[Plsfaculty] Dropbox

[David Galbraith]

Hi all:

At a meeting yesterday, some faculty indicated a lack of awareness of 
Dropbox. I have used it for the last couple of years and thought it 
might be helpful to provide some information about it.  The relevant 
website is www.dropbox.com

Dropbox is a secure commercial data-storage application that runs on 
all computer platforms.  It is free to use (up to a certain storage 
capacity -- I think it is 8Gbytes -- beyond that you pay a 
subscription).  You install the software by going to the link above 
and following the instructions.  This installs a "dropbox" folder on 
your computer, which acts as a normal folder except that it 
synchronizes automatically with other locations (i.e. users) with 
which you have shared subfolders in your dropbox.

The procedure to share a subfolder is to go to the dropbox website, 
define the subfolder you want to share (for example a multi-site 
grant proposal) and send  emails to those people you want to have 
access. They get a request to install dropbox (if they don't already 
have it running) and to join the shared file.  When that is done, the 
files in the shared subfolder can be edited by anyone and are 
automatically updated between all locations. Use of Dropbox avoids 
the complications of sending emails with giant attachments, zipping 
and unzipping, and FTP.  In a more abstract sense, dropbox is an 
application that represents the trend of outsourcing data storage to 
"the cloud", much as we outsource other valuable objects (our money 
into banks, for example).

I have attached a PDF of a recent article in the NY Times by David 
Pogue, plus some comments from readers, which provides more information.

Thanks

David



David W. Galbraith
Professor of Plant Sciences
& Professor, Bio5 Institute
Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Genomic Assay Technology

University of Arizona
Office: 341 Keating Building

Mailing address:
BIO5 Institute
The University of Arizona
1657 E. Helen St.
Tucson, AZ 85721-0240


Tel: (520) 621-9153
Fax: (520) 626-4824
Email: galbraith at arizona.edu
http://cals.arizona.edu/galbraith  
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