Items tagged with Dropbox
Today is March 31st, which in the tech world means that it is World Backup Day. We always stress here at HotHardware that you should backup all of your data frequently, because you never know when disaster will strike, be it an act of god or malware attack that renders your system unusable. Backups on Android and iOS devices In the smartphone realm, backups are pretty much taken care of for you automatically. Many Android OEMs offer automated mechanism that will backup your entire phone automatically at set interval. For iPhones, Apple allows for automated daily backups as long as your device is connected to a power outlet and Wi-Fi. These automated backups are also only possible...
Read more...
Earlier this year, Dropbox added a new beta feature called Dropbox Transfer. The idea was to make the delivering of files simpler for users, and the feature is now offered for all Dropbox users. Dropbox says that Dropbox Transfer is for times when a user needs to turn over an extensive collection of files to clients and others outside their company. The goal of the Transfer feature is to help users get over the issue with emails that are often limited to attachments no larger than 25MB. Dropbox Transfer supports sending up to 100GB of files with a few clicks. Users only need to select their files on a local hard drive or Dropbox account to create the transfer. The file transfer can also be password...
Read more...
If you're a Dropbox customer paying for the service, you'll be glad to know that a free storage upgrade is coming your way. Dropbox has updated its Business Standard plan from 2TB of data to 3TB for the same $12.50 per user per month charge. Dropbox says that these storage updates will allow users to upload more UHD video files, offload images from their smartphones, and share large files with clients (a la CADs). The Dropbox Professional plan for individuals is also seeing a storage increase, doubling in capacity from 1TB to 2TB for the same $16.58 per month. Dropbox Plus keeps its current $8.25 monthly rate and the same 1TB of storage space that money gets you. For teams needing all the...
Read more...
Dropbox will now meld with the Google Cloud, bringing users "one step closer to a world where our work comes together." Dropbox says that it will soon start to roll out a series of integrations that aim to make it easier to use its cloud storage service more effectively with Google productivity and collaboration tools. These integrations will include centralized content, which means that Dropbox users will be able to open, edit, save, share, and create Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Users will also be able to directly save content from Google's office applications to their Dropbox account. Dropbox Business admins will be able to manage Docs, Sheets, and Slide just as they can with any...
Read more...
The cloud is a highly competitive place, which makes perfect sense when you consider that so much of our daily lives exists online. And when it comes to work chores, for many users and businesses the cloud is a necessity, not a luxury. With that in mind, Microsoft is aggressively pursuing a larger chunk of the market with an enticing offer for OneDrive—make the switch from Google, Box, or Dropbox and play out the remainder of your contract for free. This is sort of like wireless carriers offering big credits to customers when they switch from a competitor. In Microsoft's case, however, it wants to make it easier for customers to jump ship from one of its major competitors and join OneDrive...
Read more...
If you are a heavy Plex user, you will be happy to know that a rather intriguing new feature has exited beta and is now available to all Plex Pass Subscribers. Plex Cloud allows you to bypass the use of a local home server for your media storage — which likely has to run 24-7-365 to provide immediate access to your videos, photos and music — in favor of directly streaming from a cloud storage service. In this case, Plex Cloud will allow you to directly interface with your OneDrive (personal), Dropbox or Google Drive accounts. Plex Cloud previously supported Amazon Drive during the beta period, but support was dropped after December 31st. “Unfortunately, the challenges with Amazon Drive have proven...
Read more...
Yesterday, we reported on Dropbox’s decision to kill off the public folders feature. Understandably, long-time Dropbox users who rely on the functionality were upset about news, although the company explained that it will not end support until September 1st, 2017. On such user, Richard K.26, took it upon himself to write an open letter to Dropbox explaining why public folders are so important to users, and why the company should reconsider axing the feature. “I’ve been using this handy feature ever since I first started with Dropbox many years ago,” writes Richard K.26. “It's very convenient to simply drop in a file, and grab the URL with a single click. Using your ‘Share Links’ feature takes...
Read more...
