Today Facebook begins rolling out file sharing to all Groups, and while it’s got many restrictions, it could be good enough to limit the long-term growth potential of cloud storage / file sharing services like Dropbox, iCloud, and Google Drive. Music and any copyright files aren’t allowed and file size is capped at 25mb, as Mashable first reported. But this is just the first version, and you can be sure Facebook will keep hacking away at it.
Last month, the social network started letting users share files within Groups for Schools, but now we confirmed with Facebook that within a few days all Facebook users should have the option to upload and share files from the Groups post composer. → Read More
Google finally launched its long-rumored Google Drive online storage service today. This was probably one of Google’s worse-kept secrets, so the launch itself wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone – least of all Dropbox, which – until today – was pretty much synonymous with online storage for documents.
If nothing else, Google Drive is a full-frontal assault on Dropbox on virtually every level. Google is not just massively undercutting Dropbox’s pricing scheme, but thanks to integrating Drive with Docs, it is also able to offer far more features. With this kind of competition, the future doesn’t look good for Dropbox. → Read More
SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online storage service, is one of the core elements of the company’s cloud strategy. Today, Microsoft is taking the wraps off a number of new SkyDrive services, including a Dropbox-like desktop integration for Windows and Mac (OS X Lion only). With this, SkyDrive will function like any other folder on your machine and any file you save to it will be automatically uploaded to the cloud and synced to your other computers. For current Dropbox users, this is obviously nothing new and it’s taken Microsoft quite a while to finally offer this feature. With this update, though, Microsoft is also reducing the amount of free storage it is offering new users from 25GB to just 7GB. → Read More
People love Dropbox and similar services, but companies — especially large enterprises in regulated industries — have an understandable aversion to file sync services: they allow company data on servers “out there” in the cloud, no longer under company control. ownCloud, essentially an open source, self-hosted Dropbox, has a unique advantage here as it’s strictly a software solution, not a storage provider. I mentioned ownCloud in passing when I wrote about OpenSUSE 12.1, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the project since. To make ownCloud even more attractive to businesses, a commercially supported version is being launched today at owncloud.com.
The ownCloud server does a bit more than just file storage and synchronization. It offers CalDAV and CardDAV services to synchronize calendars and address books with your mobile device. Work is also underway to make it aware of the file types being stored within it, and to provide meaningful actions based on those types: photo galleries, music playlists, and more. There’s a growing ownCloud app store to extend what the server can do. This is the power of open source: rather than relying on something like ifttt, you can have intelligent actions built right into the server you’re running. → Read More
HTC’s is the Cinderella story of the mobile market — they’ve gone from low-key provider of Windows Mobile hardware to Android-powered smartphone titan within the span of just a few years.
Impressive as that is, HTC has done much more than just push out smartphones. In the past year alone, HTC has inked big deals with Beats Audio, Dropbox, and LogMeIn, with rumors of a potentially final MOG acquisition swirling around to boot. It’s pretty clear what HTC is trying to do here: they’re trying to buy an entire ecosystem for their devices, and frankly, good on them for it. → Read More
Today marks another step in the evolution of cloud services for consumers: Jolicloud, the Paris-based company that was one of the first to move on offering users a “cloud-based desktop,” today launched another product that extends what users can do in the cloud even further, with the introduction of Jolicloud Me.
Available from today in private beta on Android, iOS and HTML5 in private beta, Jolicloud Me is a kind of uber-organizer for all of your online assets, aggregating them and automatically sifting them into categories base on file types — eg, images, music, video and so on — and what’s especially nice is that it takes them from all of the disparate places that you may current use for these services — and even those that you may have used once but have given up over time. → Read More
Last year, Dropbox raised a whopping $250 million funding round at a valuation in the ballpark of $4 billion. The raise had been rumored for months so it didn’t come as a huge surprise, but it still raised plenty of eyebrows. Because while Dropbox is totally awesome (I use it every day), at this point people see it as a convenient way to sync their files between computers — which it already does pretty well. So what’s all the money for?
Today, we’re getting our first taste of what’s next, and what cofounder and CEO Drew Houston calls Dropbox’s mission to solve all of the “hidden problems” that people have with technology, many of which we’ve simply become accustomed to dealing with.
