Toolbox 02: Dropbox

Dropbox is second only to Quicksilver for deep integration into my workflow — so deep in fact that, like Quicksilver, I use it so much that I almost forget it's a separate application and not a part of the OS.

Quite simply, Dropbox is a fantastic app and if you own a computer, there is really no reason why you shouldn't be using it. Here's why:

1. It's a folder that syncs. That's it. You drop something in there and, in short order, it's everywhere you've installed Dropbox. And you can install it pretty much everywhere: Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. iPhone, Android, Blackberry and, usefully, it can also be accessed by any modern browser and Internet Explorer.

Having a piece of your file system that quietly syncs itself across the cloud is a powerful productivity tool: a seamless combination of ubiquitous access and backups.

One example: Notesy, a fantastic note-taking app for the iPhone that I use multiple times daily for text snippets, outlining, drafting posts like this, random ideas — text files that Notesy stores in Dropbox. For note-taking on my main computer I use Notational Velocity which is an equally fantastic notes app that reads and writes it's notes to the same Dropbox directory as Notesy does. What this means is that a note begun on my iPhone is available (almost) instantly on my Mac and vice versa. Importantly, this all happens automatically and seamlessly behind the scenes.

2. File sharing. Drop box also let's you share too-larger-to-email files. Simply copy a link and share it. The recipient is directed to a web page with a download link. Boom.

3. Folder sharing. Dropbox let's you share a folder. What this means, for example, is that an engineer I'm working with can add a file to a folder on his PC and it will make its way to my Mac. Files added on my end are available to the engineer. As you can imagine this is very useful.

Cheesy intro:

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