Dropbox : Java Glossary

A free service to let you share files between computers. You upload files to the Dropbox server. From there you can access them with any other computer. You run the Dropbox application software on your computer that creates a pseudo-folder. Anything you put into it is automatically copied to a Dropbox server and appears on any other computer accessing that same folder. Your copy is not deleted after it is uploaded. The other computer can also upload files. So any change anyone makes is propagated to everyone else. The way this used to be done required you to explicitly use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to upload the files or explicitly email them around. Data is encrypted, but the Dropbox company can decrypt the files if law enforcement asks them to.

I don’t know if Dropbox caches copies of the data in all the computers, or if it fetches a copy only when you go to use it. If it caches and preemptively loads the data, it will be more responsive. From the video explaining Dropbox, I suspect it probably does cache.

There are a number of similar services listed below. I think there are about 100 competing products to share files. SugarSync is #2. I have not tried them out, so I can’t tell you which is best for which condititions.