Latest Dropbox beta reveals new features and UI improvements for Nexus 7

It’s nice when Dropbox always lets us in on what they’re up to. In this case, they’ve revealed several new updated features on their Android app:

  • Thumbnails for video files
  • Better video playback for both ICS and Jelly Bean
  • UI improvements on the Nexus 7
  • Ability to open Dropbox files directly in other apps
  • Various bug fixes

While bug fixes are always nice and welcomed, the most interesting part of this updated beta build has to be the UI improvements for the Nexus 7. It’s always great to see a Google Nexus device being supported in a big way. You can get your hands on this beta in the source link!

Source: Dropbox Forums

Samsung & Dropbox To Offer 50GB Of Free Cloud Storage For Galaxy S III Owners

You want to know how Samsung intends on enticing potential customers now that it’s Galaxy S III smartphone is out? No, it isn’t the quad-core processor built-in nor the sweet lineup of accessories. My friends, Sammy is offering an attractive 50GB of free storage courtesy of Dropbox— similar to what HTC has done in the past. The key difference is HTC offered “only” 25GB, while Sammy is offering double the storage space.

Keep in mind as awesome as this is, it won’t last forever. Samsung and Dropbox will be offering this awesome promotion for Galaxy S III owners for a limited time only— owners who take advantage of this will have free storage for only 2 years. But hey— by the time 2 years comes around, we’ll probably be seeing a bigger and better promotion by then.

Source: Venture Beat

Dropbox v2.1.3

Current Version: 2.1.3
Requires Android: 2.1 and up
Category: Productivity

V2.1.3 update:
In 2.1.3:
• Performance improvements and bug fixes
In 2.1:
• Automatically uploads photos and videos in the background using Wi-Fi or data plan
• Up to 3 GB of free space for uploading photos automatically (in 500 MB increments)
• Upload files of any size
We now store your Dropbox credentials in Android’s secure Account Manager. This means Dropbox can’t be installed on your SD Card and requires the “Your Accounts” permissions. These permissions only allow us to access accounts we create.

Overview:
Dropbox lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your Android device, and even the Dropbox website! With the Dropbox app, you can take everything that matters to you on the go.

Read your docs or flip through your albums when you’re out and about. Save photos or videos to your Dropbox and share them with friends in just a couple taps. Even if you accidentally leave your Android in a taxi, your stuff is always safe on Dropbox.

Features:
• Always have your stuff with you, no matter where you are.
• Save photos and videos to your Dropbox.
• Share your photos and docs with family and friends.
• Save email attachments straight to your Dropbox.
• Easily edit docs in your Dropbox.

Sync your Instagram photos to Google+ [How-to]

We’ve had quite a few folks ask about a way to post their Instagram pictures to Google+, and an equal number of methods to do so hit our inbox recently. Because Google+ doesn’t yet have a public API (tools programmers need to be able to write apps to do this sort of thing), most of the methods are pretty convoluted — including this one.

But if you can install a few free programs to your desktop computer, this is entirely possible. It’s a messy workaround, but once setup it works really well. This method won’t automatically post the Instagram pictures to your G+ stream, but it does place them in a public album in your photos.

Hit the break for the instructions.

Source: Wired

  

You’ll need a few tools to get started here, and luckily they are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This method uses Dropbox and Picasa3 to keep things synced up, and a side benefit is that photos are available from anywhere — not just the device that took them.

To get started, you need to install the Dropbox client on your home computer. If you already have a Dropbox account, you can use the same login and you’ll find that having Dropbox installed on your computer is a good thing anyway. Just visit this link and download the correct version for your computer platform. Install it, and you’re done with the first step.

This step was easy.

Next, you’ll need to install the Picasa3 program from Google. It’s a pretty good photo organizer and viewer, but what we’re interested in is the way it can sync a folder to your Google+ photos. This is where the magic will happen. Visit this link and download the appropriate version, and install it. Windows and Mac users have it easy, but if you’re running Linux you’ll need to install Wine 1.3 or higher, and use winetools to install the bits from ie6 to get the account Oauth working. There’s plenty of tutorials on the net for this, and if you hit a snag, holler at me.

Got those installed? Good. You’re just about finished. The next step is to visit Instadrop and setup the Instagram to Dropbox sync. Instadrop is a web-app, running on Google’s appspot engine, and is what makes this all work. You’ll link the Instadrop app to both your Instagram account and your Dropbox account, and anytime you post a picture to Instagram it will get copied to a folder named “Instagram photos”. All you need to do is link your accounts, and the app does the rest. You can do that here, and if you’re the suspicious type, you can inspect the source code on Github and see exactly what’s going on.

A couple final steps setting up Picasa and your Google+ album. Open the Picasa program, and click File > Add folder to Picasa. In your Dropbox folder, find the Instagram photo directory (if it’s not there, upload a picture to Instagram to create it) in the tree and mark it to “Scan Always” (the blue circular arrow). This means that Picasa will hit that folder each time it scans for new content, and automagically import any pictures it finds. Click the OK button.

Now in the Picasa program, look in the upper right. You’ll see a spot to sign-in with your Google account. Do that, and make sure the Sync to Web switch for the Instagram photos folder is set to on. Open your Google+ page, and make sure the Instagram photos album is set up to be shared with the folks you want to share it with, and that’s it.

What’s happening is that anytime you post a picture to your Instagram stream, the Instadrop web-app pushes it to the Instagram photos folder in your Dropbox. When your computer is on, Picasa uploads it to your Google+ album. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. But it’s a way to get that content merged without waiting for Google to have a public API for content posting and sharing on G+ from third party apps.

Note that these pictures aren’t shared to your Google+ stream be default. Until we get some sort of G+ API from Google, that’s not going to happen (at least not easily). But if you share your album, people can visit and check them out, and of course you can easily share a photo from the album yourself. Click on it and hit the Share button in the bottom right.

While not a perfect solution, this is the easiest way (as voted by several folks who like easy) to get your Instagram content into Google+. Give it a shot, and holler in the comments if you get hung up.

Source: androidcentral