Lovable Links is a weekly feature that I will post every weekend to help others discover useful websites, free apps, or free services (relating to design) that I have found useful, entertaining or a must have for any designer.
Platform compatibility: Mac, PC, and Linux
Price: Free (up to 2GB); $9.99 per month or $99 per year (50GB!!)
I’ve been using Dropbox for a few months now and all I can say is “Wow!” Unlike other services that allow you to store, sync and share your files online, Dropbox does it with speed, simplicity and other great, useful features that I will discuss below. If your a designer and haven’t discovered Dropbox yet, here’s your chance to learn the benefits.
Displays and Works like all other folders on your computer
After signing up and downloading (download link) the software on your computer, Dropbox installs a folder that looks and acts like any other folder with additional features:
- The ability to access files on any computer via the web
- The ability to sync files across multiple computers
- The ability to email (large) files/folders of information by simply, right-clicking on the folder/file and choosing Share…
- You can drop files/folders into your ‘Public’ folder (the files and folders have a URL attached to them) which can then be accessed by your clients or used in collaboration as a mean of quick sharing.
Other great features:
- Syncing works instantly and reflects changes or additions immediately — take that Apple iDisk!
- If you make changes you regret, you can ‘undo’ on the web and restore a file/folder
- Create a quick and easy photo gallery — haven’t used this feature, but it’s still pretty cool.
Take note that Dropbox is designed to store your files/folders directly onto its server (Dropbox), and is not a copy from your local hard drive. I am not too fond of this, so here’s what you can do…
For the last several months, it’s served to be quite handy when communicating with clients, sending clients their files, getting proofs verified quickly and making my work accessible for anywhere — just to name a few.
ohmygawd when does it come out of beta. that is awesome. I have three clients that I could utilize this with so easily. All clients are on pc and i’m MAC so i’ve got my dropbox to dropbox set up from mac to mac but its never easy to get them to figure it out when they are on pc…. Thanks for the lead.
Jojo-
Even though Dropbox is in beta, it is completely amazing and bug free from what I have seen (and used). I’m not sure why it is still in “beta” but if it means more features will be added in the future then I’m excited!
Thanks for sharing. I know someone who will find it useful.
PS – It’s not quite November 7th yet… like your article states.
Bobbi -
Glad you can find it to be of use. It’s an amazing little app that plays big :)
Also, good pickup of the wrong date…sleepy eye syndrome..LOL
[...] Lovable Links: Store, Sync and Share your Files with Dropbox | The Design Cubicle Cool info for DropBox, an easy way to sync and share files via the web (tags: tools tweetmarks) [...]
[...] You can see my review of Dropbox here. [...]
Thanks for the article. Playing with Dropbox now. Are you sure that it doesn’t keep local copies of files?
I am keen to have my files stored at one place that is easy to back up but is available from different computers. Is this the case with DropBox? I really don’t like the idea of having to upload copies all the time, after a while, I guess, it get preety hard to keep track of the most recent files.
You can either store them on one location or have an alias on another location. It’s up to you, but much like you I like to have my files on more than one spot. Dropbox is a great tool!
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by helios_design: Do you use Dropbox for file sharing? http://bit.ly/vzckI (via Design Cubicle)…
[...] I LIKE IT: Here’s a full review of Dropbox I did a while back, but I’m sure you can understand why I like it from the [...]
[...] am a huge fan and daily user of Dropbox. It allows me to work on my desktop – for example – and quickly move files across computers to [...]