Dropbox couldn't let the week end without adding another incentive to use its cloud storage service.
It's nothing but a huge win for Web surfers as the cloud storage companies duke it out for your allegiance.
At the beginning of the week, Dropbox added a file sharing feature that allows users to link their files and send them to anyone, whether they're a Dropbox member or not. Microsoft followed up by cranking up the capacity for current users to 25 GB while adding three paid plans. Then Google unleashed its own cloud solution, serving up 5 GB and renaming Google Docs to Google Drive.
After all that, the busy cloud-themed week wasn't over, allowing one more shot at consumers before the bell sounds and everyone goes home to play Farmville. Dropbox has taken that end-of-the-week jab, adding an additional 3 GB in 500 MB increments and expanding its automated photo and video upload feature to work on most devices, even cameras.
"Now with Dropbox you can automatically upload from just about any camera, tablet, SD card or smartphone — pretty much anything that takes photos or videos," the company said in a blog. "With the newest version for Mac or Windows, you can just plug your camera, phone, or SD card into your computer and with a few clicks of the mouse all your photos and videos are in your Dropbox!"
"Automatic uploading from the desktop is designed to work perfectly with the Dropbox Android app," the company added. "Your photos are copied from your camera to your Dropbox and uploaded, in full-quality and at their original size, to your private Camera Uploads folder. As your photos upload, you can access them from anywhere and move and share them as you see fit."
According to Dropbox, the company will give users an extra 500 MB of virtual space for the first automatic upload. As users take and upload more photos and videos, the company will grant 500 MB more until the user receives a total of 3 GB on top of their current base capacity of 2 GB.
"On the web, we’ve made the pictures you’ve uploaded shine on our new Photos page, with nice large thumbnails, grouped by month," Dropbox said on Friday. "You can hover over each to find the date, or click to see them full-size and then download or share them with a link."
To get started, download the new version of Dropbox here.
How many times have you wanted to share a file you don't have on you right that second? Put it in Dropbox and sync.. Right click and get an external link. Email the link to all concerned parties. Everybody gets some and you don't have to keep track of the caps on your dongles.
intelligent people do not shun the cloud because it isn't convenient... which it is as you have shown. Intelligent people shun the "cloud" (i mean regular ol' server) because of security... as in total lack of security or control on anything ever uploaded onto the cloud.
it's a fools tool and a tool for people who believe in a zero privacy future.
Lol, just because you don't like the idea of the cloud doesn't mean that it's not suitable for anyone else, or that you;re less intelligent for using it. personally I've found dropbox very convenient. If you're uploading files that you'd rather be more private, then just encrypt it. The prices do seem a little high though compared to google drive (which has a bigger privacy concern until they amend their t&c)
The cloud should refer to computing as a service, processed in server farms.
By the common usage i have had "the cloud" since the 90's
MS shrunk 25GB storage down to 7GB so that they could then increase it again to 25GB for those who already had it.
@DroKing:
Information is simply information, and there are several great reasons to use these cloud storage services:
1) Many of us have our own personal file servers, but sometimes it is simply easier/faster to put something up on a real server with real bandwidth. For example I put up common drivers and software installs that I use all the time for my test boxes so that I have everything in a single place instead of hunting for websites or CDs. Just install an OS and a network driver, and I can get the rest easily. Obviously a USB drive should be easier, but I more often dont know where it is than do.
2) For others it is easier to share pictures and videos with family via a common internet service. Have you tried getting an elderly woman to log into an FTP server to download video of their great grandson? It cannot be done! It is much easier to set them up on Skydrive, give them permissions to the file, and give them a phone call (they won't use eMail because it got their husband laid off from the postal service) to let them know that there is a new video for them.
3) Don't post stupid/incriminating things online. Period. On your own servier, or anyone else's. Personally I don't care if someone sees a pic of how my flowers turned out this last year, or if you happen to like the wall color I picked out for a room, or if you look at a picture of my family. If someone wanted to do me harm, they can quite simply do me harm, and I am not giving them any more of an invitation to do so by putting something up on the web (securely or not). To think otherwise is shortsighted and dumb. Yes, there would be dumb things to put on the internet... like a picture of my car with it's license plate, or a picture of how awesome an HDTV looks next to an open window on the first floor with a note saying "I purchased this today!" with a time stamp (seriously though... I don't own an HDTV, just a progressive SDTV so move along to one of my neighbors who watch their 65+ inch TVs facing the street so that you can watch whatever show they are watching from your house down the block).
4) Cloud storage is also a great backup as I trust MS to have better backups than my RAID 1 or 5, and it is easier to restore that information than digging out the yearly DVD backups.
5) On top of that I trust MS and other servers to be more secure than what I am capable of doing with my own personal home server. I may have a fair level of intelligence and I have done a bit of homework, but I am also no security expert and am fine with being 'reasonably secure' rather than going nuts and making fort Knox in my basement. Because there are a lot of smarter people than myself. So things I want to see that I do not want other people to see goes on CD/DVD and is not kept on my computer at all.
@Jackbling
What makes these cloud services is more in how you interact with the data rather than the fact that it is a file on a server. With most of these you simply have a folder that is synced with the cloud storage. A few minutes later it is available on all of your approved/shared devices either locally, or via the server. But the fact that you interact with your device instead of uploading or downloading something via FTP (which can be a pain), and have more control over the files is what makes is 'cloud' instead of a simple server share.
But on a serious note, why make people jump through hoops to get a space boost? It seems kind of silly with how many scavenger hunts Dropbox has.
You "share" 25GB of files ?
Hello RIAA, MPAA... :-)
You won't be laughing when your PSU blows up and all your data gone...
Sharing aside, dropbox is an excellent data backup service for important documents.
Here are the differences from what I can see.
1) Dropbox is the most expensive, 2GB free +500/mb per referral vs 7GB Google Docs and 7GB Microsoft SkyDrive. Legacy SkyDrive users get 25GB. Dropboxes paid packages are approx 40% more than Googles/Microsofts. Microsoft's appears to be the cheepest per MB especially if you have a legacy account and get the +25GB.
2) Dropbox has the most cross device support with apps for Windows, Mac OSX, iOS and Android. Google Drive only has native support for Windows and Android and SkyDrive has access for Windows/Windows Phone, Mac OSX and iOS.
3) They all have similar file size limits now in the area of 2GB, SkyDrive in the past was limited to 300MB which did not make it good for syncing family videos but that is no longer the case.
4) Auto-Upload was already supported for photos/video on Android via Google Plus which now integrates into Google Drive. This is a new feature for Dropbox.
At the end of the day, I have been testing each of these from a machine-to-cloud perspective and the auto-sync and storage is pretty strait forward and there is little difference. If you want to pick what would be best for you, base it on your mobile device requirements. If mobile devices is not your deal, and you have a legacy skydrive account this is the way to go as you can get a total of 45GB of storage for as little as $10/year.
If your about getting the most for the $$$ then if you are a legacy SkyDrive user you have the best deal.