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Dropbox finally launches to the public (YC summer 07)
- ttol 18y agocongrats (again) drew!
- rantfoil 18y agoDropbox is the first and only sync / storage solution of its kind that ACTUALLY WORKS. Tremendous job, and I love using Dropbox every day.
- crescendo 18y agoSame here. Dropbox is the best YC-backed product to date, IMO.
- fallentimes 18y agoAhem, TicketStumbler. Just kidding, I'm in love with their service and am a very happy user. They're backed by Sequoia and some other BSDs. How the hell do you make something boring like file storage viral and cool? I don't know but Dropbox just did it.
- AndyKelley 18y agoHow is it viral?
- fallentimes 18y agoNot only have I enjoyed it so much I've told countless friends about dropbox, it also auto invites your friends to join when you share a file with them. That's in part why they already had over 100,000 beta testers before even launching.
- vlad 18y agoAnd rejected from YC the first time, if I remember correctly.
- avibryant 18y agoAgreed. It's the second one (after reddit) I will actually use, and the first I would pay for - anyone know what pricing will be for going beyond 2GB?
- avibryant 18y agoAnswering my own question: $10/mo for 50GB. Not bad.
- thorax 18y agoI love Dropbox, but I've also used Foldershare across all my PCs (and friend's PCs) for years now and it's been great. I prefer Dropbox now (it's superior), but I never felt like this wasn't something I didn't have access to beforehand.
- staunch 18y agoYour comment really reminds me of this: "...What you want to be able to say about technology is: it just works. How often do you say that now?" -- http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html A damn good sign for Dropbox methinks.
- netcan 18y agoWhat makes something a winner is often very small. What makes that essay a winner is this: You can't just say "Err" to the user of a stove.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- jodrellblank 18y agoWhat do you mean "of its kind"? Windows Offline Files and briefcases actually work. Volume Shadow Copy actually works. WebFolders actually work. They're just not as well connected or cross platform.
- rantfoil 18y agoRsync works too. But I'm not going to ask my Dad to install it.
- jkent 18y agoI've been using Syncplicity, which offers similar functionality, and that works too. Clearly, their PR isn't as good - it's been launched for some time.
- truebosko 18y agoThat's awesome. I finally got the invite a week or so ago and I couldn't be happier. I already got 3 of my friends on it as well because it just WORKS. Beautiful
- adamt 18y agoI've use jungledisk and MobileMe/iDisk, but on seeing this story this morning I thought I'd give dropbox a try, and I was blown away by how well it 'just worked'. Things like sharing, proper diffs, public folders all done properly and simply. Really need Mac Finder integration. I'm a convert! Shame that someone else has the dropbox.com domain though ...
- mrtron 18y agoI have been using it for quite a few months and am officially impressed with the stability of the app. This is a good time to remember to backup - I will be saving some important photos immediately! The only complaint I have is that it does not make explicitly clear (to me) what folders are public.
- froo 18y agoThis story has already been Dugg, and interesting to note there seems to be people signing up to Digg just to badmouth dropbox and plug sugarsync. eg http://digg.com/users/supersaucer http://digg.com/users/supersaucer EDIT - PS, love dropbox guys, good work!
- raju 18y agoGreat job guys! Dropbox is certainly one of the best products I have used, and you guys are definitely making it better...
- rokhayakebe 18y agoDropBox a winner? Xobni a winner? How did they do it? The recipe is to not rush your product out there. I think most entrepreneurs do not understand "Release Early, Update Daily, Weekly, Monthly". Sometimes releasing early can work against you. Be patient.
- KrisJordan 18y agoDropBox did release early, though, didn't they? Just not publicly. My understanding was they did iterate a lot with early testers.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI know some people who have early clients installed that they can't get rid of :)
- dskhatri 18y agoI must say that while I was already impressed by the product, the blog post announcing the public launch was just as impressive. It is very well written and portrays the company as having great professionalism and aptitude. You don't see many startups doing this. Finally, yay! for being an MIT startup :)
- josefresco 18y ago"It started in Boston’s South Station in November 2006 where one night, while waiting for the Chinatown bus to New York, I wrote the first lines of code of what eventually became Dropbox. I had forgotten my USB drive at home and was frustrated that I couldn’t get any 'real work' done." Ha, classic 'founder story' as discussed 7 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=294663 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=294663
- tdavis 18y agoI routinely forget I even have Dropbox because it gets out of my way so damn perfectly. Amazing job. And thank you most of all for the "undo" feature. I'm not saying that one day Dan accidently deleted all of our files, but you know, hypothetically.
