Microsoft and Dropbox may be considered adversaries, no less because the software giant’s OneDrive service is a direct competitor to the famed cloud company's very own, but on rare occasions, rivals can work alongside each other for the benefit of the end-user experience. One such instance appears to have arisen just recently, with Microsoft and Dropbox today announcing a move to better integrate the former's Office productivity suite with the cloud-based services of the latter.
Over a month after the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus went on sale we're still waiting for some pretty big apps to receive updates that enable them to take advantage of the new, larger screens Apple's new hardware offers. Those that haven't yet received updates continue to work for the most part, but they don't look their best and certainly don't show extra content as you would expect from new, larger devices.
Dropbox is now at the center of so many of our digital worlds that it's almost indispensible to many of us. Offering an easy way to sync files across multiple platforms is something that Dropbox has excelled in over the last couple of years, but its mobile apps haven't quite done the business as yet.
After playing the waiting game and sitting in review with Microsoft for just over a month, the official Dropbox app for devices powered by Windows 8 and Windows RT is now available as a free of charge download from the Windows Store. The app has probably taken a little longer to go through the verification process than Dropbox would have liked, but the most important aspect is that owners of Windows 8/RT machines and devices now have official access to their Dropbox accounts through the natively produced app.
If you ask a random individual to mention a cloud storage provider then I imagine an everyday person would only be able to pluck a handful of names out of their minds, with Dropbox probably being the most popular. Regardless of whether you love or hate the Dropbox service, it is by far one of the easiest to get up and running with and integrates extremely well with desktop and mobile operating systems.
Users’ data and how it’s compromised to malicious sources is improving at a very fast pace today, but the way we set our passwords and log in to services is still very much stuck in the past. The general assumption is still the same: that the complexity of a password (multiple unique symbols, numbers, upper and lower case letters) is proportional to its security. Password guessing algorithms now take these patterns (using ‘@’ instead of ‘a’, randomly capitalizing letters etc.) into consideration and this means we need to change the way we set our passwords, perhaps even add an extra layer of authentication when signing into online services.
If you're a big fan of Dropbox - and let's be honest, if you're reading this then you probably are - then you are just going to love this news. Not just like, not just really like. Love!
At one point in time not so long ago, Dropbox was the definitive chosen method for users who required some kind of cloud-based storage for their documents, files or any sort of information. The Dropbox service gives away 2GB of free of charge cloud storage with the option to increase that said storage if required through the purchase of premium accounts, but it also has powerful native Mac, iOS and Android apps which make things a lot easier for users of the service.
Apple makes a big deal of its iCloud service, and it has put considerably more clout behind it since the switch from MobileMe. The company freely admits that iCloud is to become the cornerstone of everything it does moving forward, with seamless syncing and the like very much expected to be part of how we run our digital lives. At least, that's how it is going to work in Apple's iOS and Mac ecosystem.
It was at the beginning of February that the Dropbox team took the "simplify your life" motto to new levels by introducing an experimental build for Android users which had a number of excellent feature enhancements. The beta build was known as the 'Experimental Android Forum Build 2.0.9' and brought additional features to the already impressive Dropbox service by introducing automatic background uploading of photographs and videos as well as support for increased upload sizes and the ability to resume an upload after an interruption.