DropBox
Christopher Bell -- School Library Journal, 5/20/2009
I’m currently working on a project that’s part of a districtwide initiative. A major challenge has been dealing with the fact that none of the project team members work in the same building. As a result, we started using GoogleDocs to share group work, documents, and training PowerPoints, as well as photos and Photoshop Images. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to reach our 10MB upload limit. Additionally, people had to sign up for GoogleDocs and many just didn’t want another account to check. Enter the DropBox solution.
DropBox isn’t an email system or an external storage area. It’s simply an area to sync documents, pictures, Photoshop files, and other types of files. It’s very well organized and intuitive for PC or Mac users. It also works with Linux! One feature that my group found to be very beneficial is the Block system for saving. This means it will update documents without resaving the entire file or document every time, which increases save speed. DropBox makes a hefty 2GB of space available for free, with an option to upgrade. Every time you refer a friend to Dropbox, you gain 250MB of space, up to 3GB. DropBox allows you to share folders out of a public folder. You can also create your own folders and there’s a default photos folder, which can be shared and viewed in a gallery style.
To use DropBox, go to getdropbox.com and download the free application. You’ll be asked to create an account with minimal information. That’s it!
