Dropbox launches (YC summer 07)
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
For example, I'm working on some code with my cousin; we have Subversion etc.; but his PC is the host and we're never on our PC's synchronously so using Dropbox could solve that problem. Also, my folks manage a large apartment complex and they have files they share across multiple PCs at work and at home, I think DropBox would be simple enough for them to use without causing me stress as the de facto family IT guy.
I see photos and public when I first sign in - are these both public folders? How do I store things, lets say my resume I want to be able to access from anywhere, but want private?
Other than that, it appears to 'just work' amazingly. Having built a somewhat similar backend to a system like that, it really is quite a feat.
Edit: Since the startup I was at is now defunct - email me and I may have some a good potential market for your product (very slightly modified)
15. How public are Public links? How Private are my other files?
* Any file in your Public folder is accessible to anyone who can guess your public file link and the path to the file. No one can browse the directory, though.
* Any file in your Dropbox outside of the Public folder is by default only accessible via computers linked to your account or to you via the web interface.
* If you give out a shareable link to a portion of your Photo Gallery (from here), people who know the link will be able to browse any photos in the album you linked from and any sub-album.1) Get a Linux version out, it shouldn't take too long as you developed the thing using Python (not sure what OS specific bindings you have)
2) Add support for LAN connections, when two boxes sit on the same LAN there is no reason for them to wait for S3 to be updated, get the update done locally and then propagate to S3, this will save you bandwidth and shorten latency.
Fuse also has support for things like curlftpfs, so if you can't get ssh access somewhere, as long as you have a host with ftp access, you can do the same thing.
I have about..50 gigabytes of images of games that I own, i think? Having access to those anywhere would be really nice. I would run my private server to do this kind of thing anyway, but this networking solution would make things a lot easier. However, I wouldn't want anyone to instigate a raid based on what to the casual observer seems like a fat load of illegally acquired copyrighted material. This would be a problem even if I only uploaded what I own.
And then there's the problem of storage cost, 1.5$/10GB/month turns into a considerable number very quickly. So I suppose you intend this kind of thing for the small stuff; images, documents, small-to-medium music collections etc.?
And I do not want to waste all the time to rerip all those CDs if my computers gets stolen (again), so I finally had to settle for rsync and Dreamhost @ $12/mo for 500 GB, but Dreamhost is far from fast, so it's not perfect.
I don't want to impose the... 8 or 10 bucks extra electricity per month a 24/7 comp uses.
(Also, there's the nice side benefit of having a webserver to host my random forays into web design, personal blog, etc.)
http://getdropbox.com/screencast
shameless reddit/digg plug:
http://reddit.com/info/6boh3/comments/
http://digg.com/software/Google_Drive_killer_coming_from_MIT...
Can you share a little info about what you used for capture and what kind of a mic you used for the audio?
Update: Top of digg, top of news.yc... SECOND on reddit... can they complete the trifecta?
Any plans to allow a proxy configuration setting in the future?
IMO it has two major problems at the moment -
* On Windows, if DropBox is not running, it causes Windows Explorer to lag like hell; entering a folder on a local disk takes seconds and the Explorer basically plays dead at this time
* There is no detailed description of the security model - what's encrypted/authenticated where and how exactly. While some (most ?) people don't care about this sort of thing and tend to take devs' word for it, the model needs to be disclosed to allow independent review and evaluation. Otherwise it's just a proprietary crypto, which should be assumed broken until proven otherwise.
What convinced dropbox that they could do better?
I really love the S3 peice... should allow them to keep prices way down and stay profitable.
Dropbox looks like a great alternative though.
Just in case I need to remove it from my Mac, how do I do it?
Is there encryption?
i've been using it to sync my 3gb development VM across my computers; also works great with photoshop files, big documents, etc.
Pluses: Just works!
Great job, you've solved a problem I've been fighting with for a long (long) time!
for text files, i suppose this could potentially implement svn-like text merging. how would that feature feel, from a design perspective? unintuitive? error prone? or excelent?
edit: damn, this is a really cool app. goodbye emails to self.
# How does Dropbox handle editing conflicts?
If two users share access to a file (either through sharing the same account or within a shared folder) and a conflict between their two versions appears, the Dropbox server retains only the first version to fully make it to the server.
The machines still in conflict with the server will get copies of the file with a suffix like "(Drew's local copy 1-25-2008)." Users can then manually fix the conflict and remove the extra copies of the conflicted file.
looks like a great concept.