Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on November 29, 2011
Dropbox Cloud Storage Goes 1.0, Gains Selective Sync
Our favorite online-storage service Dropbox got a major update today, finally bringing it out of beta and into version 1.0.
Most notably, the update introduces a big performance boost and a feature we’ve desired for a long time: selective syncing.
Now instead of syncing your entire Dropbox folder to every computer you use, you can choose to sync only specific folders to certain computers to save space (for instance, if you have a netbook that you don’t watch movies on.) This could save you a lot of time and space.
Dropbox has posted a full explainer on service enhancements and features.
Image courtesy of Dropbox
Brian is a Wired.com technology reporter focusing on Apple and Microsoft. He’s also writing a book about the always-connected mobile future called Always On (publishing April 2011 by Da Capo).
Follow @bxchen and @gadgetlab on Twitter.
jQuery(‘#inf_widget’).load(‘http://www.wired.com/ajax/widgets/related/content/blogPost/gadgetlab_55522′);
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on December 17, 2010
Cloud Printing: Print Remotely With Smartphone, Dropbox
Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal has a clever Dropbox-based solution for printing documents from a smartphone or tablet, whether your printer’s down the hall or thousands of miles away.
The idea is so simple, you’ll be amazed you haven’t thought to try it yourself. Dropbox is a popular utility that allows users to sync and share files on different computers. Most smartphones have built-in Dropbox applications, and many mobile applications are now integrating Dropbox for remote syncing and storage. You can also add files to your Dropbox account via email or the web.
In this solution, use any of those means to get the file you want printed into a shared Dropbox folder — call it “PrintQueue” — that you’ve set up for this purpose. Your print-capable computer uses a script to monitor “PrintQueue”, automatically print its documents and then move them to a different folder. (Agarwal calls this second folder “logs”; I’d call it “Completed Jobs”). If you’re a clever hacker, you could even add scripts to send a remote notification that the print job has been completed.
For Windows, Agarwal has a downloadable VBS script that will set this up for you; as he notes, there are different scripting solutions for Mac OS X or Linux too.
Once you’ve got this rigged, the immediate use case is to send a document wirelessly from a smartphone or tablet to a local printer. And it is kind of magical to stand there and watch the whole process unfold, as in the video above.
But think beyond that. Suddenly, your printer is capable of networking with any computer, anywhere — with any phone, anywhere — that you approve and authorize. This is potentially so much better than hooking up a computer to a wireless router or navigating the virtual bureaucracy of an office printer network. It’s way better than a fax machine.
This could be one future of social networking and file sharing: instead of big, ad-cluttered feeds that push photos, status updates and Farmville notifications or anonymous networks that chop files into bits and reassemble them, imagine friends and acquaintances broadcasting to each other, wheels within wheels, each with different levels and fields of access. Designating someone a “friend” might not be worth very much in this cockeyed world, but automatic remote access to someone’s printer still means something.
Print Files from any Mobile Phone using Dropbox [Digital Inspiration] via Gizmodo
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 1, 2010
Go Wireless: Dropbox Opens App Showcase
Syncing data between a smartphone and a cable is a lousy chore (I’m looking at you, iTunes), but fortunately you can juggle a lot of your files in the “cloud” (i.e. wirelessly over an internet connection) with Dropbox-powered apps. As of today, these apps are showcased in a directory, which should really come in handy for smartphone users.
It can be a little tricky to explain, so take how I use Dropbox as an example: I read digital documents often. While browsing the web on my Mac, I’ll see a PDF I want to read later. I drag and drop the PDF into my Dropbox, and then on my iPad or iPhone I launch the Dropbox app. When I select the PDF, Dropbox gives me the option of loading the document with other third-party apps that are designed for PDF-reading such as iBooks or GoodReader. Choose an app and the file loads there instead, leaving the Dropbox app.
So basically, there are a bunch of third-party apps designed to handle different types of media that are using the Dropbox API to spare you the trouble of wired syncing or e-mailing yourself files. And Dropbox just today launched a showcase displaying which apps will cater to your wireless lifestyle.
