As I write this I’m waiting anxiously to see whether I’ll be randomly included in a beta test of a new program called Dropbox, developed by a group of MIT students and soon to be available to the public. Fingers crossed.
At a time when it feels like there’s nothing new under the sun, here is something new, exciting, and incredibly useful. It makes memory sticks and online backup services pretty much irrelevant, while also resolving some of the compatibility issues for people working on Macs and PCs simultaneously.
I encourage everyone to visit www.getdropbox.com to watch the demo, but basically Dropbox is a program that automatically and instantly syncs selected files between multiple computers. You can work on a document at the office, head home, and then pick up exactly where you left off without worrying about versions or accidentally overwriting other important files by mistake. You can sync photo archives, music archives, documents, presentations, spreadsheets and more with anybody in the world, simply by dragging and dropping files onto the right Dropbox folder.
Even better, Dropbox is advanced enough that it doesn’t send the whole file when you make an update, but merely the relevant piece of the file that was changed. That ability allows Dropbox to sync files almost instantly over the web without any lag.
There is also an online component that lets you recover
previous versions of documents or files you may have deleted, and presumably
that will store your changes if, say, one of the computers you’re syncing with
is turned off at the time.
Dropbox also has a special photo folder that attaches a URL to any photo you share, allowing you to instantly link to those photos from any website or blog. It’s a small bonus, but will be a huge asset for bloggers and web developers.
Best of all, it looks incredibly easy to use. You simply drop the files and folders you want to sync into a Dropbox folder, and let the program automatically sync between one or more computers.
If you currently shuffle work between multiple computers, then Dropbox can’t come fast enough. The only drawback I can see is that it might encourage more people to do work at home or more offices to assign homework, when I think we all probably spend too much time in front of the computer. But if working from home is already part of your modus operandi, then Dropbox will make it easier.
The arrogance of Microsoft
Almost as soon as Toshiba threw in the towel in the high-definition DVD wars and conceded the battle to Blu Ray, there were rumours that Microsoft might include a Blu Ray add-on for their Xbox 360 game consoles.
Not so, said a Microsoft exec last week, saying the company was not even in talks with their rivals at Sony to incorporate Blu Ray into the 360 at a future date.
My question to Mircrosoft is “why the hell not?” You wanted the HD DVD format to win the format wars and lost. You don’t want to work with Sony, because their Blu Ray-ready PS3 is competing directly with your Xbox 360, and the last thing you want to do is give game console buyers the impression that Sony can do anything right.
But here’s the thing — people who shell out $400 or more for a console are not necessarily idiots. Everybody knows that Blu Ray won the war, and that the PS3 comes with a built-in Blu Ray player. Not only does that mean that people can watch Blu Ray movies, it also means the PS3 can play Blu Ray games up to 50 GB. That’s more than five times larger than the 9 GB capacity of the double density DVDs accepted by Xbox 360.
While most games don’t use nearly that amount of space, the times are a’changing. Kojima Productions, which is getting ready to launch Heavy Metal Solid: Guns of the Patriots for PS3, recently said they had to pare down game content to fit it all on a single 50 GB disk. Lost Odyssey, a role playing game for the Xbox 360, had to be fit on four disks.
So while I understand what Microsoft wants, it might be better for them to consider what their customers want instead. As a customer, I want to be reassured that the console I bought won’t be obsolete in two years, and that means adding Blu Ray to the picture as soon as possible.
I was a Playstation customer before I switched to Xbox 360, and I’ll have no problem switching back. Pride goes before a fall.
Website of the Week
www.makeuseof.com — If you’re a PC user and haven’t had the reason/opportunity/courage to install and try a Linux operating system yet, I recommend an article on this website called “What’s This Linux Thing and Why Should I Try It?” The world is not completely Microsoft vs. Apple, and this brief article makes a compelling case for the uninitiated.
