Okay, okay. So I know that 2010 is already 1/12th over, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to make our traditional Resolutions post. I should mention that lots of new stuff happened in 2009 including (but def. not limited to) a new web redesign, two client releases, an iPhone app, and several million users too!

On that note, here are the team’s resolutions for 2010:

Drew
I will seek rehab for my Starbucks addiction.

Arash
I resolve to get my life together. Again.

Aston
Play in a band (Didn’t I say that in 2009?)

Jon
I resolve to finally make the Dropbox store a reality.

Rajiv
I resolve to become Justin Kan.

Rian
My New Year’s res is to harness as much dark energy as I can in my quest to become the most powerful being in the galaxy.

Mike H
I resolve to collect all 14 Chaos Emeralds and make selective sync the new hotness on all your Dropboxes.

Albert
I resolve to eat at Tartine, Ike’s, San Tung, Wonderful Foods, Shalimar and Farolito… all in one day. That, and come up with more ways to reward our users for being awesome.

Trevor
I resolve to not let Drew force me into Starcraft games at the office, and to revamp the photo galleries into a work of art.

Michael
I will expand Dropbox’s east coast operations to never before seen levels.

Will
I resolve to release some crazy new features for the iPhone app, and to begin poking my head around some other undisclosed projects.. coughANDROIDAPPcough

Paul
Eat more bacon,
start going to the gym,
find better ways to test my code.

Andrea
My 2010 resolution is to learn to sail

Teresa
Exercise more,
eat less meat,
get to work earlier.
FUN.

David
I resolve to learn to sing all 3 parts for harmony in Beatles Rock Band. Something about xattr support too

Zed
I resolve to code. That is all.

Ross
…?

Kevin Chu
I resolve all dissonant chords to consonance.

So, what are all your resolutions?

Also, I’m pleased to announce the winners of our limited edition Psychobox t-shirts:

Vidar L.
Stephanie T.
David D.
Michael B.
Neil K.
Davin S.
Frederic T.
Ruben
George B.
Tami A.

Congrats to these (edit: 10) lucky folks and thanks to everyone for entering! If you missed out this time, don’t worry. We’ll be having plenty more giveaways in the future. Furthermore, I’ll try and get some shirts and stickers out for sale in the next few months– it’s my resolution anyway

Happy 2010!

Hey everyone!

Those of you who were around last year may recall us entering the Crunchies and winning runner-up for best startup of 2008.  We have all of you to thank for winning that honor, and we’d like to ask you for that same favor this year.

Hey everyone!

We’ve got a holiday gift for you all: A new stable build! The 0.7 series (code name: Blue Yoshi) is sporting lots of new stuff including performance fixes, toolbar button support in Mac OS X, and LAN sync. LAN sync lets you transfer files between computers on your local network, which results in some ridiculously fast syncing. I’m sure those of you out there who manage several computers in one location will love this.

As always, we’ll update all of your Dropboxes to the latest stable build in phases, so don’t worry if you haven’t been upgraded yet. If you’re impatient, you can go ahead and download the build now.

We were also recently chosen for a 2009 Editors’ Choice Award by Macworld! These awards (or Eddys) are given to the best Mac products of the past year. We’re really flattered to receive this award, but we have you, our users, to thank for it. Here’s to hoping you all have an awesome holiday season. Happy syncin’!

Good news everyone!  The Dropbox iPhone app was officially submitted to the iTunes store last week and now we’ve got to play the waiting game.  Since all of you have been playing the waiting game for far longer than we have (and secrets, secrets are no fun), we’ve decided to give you a sneak peek at some of the features our app will be packing once our benevolent masters at Apple approve it:

Access your Dropbox on the go -  All the contents of your Dropbox are available for viewing.  You can even stream music and movies in your Dropbox straight to your iPhone.

Download files for offline viewing  – Add files to your ‘Favorites’, and they’ll be accessible at any time.

Take photos and videos and sync them to your Dropbox  – Take a photo from your iPhone and email its public link to a friend in less than a minute.

Share links to files in your Dropbox  – What?  Any file in your Dropbox?  Srsly?

Photo galleries  – Just like the ones online.

We’ll of course keep y’all updated on the app’s submission process, but keep your fingers crossed!  We should also add that Will’s been chipping away at a lot more fun stuff for the iPhone and that the first version of the app is only the beginning of something far more epic.  Sit tight!

UPDATE: a few screenshots for you all <3

Do you tell others about Dropbox all the time?  If so, today is your payday!  Our new Dropbox Affiliate Program allows anyone with a website or blog to earn cash (up to $50) for each new Dropbox Pro
subscriber they refer.  Under this program, Dropbox affiliates post custom links that track visitors to the Dropbox website.  Any visitors coming from your site who sign up for a free trial of Dropbox Pro
automatically generate commission for you.

