Meet some of the best Dropbox apps that add new functionality and extend the service beyond the realms of online storage.
Dropbox has made our digital lives so much easier. You put a file in
your Dropbox folder and it becomes available on mobile phone, your
tablet and on all your other computers. If you have shared a Dropbox
folder with another person, say your mom, any files that you add to the
shared folder instantaneously appear on her computer. So useful!
The Best Web Apps for Dropbox
Dropbox
has 50 million users worldwide and, because of such immense popularity,
an entire ecosystem of apps has been created around Dropbox that add
new functionality and extend the service beyond the realms of online
storage. Here are some of the best apps that you should try with your
Dropbox account.
1. Use Dropbox to Host a Website or a Blog
Your
Dropbox has a public folder and files that you add to this folder can
be accessed by anyone on the web as long as they have a link to that
file. You can thus put all your HTML, JavaScript, CSS and image files
into this folder, map it your domain and your mini website is ready for public consumption.
Alternatively, if you want a more simple solution, check out apps like DropPages.com, Scriptogr.am and Pancake.io
all of which let you publish simple websites using Dropbox for free.
DropPages and Pancake are more suitable for publishing regular web pages
while Scriptogram is geared towards the blog (reverse chronological)
format.
2. Keep Google Docs and Dropbox in Sync
Wouldn’t
it be nice if you could write a document inside Google Docs and access
it offline inside your Dropbox folder. Or vice-versa where you add one
or more files to Dropbox and they magically appear inside your Google
Docs account?
There’s an excellent service called insync
that keeps your Google Docs files in sync with your desktop folders and
with a little trick, you can get it to work with Dropbox as well.
Launch the Insync utility (it’s available on Mac and Windows) and under
Preferences, just change the default Insync directory to one of your
Dropbox folders. The other alternative is cloudHQ though their free plan has a few limitations.
3. Save Email Attachments in Dropbox
With attachments.me, you can quickly save file attachments available in your Gmail account to your Dropbox folder with one click.
There
are two ways of doing that. You can either install the attachments.me
Chrome extension and, as you are reading a message thread in Gmail, send
any of attached files to your Dropbox without leaving Gmail.
Alternatively, you can use the attachments.me website to save any of
your email attachments to Dropbox.
4. Save Web Clippings to your Dropbox
Gimme Bar
is a neat bookmarking service that lets you clip web pages, photos and
everything else that you see on the web. It even grabs screenshots of
whole web pages so the archived pages look exactly like what you see on
your screen.
You can connect your Gimme Bar account with Dropbox
and it will periodically dump all your saved web clippings to your
Dropbox folder. The backups aren’t instant though.
5. Download Online Files to your Dropbox
With URL Droplet, you can download any of the online files to your Dropbox folder even from a remote computer.
Simply
copy and paste the URL of any web file to URL Droplet and the app will
save that file to your Dropbox folder in the background. This is
especially useful when you want to download an online file to Dropbox
but the computer you are working on, say your office computer, is not
linked to your personal Dropbox account.
6. Request Files in your Dropbox Folder
Do you want other people – like your clients – to upload files to your Dropbox but without having to share any of your Dropbox folders with them?
There’s a free service called DropItToMe
that lets you receive files from anyone, anywhere and the files are
added straight to your Dropbox. Alternatively, you can create an online
form using JotForm and any files uploaded through this form are again sent to your Dropbox.
7. Transfer Dropbox Files to any Cloud Service
If you are looking for any easy way to transfer files
across different cloud services like Dropbox, Google Docs, Picasa, etc.
or if you need to move files between Dropbox and an FTP server, Otixo is a near perfect solution.
Otixo
connects to all popular cloud services, including Dropbox, and lets you
access all your online files at one place. Then, like Windows Explorer
or Apple’s Finder, you can copy or move files from service to another
using easy drag and drop.
8. Upload Files to Dropbox via Email
Dropbox, unlike SugarSync, doesn’t offer an option to upload files by email but there’s a free app called Send To Dropbox that can help you do that.
Once
you connect your Dropbox account with the app, it will provide a unique
email address and any files sent to that address will get saved to your
Dropbox account. This is useful for uploading files to Dropbox from a
mobile phone or when you want to quickly save Gmail attachments to your
Dropbox. There’s a DIY alternative as well.
