Twitter Expert

This review of the drop.io file-sharing service is a Guest Post by Al Iguana, who blogs at “Up the Valleys” - often about politics, Wales and anything else interesting.

This piece is about the Drop.io file sharing service, and why you will find it useful, particularly if you use Firefox, Twitter, or an iPhone.

File Sharing

What, that’s illegal! Call the cops!… hold your horses, file-sharing is only illegal if you’re sharing stuff you shouldn’t be. There are 1000 legitimate uses for file-sharing. You send a photo of your kids to your mother: that’s filesharing. You email your CV to an employer: that’s filesharing. Got that…? ok, then here’s why Drop.io makes it easy.

Space

Drop.io works on the concept of “drops”, which are like mailboxes. You can set up a drop, and fill it up with 100 megs of stuff. Want more space? Set up another drop, or buy a pro account.

Easy

There are two main methods that you can consider.

1. Firstly, you set up an anonymous drop, drop something in it, send the link to a friend. The drop expires in a month.
2. You want a more permanent drop. You can make one with a personalised name, and a password to access lots of options that we’re going to be covering next.

Firefox

Since I’m going to keep this short(ish), I’ll start by getting you into good habits. I assume you’re using Firefox.. if so, download and install this extension. Once you’ve done that (and restarted), you should have a red .io icon at the bottom of your screen.

First Drop

Right-click on the icon, and select “Create New Drop”. You’ll be taken to drop.io, where you will be invited to enter an admin password, and an email address in case you forget that password. For this first drop, enter both and click “save settings”. That’s it, you’ve made your drop-box. OK, so what now? Well, you need to tinker for a few moments first.

Admin

At the top-right, you will see “settings” and “logout”. Click settings to go to the options for this dropbox.

1. As a default, guests to the dropbox (people you give the link to) can add files too, download files, and delete them. You probably don’t want them deleting your files, so click on “User Permissions”. Uncheck the box that says “guests can delete”. Optionally, uncheck the box that says “users can add”, if you want control over what is in the drop.
2. You probably want something a bit more descriptive for your box than a random “65mtuy” or whatever it gives you. Click “Maintenance”.Now, you can rename your drop-box. Maybe: “drop.io/thelabourparty” or something. Drop Expiration: by default, the box expires in one month. If you want to keep it longer (maybe as a regular dropbox for your Twitter account or blog) change this to maybe 1 year from last view. Timezone: set this to GMT.

Twitter

Now you can set it up so that whenever you drop something into the box, it gets posted to Twitter. At the top of the screen, you will see: drop.io/whateveryoucalledit/settings. Click on “whateveryoucalledit”. This will take you back out of settings and into your box. Underneath that, you see three tabs: add, view, share. Click the Share tab. On the list, click “Twitter”, then enter your Twitter logon details. Click the big “subscribe button”. Done!

One more thing

Assuming you did that in about 2 minutes, your box is now set up. One more thing to do. Click the red .io at the bottom of the Firefox window. Click “options”, then go to the middle tab “Default drop”. If this is empty, put in the name of the dropbox you just made and the password you used. Uncheck “always upload files to a new drop”. Hit Save&Close.

Magic

Now, whenever you want to share a file with all your followers on Twitter, simply click the red .io, click the box you named earlier, and when it comes up, drag your file off your desktop into your Firefox window. Yup. Easy. Got a photo you want to share? Don’t need to log onto Twitpic or whatever, just drop the picture onto your Firefox. Try it now. Find something, a small avatar pic or something, and drag it into Firefox. Easy. Whatever you drop will be instantly uploaded and posted to your Twitter account.

More

There is much more you can do with your dropbox. How about customising it with your logo, some wallpaper etc? Setting it up so you can email straight into there? Uploading photos or stuff from your iPhone? Calling the number of the drop-box on your phone and leaving a long message that gets posted up as an mp3? Putting an RSS feed of stuff you’re uploading onto your blog? Chatting with people visiting your box (web version up now, coming soon to Adium etc). Setting up a private (password protected) dropbox for your personal docs?

Fantastic service. And if you feel that the free version isn’t enough, the pro version does Google Analytics etc. It also has an API, so there is no reason that Tweetdeck, Twhirl etc couldn’t have “dropping and posting” as a built in service. Maybe they’re working on it.