Dropbox Logo

Dropbox is one of those new web services that has completely changed my digital life. In a nutshell, Dropbox creates a folder system that is automatically synced up with all of your computers AND your smartphone. That means that any files that you put in can be viewed on all of your devices. Even better, they can be accessed ANYWHERE just by logging in to the website.

To a large degree, it eliminates the annoying and tedious tasks of emailing yourself pictures or putting documents on a jump drive to transfer them between computers.

The best part is that you can designate folders inside of your Dropbox folder that you can share with anyone else. For example, at my office we often make proposals for new clients. Once the PDF is complete, I stick it in Dropbox for review from the rest of the team. They can look at it on their computers, or even their mobile phones, and provide feedback. If it’s an editable document, like a Word .doc, they can make changes and save, then everyone who looks after that will see the most recent version.

It’s NOT the right tool for transferring lots of big files: for example, your 600 photos from Europe. Since each byte of data has to uploaded to the cloud, you typically don’t want to wait for multiple gigabytes to be uploaded if you can stick them on a jump drive.

It is awesome for saving files that you access regularly – for example, a project that you’re working on. When I’m designing a website, I keep all of the files in Dropbox while I’m working on them. Once I compete the job, I take them out and store them somewhere. I also use it for websites I’m working on with other people, like designers and content editors. That way we don’t have to email files back and forth all the time and get confused about versions and bandwidth.

Plus, they have some sort of recovery and version system, but I haven’t used it too much.

They also offer a referral program – if you like Dropbox and want to give both you and me some extra credit, click here and we’ll both get a little bit of free space! http://db.tt/HWfPcEc