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My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

getdropbox.com

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Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#51

Post by dhouston »

blakeross wrote: post #49
dhouston wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks :) a linux port is doable (mac will come first) -- everything's written in python and was designed from the outset to be portable. although this isn't the initial focus of dropbox, a linux port would be interesting for maintaining small web sites or web apps -- instead of using scp/sftp or equivalent you could just modify the files on your desktop and have them synced to your web host.

All written in Python? I'd love to know a bit more about what you're doing if you can share. I put together a similar tool last year for myself (Windows-only) using NTFS' USN journal, but it sounds like you're doing something different. The app looks great.

yup; i'd be happy to talk offline about it; shoot me an email at drew@getdropbox.com .

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#52

Post by vlad »

zkinion wrote: post #48

It looks great man. I know you'll be accepted. The writing is on the wall. Posting your video here just seals the deal, and puts yourself out there. I didn't apply to YC, but if I did, I'd be putting my stuff up here as well. I'm surprized nobody else has posted like you did. That takes some balls and self-belief. I didn't agree with some of the things you've said before, like IP rules, etc. but you've earned my resp…

I don't know if he applied; he has tried before and was rejected. Way to represent the lone rangers!

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#53

Post by noisemaker »

jganetsk wrote: post #39
ashu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon S3

Look at the prices for S3: $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used. $0.20 per GB of data transferred. So, that means Dropbox is going to have to resell S3 at a premium for the added value of these nice Coda-like features. Would you pay a premium for these Dropbox features? Maybe, I don't know. Also, what's the typical use case? How much bandwidth/storage are people going to consume? Because, if I store 100 megabytes... my…

I think the larger issue is about getting user adoption. It is actually great case to have a situation where users overwhelm your service in a way that it outgrows a system such as this. If he ever gets that large, obviously there will be plenty of people looking to help him figure out how to make the storage portion feasible.

More interesting is the user experience. Creating something users can enjoy, agree with, and possibly part money for is a much more difficult problem to solve than figuring out to make large scale storage cost effective.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#55

Post by soeren »

jganetsk wrote: post #33

How are you going to scale up your storage to meet the demands of the users? Are you doing something clever, like Google Filesystem? This is not an easy problem, if you aren't prepared for it in advance. If 10,000 users sign up tomorrow... you might be very very hosed, as opposed to very very happy.

The linked computers can be used for a kind of distributed storage system (like GFS). Say each user shares an amount of storage resources and can use a specific amount of storage of the system. If the users are willing to accept such a deal, you can reduce the cost of your own storage resources. A major problem of course is the reliability of the system.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#56

Post by vlad »

Sam_Odio wrote: post #50
dhouston wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks :) a linux port is doable (mac will come first) -- everything's written in python and was designed from the outset to be portable. although this isn't the initial focus of dropbox, a linux port would be interesting for maintaining small web sites or web apps -- instead of using scp/sftp or equivalent you could just modify the files on your desktop and have them synced to your web host.

Hey Drew, Congrats on a great product. A linux port would be great for servers - I'm always rsyncing stuff between my linux boxes. For those who don't have shell access though, it would be cool if you integrated the service with (S)FTP. I don't even think you'd need to sync to the server. Just giving the user the ability push his/her dropbox public folder to a server using (S)FTP would give your software several new…

+1 on being able to specify a folder inside the dropbox as a "server" folder, which means it has it's own ftp address, user, and password settings. Anything dragged there is automatically synched with that account. I thought of this as well as soon as I read that post about Linux support, as this would work with shared hosting without expecting hosts to install dropbox on their linux boxes. And the data would be backed up as well automatically in a third place (the drop box.) And, you'd have access to retrieve an older version of a file. This basically replaces the need for FTP clients if you also add a way to chmod the folders inside the "server" folder. Sam is 100% right.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#57

Post by vlad »

nickb wrote: post #31

The only problem is that you have to install something. See, it's not the same as USB drive. Most corporate laptops are locked and you can't install anything on them. That's gonna be the problem. Also, another point where your USB comparison fails is that USB works in places where you don't have internet access. My suggestion is to drop the "Throw away your USB drive" tag line and use something else... it will just m…

What about this on the download page (also good for a press release.)

Drop Box: Automatically safeguards even your biggest worries, so you don't have any!

What is a Drop Box?

Your Drop Box is a File Cabinet that Follows You Around Everywhere You Want to Go, Across Your Computers, or Across The Country.

Download and start using it today. (link goes here.)

Your Drop Box includes your own Secretary who Files and Photocopies Every Document You Make or Edit, So You Can See What Each Document Looked Like Yesterday, Two Days Ago, or at Any Point In Time. Did I Mention the Secretary and the File Cabinet are Fire-Proof and Wireless?

But, it's all digital. And, it's secure. And it's built to work between as many Windows desktops or laptop computer you use at NO EXTRA COST! See for yourself! (another link to the download.)

Or, access your files at work from a web-based interface! It's so flexible!

Q: Do I have to change how I work?

A: Absolutely not. Any file and folder (Word documents, spreadsheets, family photos, etc) you add to your Drop Box folder is automatically synchronized and saved remotely.

Q: What is the Drop Box folder?

A: It's just a special folder which will appear on your computer. Anything added to it is automatically saved, synchronized, and "dated" so you can go back in time!

Try it now! (another download link) It's safe, it's free, and you can use it on as many computers to share, backup, and keep archived file versions on, as you need to, by registering for just one account!

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#58

Post by zkinion »

vlad wrote: post #52
zkinion wrote: post #48

It looks great man. I know you'll be accepted. The writing is on the wall. Posting your video here just seals the deal, and puts yourself out there. I didn't apply to YC, but if I did, I'd be putting my stuff up here as well. I'm surprized nobody else has posted like you did. That takes some balls and self-belief. I didn't agree with some of the things you've said before, like IP rules, etc. but you've earned my resp…

I don't know if he applied; he has tried before and was rejected. Way to represent the lone rangers!

I'm guessing he did, though I may be wrong. The thread title was "...YC app..." something like that.

I don't see how after that video and that post how he wouldn't be accepted unless the YC people have some pre-existing opinions about the future of online storage.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#59

Post by jganetsk »

soeren wrote: post #55
jganetsk wrote: post #33

How are you going to scale up your storage to meet the demands of the users? Are you doing something clever, like Google Filesystem? This is not an easy problem, if you aren't prepared for it in advance. If 10,000 users sign up tomorrow... you might be very very hosed, as opposed to very very happy.

The linked computers can be used for a kind of distributed storage system (like GFS). Say each user shares an amount of storage resources and can use a specific amount of storage of the system. If the users are willing to accept such a deal, you can reduce the cost of your own storage resources. A major problem of course is the reliability of the system.

There's a recent research project called Farsite which tries to answer these questions.

http://research.microsoft.com/~adya/pubs/osdi2002.pdf

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#60

Post by BrandonM »

I have a few qualms with this app:

1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.

3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

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