I’m almost floating in the cloud. I wrote earlier about ditching my laptop and I just found another awesome app that does the file syncing I’ve been longing for.
It’s called Dropbox, and it’s amazing. Essentially Dropbox allows one to create a special folder on their hard drive which will sync anything in there with whatever computers you have your Dropbox account on. If you run a Mac, Windows and a Linux box you can have speedy up to date sharing of files. All of your files are also kept remotely on Dropbox’s servers where you can access them anywhere.
Your Dropbox web interface allows you to share folders and files with friends or even with the public. They also handle images really well with auto creation of galleries just by dropping photos, or folders with photos into the Photos folder in your Dropbox.
I used to play around with trying to sync my USB keys with my laptop but things kept screwing up. Dropbox is another slick example of how you can ditch your laptop.
I use the following services which I can essentially operate from anything with a web browser and an Internet connection:
- For my homepage I use Netvibes. It’s really awesome and displays my RSS feeds, Digg, email, and bookmarks in a great way.
- My main email address is hosted with Google Apps for your Domain. It’s basically a free and private GMail install that directly uses my ericwarnke.com domain instead of a gmail.com account. I would even pay for this if I had to.
- Along with Google Apps several of my friends and I use Google Docs to take notes together in class as well as collaborate on all the group assignments we need to do. Working on the same document at the same time kicks ass. We tried Microsoft Office Live for a bit as well but the versioning ended up sending us back to Docs.
- All my bookmarks are kept on Delicious. I’ve used this for a few years and their Firefox plugin is a life saver. I’ll never use any browser based bookmarks again.
- Now I use Dropbox
So my email, bookmarks, homepage, and now my files are all going to be available basically whenever I need them!
Eric is a jack of all trades. From running social networks to internet cafes, he’s been in the startup scene for almost a decade. Recently returned from a stint at Start-Up Chile, Eric spends his days focusing on his startups Backup Box and Surreal WiFi.
Tags: cloud, ditch your laptop, dropbox