HOW TO: Stream Music, Host a Website & More Using Dropbox

Dropbox is an amazing service that makes storing files on the cloud extremely easy.  The application can be used to integrate the service with your operating system seamlessly, giving you access to your Dropbox no matter where you are.There are also some tricks you can have Dropbox do of which you may not be aware.

Sharing Photos

This one isn’t necessarily hidden, in fact, Dropbox tells you how to do this. In every Dropbox account, there is a “Photos” directory.  You can create folders in this directory–dragging and dropping photos into them once they’ve been created.  Right click on the folder, go to Dropbox, and go to “Copy gallery link”.  Send the link to your friends, and you’re set!  The gallery interface is very attractive and doesn’t use Flash at all, making it convenient to use.

Host a Simple Website

As stated on top product pages, each Dropbox account comes with a “Public” folder, which is where you can have files up for download.  The nice thing about the public folder is that you can use it to host a simple website, such as something created using iWeb or using a custom WordPress website design.  Simply create a folder in the public folder, and dump your website into that folder.  Right click on your “index.html” or “index.htm” file, go to Dropbox and go to “Copy public link”.  Now you have the URL of your website that you can send to friends!

While this shouldn’t be used for websites that will receive major traffic, this would be a perfect way to host your portfolio, or perhaps a site to host information regarding your grandparent’s anniversary. You’ll need professional web designers if you need a website for your business.  Then when choosing a web designer, you should also look at the best packages for web design as that way you can get exactly what you need. As a web developer, I’ve used it in the past to store sites I was developing, so the client can easily see them without any issues. If you’re planning on creating a more optimized website then make sure you have proper wordpress hosting plans.

Collaboration

Dropbox makes it incredibly easy to collaborate on projects.  Simply create some sort of project in a folder in your Dropbox, and share the folder with your team members.  If the team member doesn’t have a Dropbox account, they will be forced to sign up for one.

Why does Dropbox make it easy for collaboration?  First of all, it automatically keeps files in sync.  Second of all, there’s the ability to restore previously restored versions of files (a la OS X Lion).  Let’s say your team member made a bad mistake on a document.  Go into the Dropbox website, login, and navigate to the affected file.  Click anywhere that’s not on the name of the file.  Click on “Previous versions” on the dropdown menu that appears.

Choose which version to restore, and click on the Restore button.  You can also preview each version by clicking on the magnifying glass.

Music Streaming

Yes, you can even stream music using Dropbox, although it doesn’t have as many features as some other services out there.  Simply upload or drag and drop your music to the Public directory, and you can stream it from anywhere.  It’s not the most robust system, but it’s doable.  You can also use other services such as Opentape to have a nicer interface.

Game Anywhere

Do you game a lot?  Often find yourself frustrated because on one computer, you rescued the princess, but on another, you’re still can’t get past Level 8-2?  Dropbox can save you – simply save your save game files inside your Dropbox.

Unfortunately, for some Windows games, they save automatically and won’t let you have a choice of where to save your file.  This is because all game files are saved in a “My Saved Games” or “My Games” directory in the Documents folder of your Fortunately, there’s a fix for that too, however, do not do this unless you are comfortable with a command line:

Open up your command line as an administrator (the easiest way is to search for cmd, and then right click & choose ‘Run As Administrator’), and type in this command:

mklink /D “[path to your dropbox]\My Games” “C:\Users\[your user name]\Documents\My Games”

where [path to your dropbox] is the path to your dropbox, and [your user name] is the user name you want to use on your computer.

Now, those games that don’t allow you to choose where to save will automatically be synced!

ToDo.txt

If you need to keep a list of things to do, you can create one and keep it in sync, no matter what computer you are on.  Just create a file called “ToDo.txt” (or something similar) on your Dropbox, and there you go!  Since Dropbox has mobile apps for every major mobile operating system, you can also check the list on your phone, too.

If you use Android, there’s a special task manager that can read your ToDo.txt on your Dropbox, and gives you an in-depth interface to use it called Todo.txt.   Some people will definitely prefer this option versus using Dropbox’s mobile app.

You can find out many more tips about your favorite software & hardware, just by reading GeekBeat.TV! Do you have your own favorite Dropbox tips? Let us know in the comments!