Number 313 - June 2009

Dropbox
By Ed Richard (edslinusbox@cox.net, Cajun Clickers CC (www.clickers.org) (http://cccclinuxsig.pbwiki.com)
So just exactly what is Dropbox, you might ask? Have you ever needed to sync files between two or more machines? Have you wanted to also have an off-site copy of those files? Have you needed to sunc files between Windows, Linux and Macintosh machines?    Have you wanted to have a public photo album to share pictures with your friends and family? Have you needed a shared on-line repository for collaborating with co-workers? Are you tired of carrying around a pocket full of thumb drives? Dropbox is all of these and even more. It is a cross platform so it runs on Linux, Windows and Mac computers.    After installing the Dropbox application on one machine, you create an account and link that machine to the account. Then any file that is placed in the My Dropbox folder (which in Windows lives inside the My Documents folder, and in Linux lives in your user folder, the Linux equivalent of My Documents) gets automatically synced with your Dropbox folder on all other linked machines.    If you only have Dropbox installed on one machine, it becomes an off-site backup service. Dropbox uses Amazon's S3 service behind the scenes to house your data. So files placed in your Dropbox folder are automatically uploaded to the Dropbox servers. Should you delete them on	your local machine or suffer data loss, they can easily be retrieved from the Dropbox servers by installing Dropbox on a replacement machine, or directly from the Dropbox website.    Dropbox also supports shared folders that allow anyone you invite to the folder to have access to the files in that folder. This is a great way to collaborate and share files with coworkers. There's also a folder specifically configured to hold photos. Any images placed there are automatically turned into a photo album with a publicaly accessible URL you can give out. Go here to see a photo album of pictures in my pictures folder: http://tinyurl.com/cafvvh    There is also a Public folder that is accessible to anyone and a web interface that allows you to access files on machines that don't have Dropbox installed.    You can also access previous versions of files from the web interface. So if you foul up that file and need to go back to last week's version, you can . To learn more about Dropbox got to: www.getdropbox.com/screencast#screencast and watch the video.    This article ahs been obtained from APCUG with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups; all others require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above.)
Number 313 - June 2009