I was writing earlier about a free remote desktop service called LogMeIn that I liked and briefly mentioned another free service, Dropbox, that offers some interesting features for online file storage, access, syncing, and sharing. It works with Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and even some mobile platforms.
Dropbox’s website describes their service in a tour they offer on their site. The site describes the synchronization it offers by saying, “Let’s say you’re editing a document at home. As soon as you click ‘Save’, Dropbox will sync this same file to all your other computers (and now your iPhone!) instantly and automatically. It’s as if you saved the document to all of your computers. This gives you the freedom to work on any of your computers and always have the files you need.”
It describes the sharing function by saying, “You can easily share entire folders or photo albums with Dropbox. Simply put the folders you want to share in your Dropbox, and invite people to them. You can also send people links to specific files within your Dropbox. This makes Dropbox perfect for team projects.”
The site describes the use of their service as a backup solution by saying, “Every time you put a file in your Dropbox folder it is automatically backed up to our secure servers. If your computer has a melt-down your files are safe on Dropbox and can be restored at any time. Our free 2GB account is perfect for backing up your documents. We offer larger accounts (up to 100GB) for backing up your music and video collections.”
They describe how you can retrieve early versions of files that you have changed and saved over or files you deleted by saying, “Every time you save a file in Dropbox, Dropbox syncs it to our secure servers. Dropbox keeps a history of every change made so that you can undo any mistakes and even undelete files. By default, we keep the last 30 days of undo history for all your files. We also have an unlimited undo option called “Pack-rat”.”
They also discuss how you can replace the need for flash drives, ftp sites, the practice of emailing files to yourself, renaming files to keep version histories, and backup systems by using their service.
I’ve used by Dropbox storage to store utilities I often need – I can access those utilities from any computer I’m working on and even send other people links to those utilities so they can use them as well. I used to keep all these sorts of software on a USB flash drive but now that sits, collecting dust, on my dresser. I also use Dropbox to store backups of some of my important documents. Finally, I keep documents that I’m working on in my Dropbox so I can continue working on them from other locations.
While Dropbox offers an app for the iPhone and doesn’t really offer one for the Blackberry, they do offer a mobile website that works great on the Blackberry. There is an OTA app for the Blackberry that will add an icon to your device that accesses the mobile site, basically giving you a web based app, so to speak. Regardless, I can access my dropbox files from my Blackberry
