It has happened to me on more than one occasion. I get up bright and early and pat my boys on the head and send them off to school. Kiss my wife and off to work I go. I set up my laptop, pour my first cup of coffee. Check my iPod for any fan mail from the blog or Facebook comments about last night's adventures. Then it happens. I reach into my bag for my flash drive and its not there! I hunt around feverishly inside neoprene and other fiber I can't discern, searching deep into the nether regions of my personal portable computer storage container of livelihood. Then the Blackberry goes off and its a text message from my wife. "Did you need your Sandisk 8GB Titanium Flash receptacle thingy?" Now my wife's technical vocabulary was enhanced in that last sentence. Usually I get "thingy" as all the descriptor. I had an ace up my sleeve just for this sort of problem. Now it was time to put her technical ineptitude to the test.
Two weeks before I installed Dropbox onto all of my home and work computers. I had heard whispers of this from my other tech friends before, but never really saw the need to grab an account and try it out until my wife started asking me for all my music and Christmas Card lists that were on my work computer she could not access especially since I travel quite a bit.
Dropbox works like an online Uber flash drive. That's right, I said Uber, don't judge me. To start out you get 2GB of free online storage that is expandable to 5GB after enough referrals. There are also pay plans for you video junkies and audiophiles that need extra space.
The Dropbox can be installed on any PC or Mac and even the iPod and iPhone now. Whatever is added to the Dropbox is synchronized across all Dropbox locations as long as they are online. Furthermore, I can share files with direct links to the location to anyone in the inter-webs. All I have to do is Crtl+Right Click on a file and choose the Copy Link Location right from my Dropbox and paste it into an email.
Well, Mr. Tech Trend smarty pants blogger, what if my computer takes a download over the side of a cliff with all my other computers daisy-chained with Serial cables. Now I have nothing right? Wrong. You can log into your Dropbox from any computer and Upload or Download any of your synchronized files. Mom's recipe for Sugar Cookies and my wife's Christmas Card Address list are safe and sound and the Johnsons on the other side of the US will still get their pictures of my boys pretending to get along at Christmas time. And I won't lose Mason's first snow mobile ride on the lake either. Don't worry he was supervised, they don't ride single until they are 4 years old. ;)
What if my not so tech savvy wife/spouse/significant other/house pet deletes a file? Well Dropbox has you covered there too. You can restore deleted files up to 30 days in the past without the need for a Flux Capacitor and a Delorean. If a file isn't deleted, maybe it is merely updated you can also get previous versions of that file.
So I had my wife take my flash drive and simply drop the files into the Dropbox folder and minutes later I had the documents I needed for the day. And yes, she asked if she needed to drop the icons into the folder thingy. Crises averted.
Hey there, I'm Spencer. I work for a company named Syncables, and after reading through this, I think you might want to check us out. We make a localized syncing software that I've found makes a great offline compliment to dropbox. Our client is cross-platform, and it lets you keep your files, contacts and email synced between your computers over your home or office network, which is great for when you can't get an internet connection but still need to transfer things between your machines. Additionally, Syncables includes a media component, which allows you to upload your media to any phone or usb drive.
Check us out at www.syncables.com!
Posted by: Syncables | 01/28/2010 at 03:08 PM
There is a good change that you guys, have a sort of dropbox already. If you have a google account, you can since recently upload every type of file and I think even up to 7 gig.
J. Steurs
www.cadsherpa.com
Posted by: josteurs | 02/17/2010 at 02:43 PM
I've heard of Dropbox, but never tried it. I may need to give it a try.
Mobile data access is invaluable!
Posted by: Jonathan Landeros | 03/01/2010 at 02:13 PM