Don’t know if anyone is interested but I can currently invite people to try out the excellent Dropbox. It’s basically online storage with version control and it’s cross platform. According to the forums it also works nicely with Scrivener. Send me an email at rbrimhall at gmail dot com and mention Lit and Lat and I will send you an invite.
http://getdropbox.com
Well, I sent out 5 invites and I am now maxed out. Hopefully those I invited will share the wealth.
I have no idea how many invites I now have, but I’m guessing it’s the same. I’ve already used a couple, but I’ll gladly give out any others as Robert did. Email me at antony.johnston@gmail.com with LIT&LAT as the subject line.
I’ve been playing with Dropbox for a bit now, and am seriously impressed. In short, it’s what iDisk (with autosync) is supposed to be.
I browsed the Dropbox forums a bit, and someone reported a bug with Scrivener projects. The developers downloaded Scrivener, diagnosed the bug, and released a fix within a couple of days. That was before I joined; I’ve had zero problems with Scrivener files. (Dropbox plays well with OS X packages in general.)
I’d still feel a little nervous about trusting a very important project to Dropbox, but it’s by far the best software of this type I’ve ever seen–easily better than iDisk or FolderShare.
Yeah, I’m seriously impressed too. It solves the problem of working on important files that are networked, because the files are really just local files that are being constantly monitored, and I love that I can get at data through a web browser, or even a Windows computer. I think for collaboration, it might be nice to have a check-in/out system in place. Say as an option enabled on a folder or even file level. Versions are already tracked, but right now two people could create a mess of a file if they both have it open.
For Scrivener, it looks like it still might be a good idea to turn down auto-save a bit. Since the file is local, you don’t have the latency issues—but with the default settings you’ll end up with thousands of deltas. Unfortunately, this doesn’t reduce ui.xml updates. That file is going to be updated every time you click on nearly anything.
I think the one thing I would really like to see is the ability to tag folders and files in the existing folder structure as synchronised. I have everything organised in a very precise and logical way—and having to move the things I want distributed, to a special folder, is a bit annoying.
Amber, you can use symlinks within the dropbox folder. I realize it’s a hack, but the developers say it works fine.
Actually that doesn’t strike me as a hack at all, but I’m comfortable with this UNIX-y way of doing things. Seems to work (mostly) splendidly; thanks for the tip. For me, the “synching” icon never goes away, even after it is certainly finished. Perhaps that is what you meant by hackish?
Colour me very impressed, too. At the moment I’m just using it as a substitute for my previous (and well-documented around these parts, so I won’t go into it again 
) manual backup/synch system, on my ftp server.
I’m not working on live files - I know they say it works, but I’m nervous about doing that with a package-based app like Scriv - but simply making a ZIPped backup when finished, then moving the backup to the local DropBox folder. When I move to another computer I just open up the DropBox folder on that Mac, expand the ZIP and move out the expanded Scriv file to begin work.
Simple, intuituve, drag-and-drop. I love it.
To obtain the beta access you need an invite or access code.
I used MAKEUSEOF no capitalisation and got in.
Received 2gb of storage,
It is good, What Idisk should be. Opens fast. Cannot really tell the difference between HD and online storage,
Like Antony I am concerned as I want backup and accesss not an alternative drive. But we shall see how it goes.
Paul
I’m not really “concerned”, I’m just not using it for files that will be worked on live. That’s fine, I don’t need that anyway. I’m paranoid enough about my backups that copying a ZIPped version to the dropbox folder when I’ve finished a work session is no bother, and just part of the routine.
By the way, I have now run out of invites, sorry. Hopefully the access code Paul mentions will work instead.
Count me in the impressed group. I like that I can use this at work when I need to get at something that was previously at home on my Mac. I’m basically replacing my thumb drive at this point which is nice b/c I always forgot it/misplaced it anyway. Still not sure if I will pay for the service once it’s out of beta… guess it depends on the cost.
There is a free service with 25GB called Humyo but there is no comparison.
Dropbox is a Ferrari compared to Humyo’s Morris Minor.
Paul
I don’t know where to put this acces code. Could you help me?
I’m quite impressed by the screencast, and I would love to test this service.
Just try logging in without filling in any user name or password. There’ll be a link to sign up on the next site. It worked instantly and I got a 2GB account too.
It works. Thank you!
Sorry for asking such a naive question, but how can I get this to work? Let’s say I have a folder called “school” in my documents folder. How do I create a symlink so that Dropbox can sync it automatically?
Thank you for explaining ^^;
Flo
Any one got an invite to Dropbox available?
Much appreciated.
Michael
Use the access code Paul (hatsuyuk) mentioned, it works as expected.
And if you ask kindly the developper, you can get a 5 GB account. He even told me that he could give me more than 5 GB!
This seems to no longer work…