Related tip: Print Files from Mobile Phone using Dropbox
9. Dropbox for Distraction-Free Writing
Write Box
is a minimal writing app for your browser that auto-saves your text
document into any of your Dropbox folders. You can also open any of the
existing Dropbox text files into Write Box and edit them in the browser.
The app has no toolbars and you can switch to your browser’s full-screen mode (press F11) for more comfortable and distraction-free writing. Press Ctrl+S anytime to quickly sync your edits with Dropbox.
10. Add More Power to your Dropbox
With tools like IFTTT and Dropbox Automator,
you can easily glue your Dropbox with various other services like
Facebook, EverNote, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and do some really clever
stuff that would otherwise require programming.
For instance, you
can setup a task that will auto-upload your pictures to Facebook as soon
as you add them to your Dropbox folder. Or a task that will
auto-deliver your ebooks and other documents to your Kindle when you put
them in a designated Dropbox folder. The possibilities are endless and
if you spend some time understanding IFTTT, it will probably be the only
add-on that you’ll need for your Dropbox.
How to Easily Transfer Files Across Cloud Services
Your files are stored on cloud storage services like Google Docs,
Dropbox or Amazon S3. How do transfer online files across services
without downloading them locally?
Cloud storage services like Google Docs, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.
have made it easy for you keep your important files and documents
online. These services are mostly free and you can have multiple
accounts on them as long as you use separate email addresses.
This
leads to another problem though. When you have files spread across
multiple cloud services, managing them can be challenge. You may have
stored one group of files on Dropbox, the other on Google Docs while
some of the older files could be hosted on your old Google Docs account
that you abandoned long ago.
Would it be nice if there were an
easy to way to manage / search all your online files from one place
without having to download them to the computer first?
Meet Otixo
– an impressive web-app that lets you access files stored across
different cloud service from a central location. To get started, you
associate your Dropbox, Google Docs, Picasa, Amazon S3 and other online
accounts with Otixo and then you can easily move or copy files between
any of your accounts via simple drag-n-drop.
Otixo supports FTP so
it can also be used to directly transfer files from any FTP server to
Google Docs or Amazon S3 without having to write complicated scripts.
You can even add multiple accounts from the same cloud service – like
your old and new Google Docs accounts – and transfer file across these
accounts easily.
Otixo offers unified search to help you quickly
find all your files that are otherwise spread across multiple cloud
services. You can delete files, create new folders, or upload files from
the desktop to any of the associated cloud services. Everything just
works. [via Netted]
Use Dropbox to Test your Website Locally
Learn how you can code your HTML /CSS /JavaScript files on a local computer and still test the site online using Dropbox.
Whether
you are designing a one-page basic HTML site or are developing a
slightly more complicated site that uses JavaScript and jQuery
functions, you need to thoroughly test the design and functionality
before putting the HTML/CSS/JS files on a live web server. How do you test the files associated with your project?
If
you are a professional web designer /developer, you’ve probably set up a
local server to test the sites on the computer itself but the workflow
is a little more tedious for the rest of us.
You write the code in
a local folder, then upload the associated files to a FTP server and
finally, you load these online files in a browser for testing – this
code-upload-test cycle may have to repeated multiple time until your
site works as expected.
Test your Local Website with Dropbox
There is however an easier way as well that should save you some time.
If
you can move your local development folder to the Dropbox public
folder, you don’t have to worry about uploading files to an FTP server
as Dropbox will do that for you.
As soon as you change code in the
local file, the changes get uploaded online to Dropbox servers almost
immediately and you can use the “public link” in Dropbox to open and
test that file in your web browser. Dropbox can understand relative URLs
and hence your associated JS and CSS files will also get picked up
without you having to specify the full path.
In other words, you
code websites on a local computer but test them online just like the
real environment. This technique may however not be used for testing PHP
and other non-HTML sites.
Do a Security Audit of your Dropbox Account
In a serious security breach, Dropbox accounts were open for all as
anyone could log in to other accounts without requiring a passwords.
This is time to do a quick security audit of your Dropbox account.
Something
really scary happened at Dropbox yesterday that should worry anyone who
have trusted their important files with the service.
The Dropbox
system was left wide open for about 5-6 hours yesterday and anyone could
sign-in to your Dropbox account if all they knew were your email
address. They could just type any random characters in the password box
and the system would let them in. Scary!
Dropbox has since then fixed the bug but what concerns me is this casual statement that they posted in response to such a serious security breach:
A very small number of users
(much less than 1 percent) logged in during that period, some of whom
could have logged into an account without the correct password.
