company wanted to show the world its vision of the future.  HP is betting that in the future, the "cloud" isn't a destination, it's a medium, wires and jacks are outdated and the next step is seamless integration of all our devices.

The big story yesterday was that this vision has HP positioning itself as a direct competitor to Google's Chrome OS.

And then, at the end of all that friendly touching, HP dropped the real bomb - WebOS, its mobile operating system, would be coming out on its PCs as well. Suddenly, HP is offering an entire, synergetic ecosystem that communicates both through proximity and the cloud.

What Was That About Google?

Google has been on a similar path pushing users to the cloud. There are Chrome Web apps, the Chrome OS, and the prototype CR-48 that runs it. In Google's vision, the OS disappears into the browser. It's the all-in movement to the cloud, with "programs" giving way to "Web apps" and the idea of "hard drives" disappearing all together. Gmail talks with Google Docs which talks with Google Calendar, and so on. Google has managed to create a device-agnostic, cloud-based ecosystem that weans the user of local data storage and desktops, bringing them fully into the fold.

Android devices can sync wirelessly - something we're still waiting for with Apple - but HP stepped up the game. Surely, the vision is there but we haven't fully seen it yet.

Surely, Apple Sees the Cloud

Apple offers a similar vision of the cloud, but it is still burdened by fraying sync cords and lost power plugs. (Did you know that that little cube USB adapter plug costs $30?) Apple has for-pay file sync services like MobileMe and still has not given its users the much-requested wireless syncing feature. Both Android and WebOS both boast the ability to sync your music library without a cord.

With Apple, this sort of synergy is a long-standing promise that hasn't come even close to being fulfilled. When I hold my iPhone up to my iPad, what happens? That's right - nothing.

Where HP Takes It One Step Further

At the end of the event, as we mentioned earlier, HP announced that it would be releasing PCs and laptops with WebOS. Two things are immediately obvious. First, whoah, there's potentially a new OS on the block. Second, if we take what we saw with phones and tablets seamlessly communicating using bluetooth, we can expect that the same would be true for WebOS-based computers.The PC will become another member of HP's "seamless integration." Where HP really pulls away is the combined integration of sharing data over the cloud and initiating that sharing by proximity using Bluetooth.

Now, none of this is to say that HP wins. Right now, the numbers are clear. WebOS had a 2% market share in the last quarter of 2010. Windows still accounts for nearly 90% of operating systems. iOS and Android blow WebOS clean out of the water and without even trying, Google has more users in its ecosystem than HP could currently hope for. If nothing else, HP put forth a bold vision of an ecosystem of devices that actually make sense. There's nothing ragtag or disjointed about the entire affair. One talks to another talks to another, without asking if it needs to.

While some of what HP showed today may be simple tricks that make everything seem far more connected - such as receiving SMS on your tablet when your phone is in the other room - they were the first to show off these simple tricks. It's these sorts of tricks we've been waiting for from the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft, but HP beat them all to the punch.

Some of these apps have been suggested to us by the company founders we've interviewed for our product innovation series. These are people who are themselves building innovative apps, so their tips are worth heeding. We'd love to know which apps you use to connect or sync devices in your home, so tell us in the comments.

With so many devices being used in a modern home nowadays, an app that syncs your files is a must-have. Dropbox does exactly that. It's a favorite app of Instapaper creator Marco Arment, who told us that "anything that synchronizes between computers well is a huge time saver and a huge frustration saver."

Indeed Arment considers Dropbox to be "much, much better than iDisk ever was" (referring to Apple's online file hosting service) and he thinks that "Apple should just buy Dropbox, it's that good."

Veebeam

Jim Lanzone, co-founder and CEO of Clicker, uses a product called Veebeam to connect his computer or iPad to a big screen TV wirelessly. Veebeam has the functionality of an alpha product, according to Lanzone. "But the freedom I feel," he told us, "to be able to bring up a browser, navigate to a website to watch it on my big screen in HD, has been liberating - and I could see the future when I did that."

Camera A

Camera A is a photo app for the iPad that was recommended to us by John Borthwick, co-founder of Betaworks (the company behind Bit.ly, TweetDeck and more). When used with an iPhone app called Camera B, it connects your iPad and iPhone together by bluetooth or wifi and allows you to take photos.

Borthwick told us that it re-defines boundaries for what the iPad is, as the iPad doesn't actually have a camera.