Their first solution to one of these hidden problems? Helping you keep all of your photos, from all of your devices, in one place. And to get things started, they’re launching a new version of their Desktop and Android clients that’ll automatically upload your photos to your Dropbox account. Snap a few photos on your phone, and, without having to hook up any wires, they’ll be on your computer within a minute or two. → Read More
Attachments.me, the startup that promises to take the pain out of searching through email attachments, is gradually ramping up the services that it’s offering to users: from today, it has an option to automatically file your attachments to specific folders in the cloud. And it has also expanded support to include Box, which now joins Dropbox in its list of supported cloud storage partners. → Read More
Dropbox has no shortage of fans or users these days — their stellar wins at the Crunchies are proof of that — and now the cloud storage service is leaning on them to test an experimental new build of the Dropbox Android app.
While the thrill of being on the bleeding edge is probably enough for some people to take the plunge, the real meat of the experimental build comes in the form of the new auto upload feature for photos and videos. It’s pretty much exactly what the name implies: as soon as you snap a photo or take a video with your Android device, it automatically gets uploaded to your account. And in usual Dropbox fashion, it just works. → Read More
Clearly controversy is swirling around web lockers and online storage companies in the wake of the Federal swoop on Megaupload, but if it all goes wrong rest assured that DropBox founder and CEO Drew Houston has a second career to fall back on.
The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (or just “Davos” to those in the know) is a great place for the world’s millionaires and billionaires to loosely affiliate with each-other (as Paul Simon might have put it) and part of that looseness extends to the Piano Bar of the Hotel Europe in the tiny – but 5-star-hotel-packed – village.
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In a conversation with WIRED UK’s David Rowan on stage at the DLD Conference in Germany, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston acknowledged that he did in fact have a “great meeting” with the late Steve Jobs in 2009.
Houston said about the get-together that Jobs had heard of them and asked to meet with him. Even though he was generally gracious, Houston said, Jobs expressed that he felt Dropbox was more of a feature than a product or business and gave him a “bit of a hard time” about that. → Read More
The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.
For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App (Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline, the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0), the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like Task Rabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.
In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can. → Read More
The new year is right around the corner, and many of us are in dire need of some organization. Luckily for all you fandroids out there, DropBox 2.0 has finally made its way onto the Android Market. The app has brand new features and a totally revamped layout.
You’ll find a little arrow to the right of each file in the app, which will then lead you to a pop-out menu. From there you can share, delete, and favorite, which is a brand new feature to DropBox. From the main menu, you’ll see three tabs up top including Dropbox, Uploads and the newly added Favorites. → Read More
Very very quietly (there is almost no Google footprint), investment bank and securities firm Goldman Sachs held its “Private Internet Company Conference” this week in Las Vegas. During the two-day conference, which lasted from November 29-30th, a gaggle of companies presented their business models to an elite audience composed of bankers, investors and peers. → Read More
In episode II of Erick Schonfeld’s Founder Stories interview with Dropbox co-founder, Drew Houston, Houston describes how releasing a demo video to Hacker News during Dropbox’s early days catapulted his company into elite company.
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Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket, up 49 percent from the second quarter.
Who is buying all of these shares? SecondMarket breaks it out in its third quarter report. Wealthy “accredited individuals” made up the largest share of buyers (63 percent by dollar amount), followed by asset managers (22.3 percent of transactions), hedge funds (7.8 percent), and venture capital funds (5.1 percent). VC funds became much more active on SecondMarket in the quarter, accounting for 17.5 percent of the transactions by number. Last quarter, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount). → Read More
Red-hot startup Dropbox — you know, the file syncing service that just raised $250 million at a $4 billion valuation — has announced something this week that’s getting slightly less attention than its massive funding round, but is exciting all the same: the company has released an improved version of its APIs, making the service better both in native apps (on mobile devices) and web apps alike.
Dropbox first launched its API in May 2010, and it’s been implemented in loads of mobile app since then. But it’s had a few issues that have been remedied with the new version of the API. → Read More
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