I love when I find stuff that’s free, useful, and pretty. It’s rare, but when it happens, it’s like magic. That’s how Dropbox is.
Ever since I got my laptop, I’ve had the problem of multiple computers. (Yeah, woe is me, I know. I’m a brat for thinking that’s a problem, but let’s move on.) If you’re a writer like me, you know that writing can happen wherever, and on whatever computer. After a while, you have multiple versions of your document floating around in your email and on your various hard drives, and it gets a little tricky to figure out which one you deleted that awful scene from and which one you fixed a typo in three weeks ago, and how you’re going to get them all back together in one coherent manuscript again. If you’re not a writer, I’m sure there are other reasons you’d like your documents synced between your various computers… Right?
In any case, Dropbox is the solution to my document syncing problem. You join to get an account, and then you download Dropbox onto each computer you want to sync. Dropbox makes a folder on your hard drive where you simply drag and drop everything you want to sync and it goes to work for you. All your files from one computer match the files on the other computer magically. Ok, well, I’m sure it’s not REALLY magic, but it’s magic to me. I love it.
Not only that, but Dropbox also allows you to share files publicly with anyone. Just drag files into the Public folder in Dropbox or mark a folder of your own as public. These guys thought of everything!
You only get 2.0 GB of space to play with, but don’t bellyache, it’s free. 2.0 GB is plenty of room for me to sync all of my documents and Photoshop files and websites.
The other drawback is that right now it’s in private beta, but since I love you, my faithful blog readers, the first 9 people who email me get my Dropbox beta invites. Enjoy!
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