Vuze

Vuze is a P2P client that enables you to find TV shows and movies available on the Internet. But its usefulness as a web app extends to enabling you to stream that content from your computer to a variety of devices: iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV, PS3, Xbox 360, PSP, and TiVo.

As I noted in a recent open thread about Internet TV, I use Vuze to stream TV shows or movies to my Sony Playstation 3 (which is connected to my TV).

Rdio

Rdio is the new online (and offline) music service from the founders of Skype. One of its defining features is its ability to sync music across different devices. So if you want to listen to music offline on your mobile phone, you can save it there and sync back to Rdio when you're online again. It's all done in the cloud, so there's no physical connection necessary.

Clicker's Jim Lanzone is a fan of Rdio. "I still use Pandora and I love the new genre channel that they've launched," he told us, "but I think Rdio has a lot of great personalization and sharing features."

Tell Us What Apps You Use to Connect Your Devices

The five we've mentioned are of course a small sample of apps that connect or sync your devices. Let us know which apps you use and like, in the comments!

Mozilla wants to bring the synchronization of Firefox Home to more mobile platforms, however, by expanding with BlackBerry, Symbian and possibly iPad versions of the app.

"We want to offer people access to their Firefox data no matter where they are, and these two platforms make up around 60% of the worldwide smartphone market combined," they said in a blog post Tuesday. "We've also heard interest for an iPad version of Firefox Home and will investigate this option further."

In addition, Mozilla hopes to integrate further social networking features to help users share bits of the Web with friends and followers. "Some of our more experimental features will allow you to easily share links, reviews and comments with your friends on Twitter, Facebook or other social networks directly from Firefox Home."

Mozilla also hopes to better integrate with natie iOS functionality (videos, maps, Mobile Safari, etc) as well as add password syncing to the app. With the announced shuttering of Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks), now could be a great time for Mozilla to expand it's synchronization efforts, especially in the rapidly expanding mobile market.

To enable extension sync in Chrome, you'll first need to install the current developer's build. Once installed, you'll then need to edit the Chrome shortcut's properties.

In Windows, you right-click on the shortcut, choose "Properties," and in the "Target" box, add -enable-sync-extenstions at the end of the command, to the right of the quotes. (Update: see the comments section for a tip on implementing this feature without the reported bugs).

Mac OS X users will need to use Terminal or this handy script that does the work for you (Pointed out to us courtesy of LifeHacker.)

Sync: For a Browser that Knows You

The great thing about Chrome's synchronization options is how it allows you to create a standardized experience no matter what computer you're using. Whether on the netbook in the living room, the desktop in the den or your notebook at the office, you can install Chrome and immediately have it set up with your personal preferences.

For this former Firefox user, the addition of extension sync has been one of the more highly anticipated options, second only to bookmark sync. There was a time - not too long ago, mind you - when you had to make manual lists of your installed extensions or use some sort of third-party add-on to back them up every time Firefox released a new version. And believe me, that process was not as simple as it sounds.

With Chrome, though, the transition from version to version is seamless. There's no backup needed. Forget iterative Web apps, Chrome is the iterative Web browser.

Although the current version of extension sync is still in testing - and apparently a bit crash-prone reports CNET - it's only a matter of time before the feature is stabilized and ported to the beta channel, followed by the public release.

As for what's next for Chrome sync, could it be the ability to sync browser history, searches and cookies? Passwords? Auto-complete settings? We would imagine that it's all of the above...maybe not soon but definitely not never.

Like its progenitor, Memeo Connect still offers drag-and-drop uploads, but in the latest release, the application's operating system integration has been dramatically improved. Most notably, your Google Docs folder now appears as a virtual drive that Memeo labels "GDrive", and, according to company representatives, the name is being used with Google's blessing.

To Internet early adopters, the name "GDrive" rings more than a few bells. It's referring to the long-rumored cloud storage service that Google has yet to launch. In its imagined state, Google's GDrive would have been a lot like Microsoft's SkyDrive: several gigabytes of free storage available on the Web for all your files. On the theoretical GDrive, however, files could be in any format, of any size and there would be easy ways to sync them or move them back and forth between your computer and the cloud. Office files would open with Google's Docs service, an online counterpart to desktop programs like Microsoft Office, and some even imagined that GDrive would further integrate with other Google properties, like Picasa for photos or YouTube for videos.