Very few people get upset when a company adds functionality to a popular product. However, taking away functionality that many rely on is a good way of attracting fervent negative reactions. Dropbox is finding this out the hard way with its decision to kill support for public folders. News of the change in policy was first widely made known yesterday via an email that Dropbox began sending to users. The message states: We’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Pro users will be able to use the Public folder until September 1, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in...
Read more...
More details about a previously disclosed security breach at cloud storage provider Dropbox have come to light. The hack itself is old news—it occurred back in 2012—but what's new is how many users were affected by it. Hackers made off with details belonging to north of 68 million Dropbox users, prompting a mass password reset. The folks at Motherboard got their mitts on a sample of files containing email addresses and hashed passwords of users affected by the Dropbox hack. The information is contained in four files totaling about 5GB, with details of 68,680,741 accounts. Apparently a senior Dropbox employee confirmed with the site that the info is real. It's a bit sobering to see so many...
Read more...
The cloud storage wars are ongoing, and Amazon is the latest to fire a salvo into the fray. The company announced today that it is launching two new storage plans to satiate your need to store every bit of your digital life in the clouds The first option costs just $11.99 per year, and gives you unlimited Cloud Drive storage for your photos and 5GB for anything else that you may want to store. The second option is a bit pricier at $59.99 per year, but that gives you unlimited storage for any file that you want to upload to Cloud Drive. Both plans come with a 3-month trial, so you plenty of time to take a test drive to see if Cloud Drive meshes well with your storage needs. “Most people have a...
Read more...
IBM's X-Force Application Security Research Team has discovered a severe bug that plagues the Dropbox SDK on Android, which apps can use to interact with the cloud storage service. Dubbed 'DroppedIn', unauthorized apps have been able to access a rogue Dropbox account, potentially allowing an attacker to grab data off of your device for their later perusal. The bug affects SDK version 1.5.4 through 1.6.1, and has been fixed as of 1.6.2. As serious as this bug is, it's nice to know that Dropbox wasted no time in fixing it. Security Intelligence notes that Dropbox responded to IBM's email about the bug within six minutes, and it confirmed the vulnerability within 24 hours. Finally, it patched the...
Read more...
Microsoft really wants to get people hooked on its OneDrive cloud storage service. The company already provides unlimited OneDrive storage with an Office 365 subscription, but earlier this month it offered a perk to entice users that haven’t already made the plunge by offering 100GB of storage available for free (for two years we might add) just by signing up for Bing Rewards. Today, Microsoft is offering up another 100GB of free storage for a year if you’re an existing Dropbox user. The steps are pretty simple: Go to Microsoft’s promotion page and clock “Verify and get my storage”Sign in to your Microsoft account. If you don’t have one, you can register hereOnce logged in, click the “Save to...
Read more...
Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has shown a surprising amount of “love” for its competitors. It has provided high-functioning Office apps to iOS and Android users well ahead of solutions for its own Windows Phone platform. It has even partnered with Dropbox, which goes head-to-head with Microsoft’s own OneDrive online cloud storage solution. Today, Microsoft has even more love to share, as it is taking steps to offer more robust cloud storage integration into its Office apps. That starts today with the addition of updated iOS Office apps that allow users to “open, edit and save documents from these [third-party cloud storage providers] right from within Office.” That means that iOS users can...
Read more...
If you use Dropbox, you almost certainly know by now about the company’s partnership with Microsoft to offer better compatibility between Dropbox and Office – something users had been calling for. Now, the partnership has produced another gem for Dropbox users: the long-awaited Dropbox app for Windows phones and tablets.A screenshot of the Dropbox app in the Windows Store. The app doesn’t add many new features to Dropbox, but it does give you features that whatever third-party app you’ve been using might not have. The most interesting new feature is that it lets you pin Dropbox folders to your Start screen, so you don’t have to go through the app to open your favorite folders. The app can automatically...
Read more...
It might not be its main business, but cloud storage is something Microsoft takes very seriously, and lately, it seems like the company takes great pleasure in getting under the skin of its competitors. This past summer, the company followed-up Google's decision to offer 1TB for 10 bucks a month with the same kind of plan, and afterwards, many questioned what Dropbox's next move would be. Well, it took just two months to find out - Dropbox would also be offering a 1TB plan for $10 a month. I'd like to think at that point, Google and Dropbox hoped Microsoft would chill for a while, but Redmond was having none of it. Just last Monday, the company announced that it'd be offering unlimited storage...
