Dropbox

Rands In Repose: Dumbing Down the Cloud. Rands reviews Dropbox.

I don't get to use web services like Dropbox much because these days I do most of my computer stuff my employer, and I work for a large company who (rightly) doesn't trust its proprietary data to a small one on the whim of an employee. But 1Password gave me an excuse to try .Mac mobileMe to make sure my work computer and home computers all knew how to sign in to my banks' websites. And I thought, Hey, this syncing thing would be cool for Yojimbo too, which previously I never used because I didn't have a mobileMe account and I spread my time across too many computers to only keep notes on one of them. So I paid my $99 for mobileMe. iDisk sort of worked, and the iPhoto albums were kind of neat. But application syncing never worked. 1Password and Yojimbo. mobileMe application syncing never worked.

1Password users were so desperate for a sync solution more reliable than mobileMe that Agile Web Solutions, makers of 1Password, started hacking on their own data-everywhere solution. They also invented a new keychain file format that would be compatible with file syncing services. The latter feature didn't seem to work so well with mobileMe's iDisk, so Agile updated their marketing text to recommend 5 others, including a ringing endorsement for, "our favorite," Dropbox.

The design of every aspect of Dropbox is stunning, and that's where the trust comes from. Here's how good Dropbox's design is: It's free for the first 2GB, it's beta, it's a start-up burning investor capital, and I'm using it to store my passwords. Encrypted by 1Password, but still, my passwords. They'll get my $10/mo as soon as I cross 2GB.