Tiger+Transmit+.Mac

Running Tiger? Have a .Mac account? Use Transmit? Well you're in luck. In case you didn't notice, Panic recently updated the best little FTP utility on the Mac with .Mac syncing of favorites, thanks to the newly opened .Mac syncing API for third party developers in Tiger. Essentially this means that you can automatically sync your FTP favorites (bookmarks) between, say, your PowerBook and your G5, just like Safari. So if you change a password or add a favorite on one machine, the other will automatically update.

Syncing is hardly new, but what makes this implementation so fantastic is that it all happens transparently in the operating system and not on the application level. In other words, you don't have to click "sync" or toggle a preference in Transmit -- the operating system silently handles it all -- so Transmit doesn't waste time syncing itself on startup or shut down.

To activate Transmit syncing, you have to do a little more than download the latest version. Grab 3.2, and launch it. Then go to the .Mac preference pane in System Preferences. Under the "Sync" tab is a scroll window of options. Scroll to the bottom, and you'll see a new Transmit option. Toggle it on, and click Sync Now. Then install Transmit 3.2 on your other machine, and repeat the process. After that all your favorites will be the same on both of your machines (or more).

Let's hope this is the first of many third-party apps that take advantage of this.