Read more...
You may have read in the news that hackers infiltrated Dropbox, stole seven million usernames and passwords, and then posted a portion of those login credentials online. Those reports stem from an anonymous post on Pastebin.com containing what the author claims is a data dump of 400 Dropbox accounts, calling it the "first teaser" of 6,937,081 hacked accounts. However, Dropbox says the leaked info is from other services. "Recent news articles claiming that Dropbox was hacked aren’t true. Your stuff is safe. The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across...
Read more...
Events of the past year or so have really highlighted the importance of both our security and privacy, but the sad fact of the matter is, the majority of people don't take simple precautions to vastly improve either of those things. Take two-step authentication, for example. It's widely available, but not widely used. A new consortium headed by Google and Dropbox aims to fix that. At this point, the joint venture is extremely modest, but it's in the midst of hiring people that will help get its show on the road. It claims, "We have expertise in usability research, design, software development, and product management, and are supported by a diverse set of advisors and partners." Also, to help...
Read more...
When Google began offering its Drive customers a huge 1TB worth of cloud storage for just $10 per month back in March, it seemed inevitable that its competitors would soon follow-suit. In June, Microsoft was the first to do so, offering 1TB as a perk to its Office 365 subscribers. Today, Dropbox has finally joined in as well, which is major mostly because this is a company that infamously holds off on adjusting its plans even when competition heats up. Today, the company has effectively merged all of its Pro accounts into one, offering everyone huge 1TB storage for just $10/mo. Those needing business-class features can gain the same storage plus other admin features for $15/mo. Considering the...
Read more...
Dropbox helped pioneer the concept of the cloud by offering users a free and easy way to store and sync files on the web so that they're accessible (and look the same) from any PC or mobile device with an Internet connection. Company founder Drew Houston initially created the app for his own personal use, though quickly realized others could benefit from it as well. Fast forward to today and Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud services out there, albeit it's a much more competitive landscape than it was several years ago. Rather than concede the market to the competition, Dropbox this week has come out swinging with a bunch of new features, including Carousel, a photo and video sharing app...
Read more...
Dropbox is a hugely popular cloud storage and sharing service with individuals, but the company has its eye on the enterprise market, for sure. That couldn’t be clearer with the company’s acquisition of Zulip, a messaging service that’s not yet even out of private beta. Zulip’s integration into Dropbox wasn’t supposed to be public for a few more weeks, but TechCrunch acquired a letter from Zulip to its users that let the news slip early. Credit: TechCrunch Zulip is designed to focus more on conversations on various topics rather than simple one-to-one chats, and it uses threaded replies and subsections, too. For instance, as you can see in the screenshot, a topic...
Read more...
The consumer-level cloud storage market is a highly competitive one, and Google is taking things up a notch (or is it down?) by deeply cutting the cost for Google Drive storage. The monthly cost for 100GB is now $1.99, and it’s $9.99 for 1TB. Google has also added a new 10TB tier for $99.99 per month. Previously, 100GB cost $4.99 per month, and $49.99 was what you paid for 1TB of storage. Users can still have 15GB of Google Drive storage for free, and the high-end storage options don’t end with 10TB; 20TB is $199.99 per month, and 30TB is $299.99 per month. That’s a lot of numbers to digest all at once, but here’s arguably the most important one: 1TB of cloud storage for...
Read more...
Make no mistake--Microsoft’s new OneDrive cloud storage solution is little more than a simple re-branding of SkyDrive, a change the company was forced to make after it opted out of a trademark spat with BSkyB over the service’s original name. “Little more”, that is, because Microsoft is taking the opportunity to add a few features to OneDrive for today’s official rollout. First, although OneDrive users still get 7GB of free cloud storage, they can earn up to an additional 5GB of additional storage in increments of 500MB for those who successfully invite friends to the service (a la Dropbox). Users can also get another 3GB of storage by opting in to the camera backup...
Read more...
