If you haven't heard the news – Drush rules! It's a command line interface for Drupal that allows you to do all sorts of things like download and install modules, themes and Drupal base-installs, as well as manage some database functions, evaluate php, access the drupal API and more! Drush is also a great tool for syncing various sites. You can copy a site file directory and database to a local development environment or any location, really. This makes things like backing up a live site, or pushing a development site to a server easy.