Being able to link to a folder is a godsend. I hated having to share a folder (editable) when I needed to send someone many files.
However, does this now deprecate the Public folder? I thought that was one of Dropbox's best features: knowing only things in the Public folder were publicly-accessible (with a link)—and more importantly, that files located anywhere else were completely private and NOT web-accessible at all—was easy to grok and explain.
I worry that as Dropbox moves toward its stated goal of becoming the "file system for the Internet" that they will give up the focus on syncing our private files in exchange for the allure of allowing every site and app to read and write from one's Dropbox. That's a worrisome future, indeed.
I agree. I actually read your comment an hour ago, thought nothing of it, then just now tried to send a file to someone, and realized immediately how important this is.
What would be really great is to have an easy view for all files that are not private (or all files that are link-shared, etc., since there are three tiers of privacy in the Dropbox world). On the web interface, this would be easy, but I do most of my work on the command-line, so it seems the easiest way for them (or anyone) to implement this would be through links.
However, I know that Dropbox has had (still has?) issues with treating symlinks properly, so I'm very hesitant to write a script to handle this myself.
As it stands, though, I'm very concerned about this. I've used Dropbox for years, and I've accumulated so many files and folders there - I could do some spring cleaning, but most of it is actually stuff that I want to be able to access remotely. Right now, I know that everything is private, except for the shared folders, which I always name "shared_" by convention. Pretty soon, that won't be the case, and not having a clear system for this makes me really* uneasy, because I know that human error is the number one cause of security/privacy breaches.
ivankirigin 19 minutes ago | link [dead] You can view all the links you've made here: http://dropbox.com/links Also, when something is linked, there is a link icon on the right side of the file browser on http://dropbox.com/home
Right now that's empty for me, though maybe it doesn't list files in Public/ (though why that would be the case, I'm not sure....)
Still, if that works, that's good and takes care of #1, but I'd still like to see something like #2. The sad part is that it wouldn't be that hard for a 3rd party to implement (assuming that they support the /links endpoint in the API), but I'd be too afraid to do it myself, given Dropbox's history with broken symbolic links.
Good idea poorly executed. Serving a html page but having a media file extension at the end is a bad idea.
For example https://www.dropbox.com/s/yq9fyyh794qvghv/IMG_0146.JPG. You can't embed it in an img-tag. Other software which tries to embed or handle it as an image fails. Even worse: non-tech people you're trying to help here have no idea why: "But it's a .jpg!".
Dropbox just put a layer between me and the data and there's no easy way around it.
The extension thing is a valid critique; but the "layer" as you call it is just a main part of their business; remember, they are in the file sharing business and _not_ in the file hosting/CDN business.
Sharing anything with a link has always been LogMeIn's thing, and their Dropbox clone (called Cubby and released into beta last week) also has it. But you know what else LogMeIn's stuff has that Dropbox doesn't? Client-side encryption. I wish Dropbox reacted to that.
This feature was there before, you could enable it for your account by visiting https://dropbox.com/enable_shmodel. This gave you the context menu in the desktop software as well as the buttons in the webview. Also, you could create links to anything you wanted already in the Android app.
Dropbox has pretty harsh bandwidth limits for files that are hosted publicly, mainly to avoid becoming a cheap & lazy webserver for everyone to use. They additionally have the difficulty that the photo could change at any moment -- so photo URLs from their CDN have all this complicated versioning:
Interesting that people are doing this, but most people use Facebook for storage/sharing second, for social/commenting first. It's not about the photos, it's about the comments attached to the photos. And about the status updates and wall posts and all the other communicative stuff.
Email doesn't handle that, because email doesn't let interested observers chip in. One-to-one has its drawbacks.
that's true, I guess it would only take Dropbox to add commenting on the sharing pages they now create. But it's mostly about the perms for me (which these shared pages don't seem to offer), I know who I share a DB folder with. And in my particular case, the comments happen over the phone, or when my family comes over, on skype and actually some to/fro email (although it's annoying when it happens there).
A comments page but also a newsfeed to track the comments happening.
It's a bit catchword-y, but I like the phrase "ambient social" to describe the appeal of Facebook in one key sense: it's not about directed conversations, it's about creating opportunities for conversations which other people might take you up on. I post a status not because I want to talk about myself, but because I'm sending out a feeler for if anybody else wants to begin a conversation. (Which is why Twitter doesn't appeal to me the same way: it's nowhere near as easy to track conversations.)
Yes, exactly. I was noting the amusing fact that Dropbox uses S3, but using S3 alone already offered exactly the functionality they're launching today for less money. Dropbox is adding is a brand name and an easier-to-use GUI.
I have symlink in my dropbox folder to a few other directories on my harddrive (like pointers to My Documents, etc.) This is super useful, because I can view pretty much any small file on my computer via Dropbox.
However, this linking doesn't work well in OS X via Finder. Even though any file in My Documents is in my Dropbox, the Dropbox client doesn't detect this, and I don't have the option in the right-click menu to view the link for these files.
I think the consensus is this isn't really a new feature (around since at least 06/2010), just extended to include files in any folder, not just the 'public' folder.
its more than that since its building nice galleries out of your content (like the previous photo galleries). But they had it in beta for quite a while!
Minus has been doing this for awhile. It's incredibly handy to be able to share something with someone instantly and without a need to create an account. http://minus.com/
When I saw the title on my feed I tought the article would be about the python simple http server.
One of the most useful commands that I've ever learned:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
However, does this now deprecate the Public folder? I thought that was one of Dropbox's best features: knowing only things in the Public folder were publicly-accessible (with a link)—and more importantly, that files located anywhere else were completely private and NOT web-accessible at all—was easy to grok and explain.
I worry that as Dropbox moves toward its stated goal of becoming the "file system for the Internet" that they will give up the focus on syncing our private files in exchange for the allure of allowing every site and app to read and write from one's Dropbox. That's a worrisome future, indeed.