Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com Dropbox is one of the great cloud storage tools like sugarsync or SkyDrive that lets you sync files with any computer when you put a file into your Dropbox you can access it on any other computer or mobile phone lots of people use it for project management as a virtual thumb drive or as a way to share files with friends but today I have four new ways to use Dropbox on my Facebook page I asked you guys to give me your best tips and I'm including a couple of those two to get Dropbox go to Dropbox comm sign up for an account and download the desktop client you'll automatically get two gigs of storage free and you'll start using it right away to upload files to your Dropbox you can upload it through the web client or drag it into the Dropbox folder on your desktop but a very clever way to get things in your folder is by emailing it go to send to Dropbox comm where you'll get a special email address you can use to email attachments to your Dropbox so if my friend sends me an email with his new mix and I can't save it on my iPhone because it doesn't do that I can just forward it to my unique Dropbox email address and it will automatically get uploaded to my Dropbox folder another company got creative and built a tool that lets you upload target links to your Dropbox for instance if a restaurant has a PDF of nutritional facts on their website you can copy the link paste it into URL droplet comm and it'll be uploaded to your Dropbox so it's nice you can find a link and upload it that way or email attachments and your files will be waiting for you on another computer or phone whenever you're ready you can automate things even more with this awesome trick no matter where you are you can use Dropbox to remotely start downloading torrents to show you I'll use utorrent but the steps are similar for other BitTorrent clients too so what you have to do on a Mac is open utorrent and go to preferences then head over to downloads and check automatically open torrent files found in and browse to select your Dropbox folder on windows go to preferences then directory's check the box next to automatically load torrents from and select your Dropbox folder since torrent files can be big set them to download somewhere else on your hard drive just remember that if you use this trick your home computer needs to stay on and running utorrent but now you can start torrents no matter where you are for whatever legal purposes you like of course like I mentioned lots of people use Dropbox as a virtual USB Drive and since you really can't forget to take it with you it's a convenient solution for accessing your documents but Lifehacker points out that since it's not the default documents folder you might forget to change the target folder to your Dropbox when you're saving documents so why not make Dropbox your default Documents folder on Windows 7 or Vista right-click your Documents folder select properties and then on the location tab you can specify the new file path click move and then select your Dropbox folder on a Mac open up terminal and type CD Dropbox then type this command which will create a Documents folder in your Dropbox that automatically syncs with your desktop and other computers and on my Facebook page Jason Wong reminded me that Dropbox will save all versions of your Docs for 30 days just go to the Dropbox web interface hover over a file and click the arrow to view previous versions of it and finally Xavier left a message on my page explaining that you can use Dropbox as your own Photo Stream with the Android and iPhone apps you can upload photos from your phone directly to your Dropbox or take photos within the application and view them anywhere and you can even make a public photos folder to share with friends and family by now though you might be wondering if two gigabytes is enough for all these tricks two gigs is good for most but if you need more storage don't forget that Dropbox gives you two hundred and fifty megabytes for every friend you refer but don't start making fake email addresses and inviting yourself Dropbox is a little smarter than that if you have any more tips let me know on my Facebook page and visit how to see Netcom for more how to's first seen it I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs you