Hi
I know that some folks here are using Dropbox and thought that they might appreciate the chance to add a few extra gigabytes of storage to their accounts.
Dropbox are running a promotion to test out some new features, specifically they want your dropbox to be the place where you back up your recently taken photographs. If you take part in that testing they will give you an additional 500 MB immediately and more space in 500 MB blocks as you need it (up to a total of 8 GB (I think)).
Instructions on how all this works further down the page.
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What is Dropbox?
It is a bit of software that synchronises a folder (and its contents) on your computer with a cloud version of that folder and any other PC's, Apple's, Linux boxes and mobile devices that you choose to use it with.
So for example if I work on an excel sheet on my laptop and that excel sheet is sitting in my dropbox folder then that excel sheet will be available for me to open and work with on any other machine that I have set up for Dropbox. Lots of other uses too.
Dropbox is free to download and use.
Don't have an account, sign up for one here.
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Promotion details:
You need to download the Experimental Forum Build of dropbox from these links...
Windows: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/Dropbox 1.3.26.exe
Mac OS X: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/Dropbox 1.3.26.dmg
Linux x86_64: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.3.26.tar.gz
Linux x86: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86-1.3.26.tar.gz
You will obviously have to quit your current version of Dropbox and you may have to un-install it before you install the Forum Build version.
Once you are running the Forum Build version, connect a camera to your machine, a Dropbox dialogue box will open and ask if you want to import your images, say yes.
Dropbox will create a subfolder named 'Camera Uploads' it will copy your images to it, and once copied will sync them to your dropbox cloud storage.
For some reason it renames the images however the exif data is unchanged, so do not rely on these images alone if you want to keep the original file names.
You will be given your 500 MB as soon as your first upload begins.
Once the images have been uploaded you can move them or delete them from the 'Camera Uploads' folder.
Dropbox will not upload the same images twice so you need to take more images and once you have uploaded more than 500 MB in total you will be given your next 500 MB and so on up to a maximum of 8 GB (in addition to the 2 - 3 GB you already probably have).
Digital movie files count towards your total, so if you are in a rush to get your storage take some long ten minute movies of a nice sun rise or whatever and upload those.
To clarify, you do not have to leave these images in your dropbox to qualify for storage upgrades, Dropbox remembers how many MB's of photos you have uploaded and uses that to measure how much additional space it should give you.
These extra gigabytes are yours forever (or as long as Dropbox exist) they will not claw them back after the promotion/testing period.
You will be testing software for Dropbox, I probably don't have to point out that you should back up all the stuff in your dropbox folder just in case.
I have been playing with this for much of the week and now have 5.5 GB of storage space, which is nice.
I hope this proves useful to some.
I know that some folks here are using Dropbox and thought that they might appreciate the chance to add a few extra gigabytes of storage to their accounts.
Dropbox are running a promotion to test out some new features, specifically they want your dropbox to be the place where you back up your recently taken photographs. If you take part in that testing they will give you an additional 500 MB immediately and more space in 500 MB blocks as you need it (up to a total of 8 GB (I think)).
Instructions on how all this works further down the page.
----
What is Dropbox?
It is a bit of software that synchronises a folder (and its contents) on your computer with a cloud version of that folder and any other PC's, Apple's, Linux boxes and mobile devices that you choose to use it with.
So for example if I work on an excel sheet on my laptop and that excel sheet is sitting in my dropbox folder then that excel sheet will be available for me to open and work with on any other machine that I have set up for Dropbox. Lots of other uses too.
Dropbox is free to download and use.
Don't have an account, sign up for one here.
----
Promotion details:
You need to download the Experimental Forum Build of dropbox from these links...
Windows: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/Dropbox 1.3.26.exe
Mac OS X: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/Dropbox 1.3.26.dmg
Linux x86_64: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.3.26.tar.gz
Linux x86: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86-1.3.26.tar.gz
You will obviously have to quit your current version of Dropbox and you may have to un-install it before you install the Forum Build version.
Once you are running the Forum Build version, connect a camera to your machine, a Dropbox dialogue box will open and ask if you want to import your images, say yes.
Dropbox will create a subfolder named 'Camera Uploads' it will copy your images to it, and once copied will sync them to your dropbox cloud storage.
For some reason it renames the images however the exif data is unchanged, so do not rely on these images alone if you want to keep the original file names.
You will be given your 500 MB as soon as your first upload begins.
Once the images have been uploaded you can move them or delete them from the 'Camera Uploads' folder.
Dropbox will not upload the same images twice so you need to take more images and once you have uploaded more than 500 MB in total you will be given your next 500 MB and so on up to a maximum of 8 GB (in addition to the 2 - 3 GB you already probably have).
Digital movie files count towards your total, so if you are in a rush to get your storage take some long ten minute movies of a nice sun rise or whatever and upload those.
To clarify, you do not have to leave these images in your dropbox to qualify for storage upgrades, Dropbox remembers how many MB's of photos you have uploaded and uses that to measure how much additional space it should give you.
These extra gigabytes are yours forever (or as long as Dropbox exist) they will not claw them back after the promotion/testing period.
You will be testing software for Dropbox, I probably don't have to point out that you should back up all the stuff in your dropbox folder just in case.
I have been playing with this for much of the week and now have 5.5 GB of storage space, which is nice.
I hope this proves useful to some.
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