Hi readers. Can we talk for a minute? I just wanted to chat about an application that makes my life a hell of a lot easier. Maybe you've heard of it -- Dropbox. I would easily put this program up with the giants, like MS Word, and AIM. It is one of the greatest achievements of the new millennium, and I use it multiple times daily.

What is Dropbox? At its core, it is a storage, backup, and sharing utility. What makes it special? Okay. Rather than being browser-based (i.e Rapidshare), one actually installs Dropbox on their computer. Once they've done that, a folder appears, entitled "My Dropbox". One can simply drop files into their public folder, and they begin to upload to the Dropbox servers. After they're finished, a green check-mark appears on the icon of the file, and they can right-click it to copy a URL to their clipboard that they can share with their friends.

It doesn't stop there, no. You can install Dropbox across 3 computers with the same account, and your documents will always remain synced. Here's a scenario: you're working on a spreadsheet on your home computer for the big meeting this afternoon. You save it, and leave. That's right, you just leave. You don't put it on a thumb drive, you don't e-mail it to yourself, you're just out the door. Then, later, you hop on one of your business computers and pop open your Dropbox folder -- there's the spreadsheet you saved half an hour ago, primed and ready to go.

Maybe the boss comes by and wants to see the spreadsheet, but it's not on your cubicle's computer and you don't have Dropbox installed. No big deal, you can access all of your uploaded files directly from the website through an interface similar to (but a whole lot more convenient than) Rapidshare or Megaupload.

Say, for the sake of example, that Jimmy - your cubicle mate and incidental arch rival - gets into your spreadsheet and messes it up irreparably before saving it to your Dropbox. The CFO is coming to take a look at it himself in 10 minutes. Relax, one of Dropbox's most awesome features is to keep every saved edit of a document for the past 30 days. You could have saved 4500 edits of that spreadsheet to your Dropbox and you'd be allowed to go back and revert to any of those 4500 any time you wanted through Dropbox's convenient History page.

The best part? It's all completely free. You don't pay a cent for all of this. Dropbox does have upgrade options -- you start with 2 GB, and for 9 dollars a month you can bump it up to 50 GB, and for 20 dollars a month you can get 100 GB. If you're an enthusiast with a whole crapload of files to keep uploaded, the upgrade options are cheap and easy to keep up -- but let's be frank. I've been using Dropbox for just under a year and a half, and I've never gotten close to my 2 GB size limit. I could not even imagine having 100 GB. That's a freakin' hard drive! They also offer a paid service called Pack Rat that gives you unlimited reversions.

Well, that's my shameless Dropbox plug. Go get it -- in fact, let me invite you, so we both get 250MB of additional space.


In other news, I got a pretty boss haircut. There's not a whole lot to say about it besides DAMN it is nice to be able to style my hair again. I really don't know how to have long hair, despite having had it twice. Oh, and just before the hot stylist cut my hair, she washed it for me. Twice. It was quite frankly amazing and I highly recommend the experience.

And that's that.