At
an event the previous month, founder Drew Houston was quoted as saying
that the Dropbox service has 25 million users. That means about 250,000
users logged into Dropbox during that window and it’s definitely not a
small number.
Is Your Dropbox Account Affected?
Unlike Gmail,
Dropbox doesn’t offer you a list of IP address that have recently
accessed your account else that would have really helped understand if
anyone else got into your account during that period.
There are however a few things that you may do at your end. #1. The Dropbox website has a page – dropbox.com/events
– that details all the recent activity around your Dropbox account. It
won’t show details for sign-ins or which of your files were downloaded
but you’ll at least get know if someone has removed or added any files
to your Dropbox storage without your knowledge. The Events log can also
help you determine if any of your Dropbox file folders were shared with
another user. #2. Another page – dropbox.com/account
– maintains a list all computers and mobile devices that are currently
linked to your Dropbox account. If you see an unknown computer or mobile
phone listed on this page, or if a device you own is missing, it is
something to worry about. #3. Also take a look at your My Apps pages to confirm that only known apps have access to your Dropbox account. Update: I contacted Dropbox support at support@dropbox.com
asking them for a list of IP addresses that accessed my account in the
past day or so. They didn’t provide that list but were kind enough to
review my account:
I have the reviewed the logs for
your account and have not been able to detect any relevant account
activity for your account during the time period, so I believe that your
account was unaffected by the bug.
At this point, we have emailed
accounts that logged in during the time period with additional
activity-related details for review. We’re sorry for this situation and
regardless of how many people were ultimately affected, any exposure at
all is unacceptable to us.
Dropbox support also said
that they have contacted all accounts that reported log-in activity
during the "unlocked" period – just hope that no such email lands in
your Inbox because if someone else has read or downloaded your documents
stored on Dropbox, you can’t really do anything about it now.
How to Permanently Delete Files from Dropbox
This video tutorial explains how you may permanently delete files and
folders from Dropbox servers so that they cannot be restored or accessed
later.
One of the big advantages of using Dropbox is that it lets you easily
recover files that you may have accidentally deleted from your
computer’s hard drive. Should you wish to restore a file that is no
longer available on your computer, just go to the “Deleted files”
section of the Dropbox website and select the file that you want to
recover.
When you delete a file from a local folder, Dropbox will
not remove that file from their own servers, instead they will simply
move it to another folder from where you may restore it later. This is
much like the Recycle bin of Windows – deleting a file will only move it
to the Recycle bin and you have to manually empty* the bin to
permanently remove that file.
Coming back to Dropbox, if you would like to get rid of a file
permanently so that it also gets deleted from Dropbox servers, first
delete that file from your computer.
Next, log in to Dropbox
website, choose the “Show Deleted Files” option, select the file that
you just deleted and then click More –> Permanently Delete to trash
it forever. The screencast above explains the steps in greater details.
[*] In fact, it is a bit complex at the OS level. You should securely delete your Windows files else they can be recovered even after you have emptied the Recycle bin.
How to Let Others Upload Files to your Dropbox
You have a Dropbox account and you want to provide other people – like
your clients or your friends – the ability to directly upload files to
your Dropbox folder. How do you do that?
One of the possible solutions to this problem is email based uploads.
You create a separate email address and any file attachments that are
sent to this email address would automatically download to your local
Dropbox folder. There’s no need for anyone to even install Dropbox and
all they need is an email client to upload files to your Dropbox
account. Shared Folders
is another option. You create a common Dropbox folder and share it with
friends using their email addresses. The folder will then appear inside
their Dropbox installations and they can add files to it as if it were
their own. The downside is that you are giving both read and write
access to your shared folder.
Let Anyone Upload Files to your Dropbox
JotForm,
a popular web app that you may have used in the past to create online
forms, now offers an almost perfect interesting solution to the above
problem. Test it here.
To get started, create a simple Dropbox form
using the WYSIWYG editor, connect it to your Dropbox account (using
OAuth) and what you get is an online form that you may embed on your
website or directly link from email messages and tweets.
Since
it’s a public form, anyone can see it and files that they upload using
the form will land straight into your Dropbox folder. You may keep the
upload form simple, as in the example above, or may chose to have
additional user fields like name, email address, etc.
The Dropbox
integration in JotForm is completely free and you don’t even to create
an account with JotForm in order to create a web based Dropbox uploader.
