DROPBOX

The Best Apps for your Dropbox

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: <IfModule mod_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.