Monday, November 17, 2014

For File Sharing, Dropbox + Orangedox = Win

I deprecated Dropbox a few months back. Between various privacy-related droppings of the ball and its incredibly stupid company decision to put Condoleezza Rice on its board of directors, I could no longer confidently recommend the service as a personal file storage/sync application. And I still don't -- I moved all of my personal files off the service and off they remain.

But Dropbox is still very good for one particular use -- public sharing/downloading -- and yesterday I discovered a way to make it even better: Orangedox.

Dropbox lets you share files by storing them in your "public" folder and generating "public links" for them.

Orangedox lets you track the downloads of your Dropbox files.

I changed the Dropbox PDF download link for KN@PPSTER's Big Freakin' Book of Stuff to an Orangedox link on Saturday afternoon, so now I can tell how many people are downloading the book (52 on Sunday!).

A free account comes with the ability to track 10 download links. If you need more links and more detailed statistics-keeping, "pro" accounts are available too (or you can get more available links by referring new users, as I naturally hope to do with both Orangedox and Dropbox in this very post).

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