Dropbox is available on several mobile platforms: BlackBerry, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 22, 2010
Elements for iPad, a Dropbox-Syncing Text Editor
Elements is a new iPad text editing app that syncs with your Dropbox. Another one? Yes, but this one is at once simple, functional and a lot of fun to use. It is also a universal app, so you can buy it once and use it across all your iOS devices. The core of Elements is a super-simple plain text editor which saves and reads files directly to and from Dropbox, a (free) online sync and storage service. This means that any new documents, and any changes you might make, are immediately available on any other device connected to the Dropbox account, or on the web. Elements saves changes every 30-seconds and, if you’re offline, will sync next time you connect. If you drop a TXT file into the Elements folder of your Dropbox, it will show up in the iPad app.
You can choose a color scheme, change fonts and sizing, but it’s the details that really make this stand out as a great portable writers’ tool. First, it supports Textexpander, an app which expands typed snippets into longer texts. For example, if I type “gl” it immediately changes to “Gadget Lab”, according to my settings. It is essential for writers. Elements also shows you word, character and line counts in a popover, and will email your TXT files as attachments.
The other standout feature is the scratchpad, a popover panel which lets you type a quick note or paste a paragraph to use later. It should be standard in any app, mobile or desktop, which uses text.
What it doesn’t do is let you do fancy formatting, or search within your files. It won’t even let you search those files by title. But that’s not early the point. Elements is, as it’s name may suggest, a bare-bones text-editing machine.
One hidden feature is file versioning, which comes courtesy of the Dropbox storage. Here’s an example. Say you are writing a review of a new iPad app, and you are writing it in that same app. Say that the Internet connections are flaky and somehow you lose all your work but the first two lines. Then say you panic a little (you may have already guessed that this is a true story that happened a few minutes ago). Stay calm, wait for the Dropbox website to load up and go chase down the version with the most text in it. Make sure Elements isn’t in use, click restore and you’re back where you were. Thank God.
I like Elements a lot so far. It lacks the tabbed document view of Simplenote on the iPad, which makes popping between documents to copy and paste a breeze. The word-count features, versioning and scratchpad, though, make it useful in other ways. $5.
Elements [iTunes]
Elements [Second Gear]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 18, 2010
Dropbox for Blackberry Now in Beta
Dropbox, the file-syncin’, cloud-storin’ service for the cognoscenti and the extremely good-looking, has released a beta for the Blackberry. Currently limited to 1,000 users (and already fully subscribed), the beta essentially brings gigabytes of remote storage to your crackberry.
Dropbox is a service which syncs any files in the Dropbox folder on your computer with 2GB free space in the cloud (you can pay for more). This is at once a backup (with versioned saves of files, so you can rescue a file you wrongly edited) and as a sharing service.
Like the versions for iPhone and Android, Dropbox for Blackberry lets you open files, stream movies and music and view pictures right on your handheld. You can also upload files: pictures taken with the Blackberry’s camera, for example.
It’s too late to sign up for this wave of the beta, but hopefully this signals that the fully-baked app, which will run on OS 5.0 devices, will be launched soon.
Dropbox for Blackberry Beta Begins [Dropbox Forums via <a href="http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/31/dropbox-launches-a-limited-beta-version-for-the-blackberry/
">Boy Genius]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 2, 2010
Droptext Adds Dropbox Text Editing to iOS
Dropbox, the free cloud-storage and kinda-backup service, is awesome. One of its best features is to let you share all the documents on your computer with your iPad, iPhone, Android device and soon, your BlackBerry. It would seem, then, to be the perfect way to work around Apple’s excruciating file-transfers for the iPad. There’s just one catch: you can’t actually edit your files.
Droptext fixes this. The application, from developer Kevin Smith, does one thing: It connects to your online Dropbox and lets you edit text files. Up until now, you have had to open the file in a separate application and then try to save it back, somehow, into the original Dropbox folder as a copy. That, or you need to buy one of the capable but ugly and expensive office apps like Office HD.
Smith’s app is dead simple. Once you have signed into your Dropbox account, you can browse files and folders. Anything that is editable has an icon. Tap that icon and the document opens in edit view. Tap “Save” to save. That’s it.
Any plain text file can be opened, from TXT through PHP, HTML and M. RTF and Word docs cannot be viewed or edited, however. You can also create and delete files, although to actually send them anywhere you’ll need to fire up a different Dropbox-aware application.
In my short testing, Droptext crashed on me several times. The iTunes store page promises “bug fixes” as “coming soon”. The biggest draw of this app is the price, though. At just $1, it’s worth having the 2.9MB app around for when you need it.
Droptext [iTunes via iLounge]
Dropbox Anywhere [Dropbox]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 9, 2010
