Pinboard (guardiantech)

Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro >> Dropbox blog

guardiantech — 2014-08-27T14:10:53+00:00

New sharing controls, new safeguards if you lose your device, and:

We don’t want you to worry about choosing the right plan or having enough space. So today, we’re simplifying Dropbox Pro to a single plan that stays at $9.99/month, but now comes with 1 TB (1,000 GB) of space.

UK: £7.99/month or £79/year.

Dropbox hires Google's Woodside as operating chief >> WSJ.com

guardiantech — 2014-02-13T16:02:29+00:00

Mr. Woodside is departing the search giant in the wake of Motorola's sale to Lenovo Group for close to $3bn, less than two years after Google acquired the hardware maker and put the executive in charge of it. Mr. Woodside wasn't able to return Motorola to profitability, even as he slashed prices of phones to better compete for value-conscious buyers.
The appointment gives Dropbox a seasoned manager who was previously running Google's advertising sales in the Americas after replacing Tim Armstrong, who became chief executive of AOL. Mr. Woodside, who started at Google in 2003, helped manage the search giant's relationships with partners and advertisers internationally.

isaach: hacker news commenter in 2007 ... >> Twitter

guardiantech — 2014-02-06T23:06:15+00:00

A Hacker News commenter in 2007 explains why Dropbox is lame. (You have to see it. Also, Dropbox has less space than a Nomad.)

Dropbox blows up the box, connecting every app, file, and device >> Wired.com

guardiantech — 2013-07-09T21:05:56+00:00

Marcus Wohlsen:

since starting Dropbox in 2007, [co-founder and chief executive Drew] Houston and co-founder Arash Ferdowsi have taken the opposite approach to running their company. The pair set out to solve a simple, irritating problem and never got distracted. They didn’t concern themselves with bells and whistles — or the equivalent of effects pedals [Houston is a guitar fan]. They focused on finding the most elegant way to sync files across devices, so you wouldn’t have to email them to yourself. Instead of letting groovy digital stompboxes dazzle them, they practiced their scales and chords until they laid a seemingly unshakable foundation in the fundamentals.
The result is a product used by 175 million people — and a company valued at billions of dollars.

Fascinating profile.

Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Amazon vs. Skydrive: which one Is fastest? >> ReadWrite

guardiantech — 2013-05-21T05:31:27+00:00

As cloud computing services become ever more popular, you might begin to wonder how much you can really trust them to perform when you need them? I decided to find out - by testing the top file-transfer/file-storage/file-backup services.
In many ways, getting a file from one computer to multiple computers is the most challenging task for the cloud. And because I like to use multiple computers running multiple operating systems, including Linux, Windows and the Mac, that function is particularly important to me.

Helpful and thorough.

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer does not fear Dropbox or an Office-less IPad >> Businessweek

guardiantech — 2013-01-30T21:39:48+00:00

Good interview on Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Steve Ballmer, including this gem:

Q: You guys face the huge challenge of trying to advance a product on which about 1 billion people rely. You want to modernize it, but you don’t want to break anything that people need. Partly as a result of this, Microsoft is coming to the cloud late and now going up against a company like Dropbox that already has 100 million users.
Ballmer: Well, you’ve got to remember, 100 million sounds like a pretty small number to me, actually. We’ve got a lot more Office users. And actually if you even want to go to the cloud, we have a lot of Hotmail and SkyDrive users. I’m not beating on Dropbox. They’re a fine little startup and that’s great.

100 million makes you a little startup? OK. He's then asked about Yammer (6m) which Microsoft bought for $1.2bn. And he also deals with the question of Office for iPad. Well, sort of.

Dropbox to be included on all Samsung flagship phones and camera - Computerworld

guardiantech — 2013-01-09T22:33:11+00:00

Dropbox on Wednesday announced tighter integration of its cloud storage and file-sharing service with Samsung products, from smartphones to televisions.
Dropbox said the deeper integration includes several new Samsung devices, such as the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Grand smartphone and smart cameras. Samsung cameras will automatically push the photos to Dropbox's cloud storage service.

Just a thought: if Samsung bought Dropbox, Apple would be screwed - inasmuch as Samsung could stall the development of Dropbox on iOS, or let it die. That could lead to users abandoning the iOS platform quite fast.

100 Million Thanks >> Dropbox

guardiantech — 2012-11-13T22:30:16+00:00

"The cloud done right" has hit 100 million users. Apple once tried to buy it for a billion. That one got away.

Account security >> Dropbox

guardiantech — 2012-08-27T20:57:05+00:00

If you look down at the bottom, it now includes two-factor authentication. Do use it.