To prevent abuse, you may turn on the “Unique Submission” setting for
your form and the service will reject multiple submission through a
combination of cookies and visitor’s IP address.
You may upload
one or more files of any size and any type though the maximum size of
the batch should not exceed 50 MB. Here are some more Dropbox tips & tricks.
How to Automatically Backup your Files with Dropbox
Dropbox is a free service for online backup and file synchronization.
This article explains how you can automatically back up your files and
folders online with Dropbox.
Dropbox offers 2 GB of free online storage space that you can easily bump up to 3 GB or more with the help of your social networks and by inviting friends who aren’t on Dropbox yet.This kind of space is not sufficient to backup the entire hard drive1
but enough to save your essential files and folder that you can’t
afford to lose. These may include your documents, photographs, source
code and other important files.
Using Dropbox for File Backup
Backup
with Dropbox is effortless but one big limitation is that your files
and folders need to be residing inside the main Dropbox folder before
they can be sent to the cloud.
To deal with this problem, we’ll make use of Microsoft SyncToy,
a free application that keeps files and folders in sync with each
other. You identify all the essential folders that you want to backup
and then sync them all with the local Dropbox folder using SyncToy.
Next
we’ll use the built-in Task Scheduler in Windows to run SyncToy once
per day (or sooner) so that the content of our local Dropbox folder and
the source folders are always in sync with each other.
Backup with Dropbox – Step by Step
Now that you have the basic idea, lets see how this can be implemented in in few easy steps (you can also skip straight to the video tutorial). Step 1.
Launch SyncToy and create a new folder pair. For instance, to backup
documents, set the “Left Folder” as your My Documents folder and the
“Right Folder” as a sub-folder of Dropbox. Set the action as
‘synchronize.’ Step 2. Repeat Step 1 for every
folder that you want to back up using Dropbox. If you want to backup all
your pictures, just point the left folder to the main ‘My Pictures’
folder or choose individual folders if you don’t have space to backup
the entire archive. Step 3. Enter taskschd.msc in
the Windows Run box to start the Task Scheduler or go to Start –>
All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Scheduled Tasks. Step 4.
While you are inside Task Scheduler, create a basic task and give it a
name like ‘Dropbox Backup.’ Set the trigger as Daily (run backup once
per day) and choose a time when you are less likely to use your
workstation. Step 5. Under Action, choose “Start a
Program” and set the program name as SyncToyCmd.exe. For arguments,
just say “-R” without quotes and save the task.
That’s it! SyncToy
will launch everyday at the set time and will put all the new and
updated files into Dropbox. Once there, Dropbox will automatically copy
your files to the cloud which you can then access from anywhere from almost any device.
Upload Files to your Dropbox Folder by Email
Nearly every web application that offers some sort of cloud-based
storage space – look at YouTube, Flickr, Facebook or Scribd – support file uploads via email. You get a unique email address and any files that you send to this address are uploaded to your online account.
This
is handy for a couple of reasons. You can upload files from your mobile
phone by simply attaching them to an email address without requiring
any specific app. If you are working with a group, everyone can upload
content to a common space without knowing the login credentials. You can
even send remote print commands via email.
Send Files to Dropbox using Email
Surprisingly
Dropbox, the most popular file storage and sync service on the web,
doesn’t offer native support for email based file uploads yet.
Fortunately, they do offer an API and that has lead to the creation of a
host of third-party services – like SendToDropbox.com and
AirDropper.com – that kind of fill this important gap.
The problem
is that many of us may feel comfortable trusting our important files
with relatively unknown services and second, they don’t have a solid
business model and maybe not be there for long. Previously mentioned
Habilis has already gone out of business.
So here’s an alternate
DIY method that kind of offers best of both worlds. You can transfer
files to your Dropbox folders by sending them to an email address, there
are no limits and you aren’t dependent on another service.
The trick is simple. Step 1. Setup a Gmail
account that will become your Dropbox email address. Gmail lets you
attach files up to 25 MB in size but if you need to upload even bigger files, use Hotmail.
Step 2. Get the Mail Attachment utility and configure it such that it checks your Gmail account for new email messages after every ‘n’ minutes.
This
tiny utility connects to your email account via POP3 or IMAP and
fetches any new file attachments from the inbox. It only downloads the
attachments as separate files and not the actual email message – that’s
exactly what we want.
