Tag: File Managers

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At the bottom of the page is a podcast I did on DropBox you can listen to or here is the written version.

I cant think of another innovation that I love more than DropBox, especially as a graphic artist, it solves the problem of teaching clients how to use FTP!!!

So you may ask why… that is a question easier asked than answered.

When I started my career in tech it was in Cisco training, then as a computer technician and now as a graphic designer. One of the many challenges faced as a network designer and a computer technician was a good way to share mid to large files outside your home network. Setting up and maintaining a VPN is easy enough if you are a technician, but can be challenging for the average user and near impossible for most of the people I worked with as a technician.

So when I was introduced to DropBox about a year ago, I immediately jumped on the band wagon. The basics of BropBox are this: a cloud based networked storage folder. Dont try to think too hard on that… it may confuse you. I will try to draw a mental picture here for you. I have a folder on my computer that is linked to a folder stored in the cloud. Any time I place anything in this folder here it is synced to the cloud, and here is the really beautiful pare, it is also synced to any other computer that I have DropBox on and am logged into with my username and password. I will get into why this is so beautiful in a minute. The other cool thing is I can share any of the folders I have in my main DropBox folder with anyone else, whether they have the DropBox application or not.

Here is why this is so cool, I am currently working on two books, one sci-fi the other about Real Estate Marketing and Design. I use Scrivener as my word processing tool for these projects, which I have installed on three of my computers – each also have DropBox on them as well. I have my Scrivener files saved in my DropBox folder so I can get to them from any of my computers and work on my books whenever inspiration strikes. So you can see how this could be really great. You could store your 1Password files there, Word Documents, and anything else  you may want to access from another computer as a native file, it is similar to carrying around a thumb drive with you, only easier.

I am also working on a design project with a friend, he is coding and I am doing graphics and we have a shared folder between us with all of our files in them so we have instant access to anything we need.

There is also an iPhone app so I can view many of these files on the go and can even open some of them, like PDFs and Text files so I can read these files later with out actually having them stored on my phone.

Over all I give this application FIVE STARS out of Five! I recommend it to anyone with more than one computer or anyone who collaborates on any kind of projects.

This is from my Daily Tips Series on Posterous. Check it out for more useful tools, or click below to listen to this as a podcast.