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Paid Dropbox users are getting 1TB more storage space today
Dropbox has spent much of the last few years focused on its products for enterprise business, but the company got its start by offering a simple, reasonably priced cloud storage and sync option. With major competition in the space from Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Apple iCloud, Dropbox today is making its plans a bit more enticing. The first Dropbox paid tier, called plus, now has 2TB of storage, double what it had before and the same as you'll get with similar $10/month plans from Google and Apple. The catch is that Dropbox Plus only costs $10 per month if you sign up for an annual plan -- otherwise, you'll now be billed $11.99 per month. That's still a bit more expensive than the competition, but it's definitely closer than it was before. And Dropbox was quick to point out that it makes all its revenue through subscriptions, so it's not selling your personal information. Given the intense interest in user privacy these days, it's not surprising to see them taking an Apple-like stance when comparing its service to Google's products.
Google Docs can now be edited inside of Dropbox
It's been more than a year since Dropbox and Google announced that they would partner to make their products (including Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Slides) work better together. The Gmail / Dropbox integration launched last summer, and now we're getting to the main event. Starting today, Dropbox Business customers can participate in an open beta program that makes Google Docs, Sheet and Slides work natively in Dropbox.
Dropbox brings its simple mobile search to the desktop
Dropbox has given its search function for desktop a much-needed boost by making it more like its mobile app counterpart. Now, when you tap on the little Dropbox icon sitting on Windows' system tray or Mac's menu bar, you'll find a search bar where you can type in your query. Its results will include not just the files synced and saved on your computer, but everything relevant it can find in your account. If you have a Professional or Business account, it can even search for text within documents.
Dropbox limits free accounts to three linked devices
If you're used to linking Dropbox to every device you own, you might want to reach for your credit card. Liliputing has noticed that Dropbox quietly started limiting its free Basic tier to a maximum of three linked devices as of March. If that's too confining, you'll have to shell out for a $10 Plus or $20 Professional subscription. You can keep any links you've already established, but you won't get to add any more until you go below that three-device maximum.
Dropbox lets users leave comments at specific times in videos
Video editors who collaborate on clips using Dropbox should appreciate a new feature the company is introducing today. "Time-based comments" are exactly what they sound like: users can now drop a comment at a specific time stamp on a video, making it a lot easier to specify exactly where an editor might want a change to be made. As with all other Dropbox comments, you can @ mention specific users to get their attention, making it a bit less likely that a requested change will just sit there without being addressed.
Dropbox taps third-party apps for file editing on the web
Dropbox started out as a simple online vault for your most important files, but over the years the company moved from just having a place to store and share documents to a place where you can get collaborative work done on them. Today, Dropbox is announcing a new tool called Extensions that'll make it a lot easier to get basic tasks done through the Dropbox web interface. Thanks to partnerships with a host of software companies like Adobe, DocuSign, Vimeo, Nitro, Pixlr and Smallpdf, Dropbox users will be able to run various "workflows" to edit files on the web without having to download anything or open any apps.
Dropbox's collaboration tool adds timelines to coordinate your team
Dropbox's collaboration-focused Paper tool just became much more useful if your team is juggling multiple schedules. The company's answer to Google Docs now has a timelines feature that lets you track who's working on a project and when. You can set milestones (such as due dates), assign members, write notes and attach relevant files. Your timeline view is flexible, too, letting you glance at the entire year or drill down to your team's week-by-week challenges.
Google introduces Gmail integrations for Dropbox, Box and more
Today, Google announced new Gmail integrations for G Suite, which is its enterprise offering for business. Now G Suite users will be able to perform actions for popular apps directly from Gmail.
Dropbox text recognition makes it easier to find images and PDFs
There's nothing worse than having to pore over a pile of PDFs containing documents scanned as images when you quickly have to find a specific file. Dropbox is making it easier to do that by introducing automatic image recognition, which extracts texts from photos and PDFs and makes them searchable. According to the cloud storage provider, there are 20 billion image and PDF files stored on Dropbox. Around 10 to 20 percent of those are photos of documents, so the new feature can be very, very useful.
Some Dropbox users are getting an extra 1TB for free
Dropbox Professional and Business Standard users have more storage to play with starting today, as the company is bumping up the capacity on each plan by 1TB. Professional users now have double the space with 2TB, and Business Standard teams will share 3TB between their members.