The seven ways Dropbox hacked growth to become a $4bn company >> Kissmetrics

guardiantech — 2012-07-15T20:55:44+00:00

Most of them are pretty obvious, but the point where it's compared to Megaupload seems like the most relevant broadly.

New Dropbox Pro plans! >> The Dropbox Blog

guardiantech — 2012-07-11T16:06:44+00:00

Today we’re happy to announce that our upgrades are getting a huge upgrade! Dropbox Pro now comes in flavors of 100 and 200 GB, but at the price of the original 50 and 100 GB plans. For those of you who need even more space, a brand new 500 GB plan is also joining the posse! If you’re already a Dropbox Pro subscriber, just take a seat and enjoy the fireworks — your Dropbox will supersize itself automatically tonight.

Should we take bets on whether Dropbox will reduce the size of free accounts, rather as Spotify did with music streaming? (Of course, a key difference is that it doesn't have to pay a per-use tariff on storage as Spotify does with song plays.)

iOS Dropbox app kerfuffle ends, but highlights confusion about guidelines >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-05-04T21:18:11+00:00

Is Apple blanket-rejecting iOS apps that make use of Dropbox because of an evil plan to push developers toward iCloud? If you asked this question five days ago, the answer from the Internet at large might have been a resounding "yes!" But days later, as is often the case, details have come out that reveal the answer is probably "no."
As it turns out, Dropbox inadvertently put other developers using its SDK in violation of one of Apple's app guidelines, resulting in a string of rejections that looked as if apps using Dropbox were being banned. The Web flew into a fury over what is essentially an annoying but long-standing clause in Apple's guidelines. The problem has now been remedied and the fury has died down.

The problem was that Dropbox wasn't letting apps where people could click through to buy Dropbox storage externally the option of buying the same storage inside the app. Guidelines, eh.

Compare - How does SkyDrive compare to Dropbox, iCloud, and Google? >> Microsoft

guardiantech — 2012-04-25T05:30:02+00:00

Tickboxes galore. Man, Microsoft sure does love those tickboxes. It's like the specification inspector. What's not mentioned is that you don't have to use one or the other. You can have them all.

There Will Be No Files In The Cloud >> A VC

guardiantech — 2011-08-10T06:32:08+00:00

Not looking good for Dropbox: "I've spent a bunch of time talking to entrepreneurs who are building companies in and around the cloud storage space. It's not a space I like very much because I don't think we'll be using files in the cloud. Now Dropbox is a brilliant company and an amazing service and they are doing very well, but will we need a service like Dropbox when everything is in the cloud? I don't think so."

What’s yours stays yours >> Dropbox blog

guardiantech — 2011-07-11T22:12:59+00:00

"We’ve never been interested in rights broader than what we need to run Dropbox. We want to get this language right so that you’re comfortable using Dropbox with no reservations: what’s yours is yours. Instead of trying to add clarifications to the terms, we’ve rewritten this part from scratch..."

Suitable for those concerned about it?

Dropbox Kisses and Makes Up? >> Roland Schorr

guardiantech — 2011-07-03T16:51:54+00:00

"Now I don't think the Dropbox guys are evil or that they're trying to steal your content. I'm sure they're perfectly nice guys just trying to provide a useful service. And it *IS* a useful service. I wouldn't hesitate to use Dropbox for any non-confidential data/documents that I needed to sync to multiple devices. Just as I wouldn't hesitate to use the free Google Docs to coordinate a family reunion or maintain the stats for a little league baseball team.
"But when it comes to confidential data, ESPECIALLY confidential data that belongs to clients or customers - data that, if leaked publicly, could do some real harm to my clients or customers...there is no way I'm going to willingly upload it to a service that acknowledges that their staffers (none of whom I've ever met) and the unspecified people and companies they work with can access (or even "monitor") that data. Not going to happen."

Note: you can encrypt before you upload. Then they can't read it.

Privacy, Security & Your Dropbox >> Dropbox blog

guardiantech — 2011-04-21T14:03:05+00:00

"The previous section should clarify our commitment to user privacy. That said, there have been a lot of questions raised about government data requests.
"Just so you know, we don’t get very many of those requests — about one a month over the past year for our more than 25 million users. That’s fewer than one in a million accounts.
"That said, like all U.S. companies, we must follow U.S. law...When we get a government request, we don’t just hand over your information or files. Our legal team vets all of these requests before we take any action. The small number of requests we have received have all been targeted to specific individuals under criminal investigation. If we were to receive a government request that was too broad or didn’t comply with the law, we would stand up for our users and fight for their privacy rights."