We’ve asked you about your favorite apps and your favorite tweaks in previous editions of our ongoing PC Brain Trust series, and the topic this time is music.

There are a number of approaches to listening to music on our webOS devices.  We can sync our music manually by dragging and dropping files from folder to folder, we can use old versions of iTunes or programs like The Missing Sync to automatically sync music to our devices, or we can use cloud based solutions like DropBox and streaming solutions like GrooveShark to pipe music in without going through the hassle of syncing.  

With the myriad of options available, we have to ask:  how do you choose to listen to music on your phone?  Do you stream exclusively, preferring the variety associated with the huge libraries of music companies like Pandora and GrooveShark have access to?  Do you you prefer the fidelity and control offered by having high bitrate MP3’s and WAV files hosted locally on your device?  Or do you pursue an approach that mixes the two?

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It’s been some time since we reviewed The Missing Sync (available for both PC and Mac), since then they’ve added two-way calendar sync and now, most recently, the ability to sync notes and tasks to your desktop. On my Mac, TMS is my go-to app for syncing music, photos, ringtones, bookmarks, and a few other bits and bobs not handeld by Synergy and Google. (Those looking to just sync media might take a gander at the less-expensive GoGadget sync tool).

The kindly folks at Mark/Space have provided us with 20 registration codes to give away to you, our good and gentle readers. To enter, give us a comment here telling us what you would like to get synced from your computer to your Pre or Pixi. 

Full details and a note from Mark/Space after the break!

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Who says PC can’t have fun too? The folks over at Mark/Space may be of the Macintosh-inclined variety, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to work to make their products fully capable for their Windows-using brethren. To that end, Mark/Space has released a new version of The Missing Sync for webOS that brings two-way calendar synchronization to the PC side of their software. Previously two-way calendar sync was only supported for Mac users.

Change an event name on your webOS phone and sync it back to your computer. Add a location and adjust the time on your PC and then push that back to your phone. Life with webOS and Outlook just got easier. The Missing Sync for webOS is available from Mark/Space’s website for $39.95. A free webOS companion app needed to trigger and manage the sync is available in the Palm App Catalog. Future updates to The Missing Sync promise to bring Tasks and Notes synchronization to both PC and Mac users.

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There will continue to be a market for desktop sync software, even in the days of mobile cloud computing that are being ushered in by likes of Palm and webOS.

Count me in.  Call me paranoid, but I still use a desktop mail client on a day to day basis, primarily for archival purposes. Sure, Google and Palm both have massive server farms, and much of my important PIM data is backed up into the cloud automatically every night. The thing is, I really like having an offline backup of everything, because as we’ve seen in the last few months, some of the big players in cloud computing aren’t exactly impervious to losing our data.  And it’s not like everyone want’s all of their PIM data in the cloud. 

Mark/Space’s The Missing Sync is one such program that caters to the “I’d like to sync to my desktop” crowd, allowing for the synchronization of your contacts and calendars to various desktop mail clients on both the Pre and the Pixi, in addition to media like music, videos, and more. 

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We at PreCentral receive a lot of tips throughout the day, but more and more over the past few weeks our inbox has been flooding with stories of users having just reset or replaced their webOS phones only to find that their Palm Profile did not back up all their data as promised. If you haven’t experienced this issue you’re in the lucky majority, but it seems the rate of the backup failures is accelerating and spreading.

We do feel your pain – one of our own staff members was hit by this bug and lost all of his contacts, calendar events, memos, and tasks. The only thing that was saved were his apps, which is a small consolation when you’ve just lost hundreds of phone numbers and email addresses accumulated over the years.

While we’re waiting for a third-party backup solution to land, we did some investigating. It turns out that the problem stems from corrupted backups, which is nothing new in the backup industry. Corrupted data happens all the time, but there are always safeguards to ensure that it doesn’t corrupt the system. Usually, that’s a prior backup. The issue is that the Palm Profile doesn’t keep anything other than the most recent backup, corrupted or not. Since your phone doesn’t provide any feedback on backups, even when they end up as corrupted, webOS users have no idea whether or not their backup was successfully completed. That is, until you reset your phone and realize that everything is lost.

Update: Palm has issued an official statement on the situation:

We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device. Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device

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If this cat-and-mouse game with Palm and Apple over iTunes is getting on your nerves and solutions like DoubleTwist or Salling Media Sync just aren’t good enough for you, then Mark/Space may have the solution for which you’ve been waiting. It’s called GoGadget, and it pulls the media synchronization features of their The Missing Sync for webOS desktop software out and bundles them into a tight little package. We’ll be giving away five copies of GoGadget during this week’s PalmCast Live – details are after the break.

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When The Missing Sync for Palm Pre debuted back in June as a Mac-only application, the question we heard from many of you was “Where’s the PC version?” Fret not, for Mark/Space is hard at work on such a program, and to assuage your local synchronization hunger pangs not fulfilled by PocketMirror they have posted a development tracker for The Missing Sync for Palm Pre for Windows XP and Vista where frequent postings will allow you to follow along as new features are added to the program.

As of this posting, they have managed one-way synchronization of your Outlook contacts and calendars (more comprehensively than the Palm Data Transfer Assistant) with two-way sync promised down the road, folder synchronization, and iTunes playlist music transfers. Next up on their development list are full two-way contacts synchronization and photo transfer capabilities. Mark/Space has also started a private beta program to test out the latest builds of the PC version of The Missing Sync. The Missing Sync is coming to the PC, it’s just not here yet.

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Since Apple has decided to take their iTunes ball and go home, Palm Pre owners who had come to depend on the software as their synchronization solution have found themselves out in the cold. Do not distress, for there are many options available for you to continue delightful synchronization of your music. Several of these options even come with more options than iTunes itself, and if there’s anything we like here, it’s options.

Our list is by no means comprehensive, but it is broad and touches upon the various options available for iTunes synchronization, as well as ways for non-iTunes users to get their music easily onto the Pre. If there’s something else that you use, or a sync solution that you need, sound off in the comments!

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The Palm Pre runs a backup every day to the unique profile you created when you bought it, but is that enough? What about those of us who are “old-school” and are used to syncing our devices with our desktop computer? Fortunately, Mark/Space has developed The Missing Sync for the Pre so you can sync [...]

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Late yesterday (at least so the App Catalog tells me), two new apps found their way into the store. And today saw two more applications, including a returning favorite from the Palm OS days.

New:

• Evernote for Palm Pre (Free): Text, to-do, and photo note-taking application, syncs with desktop client.
• PocketMirror (Free): Outlook Synergy synchronization conduit.
• The Missing Sync (Free): Macintosh Synergy synchronization conduit.
• SplashID Beta (Free): Secure app for storing usernames, passwords, account numbers, prescriptions, etc.

Updated:

• Spaz

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