1) Apply for the program.  To become a Dropbox Affiliate, you’ll need to join the Commision Junction network.  It’s free.  They handle all the tracking, reporting, and payment.

2) Post your Dropbox affiliate links on your website or blog. The most successful affiliates will craft their own dedicated microsites.

3) Get paid!

To join the progam, visit our affiliates page.  We look forward to working with you as a Dropbox affiliate!

It’s been a wild, almost two-year ride.

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. I had forgotten my USB drive at home and was frustrated that I couldn’t get any “real work” done.

Arash joined shortly thereafter, and we set up shop in Cambridge for the Y Combinator program. That summer is worthy of many blog posts, but we have countless fond memories of coding like crazy and setting our own hours (”the sun’s come up again, we really should go home, no really…”)

Our office sublet had “personality.” When we arrived, our little room was bare except for a framed portrait of a donkey, and a whiteboard which permanently bore the vestiges of some earlier startup’s plan for world domination, no matter how many times we scrubbed it. And the entryway always smelled “interesting”, to put it delicately.

Fast forward to today. We’re in San Francisco; we’ve got a beautiful office and comfy chairs. There are few visible remnants of our humble beginnings, but the spirit remains the same. 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.

We’re excited to announce, 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, that Dropbox is finally publicly available for everyone to try. (Go get it!)

Of course, we’ve got a few other announcements.

We get hundreds of feature requests, but none have been as passionate (or persistent) as those for a Linux client. Of course, it helps that we’re Linux zealots ourselves, with about half of us using Linux as our primary desktop environment. Dropbox for Linux is something we needed too. So we’re happy to announce that the Linux client goes live today, and is functionally identical to our Windows and Mac versions. (Special thanks to our alpha testers, and the poets in the forums.)

Sometimes you need your files on the run, and we were amazed that no one had made it easy. So we developed an iPhone-optimized interface that lets you get to your Dropbox from anywhere, including special support for photo galleries. (It works great on other mobile browsers, too.)

Our most common request has been for more storage. Next week, you’ll be able to buy a 50GB Dropbox for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year. Don’t worry — the free 2GB accounts will always be free, and you can keep the amount of space you had in the beta. Stay tuned for more on this.

As always, we’ve been blown away by your support and enthusiasm — nearly 200,000 people signed up for the waiting list — and we read every piece of feedback and every tweet.

So thanks again, and let us know how we can make Dropbox continue to change the way you think about your files and storage.

UPDATE: We’ve been dugg — show us some love

It began with one limerick.  The world would never be the same.

As some of you may know, we’ve released the alpha version of our Linux client to a small handful of people for testing.  Instead of just sticking to a conventional lottery, we decided to have a little fun with our second wave of invites.  Since Dropbox has been in existence, it has become apparent that many of our users are poetically talented.  It was time to put their skills to the test.  Here were the initial rules:

Write a haiku ( first line: 5 syllables, second line: 7, third line: 5) explaining why you deserve a chance to test the client before everyone else.

an example of a haiku:

angry linux hordes
bombard my e-mail box
like zombies on crack

creativity and odes to my dashing good looks score brownie points. good luck!

And here are a few of our favorites:

What’s that, linux man?
rsync got you down? that’s sad
I can has dropbox?
- Adam H.

Freedom from dual boot
Calls out to me from the cloud
Linux soon flies, too.
- David H.

The dropbox motto
is incredibly simple
die vile thumbdrive die
- Michael N.

Dropbox I want you!
Together we will run free
Probably too late

I am not too proud
to beg, grovel, cry and sob
please, please, please, please, please
- Craig B. (A late entry)

in lolspeak:
i no has dropbox
but teh lolrus he has it
please to let me has?

dropbox on linux
awesomeness beyond belief
Snuffleupagus
- Patrick W.

We even had a few more international haikus:

Guck mal! Dropbox kommt!
Die Zukunft ist schon fast hier
Ich sag’ “Willkommen!”
- David H.

And an entirely legit one from a Japanese user to boot:

Li-na-ku-su-no
Ho-ru-da-ni-ki-e-yu-ku
de-e-ta-ka-na
- Ken N.

Our CEO Drew, joined the fray…

Dropboxed penguins cheer
It’s just an apt-get away
What’s the URL?
- Drew H.

And finally, my personal favorite

Jon Y’s face is an
image of pure physical
perfection – ‘nuf said.
- Matthew W.

