SnapSession: Dropbox

I recently put out a note to my social network asking if anyone knew of a photo sharing service I could use where the photos would be private. When you upload photos to Flickr, even if you mark them as private, the web crawlers can (will) still find them and then your private picture end up on Google Images.

Suzie Medders, over at Clemson, suggested I try Dropbox. Quick glance, I liked what I saw, so I decided to do a SnapSession on it.

It really could not be easier and the product does exactly what it says its going to do, at least as I can tell. You download an application to your computer (it is an .exe file for PCs and .dmg for Mac – it also runs on Linux) and this puts a dropbox folder either in your Documents folder, or you can tell the program where you want it (I choose my desktop). I downloaded Dropbox to both my PC and Mac, sitting side-by-side, so I could compare as I went.

The install was simple but I did make one mistake. When going through the process it asks you to provide a name for the account, which is not a name for the entire process, just for the computer you are on. Even though they provided the example “Joe’s Laptop”, I wasn’t sure, so I called my office computer “My Stuff”. When I did the install on my Mac laptop, I realized it was asking the same thing and that the name was for the local machine. I went back and tried to rename my office PC but could not find out to do so. Perhaps I’ll find it later on.

I uploaded a file I carry around on my flash drive. It magically appeared on my Powerbook right away. Wonderful. I’ve thought about what might happen if I lost that flash drive or if it got damaged. I do back it up regularly but use it all day long, it has my most active documents on it (one’s I work on at home and in the office). Losing even a few hours work could be time consuming, annoying, and potentially costly. This has now solved that problem. Well, for all files but one. I won’t put my financial budget excel sheet up there. I know they say it is private, but I’m just not that trusting. Remember, putting something on the network means its always there, pretty much, forever. It means that if Dropbox has its servers audited by law officials or the government, they can have access to anything they want. So if this is really something super secret you never ever want anyone else to ever see, don’t put it up on a network anything!

I loaded a file up into my “public” folder, which makes things public by default and when you right (control) click on it, you get the URL. Here is the document I put up there. http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1450981/mj-google.gif

There is also a folder for photos, which I didn’t have time to test in my designated 15 minute test period for these SnapSessions, but I will get to that on my own.

You can connect as many computers as you want, as long as you have the sign in (so I can do my work computer, laptop, the netbook I’ll be getting for school, home desktop, and even the computer I use when I’m at my mom’s!). You can share folders with others (didn’t get to test that either). If you working in a public space, you can even access the entire set up via a web site (once you sign in). And all this happens in relative real time.

The only glitch I ran into was I found a file that was the same as another file but with the word “conflict” and the name of my office computer in the file. It turns out that if two computers are accessing a file at the same time, the one that saves first wins and the second on is called the “conflict”. The help/FAQ told me why right away. I found this help/FAQ pretty easy to read and reliable.

The sign up was easy. They give you 2GB of storage space for free (and have paid accounts if you want/need more space). The product seems to perform exactly as it says its going to. In my book, this is a win. I’m interested in hearing what others think, especially those who might have been customers for a while – Dropbox has been around since 2007.