December 11, 2009

For many small business owners, keeping track of documents and data files across different computers, smartphones and users can be really challenging. Fortunately, there are some great solutions to make that task easier. One solution is called Dropbox. Dropbox is a service that allows you to back-up, share and sync files with other users and across different computers and phones. It works on Mac, Windows and even Linux.

Dropbox looks and acts like a regular folder on your computer. The only difference is that everything you add to that folder is automatically backed up to Dropbox’s cloud and those changes are instantly accessible from your other computers or with other users you have decided to share a file with.

The service offers free accounts with up to 2 GB of online storage space, but plans with more space start at just $9.99 a month or $99 a year. Here are five ways you can use Dropbox to keep your business more organized and your digital life less cluttered.

Keep Your Passwords In Sync – Because Dropbox acts like any other folder, you can use it with password management utilities like 1Password or KeePass. Password managers are great because they let you create safe, difficult to crack passwords but also keep a record of what those logins are. By using Dropbox as the location for your password database, you can access you account information from multiple computers (or your phone), without having to resort to writing things down on post-it notes.

Back-up Important Files – Dropbox backs up every file you save to its folder in the cloud (using Amazon’s S3 data storage technology). Storing important business documents or contact information on your Dropbox account is not only safe (Dropbox uses SSL encryption), but if disaster strikes, you have an off-site backup copy.

Easily Share Folders – One of the best features of Dropbox is that you can easily invite others to join sub-folders within your Dropbox folder. So if you are collecting documents related to a certain project, you can invite other users to that folder and they can access those files, upload their own additions and even make changes. You can do this without having to e-mail files to each person, and files can be accessed from a computer, a smartphone or the web.

Easy Version Control – If you make a change to an existing document inside Dropbox, Dropbox stores the different versions of that file for 30 days. That means you can access past revisions of a document or even a design proof without having to save each file under a different name. If you want to have versions of your documents accessible after 30 days, you can upgrade to Dropbox’s Pack Rat plan that will keep versions on file forever.

Back-up Your Web Browser Bookmarks – One of the more frustrating aspects of working on a number of different computers is that the bookmarks you have on your main machine might not always match those on your laptop or vice versa. Dropbox makes it easy to keep your Firefox profile synchronized across multiple computers. You can follow this guide to get things set up.

Dropbox isn’t the only file synchronization and backup service (Microsoft’s Live Mesh and Drop.io are other options that also work quite well), but it is unique in how it integrates with computers across platforms and how it stores and synchronizes files. You can find more add-ons and tips and tricks on Dropbox’s website.

Join the conversation ( 1 )

• PAUL ROSENFELD 2 years 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  We use Box.Net and COULD NOT BE HAPPIER. We rely on this daily to manage all our files across our virtual workforce. It has one of the easier user interfaces I've ever used and never fails to work properly. I strongly recommend it.