Dropbox – Dan’s freebie of the year

We've got a guest blog post today from Dan Atkinson….

Once in a while something comes along that makes so much sense and you wonder why it's taken so long.  To add to my list of personal favourites (suitcases on wheels, those little folding  bag clips from Lakeland) I'm now adding Dropbox.

Dropbox is an incredibly simple idea executed beautifully.  It's a free Web based service that creates a virtual 'drive' on your computers in which you can store your documents.  And I'm loving it why?

– Because it will also replicate the same files on all the other machines I've installed  the Dropbox software on (and that goes for Mac, PC and Linux). No more saving stuff on USB sticks and running the risk of losing them. It's all there on my home and office machines.  It's also securely stored online too so anywhere I've got internet access I can access my work safely and securely.
– Because I can also access files I hold in Dropbox on my iPhone – no  matter when a Client calls I can always retrieve  information for them.
– Because  you can get up to 8gb of workable space free of charge, which is more than enough for most people if all your saving is Word and Excel documents (although you can upload and share photos etc too).
– And finally, because I can share designated  files with other users.  My attitude as a researcher is that I'm a co-consultant with whomsoever is fronting the work; I'm loving that that I can give my customers 24-7 access to work in progress to review and collaborate on.

You get the first 2GB of storage for free.  For every person you sign up you get an extra 250mb up to the maximum free allocation of 8GB. There's also premium services that can give you up to 100GB of space.   I'm going to shamelessly plug my free space allocation and ask you to sign up here. 

Dan Atkinson is a Director of research firm Accite Ltd.  He is also a bit of a technology junkie (first going online in 1995 and being one of the first 250,000 people worldwide to join LinkedIn). 

If you want to write a guest post for me just drop me a note.