Living in the cloud

A couple of days ago I got a beta invitation from Dropbox, yet another web service for storing your data in the “cloud” (up to 5 GB during the beta period, for free). Since then I’ve been using it in a daily basis and I’ve to admit it works pretty well, including the Linux client (the reason I decided to give it a try). It’s perfectly integrated with Nautilus with a dedicated Ubuntu repository to make updates easier.

This pic is hosted in Dropbox, if you don't see it it means the service doesn't work so well :)

There are some other services out there doing the same thing like iFolder, Jungledisk, box.net (included now with the new Dell Mini) or GDrive, the eternally rumored service from Google. However, for one reason or another I never managed to get them running they way I wanted. Dropbox however seems to have got it right.

I’ll keep using S3 for large backups though, as Dropbox doesn’t look like the right tool for this. The thing is that Dropbox uses S3 as its backend but you’ve to keep a working copy of all your files with it. This is perfectly right to keep directories synchronized across different computers, but it’s not the case with backups you want to send to the cloud and forget.

Oh, I still have some remaining invitations, just drop me a line if you want one.