Dropbox sees rival file-piles merely as dots in rearview mirror A biz-research report says that cloudy pile-o-files Dropbox is currently walking away with the enterprise sync 'n' share market. The report (451 subscription required) shows a chart depicting Dropbox' dominance. The 451 organisation surveyed 1,000 users and found Dropbox led with circa 44 per cent, followed by Microsoft's …
Because it takes ages to set something up internally. The old story. Or security getting in the way.
Back in 2006, I knew of senior managers who were emailing stuff to hotmail accounts to be able to get .zips from 3rd parties onto their machines.
I wrote my own little script for uploading files quickly to a webserver and generating a link to paste into an email. It's quick and dirty, but it works very well. Fast, reliable and no faffing around when the other end is behind an office firewall that blocks Dropbox.
http://birds-are-nice.me/programming/CANary.shtml
Security is pretty poor, though. Sends the password in plaintext, unless you configure https.
Just do it...
I haven't touched my dropbox and box accounts in more than a year, the Gdrive as little as possible.
The only limit is uplink bandwidth, which here in Belgium is pretty limited either by technology (Belgacom, copper) or corporate idiots (Telenet, cable), the latter trying if they can charge you an arm and a leg for 10mbps....
So if I have to pass a huge file to several people, I upload it to a webserver I have an account on (yes, cheating, I know, but my ISP also limits me to 100GB)
The clever trick that Dropbox has pulled off is being the name the average ID.10T user associates with cloud services. There may be better and more controllable services out there, but some how dropbox is the name that people go to first.
Just like many people call all vacuum cleaners "Hoover", even when made by another brand. Or all tablets being referred to as "iPads" even when the user is really talking about an Android
It is a truffle pig that gets installed with a closed source blob, and sniffs around for data to upload.
If you feel you must use cloud, encrypt and then send your data to the "attached" box. Assuming you care, that is....
Binary blobs are a Trojan no matter which way around you wear it...
P.
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