Not only have I enjoyed it so much I've told countless friends about dropbox, it also auto invites your friends to join when you share a file with them. That's in part why they already had over 100,000 beta testers before even launching.
I've been using Syncplicity, which offers similar functionality, and that works too. Clearly, their PR isn't as good - it's been launched for some time.
Along these lines, I want to know what the catch is. Where/how are the files stored, how do they stop us from going past 2gb, is there anything in place for when the RIAA/MPAA come calling? More critical replies please, YC.
That's not Dropbox, that's the Nautilus integration. That is, you keep the essential parts proprietary and closed, and open the parts where you hope others to do work for you. It's not the oddest strategy, but it doesn't live up to the promise either.
On the other hand, if you freed the daemon too, you could get included in Linux distributions, and people would know what all Dropbox is doing on their computers.
"It started in Boston’s South Station in November 2006 where one night, while waiting for the Chinatown bus to New York, I wrote the first lines of code of what eventually became Dropbox. I had forgotten my USB drive at home and was frustrated that I couldn’t get any 'real work' done."
DropBox a winner? Xobni a winner? How did they do it?
The recipe is to not rush your product out there. I think most entrepreneurs do not understand "Release Early, Update Daily, Weekly, Monthly". Sometimes releasing early can work against you. Be patient.
I routinely forget I even have Dropbox because it gets out of my way so damn perfectly.
Amazing job. And thank you most of all for the "undo" feature. I'm not saying that one day Dan accidently deleted all of our files, but you know, hypothetically.
"Since 1988 many prominent architecture astronauts have been convinced that the biggest problem to solve is synchronization.
[...]
When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not.
[...]
this so called synchronization problem is just not an actual problem, it's a fun programming exercise that you're doing because it's just hard enough to be interesting but not so hard that you can't figure it out."
You should add a link to your main site on your blog. I arrived on the blog from the HN link having no idea what Dropbox is or what it does. I had to manually edit the url to get to the main page to find out what it does. Lots of users would be too lazy to do that.
Snap. Also, the tour thing doesn't load on the PCs here at work (probably the firewall), so I still don't know what it is! The site could do with a bit of simple plain boring old html text which tells us poor people behind firewalls what all the fuss is about :)
I'd like to emphasize how well Dropbox works as a collaborative tool. Never having to attach and download shared files from email is a great help in staying organized.
A co-worker can simply shoot you an IM or shout across the office that a document has been updated, and it's already on your machine ready to be opened.
I hope people don't get this confused with a source code repository though, as it definitely isn't optimal for working on shared source code. Stick with documents, images, and media, and you'll be fine.
I have been using it for quite a few months and am officially impressed with the stability of the app. This is a good time to remember to backup - I will be saving some important photos immediately!
The only complaint I have is that it does not make explicitly clear (to me) what folders are public.
Dropbox will probably take over gmail as my primary file storage on the go... ;)
Now, one question though, is Dropbox smart enough to only access network when I am actually doing anything with it(ie transfering files from/to Dropbox), or will it occasionally do weird sync type of things even when I am not using it(but have Dropbox folder open on desktop)?
Weird issue with the website: On this page: http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux if I move my mousewheel while the cursor is over that ascii dropbox on the right my cpu usage jumps to 100% and Firefox hangs for a few seconds.
Using Firefox 3.0.1 on Ubuntu 8.04.
I think if you're actually interested in encryption, your best bet is actually not to wait on us to help you with it. If we're cooperating with you to encrypt your data, it's by definition not secure. A number of security-conscious users use us combined with TrueCrypt volumes.
I see a couple ways you could introduce encryption securely.
1. At the very least, encrypt data being transfered using SSL, to prevent sniffing on WiFi and other public networks. Public key cryptography (like SSL) certainly can be secure, and does or doesn't require "cooperation" depending on your definition.
2. Your client could somehow integrate with something like TrueCrypt, but leave it up to the user to manage their keys.
I must say that while I was already impressed by the product, the blog post announcing the public launch was just as impressive. It is very well written and portrays the company as having great professionalism and aptitude. You don't see many startups doing this.
There seems to be an explosion of these online storage services. They will become much more useful when/if there is a standardized API with per-app isolation and access control. The closest I've seen to that is Openomy:
That's awesome. I finally got the invite a week or so ago and I couldn't be happier. I already got 3 of my friends on it as well because it just WORKS. Beautiful
I've use jungledisk and MobileMe/iDisk, but on seeing this story this morning I thought I'd give dropbox a try, and I was blown away by how well it 'just worked'. Things like sharing, proper diffs, public folders all done properly and simply. Really need Mac Finder integration. I'm a convert!
Shame that someone else has the dropbox.com domain though ...
"Sometimes you need your files on the run, and we were amazed that no one had made it easy"
What? Never heard of offline files, briefcases, SSH/FTP/SFTP/Web/WebDAV servers, Sharepoint, Groove...? (or any of millions of online file repositories?)
That seems an odd keyword for the sort of person capable of writing dropbox and for a site like HN which revels in arguments about what kind of threading mechanisms are preferable.
I don't suppose I'd win any favor for saying Offline Folders - you logoff your domain, they sync, you logon, they sync again. It isn't any effort once it's setup. Not even browsing to a webpage or entering a password.
