DropBox: Your Breakthrough in Outsourced Filesharing

I’m a huge fan of accessibility. I carry copies of files with me on USB flash drives, on my iPod, on a microSD card in my phone, and in a pinch, even on an old CF card. In the “old days” (think Floppy and ZIP disks), I used to email files to myself so I could access them from my yahoo or hotmail email account.

Well, there’s a new way to fileshare. It’s called Dropbox. In addition to being able to access your important files from any computer with web access, you can even designate specific folders to share with friends. This is great if you need to collaborate on projects with someone else… just imagine the possibilities!

When you sign up with Dropbox, you’ll get a little welcome email that reads something like this:

So far, I’ve tested out the web access portal, and installed the Dropbox folder on one of my laptops. Anything you put into that folder gets automatically backed up to your online Dropbox account.

And, if you share a folder with a friend, anything they put in that folder will automatically be synced to your local (i.e., on your computer) Dropbox folder. Within two minutes of sharing a folder with a friend, she had already dumped a few actions and files in there for me. Talk about easy and quick!

I can see Dropbox being useful for photographers who outsource their retouching to a retouch artist, or in other circumstances where localized file sharing may not be an option.

If you can be satisfied with 2-3 GB of online storage space, Dropbox “Basic” is free. Here’s a summary of the different plans available to you:

• Basic (2 GB) – FREE
• Pro 50 (50 GB) – $9.99 per month
• Pro 100 (100 GB) – $19.99 per month

To sign up and give Dropbox a try, go do Dropbox.com.