Business - Written Monday, June 30, 2008 by Jeff DeChambeau - 21 Comments

Up On Cloud (Computing) Nine with Dropbox

For a few months now, my friends and I have been using this software called Dropbox. It’s really cool, check out the video:

Dropbox is a service that synchronizes files between computers and the web. Once you add a computer to your Dropbox account, the Dropbox software creates a folder in your My Documents folder, the contents of which are synchronized across all computers linked to your account, as well as the Dropbox server. Whenever files are changed, only the difference in the file is updated across the network, minimizing bandwidth requirements. You can also have shared folders with other users, the files update as they normally do across all computers in the network. Finally, all old versions of the files are stored, and are accessible via a web interface at the Dropbox website. While my friends use this mostly for swapping photos and legally acquired mp3s, the possibilities for business are many.

Given the versioning, synchronizing and web accessibility, integrating Dropbox with a company wiki would fantastic. No more uploading and downloading the latest version of files, you’d just open the file in your Dropbox share and save it when you’re done. Then, if you had to grab it from another computer, you log in through the web interface and download the latest version. It basically makes every file a wiki.

This system is similar to the new Mobile Me platform that Apple has announced, and is a solid step towards the world of cloud computing and storage. The concept of Wikinomics brings about lots of potential, but software like Dropbox really empowers users to collaborate en-masse easily and quickly. I highly recommend it.

Also, I’ve got 10 invites to give away, post a comment with your e-mail if you’d like one.