Dropbox

I suspect this is blocked in most schools but I've found it useful, so I thought it was worth passing on: Dropbox. The tagline on the site says "Sync your files online and across computers".

Box o' Receipts
Originally uploaded by Jim Frazier

It's a simple idea. You download a (free) application and then set up a folder on your computer (Macintosh, Windows or Linux). Anything you put in that folder is automagically synchronised with the Dropbox servers and with any computers that you link to your Dropbox account. Will I say that again? Automatic file synchronisation across multiple computers... for free.

To access your Dropbox, you don't even have to install the application. As long as you can access the Internet, you can access your Dropbox through the Dropbox website.

And it's not just a personal service. You can invite collaborators to access shared folders which makes it easy to set up group projects. You can also give read only access to a public folder by sharing a Dropbox URL (for example, here's a photo I took with my cameraphone of the venue for TeachMeet Student Edition).

What's the catch? I can't really see one. With the free account, you are "limited" to 2GB of storage but you can pay a subscription to increase your storage space if you want. I don't know that I would trust it with sensitive documents but for an easy way to synchronise between different machines and different operating systems, it looks great.

Two questions to end with. What do you think of Dropbox and is it blocked in your school?