Dropbox - my new best friend
There are now countless cloud storage solutions out there - from Rackspace and MyDisk to MobileMe and Live Mesh - however, for one reason or another, I've never stuck with any of them.
Like most people, the crucial factors that make or break a cloud storage service for me are a) sync time, b) price.
Being a Mac user, I trialled out Apple's MobileMe and was totally disappointed - not only by the high price for use of the service (£59/year), but, principally, by the time it took for the service to sync files. I often updated a file, shut down my computer ten minutes later and then tried to access it over the web at work, only to find the old version remained there - very frustrating.
MyDisk.se is a good free service, but it is completely missing a synching function; being as brain dead as I am most of the time, I tend to forget to upload updated files manually and end up with half the data I need when I access it.
Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) has become my new best friend (yes, I know I'm a geek). Free membership includes 2GB of storage (up to 3GB if you recommend friends) and lightning-fast backup speeds. The service detects exactly when you make a change to a file on your PC, Mac or iPhone and then instantly syncs it to the cloud.
Like MobileMe, you can send photos from your iPhone to your Dropbox using the new iPhone app (see link below). The app also includes a "Favorites" feature in which you can designate a particular file to be automatically downloaded to your phone for offline viewing.
If you work cross-platform, on multiple computers or on-the-move, it's really a no brainer you give Dropbox a try.
Sign up for Dropbox here:
https://www.getdropbox.com/home#/
Download the iPhone app here:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=327630330&mt=8&s=143441
