5 Unusual Ways to Use Dropbox You Might Not Have Thought Of

I’ve been using Dropbox for a while, but I just discovered the Android functionality this weekend and was blown away. Here’s a few other uses for this nifty app!

Dropbox has just been upgraded to version 1.0, so we thought we’d take a look at some great ways to use it that might not have occurred to you.

A free Dropbox account allows users to store up to 2GB worth of files and access them from any other Linux, Mac or Windows machine running the Dropbox application. Or, those files can be accessed from any browser.

In fact, the new 1.0 version of Dropbox is so tremendously useful, I decided to invest the $9.99 per month to increase its capacity to 50GB. Dropbox can perform some slick tricks. Here are my five favorite examples:

Chat Logs

Many chat programs let you change the location of the chat log. Clients such as Pidgin can be modified to save those chats wherever you’d like, so point to a folder within the Dropbox for complete portability.

Multiple chat client Digsby is especially useful when you save its chat logs in Dropbox, and there was a portable version available until just a few weeks ago.

It’s still possible to make this happen, but it takes a bit of hacking. If you’re so inclined, it might be worth it — it lets you save all your Facebook, AIM and Google Talk chat logs in the same place.

Gaming Saves

Most games let you designate where you’re going to save your progress, so why not put that saved game data in Dropbox? Then, no matter what computer you’re using (as long as you have the game installed there), you can pick up where you left off.

Documents Folder

Have a group of documents you’re always working on and adding to? Place them all in a Dropbox documents folder and you can modify them at home, work, and on the road. This works especially well when you’re writing with a team, allowing you to see when someone else has begun working on a document.

Teamwork

We like to shoot videos, and it often works out where one of us is shooting and another is editing. One of us drops the unedited video clips in a shared Dropbox folder, while the other picks them up and edits them as soon as they’re synced. Then, someone else can share the finished videos on YouTube. This works especially well if you spring for the 50GB upgrade.

Any App With a Watch Folder

Any application that lets you create a watch folder is fertile ground for Dropbox. Here’s an idea: if you’re a Photoshop user, create a watch folder in Dropbox, leave your powerful PC running Photoshop at home. Then, when you drop a photo into that folder when you’re on the road, it’s automatically processed to the dimensions you designate back at the mother ship. You can also use this idea for BitTorrent, dropping torrents into a watch folder and having them download on your home machine while you’re at work.

We’ve grown to adore Dropbox in the past year, and now that it’s reached version 1.0, its subtle improvements make it even more appealing. To see for yourself, download it here, and find out more tips and tricks here.

Posted via email from pearl’s posterous

Working Better: How to Use Your Email Effectively – Business – GOOD

Every three months, GOOD releases our quarterly magazine, which examines a given theme through our unique lens. Recent editions have covered topics like the impending global water crisis, the future of transportation, and the amazing rebuilding of New Orleans. This quarter’s issue is about work, and we’ll be rolling out a variety of stories all month.


Chances are good that at some point, you’ve implemented some fancy email technique that you were certain could rid you of your chronic email anxiety via color-coded folders and an elaborate filtering system. You took the workshop or read the book, and then six weeks after it totally changed your life, you stopped doing it, only to find your inbox even messier than it was before. So what to do? Keep it simple. These strategies are tried and true—and easy as hell to keep up.

Embrace “Inbox Zero,” sometimes. The Inbox Zero model essentially says that an empty inbox is a happy inbox (and a happy you). It might not be practical for everyone to do every single day, but once a week, set aside an hour to make sure every email that demands your attention has received it. Once it’s done, file it away in a folder (something like “Old Mail”). It’s a great example of a little up-front work that makes your life so much easier in the long run.

For work emails, set a tone and keep it short. If you’re always really chatty in your emails, people will come to expect that from you and may be thrown off if, in a rush, you dash off something curt. Develop a consistent email personality for business correspondence that is polite, professional, and to the point—then stick to it.

Change your email settings. Tell Facebook and Twitter that you don’t want to get updates sent to your inbox. 

Unsubscribe. It takes five seconds and clears the muck. 

Check it less. Some productivity gurus advise us to check our email only twice or three times a day. If that seems unrealistic, how about once every hour instead of clicking every time you see the number go up on your inbox icon? Most things can wait at least that long.

Set up an auto reply. If you’re so backed up on email that it’s interfering with your work and offending people, you can let them know with a humble and honest auto reply that says as much. But do this very sparingly. Anyone who emails you more than once will get your bounce-back repeatedly, which can get annoying fast.

If you’re really hosed, declare email bankruptcy. This is a last resort—and a borderline obnoxious one. But if you’re so bogged down in email that you don’t know how to dig yourself out, this is an option. You simply tell every person in your inbox that you’ve deleted their email, and to please resend it if it’s important. It’s basically getting yourself to Inbox Zero without the work. Just make sure you keep up with the new messages.

Good ideas for keeping email a useful tool versus a weighty burden.

Posted via email from pearl’s posterous