FlashApe

If you haven’t yet checked out Dropbox, the slick file transfer/sharing/backup tool, you should. It’s one of those things that reminds me that computers supposed to be here to make our lives easier, not harder. It’s so easy, even my wife was excited about it (”Cooooolll !!!” )

Dropbox installs on your computer and completely integrates with the filesystem…it’s actually just a folder (your ‘Dropbox’) you drag files into. In your dropbox you have a public folder, and once you drop a file within the public folder, you can right-click on get the web URL for that file. You can then send that url to anyone you like and they can view that file.

In addition to your Public folder, there is a ‘Photos’ folder. Dropping images (or a folder of images) into that folder will create a public photo gallery with thumbnails.

You can also create Shared folders within your Dropbox, to be shared only with specific people.

Your drop box also keeps a version history of your files, so you can roll back to a previous version, a la Time Machine.

There are two small downsides I can see so far with Dropbox. First, as of right now they have a 2 gigabyte limit. Two gigs of backup for free is not that bad I guess, but I think 5 would be a better starting point. Regardless of that, they will soon be offering paid plans to increase storage, and I’ll be jumping on that immediately…goodbye local hard drive backup.

The other issue I have is that you must place everything within your Dropbox….so for example, if you wanted to share your Iphoto library you would need to copy the images into your Dropbox. I think they are working on allowing for watched folders as well. Mac (and I’m assuming linux) users can get around this by creating symbolic links in the dropbox.

Overall, 4-stars, two thumbs way up for Dropbox.

Note: I have no affiliation with Drobox, it’s just love at first sight.