Shameless Plug Alert

I’ll tell you this right up front:  For every person I get to sign up for Dropbox, I get 250MB extra storage for free (Up to 6GB).  Before you zip off the page ‘cause you think I'm selling something, this is a totally free service for 2GB or online storage, and if you sign up through my link, you get the extra 250MB too.  You can purchase more if you want to, but for 2GB it costs nothing.

I used to carry a portable hard drive from school to home and back that had all my school worksheets, spreadsheets and other papers.  I worked on them right off the portable hard drive because I got tired of forgetting which files had the updated stuff, and if I worked on something at school and then at home, I’d have new stuff on both.  This way I had only one copy.

A couple of months ago the principal at my new school told me about Dropbox.  I install a small program on any computer, it creates a Dropbox folder in “my documents” and as long as I’m connected to the internet, as soon as I put a new document in that folder, or update one that is already there, it synchronizes that folder with my online storage.

So, if I work on my seating charts at home and save them in the Dropbox folder, as soon as I get to school and connect to the internet the Dropbox folder there is updated and I have the new stuff at school.  No more carrying the hard drive.

I also have online access to the storage, so if I’m at a computer that does not have my Dropbox  programmed, I can just get online and download, work on and then upload the changes back to all my usual computers.

I’ve been using it, going back and forth to school, for the last couple months now and have had no problems at all with it.  I love it, can’t imagine doing without it.

Some of the drawbacks:

• I don’t know what kinds of problems would arise if two people were working from the same folder, on the same file.  How would it know which one to keep?
• If what you want to keep in it is a lot of pictures, don’t bother.  2GB isn’t going to hold too many pictures (unless they’re small).  That’s why I’m keeping the hard drive, to shuttle any pictures back and forth.
• I also wouldn’t put any sensitive information on there.  It seems to be pretty secure, but I’m just paranoid like that.  My school stuff, although it has grades and other information, is not something anyone is going to get away with a lot of mischief with.

So, if you think you may be interested, please use the link below so that we both get credit for the extra 250MB.  If it sounds like something you’d never use, wouldn’t want to use, then no big deal.  The only stake I have in your trying this is an extra quarter GB.

If you are interested in how these companies make money off this, I learned this when I was the School Technology Specialist at the high school:
After the initial start up costs, the cost of an extra 2GB memory is so negligible that if they can get one out of every hundred people to sign up for the $10 or $20 monthly fee, they’re making a profit.  This is the same with things like gmail, Blogger and all these other online business that offer free memory space.  If one out every 100 blogs signs up for the advertising, they’re making money.