Step 3. Set the “Save
Location” inside the Mail Attachment utility to any sub-folder of your
main Dropbox folder (you may call it “email-uploads”). Hit the close
button to minimize the app to the system tray and it will continue
checking for new files in the background.
That’s it. Compose an
email message, attach some files and send them to your Dropbox address.
Within a minute, those files would become available in your Dropbox
folder.
If you want other people to upload files to your Dropbox
folder, simply share your Dropbox email address with them and reset it
once the task is done!
Send Files to Dropbox with a Right Click
Learn how you can easily copy or move files to the main Dropbox folder with a simple right-click.
The only disappointment with Dropbox 1.0
is that it still cannot sync files and folders that are outside the
main Dropbox folder. Thus, if you have a file on your desktop that you
want to distribute through Dropbox, you got to place it in the Dropbox
folder first. Dropbox Shell
is a handy little utility for Windows that makes it a bit easy for you
to transfer files from the desktop (or Windows Explorer) to the main
Dropbox folder.
The tool adds a new menu item to your Windows’
contextual menu letting you send the currently selected file(s) straight
to any folder inside Dropbox with a simple right-click. It supports
both copy and move commands for files as well as folders. Send files without installing Dropbox Shell
You
may also replicate the functionality of Dropbox Shell Tools using the
Windows “Send To” folder without installing anything extra. Just follow
these easy steps: Step 1. Launch Windows Explorer
(Windows key + E) and paste the following string in the address bar to
open the current user’s Send To folder.
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
Step 2. Right-click inside the SendTo folder, choose New –> Shortcut and under location, browse to your “My Dropbox” folder (screenshot). This should add a new shortcut in the SendTo folder pointing to your local Dropbox folder.
Now
when you want to copy a file from the desktop to Dropbox, simply
right-click that file and choose Send To –> My Dropbox. Hold the
Shift key if you want to completely move that file to Dropbox instead of
creating a copy.
The only limitation with this approach is that
it will move, or copy, your files and folder to a single folder in
Dropbox while the Shell Tools give you an option to send files to the
main folder, the public folder or any of the sub-folders.
Use Dropbox with your own Web Domain
Your Dropbox account comes with a special “Public” folder that you
may use to host documents, images, and other stuff that you want to
share with everyone. To give you an example, I distribute the Always on Top utility only through my Dropbox Public folder – the file is always available for download and puts little strain on the server. Personalized Dropbox URLs
All public URLs on Dropbox follow a very standard pattern as illustrated above. The first part of the URL, which reads like dl.dropbox.com/u/ID/, is common for a Dropbox user and you can easily map it to your own domain or sub-domain.
This
will make your Dropbox URLs appear less complex, you get to indirectly
promote your brand since its now mentioned in the download links and,
best of all, you can track individual file downloads. How to Map Dropbox to your Web Domain Option A. If you have a domain and a host running Apache, use the following approach: Step 1.
Go to your cPanel and setup a new sub-domain (for example,
files.labnol.org). This should create a new directory with the same name
on your server. Step 2. Log in to your server
and create a new file called .htaccess in the above directory. Do
remember to replace XYZ with your Dropbox ID.
1:<IfModulemod_rewrite.c> 2: RewriteEngine on
3: RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/XYZ/$1 [L,QSA]
4:IfModule>
That’s
it. Now before sharing a Dropbox URL, replace dl.dropbox.com/u/ID with
your web address (like files.labnol.org) and the recipients will still
be able to download your files as before. Option B. If you don’t have access to a web host, you may use Google App Engine to have custom Dropbox URLs.
Step 1: Download the source code for your new project from code.google.com and make the following changes in the code.
Replace XYZ in mirror.py with your Dropbox user number.
Replace APPNAME in appl.yaml with some unique name.
Step 2: Deploy the above project through the Google App Engine launcher. Refer to my previous Web Proxy tutorial for details on how to get started with GAE. Step 3:
This is optional. If you already have a web domain configured with
Google Apps, you may serve your Dropbox redirection app on that domain
else your Dropbox URLs will have structure like appname.appspot.com but
without your Dropbox ID.
[*] You may use CNAME addresses to map
Dropbox URLs to any sub-domain but in that case, the mapping will only
happen at the root level and thus your custom URLs will still look
complex – you don’t want your URLs to look like
files.labnol.org/u/123/abc.txt. [**] You are only re-mapping URLs and thus the previously-stated bandwidth limits in Dropbox will still apply to all your file downloads.
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