Dropbox just made it easier to find your files in Gmail
A few years ago, Dropbox partnered with Microsoft, and the official line about the partnership was that the cloud-storage company wanted to help its users work better and easier in the tools they're already used to. For untold millions, Microsoft Office is a big part of that workflow, so tying Dropbox tightly into Office made both services work better. Today, Dropbox is doing the same thing with Google. A partnership between the two companies was announced earlier this year, and today we're seeing the first product: a Dropbox add-on for Gmail.
Engineer stashed Navy drone trade secrets in his personal Dropbox
Trade secret theft allegations are serious enough in the corporate world, but they're particularly grave when they involve military projects. And one contractor is learning that the hard way. A Connecticut federal court has found electrical engineer Jared Sparks guilty of six trade secret theft and transmission charges after he took files relating to underwater drones built for the US Navy's Office of Naval Research. When contemplating a switch of jobs from drone builder LBI to its software partner Charles River Analytics, he uploaded "thousands" of his then-current employer's sensitive files to his personal Dropbox account, including accounting and engineering data as well as design-related photos and renders.
Tesla wants former employee's data from Dropbox and Facebook
The saga of Tesla and its case against former employee (and alleged saboteur) Martin Tripp continues this week with a subpoena against tech companies that include Facebook and Dropbox, which was granted yesterday. Specifically, Tesla is trying to gather all the data that Tripp allegedly uploaded and shared with outside parties, and it believes these companies hold it.
Dropbox lets you preview more file types without having to download
If you've ever received a ZIP or RAR file in Gmail, you'll have noticed that you can peek to see what's inside without having to download the file. If you've been hoping for a similar feature elsewhere, you're in luck: Dropbox has updated how it handles previews for a bunch of file types. You can explore a ZIP or RAR file's structure, and preview things like images without having to waste time and bandwidth on downloads if the contents aren't useful.
Dropbox's mobile apps make it easier to find, track and share your files
Dropbox finally went public at the beginning this year, and over the last month or two the company has made numerous improvements to a wide variety of its services. The latest to go under the knife are the Dropbox iOS and Android apps, which get a handful of new features today that the company says are focused on helping users stay in sync with their teams when they are on the go.
Dropbox's Paper documents app now supports custom layouts
Dropbox has been pushing out a bunch of updates to its core products over the last few weeks, and its collaborative document-building service Paper is the latest to get some major tweaks. As of today, Dropbox is adding the ability to build Paper templates and share them with an entire organization, if you're working in a big business setting. Whether you're in a large company or just using Paper solo, templates should make it a lot easier to re-use layouts that you've built.
Dropbox gets full-screen iPad navigation and drag-and-drop for iOS
You know how an iPad's screen real estate is wasted on Dropbox? Well, it's wasted no more. The file hosting service has rolled out a pretty meaty update for Apple devices, which includes full-screen file navigation for Cupertino's tablets. Just collapse the preview pane to see files' full names, so you can be sure you're clicking on unbelievablylengthyfilename01 instead of unbelievablylengthyfilename02. You'll also notice that you can now drag and drop files around when you tap and hold them -- so long as your device is running iOS 11 -- making it easier to arrange them a certain way or organize them in folders.
Dropbox's Showcase presentation tools are faster and more flexible
Since going public earlier this year, Dropbox has been steadily rolling out new features to its all-important business customers. Earlier this month, the company's Smart Sync feature had a wide release after several years of testing, and today Dropbox is announcing an expansion of the visual "Showcase" portfolio-sharing tools it introduced last fall. If you haven't seen it, Showcases are meant to be a more distinctive way to share a group of files; instead of just providing links to folders, Showcases feature large images and headers alongside rich previews of the files contained inside.
Dropbox Smart Sync is finally available to all business users
It's been a few years since Dropbox first started talking about Smart Sync, a feature that lets users see everything stored in their Dropbox in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, regardless of whether that file is available locally or stored in the cloud. Everything stored in Dropbox shows up in your native file browser, but does so without eating up hundreds of gigabytes of storage -- a feature particularly useful for large teams or businesses with massive file systems. After a few years of development and an early access program, Dropbox is releasing Smart Sync for all its business customers.
Czech Republic extradites suspected Russian hacker to the US
The Czech Republic has extradited Russian national Yevgeniy Nikulin to the United States, where he's accused of several hacking attempts dating back to 2012. A US federal grand jury had indicted him in 2016 for breaking into DropBox, Formspring and LinkedIn. The latter breach potentially exposed the information of 100 million of users.