- fallentimes 18y agoLivingston did it.
- tdavis 18y agoDon't blame this on poor, sweet Livingston you knave!
- rms 18y agoHighly recommended -- Dropbox provides an extremely rare, zen-like experience.
- thedob 18y agoI'd like to emphasize how well Dropbox works as a collaborative tool. Never having to attach and download shared files from email is a great help in staying organized. A co-worker can simply shoot you an IM or shout across the office that a document has been updated, and it's already on your machine ready to be opened. I hope people don't get this confused with a source code repository though, as it definitely isn't optimal for working on shared source code. Stick with documents, images, and media, and you'll be fine.
- whacked_new 18y agoI can't wait to sign up... but would really like to see encryption. Is this on the todo shortlist? (third time asking!)
- aston 18y agoI think if you're actually interested in encryption, your best bet is actually not to wait on us to help you with it. If we're cooperating with you to encrypt your data, it's by definition not secure. A number of security-conscious users use us combined with TrueCrypt volumes.
- whacked_new 18y agoHaha, you win. I'm signing up. Thanks for the reply!
- dcurtis 18y agoI use an encrypted Mac OS X disk image on my Dropbox. It works well.
- tlrobinson 18y agoEvery time you make any change to the image it needs to sync the whole thing, right? Seems wasteful to me, there must be a better solution.
- Herring 18y agoI really doubt it. The whole point to encryption is that the storage area doesn't know anything about your files.
- whacked_new 18y agoMy impression is that cperciva is after this problem, but the wait seems indefinite.
- dcurtis 18y agoIt doesn't. It just syncs the byte changes.
- fallentimes 18y agoLove it.
- nostrademons 18y agoW00t, congrats guys, and you're gonna make me regret that I didn't join back last February. :-)
- immad 18y agoReddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/70yy8/dropbox_gdrive_killer_finally_launches_plus http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/70yy8/dropbox_gd... Digg: http://digg.com/software/Dropbox_GDrive_Killer_finally_launches_plus_Linux_iPhone http://digg.com/software/Dropbox_GDrive_Killer_finally_launc... Already at the top of digg!
- Protophore 18y agoCongrats! I'll pass the word around and see if I can't get some more people to sign up.
- jonknee 18y agoFantastic! Now if I could only get the Linux app to work with my Aspire One I'll be in heaven (libgio-2.0.so.0 is a missing dependency).
- bradgessler 18y agoThis is awesome; exactly what I've been looking for. Congrats on the launch!
- brlewis 18y agoIs there an API such that an automated service could detect that someone shared a folder with it? Failing that, is there a Linux command-line client?
- KrisJordan 18y agoCongrats on the release! Just got an invite yesterday and believe this is a truly great product that provides end-users a beautiful experience.
- tuukkah 18y agoI find this misleading at best: http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux It's here, it's open source, and it's free software! Dropbox for Linux is finally available and ready for your everyday use. Further down the page: -- dropboxd is a per-user closed-source daemon process that makes sure your $HOME/Dropbox directory is properly synchronized.
- immad 18y agoThey seem to be referring to Linux :)
- Herring 18y agoAlong these lines, I want to know what the catch is. Where/how are the files stored, how do they stop us from going past 2gb, is there anything in place for when the RIAA/MPAA come calling? More critical replies please, YC.
- tzury 18y agowant the souce? get it: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/5143/nautilus-dropbox-packages/0.4.1/nautilus-dropbox-0.4.1.tar.bz2 http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/5143/nautilus-dropbox-packages/0....
