Soonr is releasing the third version of its service Wednesday with a redesigned Web site and updated iPhone application that brings more of its desktop functionality to mobile users.
On the desktop side, the site has been rearranged to put all of Soonr's collaborative features in one place. Things like past file edits, user comments, and permissions control are now in the same place. And you can quickly create a project and start adding files to it on your own, or with collaborators who will be alerted each time there's a new file, user comment, or a change.
However, many of the biggest changes remain on the mobile application, which the company says should fulfill most of the top requests users had when it originally came out. These include:
- A full-screen document viewer that can be pinched to zoom in and out of large, complex files like spreadsheets.
Streaming video. If you're opening up a supported video file it will play right on your phone.
Contact list integration, so you can send files to people on your phone's contact list, even if they're not a Soonr contact.
You can send and receive eFaxes from your phone if you have an eFax account set up.
The option to create and move around folders, so you can reorganize everything you have saved on the service when you're out of the office. You can even upload files from your phone.
The updated dashboard divides up projects and site activity into different tabs.
(Credit: Soonr)To help sort through everything the service now has a search engine that indexes not just the names of your files, but what's inside them. This works on both the mobile and desktop versions on supported file types; So if you remember a small snippet of a Word document, it will be able to pull it up out of hundreds, or thousands in your account.
One thing that's not coming with this version is the capability to make edits to files from your phone. Creator Martin Frid-Nielsen tells me it's on the road map, and is on track for a future release, but it's not quite ready yet. It's definitely the one thing that keeps this service from being a true replacement for the Web version, since any changes or fixes to your work must be done when you're back on a real machine.
See also: Box.net updates its search to go inside your files
Soonr's iPhone app.
Soonr, a Webware 100 winner in 2007, has a fresh new look and a killer iPhone application.
Soonr's free service and accompanying App Store download allows users to store up to 500MB of files, which they can access on the go, from the iPhone or a standard Web browser.
New users create their account on their iPhone and then download a desktop application (available for PC or Mac) which handles the synchronization of files. In the same form of other desktop-syncing applications, the user only has to choose the directories that they want to keep updated, and any changes made will be automatically uploaded. All of these files are easily accessible from the iPhone app.
Not only does Soonr allow you to have very quick access to your documents from the iPhone, but it also allows you to share the documents with other users. These users can view and comment on the file.
Unfortunately, Soonr does not currently enable users to edit these documents. But its application does include a wireless-printing feature, enabling users to send documents to networked printers when on Wi-Fi.
My only real gripe with the iPhone app is the lack of full-screen support within the document viewer. The iPhone's document viewer does a better job of actually displaying documents than Soonr's.
Soonr is a great solution for iPhone users looking to have constantly synchronized documents on the go. Soonr is very easy to use, fully featured and, best of all, free.
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