14 DAY TRIAL // Drew Houston, the developer of an amazing cross-platform file-sharing solution called Dropbox, has just announced the program's first public release. Up until this point, Dropbox has been in private / invitation-only beta, but now everyone is welcome to download the free software (2GB space) and try it out.
“It started in Boston’s South Station in November 2006 where, one night, while waiting for the Chinatown bus to New York, I wrote the first lines of code of what eventually became Dropbox,” Houston reveals on the Dropbox Blog. “There are few visible remnants of our humble beginnings, but the spirit remains the same,” he further explains. “In the meantime, we’ve built an amazing team, work with fantastic investors, and most importantly have been fortunate enough to have tens of thousands of people from all over the world try Dropbox and participate in our vibrant community.”
Thanks to the tremendous amount of feedback the Dropbox team has received, they were able to quickly assemble a more stable version of the program, which is now live and available for the whole world to use. Dropbox works beautifully on Apple's Macs and iPhone, but the software is cross-platform, meaning you can make changes on your Mac at work, and see them reflected on your PC at home. If you need your files before getting home, just fire up Dropbox on your iPhone and your files are synced across all your systems.
“...After what’s been a long wait for many of the folks on our beta list, and a great launch at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco... Dropbox is finally publicly available for everyone to try,” says Houston. “We developed an iPhone-optimized interface that lets you get to your Dropbox from anywhere, including special support for photo galleries,” the developer adds.
According to the same blog post, you'll be able to buy a 50GB Dropbox account for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year, starting next week. For those who've participated in the private beta, their 2GB accounts are intact, and will always be, according to Houston. Also, everyone can now make a 2GB free Dropbox account – no invitation required. So, go on, download the software to backup, sync and share files easier than ever before.