Dropbox- Easy File Sharing
I recently started to work on a contract for a company to make a “Getting Started” type screencast video tutorial for their site. While they are not far from my home I will not go to their offices very often. My video size will be within emailable limits but it will be fairly large. It could take a long time to send.
They already have in place Dropbox folders. Dropbox, is a great file sharing application that adds a folder to your home directory automatically once you set up your account.
A free account gives you 2G of space. When you want to share a file simply drag and drop the file into your Dropbox folder. No FTP no stress and you get a nice green checkmark to indicate when it is finished.
You can also send a link to others to share the folder with them. Perfect for remote teams. The info about the file will tell you about recent revisions and by whom.
They have a nice set of user forums that provide lots of help when you need it.
You can also move items into the Dropbox so you can retrieve them remotely when you would like. For example, let’s say you are going to be away and you are not taking your computer with you, I know blasphemy, but it could happen. You could place some files that you might need to work on in the Dropbox folder on your computer and then log into your Dropbox account from a public terminal and see those files and work on them. It’s not the most elegant solution but certainly practical.
Another big benefit is that it is cross platform. Mac, PC, and Linux distributed teams can easily play well together, or at least Dropbox will not interfere with how well they play together.
Here is another review of Dropbox.
As I continue to use it I will continue to report on how useful it is, but so far so good.
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