First Look: ShifD Content Sharing Tool

The New York Times Company dives head-first into Web 2.0-world with a slick little tool for shifting notes, Web links, and addresses between computers and mobile phones. Called ShifD, this Web service is also a 1.0 Adobe AIR app - a platform released over the weekend by Adobe.

I tried out ShifD and like it. It's a handy utility that doesn't have anything to do with the The New York Times Web site or the newspaper. From what I understand the only thing in common between the NYT and ShifD are the designers. ShifD works with any sites and is worth using by mobile users looking to manage their digital lives.

Getting Started

ShifD is a replacement for e-mailing and text messaging yourself. You know how sometimes you will stumble upon something at work and e-mail it to yourself so you can get it at home? Also, you know how you will text message yourself addresses or directions so you can have it on the road? This is a sufficient replacement for that.

The root of ShifD is a browser page that can be accessed from a PC or a mobile phone browser. You log into your ShifD account from any computer or mobile browser and have access to all content saved and have the ability to add content. On a computer, ShifD client can be downloaded and installed that does not require a browser to view and add ShifD content.

ShifD is broken down into three categories for content sharing: notes, places and links. So let's say you are at dinner and remember an errand that needs to be taken care of. Instead of writing it down on a napkin or trying to remember it later from memory, you can whip out a mobile phone and enter it as a new note in your browser, or by simply sending a text message to ShifD.

Unfortunately, the text messaging feature is not currently available with the ShifD beta, but will be available soon. A text message to ShifD appears as a new note in your ShifD homepage.

On the other hand you can look up directions on a PC and save it as a "place" on your ShifD. Fire up your mobile browser from the road to see a map of where you need to be.

To really maximize the abilities of ShifD, a cellphone data plan that has access to a mobile browser is needed.

The clean interface and operations is a big bonus for ShifD and it is a service that needed to be created. Head on over to ShifD to try it out for yourself.

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