Google never fully realized everyone's GDrive dreams, but its Google Docs service is functional enough for most. It allows for the upload of any file type while multiple third-party services offer decent options for keeping files in sync between your computers and cloud. These include Memeo competitors like Box.net, Dropbox, Syncplicity, SugarSync, OfficeSync, Gladinet and more.

There are few programs that actually offer the full virtual drive functionality that Memeo now does, though. The company worked closely with Google to build this latest version of its Connect software and when Google engineers found out Memeo was calling the virtual folder it creates "GDrive," they had a good laugh.

Sorry, Internet, Google isn't designing its own GDrive service anytime soon, but it's well aware of the rumors.

Google actually prefers that, when it comes to GDrive-type offerings, third parties do it for them. The closest thing we'll see to a Google-branded tool of any sort is a desktop uploader application now being built, sources tell us. But it's no GDrive, based on what we've heard.

Version 2.0: More OS Integration Blurs Line Between Desktop and Cloud

In Memeo's case, version 2.0 of its software continues to offer drag-and-drop uploads (even folders!) and automatic synchronization. But it goes further with a combination of features that make using its so-called GDrive a more viable option. For example, you can save files from your desktop-based applications like Microsoft Office directly to Google Docs via GDrive, and you can open GDrive-hosted files with its associated native desktop program. In other words, it blurs the line between the cloud and the desktop, just as Google's mythical GDrive would have supposedly done. And for that reason, we don't at all begrudge Memeo the name "theft."

Memeo Connect's other new features include the ability to select multiple files at once for deletion (from the cloud), filter files by type or category, download all Google Docs with a click, view folders shared with you via Google Docs and more.

And let's not forget one of the most exciting new features: full text search for documents, another benefit of the in-depth collaboration between Memeo and Google when building this new version of Connect. To truly transition to cloud-hosted files, this feature is considered a must-have for many users.

For Business Users Only?

Memeo Connect is more business-focused than it is a consumer tool. It's not available as a "freemium" offering, as some would expect. Surprisingly, that's not Memeo's decision, but rather Google's. Google restricts its API usage for these types of synchronization services so that they only work with those who have business-level accounts.

As far as pricing goes, for Google Premier users, it's $9 a year per user and for non-Premier users, it's $59 a year per user, which includes a new Google Apps Premier Account in addition to the sync service.

Memeo Connect 2.0 is available for free evaluation from here. Both Mac and PC versions are available.

From Weave to Firefox Sync

Mozilla first announced Weave in December 2007. Since then, the organization introduced a number of additional betas. The basic idea behind Weave - to allow users to easily sync their browser data between different machines - has remained the same. If anything, Mozilla's plans to allow users to manage more aspects of their online identities in the browser makes Firefox Sync an even more important part of Mozilla's ecosystem.

Just last week, Mozilla also announced that it has been working on an iPhone app that will allow users to access their browsing history and tabs from their most recent browser session on Apple's platform.

Drivers will be able to control AppLink-enabled mobile apps through voice commands that will be routed through the Sync system, as well as from buttons on the steering wheel. The first car to feature this new service will be the 2011 Ford Fiesta. Ford plans to offer AppLink on all Sync-equipped cars next year. Existing Sync users will be able to update their car's software at a later point as well.

Same Apps - Just Controlled by SYNC

From the user's perspective, installing a Sync-enabled app is no different from installing a regular app on their mobile phones. The only difference is that the car will notice when you start a Sync-enabled app and allow you to control the app's function with your voice. This allows Ford to plug right into the existing developer ecosystems and distribution channels for all of these platforms and developers only have to make relatively minor updates to make their apps compatible with Sync.

It's important to stress that these applications are running on the user's phone and not on the car's built-in Sync hardware. Sync only passes the voice commands on to the application but doesn't interact with the app beyond this. In Ford's parlance, these are "brought-in" apps, as opposed to "built-in" apps (like Ford's Vehicle Health Report and 911 Assist) or "beamed-in" cloud-based apps that send traffic information and turn-by-turn directions to the car.

Sync AppLink for Developers

Ford is currently working with a small group of trusted partners and plans to open up the Sync API and software development kit to a broader selection of developers later this year. Ford also announced the launch of a Sync developer community that will give developers a pathway to partner with Ford on Sync-enabled applications.