PastorHacks

I Heart DropBox

I can't tell you how much I am using, and loving, DropBox right now...

I have all my sermons on it- no more losing sermons to hard drive failure- ever. 

And the new, very slick iPhone interface means I have access to all my documents, all the time. Pretty freakin' incredible. 

I use it to drop graphics files to those preparing MedisShout.

We've discovered that it works great for preparing a MediaShout (or Powerpoint/Keynote, etc) presentation on one computer and having it instantly available and runnable on another. 

I drop big music files in it's public folder and can email song suggestions to musicians by including the public links. No more 8mb emails!

Works great for document sharing, and unlike GoogleDocs, I don't have to be online to get at it. It'll even track revisions. 

I love it so much, I'm seriously considering upgrading from the free 2gig account to the more beefy 50gig (though with all the usage, I'm still only at 37% of filling up that free account amount).

Dropbox open to all

Dropbox has quickly become one of my favorite and most used tools. 

I archive all my important documents on it (I've lost one too many sermons in hard drive FAILS...) and use it to transfer large files or large amounts of files to various folks on our staff and in our community. I have shared folders with a growing number of people. 

I'm even working on a way where one person can design a Shout Script on their laptop, save it to dropbox and someone else could run it on another computer. Freaking awesome. 

Dropbox is free for 2gig of storage and cheap for 50gig. You really need to check this out!

2 caveats- When you place a folder or file in your "dropbox" you are really moving it from one place on your harddrive to another place- and from that place it will constantly be backed up to the cloud. 

What this means is that when I placed my "sermons" folder in my dropbox, it disappeared from my Documents folder. Well... that's no good. I like it in my documents folder. Easy fix. 

I went into dropbox, created an alias of my sermon folder and dropped it back into my documents folder. Voila'. Just the way I was used to, but now, with automatic backup. 

Also- in the world of shared folders...

I've discovered that in a shared folder with someone, if that person drags a doc out of their dropbox onto their desktop, say... it doesn't just copy to their desktop. It also disappears from dropbox. I have to advise people to copy and paste when they want to grab a file, like a movie (unless it's something we're collaborating on)

Another free back-up/sync solution...

Joel Bordeaux, in the comments to the last entry on DropBox said this:

"As a die-hard mac guy, I am almost ashamed to say that I have relied heavily on a free Microsoft product for instant and redundant back-ups for almost 2 years.

It's called Foldershare, and it's free, and it rocks.

It has saved me a few times now, and it's nice to be able to access the documents from any mac or pc with an internet connection. (I was able to search through all of my sermon notes when asked to preach while in Russia.)

I recommend multiple, instant, and redundant back-ups of all your important files."

DropBox!

Okay- thanks to John in the comments who turned me on to DropBox. I had seen it talked about elsewhere, but lacked a beta code for trying it out. 

But since I've lost a few sermons here and there over the past couple of months due to inconsistent backups, I knew I needed an always on, immediately syncing/backing up solution. 

Enter DropBox.   Dead simple backup with 2gigs of space. And free! I installed the program (Mac OR PC), clicked the taskbar icon, dragged my sermon folder to the window and... voila'. Backed up.

A simple test confirmed- I opened last week's sermon, made one change and saved and... instantly backed up. 

Files, folders, pictures, music- whatever. Drag and drop and FORGET. That's the best part. I have backups elsewhere, but nothing that automatically backs up the moment I make a change.  

Seriously- why can't .Mac Mobile Me make it this simple? I feel like this is the utility I have been waiting all my life for... 

Okay- a little hyperbole, but when I think of the masterpieces I have lost due to hard-drive crashes between backups...

I have 10 invites for those that want 'em- give a shout out in the comments and I'll pass them on later today. 

Trust me- I think you want to use DropBox.