I'd like to start off this blog series with one of my favorite tools: Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud-computing file sharing service. It is very easy to use and works on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, and you can access it online too.
It's set up as a special folder on all your computers. Whatever you copy into it gets copied to all of your other devices. There are special icons that let you know when everything has synced over.
Here's three reasons why Dropbox was useful for me doing PR for campus ministry:
1. All my critical files are synced, everywhere I go. I can log onto different computers or onto the web or even on my phone, and the files are there. I don't need to carry around a flash drive or worry about the file being too big to send via email. I can even get to them on my iPhone, and view files! To edit, you need to download an app that will let you edit them - I use PlainText off the App Store.
2. It helps with Boot Camp, allowing me to edit the same files without worrying about versions. If you are familiar with Boot Camp, it lets you install Windows onto your Mac. However, while the Mac and Windows sides can read each others' partitions, they cannot write to each others' partitions. If you have Dropbox set up on both sides, it syncs the files you put into Dropbox on both sides, so you don't have to deal with this.
3. Easy sharing of files. You can put a file in Dropbox, right-click, and get a link that you can then paste in an email or otherwise give to people. They can access the current version of your file immediately! No more email attachments or re-emailing. True, it's not Google Docs in that others can't edit the file, but if you don't need the collaboration features, this is much quicker.
Initially, you get only 2 GB of storage. However, you can go into your settings and do some simple things and get it up to 3 GB, and you can pay more if you want more storage. Let me know if you want an invitation and I can give you one! You get a storage boost of 500 MB if someone invites you, and that person also gets 500 MB.
You can download Dropbox at http://www.dropbox.com.
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