4 ms·

Dropbox (YC 07) announces mobile API (and apps for iPad, Android)

101 points by jrnkntl 16y ago

brlewis 16y ago
I'm still looking forward to a non-mobile API, but I'm doing my best with the CLI. Here's an email I got last night from a user of http://ourdoings.com/ http://ourdoings.com/ That was trivial to set up (I already had dropbox, which is partly why I chose to use it to upload the latest set of photos). Your directions were easy to follow, and the email confirmation came within minutes. I dropped the photos into the shared folder, went to dinner, and when I came back, everything was transferred over. thanks, TJ
Legion 16y ago
Of course. Earlier today I go to Android Market, thinking "gee, the Dropbox app ought to be out by now, right?". It was not, so I downloaded some 3rd party thing. Drive home, fire up HackerNews, and look what I see... Ah well. As if I can really act like I'm mad for having another reason to twiddle around on my phone.
minouye 16y ago
Just downloaded the Android app and I'm reminded of why I like Dropbox to begin with. It's simple, straight-forward, and does what I want it to. This app is no exception.
- e40 16y ago
  How do I put all the photos on my droid in my dropbox? That should be simple, but I can't figure it out.
bmalicoat 16y ago
Won't be surprised when these guys get bought out. Fantastic product, implemented way better than anything any of the major players have.
grosen 16y ago
iPad App works great and integrated extraordinarily well with the service. No limitations as far as I can see.
- cstuder 16y ago
  I especially am looking forward to use files stored on my DropBox in other Apps (Like Air Sharing or Goodreader). It's a nice way to get around the clumsy synchronization via iTunes.
evo_9 16y ago
Yeah these guys are top notch. Excellent product, and now this smart move to further fill the storage void for mobile. Good work DropBox!
derefr 16y ago
Anyone know what the API looks like? The documentation for it is behind the invite-wall, I'm guessing.
ugh 16y ago
Great product and at the moment all the rage with the lecturers at my university (small university in Germany). I guess it’s the file format agnosticism, the flexibility and the ease of use. Also a good way for them to exploit students and get their 250MB :) (You would really think university IT could provide their own solutions but they just can’t compete. We use Dropbox, Google Docs, Wave and Doodle all the time. And Gmail, so as to not be limited to 200MB.)
- jackowayed 16y ago
  Do you really expected university IT to provide comparable solutions? Even the biggest university IT department is providing the stuff to maybe 50k people, and as long as it more-or-less gets the job done, they keep their jobs and don't really care that it's not spectacular. Dropbox is providing the service to 5M people, and the whole business is built on it being spectacular. The economies of scale mean that they can afford to make tiny improvements, and they have serious incentives to make it as great as possible; otherwise, they go out of business. (In fact, otherwise, they would have gone out of business long before they made it to 5M users.) Good OSS can fix this to an extent--if someone started a really good host-your-own Dropbox project, every university could use it, getting you similar scale when it comes to coding it, so people would contribute from all over to make it great, and the IT at each individual university would just have to deploy it and update it as it improves.
  - soult 16y ago
    I'm sorry that you go to such a crappy university then. Where I study, IT staff try to be use- and helpful, and not just to keep their jobs.
    - jackowayed 16y ago
      I'm just saying that to make something as seamless and all-around good as Dropbox takes some serious work. Not only do IT people have little incentive to reach that level of perfection, they often aren't really coders and wouldn't be able to get a budget through that gave them enough man-hours to have time to make something like Dropbox. It's not worth it to the university, in general, to pay the full development cost of an extremely well-done implementation of a complex, nonessential system. The economies of scale aren't there. And I'm still a few months away from college. It looks like Stanford has some pretty good systems overall, but just as a datapoint, the design of Axess (the system that appears to handle pretty much everything--course signup, financial aid, etc) is much uglier (and a little harder to use) than any commercial site I use. It gets the job done, it probably dates back to when all sites looked like that, and the people in charge of it don't have enough incentive to give it a facelift.
acgourley 16y ago
Excellent, was waiting for dropbox to give my ipad a cloud filesystem! I'll probably pay for it now.
tingley 16y ago
It makes me happy to see how much success Dropbox is having. It's a great product.
RK 16y ago
The only problem I'm having so far with the Android app (on 2.1/Nexus One) is that whenever you view a picture in the Dropbox app it gets added to your Android gallery. The other way around would be OK, but this way just clutters up the phone gallery.
mgz 16y ago
Created an mp3 hosting/sharing website using this new Dropbox API: http://boomp3.com http://boomp3.com

