How Many MIT Graduates...

Posted on 1/20/2010 9:30:21 AM by Justin Etheredge

How many MIT graduates does it take to copy a file?

If you're Dropbox, apparently about a dozen.

As a side note, if you haven't tried it out yet, you should. It is a bit like Microsoft's Live Mesh, only it is a single folder (you can create symlinks to sync other folders though). The killer feature though is that you have a public folder which you can copy files into and then get a url to give out to people so that they can download files. I was using Windows Live Mesh for a while, and loved it, but being able to put public files up and then hand out urls... so nice. I kept using S3 for a while to pass people large files, but it was nowhere near as convenient.

Oh, and I have no affiliation with Dropbox at all. And I get no money from them. I just wanted to let my reader's know about some cool stuff.

Article Info: 6 comments • Share your thoughts; Filed under: Miscellaneous; Tagged: humor

Comments

+1 for DropBox. Awesome tool. I use the free version right now, but I'm seriously thinking about paying for upgraded space.

Kevin Griffin

January 20. 2010 11:46

Kudos for recommending it without putting in a referral link. Not sure I would have exercised such restraint

John Sheehan

January 20. 2010 12:07

@John They have affiliates! Crap, I didn't know that! Just kidding.

Justin Etheredge

January 20. 2010 12:09

You can create symlinks, yes. But on OS X the Dropbox app doesn't count data you've linked to as being used as part of your quota. It syncs it, but in my case it tells me I have used 0% of my 10GB. I got an email earlier telling me I'm over my quota (there's 20GB of data). Small flaw, but otherwise a good app.

I'm not sure how long services like Dropbox are going to be relevant, though. Google have just allowed storage of any kind of file via Google Docs. If you're an Enterprise customer you get access to the API to handle files. So once Google allow normal humans access to that, someone will release a sync app and Google will likely show that it can provide a better/faster/cheaper service than others. I hope there's still worthy competition, but I'm not sure it's likely.

Rik Hemsley

January 20. 2010 15:13