- tuukkah 18y agoThat's not Dropbox, that's the Nautilus integration. That is, you keep the essential parts proprietary and closed, and open the parts where you hope others to do work for you. It's not the oddest strategy, but it doesn't live up to the promise either. On the other hand, if you freed the daemon too, you could get included in Linux distributions, and people would know what all Dropbox is doing on their computers.
- ryanspahn 18y agoCongrats and dugg! Is a domain name change in the future? Drop the word get?
- nazgulnarsil 18y agothis seems like an easy backup solution for a small business.
- btw0 18y agoI will use it only if it has a command that will mount the dropbox somewhere in my filesystem, no nautilus.
- clay 18y agoI started reading this thread and I thought, oh finally linux. But then I got really sad when I learned that nautilus was required :(
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoThis smells like a perfect application of FUSE to me. Userspace filesystems rock.
- netcan 18y agoI liked this : Now with lots of AJAX!
- netcan 18y agoIs this an intended use: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/11b.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/11b.html ? BTW, he's right about the URL. Wonder how much the squatters want for it?
- aidanf 18y agoYou should add a link to your main site on your blog. I arrived on the blog from the HN link having no idea what Dropbox is or what it does. I had to manually edit the url to get to the main page to find out what it does. Lots of users would be too lazy to do that.
- thalur 18y agoSnap. Also, the tour thing doesn't load on the PCs here at work (probably the firewall), so I still don't know what it is! The site could do with a bit of simple plain boring old html text which tells us poor people behind firewalls what all the fuss is about :)
- jodrellblank 18y ago"Sometimes you need your files on the run, and we were amazed that no one had made it easy" What? Never heard of offline files, briefcases, SSH/FTP/SFTP/Web/WebDAV servers, Sharepoint, Groove...? (or any of millions of online file repositories?)
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoKeyword being "easy."
- jodrellblank 18y agoThat seems an odd keyword for the sort of person capable of writing dropbox and for a site like HN which revels in arguments about what kind of threading mechanisms are preferable. I don't suppose I'd win any favor for saying Offline Folders - you logoff your domain, they sync, you logon, they sync again. It isn't any effort once it's setup. Not even browsing to a webpage or entering a password.
- nailer 18y agoa) Home users don't have Windows domains b) Nor can they set up offline folders easily
- chmike 18y agoWhat about privacy ? Data is stored in clear text ? Where is it stored ? How about making it possible to setup a private server ?
- JesseAldridge 18y agoWeird issue with the website: On this page: http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux http://www.getdropbox.com/install?os=linux if I move my mousewheel while the cursor is over that ascii dropbox on the right my cpu usage jumps to 100% and Firefox hangs for a few seconds. Using Firefox 3.0.1 on Ubuntu 8.04.
- extension 18y agoThere seems to be an explosion of these online storage services. They will become much more useful when/if there is a standardized API with per-app isolation and access control. The closest I've seen to that is Openomy: http://api.openomy.com/2.0 http://api.openomy.com/2.0
- sireat 18y agoFirst impressions: Very positive Dropbox will probably take over gmail as my primary file storage on the go... ;) Now, one question though, is Dropbox smart enough to only access network when I am actually doing anything with it(ie transfering files from/to Dropbox), or will it occasionally do weird sync type of things even when I am not using it(but have Dropbox folder open on desktop)?
- jaymstr 18y agoLooks pretty cool. I'm looking forward to using it. They're presentation at TC50 didn't go so hot though. I feel bad for the guy.
- Hexstream 18y agoMakes me giggle when I remember Joel's rant (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html): "Since 1988 many prominent architecture astronauts have been convinced that the biggest problem to solve is synchronization. [...] When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not. [...] this so called synchronization problem is just not an actual problem, it's a fun programming exercise that you're doing because it's just hard enough to be interesting but not so hard that you can't figure it out." You show him!
- Bluem00 18y agoHe seems to have embraced it, regardless of his earlier opinions on the subject: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/11b.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/11b.html
- AndyKelley 18y agoThe tutorial video is great. One of the files was named TPS Report.doc.
- tectonic 18y agoDoes DropBox encrypt your files? I couldn't find anything on their site.