Dropbox

Lifehacker has turned me on to some great services, but none do I use as often as I use Dropbox.

Do you use more than one computer, frequently (school, work, whatever)? Tired of carrying around that flash drive that you are frequently forgetting? I suppose these questions could be nullified by owning a laptop, which I don't. But Dropbox works seamlessly for what I need it to do.

Dropbox allows me to create public links; i.e., they actually HOST files that I need others to have. Instead of emailing or sending by some other medium, I can give them a link, which with they can then download at their will.

The most helpful feature of Dropbox is it's ability to share folders and track changes. This is huge. Get this:

When I had time to work with Grandpa on family history, I needed a way to be able to keep in sync with him without having him send me his PAF file everytime he updated it (which was basically daily). That's too much for him to worry about. Instead, I installed the D-box on his machine, stuck it in a shared folder, linked it with my own, and VOILA, I can see immediately anytime Grandpa makes a change. It is accesible in my Dropbox, which is in the "My Documents" folder. Besides this, if Grandpa accidentally deleted the file (just happened), I can restore it. Beyond that, I can restore it to ANY POINT that Grandpa made changes to it. Every time a file in Dropbox is saved, only the actual info that was changed is updated. This means I can go back to the way the file was in the original, the way it was two weeks ago, or yesterday, all with a simple restore.

I like Dropbox. If you check it out with my invite, I get more space, and better than that, you do too. Intro offering is at 2GB, which is pretty generous.

Works on Mac/Windows/Linux. Accessible via the web or an installed app. Learn more here.