Dropbox: More than a File Sharing Application!

Have you ever wanted to send a friend a large file that was exceeding your email attachment limit? It has happened to me quite a few times, when I wanted to send photos or video clips I took at a kid's birthday party to the parents. If I got lucky and managed to attach it to my email, often enough it bounced back because the recipient's email service provider didn't accept such large attachments!

I came across this wonderful web application called Dropbox, where users can upload files and send a link to others to download. The person who receives the link does not have to have a Dropbox account to access the file. Each user gets up to 2 GB of free storage space (more space is available for a fee)!

After I decided to write a help file for this web application for one of my course projects, I discovered that Dropbox is more than a file sharing application. Upon downloading Dropbox software onto your computer, it generates a folder that you can use just like any other folder. But the wonderful thing is that whatever you keep in this folder is accessible through Dropbox website, your other computers, or mobile devices that have the Dropbox application installed. There is no need for you to carry your files in a flash memory anymore!

Also, Dropbox keeps track of changes you make to your files in the Dropbox folder. So basically, it works as a backup system. You can undelete or recover earlier versions of your files! Dropbox saves a history of your files for the last 30 days; you can pay to extend this period.

Dropbox is a good example of Internet-based shared resources--or cloud computing--but security is a concern. You may not want to use Dropbox to store sensitive information as you do not know who has access to your documents at the other end!