101 points by jrnkntl 16y ago

I'm still looking forward to a non-mobile API, but I'm doing my best with the CLI. Here's an email I got last night from a user of http://ourdoings.com/ http://ourdoings.com/ That was trivial to set up (I already had dropbox, which is partly why I chose to use it to upload the latest set of photos). Your directions were easy to follow, and the email confirmation came within minutes. I dropped the photos into the shared folder, went to dinner, and when I came back, everything was transferred over. thanks, TJ

Legion 16y ago

Of course. Earlier today I go to Android Market, thinking "gee, the Dropbox app ought to be out by now, right?". It was not, so I downloaded some 3rd party thing. Drive home, fire up HackerNews, and look what I see... Ah well. As if I can really act like I'm mad for having another reason to twiddle around on my phone.

minouye 16y ago

Just downloaded the Android app and I'm reminded of why I like Dropbox to begin with. It's simple, straight-forward, and does what I want it to. This app is no exception.

e40 16y ago
How do I put all the photos on my droid in my dropbox? That should be simple, but I can't figure it out.

bmalicoat 16y ago

Won't be surprised when these guys get bought out. Fantastic product, implemented way better than anything any of the major players have.

grosen 16y ago

iPad App works great and integrated extraordinarily well with the service. No limitations as far as I can see.

cstuder 16y ago
I especially am looking forward to use files stored on my DropBox in other Apps (Like Air Sharing or Goodreader). It's a nice way to get around the clumsy synchronization via iTunes.

evo_9 16y ago

Yeah these guys are top notch. Excellent product, and now this smart move to further fill the storage void for mobile. Good work DropBox!

derefr 16y ago

Anyone know what the API looks like? The documentation for it is behind the invite-wall, I'm guessing.

ugh 16y ago

Great product and at the moment all the rage with the lecturers at my university (small university in Germany). I guess it’s the file format agnosticism, the flexibility and the ease of use. Also a good way for them to exploit students and get their 250MB :) (You would really think university IT could provide their own solutions but they just can’t compete. We use Dropbox, Google Docs, Wave and Doodle all the time. And Gmail, so as to not be limited to 200MB.)

jackowayed 16y ago
Do you really expected university IT to provide comparable solutions? Even the biggest university IT department is providing the stuff to maybe 50k people, and as long as it more-or-less gets the job done, they keep their jobs and don't really care that it's not spectacular. Dropbox is providing the service to 5M people, and the whole business is built on it being spectacular. The economies of scale mean that they can afford to make tiny improvements, and they have serious incentives to make it as great as possible; otherwise, they go out of business. (In fact, otherwise, they would have gone out of business long before they made it to 5M users.) Good OSS can fix this to an extent--if someone started a really good host-your-own Dropbox project, every university could use it, getting you similar scale when it comes to coding it, so people would contribute from all over to make it great, and the IT at each individual university would just have to deploy it and update it as it improves.
- soult 16y ago
  I'm sorry that you go to such a crappy university then. Where I study, IT staff try to be use- and helpful, and not just to keep their jobs.
  - jackowayed 16y ago
    I'm just saying that to make something as seamless and all-around good as Dropbox takes some serious work. Not only do IT people have little incentive to reach that level of perfection, they often aren't really coders and wouldn't be able to get a budget through that gave them enough man-hours to have time to make something like Dropbox. It's not worth it to the university, in general, to pay the full development cost of an extremely well-done implementation of a complex, nonessential system. The economies of scale aren't there. And I'm still a few months away from college. It looks like Stanford has some pretty good systems overall, but just as a datapoint, the design of Axess (the system that appears to handle pretty much everything--course signup, financial aid, etc) is much uglier (and a little harder to use) than any commercial site I use. It gets the job done, it probably dates back to when all sites looked like that, and the people in charge of it don't have enough incentive to give it a facelift.

acgourley 16y ago

Excellent, was waiting for dropbox to give my ipad a cloud filesystem! I'll probably pay for it now.

tingley 16y ago

It makes me happy to see how much success Dropbox is having. It's a great product.

RK 16y ago

The only problem I'm having so far with the Android app (on 2.1/Nexus One) is that whenever you view a picture in the Dropbox app it gets added to your Android gallery. The other way around would be OK, but this way just clutters up the phone gallery.

mgz 16y ago

Created an mp3 hosting/sharing website using this new Dropbox API: http://boomp3.com http://boomp3.com