DROPBOX
BY: TIMOTHY JOSEPH RAYMUNDO
HISTORY
According to Dropbox, founder Drew Houston conceived the idea after repeatedly forgetting his USB flash drive while he was a student at MIT. He says that existing services at the time "suffered problems with Internet latency, large files, bugs, or just made me think too much." He began making something for himself, but then realized that it could benefit others with the same problem. Houston founded Dropbox, Inc. in 2007, and shortly thereafter secured seed funding from Y Combinator. Dropbox officially launched at 2008's TechCrunch50, an annual technology conference.
HISTORY
Due to trademark disputes between Evenflow (Dropbox's parent company) and Proxy, Inc.,
Dropbox's official domain name was
"[Link]" until October 2009, when they acquired their current domain, "[Link]".
HISTORY
OPSWAT reported in their December 2010 Market Share report that Dropbox held 10.41% of the worldwide Backup Client market, based on number of installations. In May 2011, Dropbox struck deals with Japanese mobile service providers Softbank and Sony Ericsson. As per the terms of the deal Dropbox will come preloaded on their mobile phones.
FUNCTIONS
Add-ons There are official and unofficial Dropbox addons, mostly created by the Dropbox community. These addons are both in the form of web services such as SendToDropbox (which allows users to email files to their Dropboxes), Backup Box (which facilitates online backup of FTP, Git, MySQL, and other services
to Dropbox accounts), and desktop applications such as
MacDropAny (which allows users to sync any folder on their computer with Dropbox).
FUNCTIONS
There is also a web service and browser extension called cloudHQ for Dropbox which allows Dropbox users to synchronize Google Docs with files in Dropbox storage and also to edit Dropbox documents in the browser. There are a number of client applications for operating systems that Dropbox does not officially support, such as Maemo,
Symbian, Windows Phone and webOS.
FUNCTIONS
An open source tool called Dropship provided unauthenticated access to Dropbox-hosted files by using the Dropbox API to access files by their hash. Dropbox attempted to suppress this project by requesting its suspension where it was being hosted, and by issuing a fake DMCA takedown notice, later said by Dropbox to be "a mistake".
Dropbox user demographics
FUNCTIONS
32.7% of Dropbox users, the largest share, are from the United States, followed by 6.7% from the United Kingdom and 6.5% from Germany. 66.1% of Dropbox users use Windows only, 20.9% use Mac OS only, 2.0% use Linux only, and the remainder use more than one operating system.
BENEFITS
Benefits of Dropbox Access it anywhere save a PowerPoint in your office and then open it in the classroom, library, coffee shop, home, airport, hotel, or conference center. Use it on multiple devices backup files on your desktop and see them later on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
BENEFITS
It works across platforms sync up a to-do list from a Windows machine and modify it on a Blackberry, Mac, Linux, iPhone, or Android device The app is optional if the computer in your classroom that doesnt have Dropbox installed, you simply access your files from a browser.
BENEFITS
Its good to share you can set up a folder to be accessible by a specific set of Dropbox accounts. Try this with students, colleagues, committee members, co-authors, family, or other groups.
Make items public anything you put in your Public folder is
available to the world; you can even link to an item from a course website (heres an example). Back up essential files everything you save in a Dropbox folder is automatically copied, not only to the cloud but also to other devices connected to your account.
BENEFITS
Keep files in sync always have your most recent to-do list or folder of browser bookmarks. I keep my genealogy database in Dropbox, so I have the most up-to-date info at home and on the road. One less thing to forget become less reliant on that USB flash drive or portable hard drive.
BENEFITS
We have a history an account maintains 30 days of undo, allowing you to return to last Fridays draft of class preparation notes the one before you accidentally deleted that awesome anecdote. Keep costs low there is no fee for 2 GB of space. If you need more, pay up to $20/month for 100 GB. You can earn extra free space by using a special URL to refer new customers (I resisted that
temptation here).
BENEFITS
Play nicely with others on my iPad I access Dropbox files from GoodReader, for example. Other connecting apps include QuickOffice, iA Writer, and Documents to Go. I expect that other platforms offer similar connections.