I’d like to thank all of our users for participating– all of us here at the office had a blast reading your entries and I’m sure you had some fun making them too.  In case you still haven’t gotten your fill of haikuey goodness, Samsung just happened to have a haiku contest on the same exact day we held ours.  It’s okay Samsung, imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and I’ll let it slide this time.  Keep in mind, though, that I won’t be so forgiving the next time around.

But now for the reason you’re all here:  Invites!  Anyways, keep your eyes peeled for the next time we publish more stunning gems of Dropbox poetry.

‘Til next time.

Okay, so it isn’t exactly spring anymore, but I figure it’s never too late to start, right?  It’s not like those of us up here in the Valley really go through seasons anyway.  The past two weeks have been pretty crazy up here at Dropbox HQ, and for several reasons:

-  Our devs are hard at work squashing any remaining bugs still crawling around in our clients.

-  Rian, our resident Linux expert, is also occupied 24/7 with putting the finishing touches on our super-elusive Linux client.  All you rabid Linux users out there needn’t fret anymore.  We’ll have your vaccine out and ready within a week or two.

-  We’ve had a bunch of new Dropboxers move into the office (photo tour upcoming), and getting them up to speed with how we roll around here has proven both challenging and entertaining (more the latter thanks to frequent breaks of Rock Band).  Incidentally, some of us still don’t have places to live, but we’re definitely willing to offer beta accounts/storage increases if you happen to have a place in San Francisco where some of us could stay .

Just because we’re busy at the office doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped caring about what goes on outside of it though.  As promised, here are some more invites.  Grab these quickly!  Our last batch ran out within 30 minutes.

And now, an epic picture of our CTO Arash undertaking the valiant struggle of slaying bugs:

PS – I’d like to emphasize that the bug in the picture is NOT drawn to scale… we do NOT have monster bugs crawling around our code.  well, hm, maybe it is drawn to scale.  Arash is pretty short, I suppose.

So, what do people use Dropbox for? We have people sharing documents between their colleagues at work, grandparents sharing pictures of their grandkids with the rest of their family, and students utilizing our versioning feature for projects. The possibilities are really only limited by imagination and, well… bandwidth. The team at Dropbox continues to be amazed at how many of our users find new and novel ways of… thinking outside the (Drop)box. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Here are a few uses that we found particularly cool:

- Several of our users use Dropbox to synchronize chat logs (for MSN, AIM, etc.) across all computers of an account.

- One user set up his webcam to record video once motion is detected, with the resulting file being dumped into his Dropbox. He uses this combination as a security system of sorts when he’s out of town.

- Other users have managed to add some convenience to their work routine by routing incoming faxes to their Dropbox folders.

- Some of our more hardcore gamers have used Dropbox to synchronize their mods and customizations for games like World of Warcraft.

- We’ve even had some people run full websites out of their public directory, making uploading updates to FTP servers a thing of the past.

There are still tons of uses that haven’t been explored yet, and we’re anxious to see what else Dropbox can be used for. I’m happy to announce that, over the next few days, we will be opening the gates to tens of thousands more users on our beta invite list. I’d also like to give our blog readers a chance to get in too, since I’m sure you guys have plenty of amazing ideas in store for Dropbox. Hurry, these invites won’t last too long. Get started here.

-Jon

Hey everyone,

Dropbox is quickly picking up steam, and I’ve got plenty of info that I’m sure you all would love to hear. First, though, I realize that we’ve done a not so amazing job of communicating with those of you outside the beta. Hopefully you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive us (just try to imagine our puppy dog eyes)… but I promise we’ll make it up to you with frequent blog posts from now on.

So, where to start? I suppose some updates are in order. Our Windows and Mac clients are still being tested extensively by our users, and we’re trying to maintain a fine balance between stability and new features (and succeeding, I think ). The two words “Linux client” have led to my tendency to curl up into a ball and suck my thumb, if only because of the angry mobs of Linux zealots that bombard our forums and my e-mail inbox relentlessly– but I can assure you that a CLI client is already being used internally, and a GUI version is on its way.

Some of you have been asking for our pricing plans, and hopefully this info will shed some light on what we’re planning: Our beta users currently get 2GB for free (and these will stay free through launch), but we plan to keep Dropbox free for everyone. We’ll also be establishing some pricing tiers based on more storage and premium features.

You’ll also be happy to hear that we currently let thousands of users into Dropbox every week. I know that some of you are impatient though, and I don’t blame you… so I s’pose it wouldn’t hurt to hand out some more invites . The first 25 people to register to Dropbox through this link get into our beta!

Anyways, look for more updates here in the future, but also feel free to subscribe to our Twitter for the latest on what’s new.

‘Til next time,
Jon