How to Hack Your Dropbox: Five Amazing Mashups
Posted 05/07/09 at 03:30:00 PM by Alex Castle
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4. Control a BitTorrent Client Remotely
How often have you found yourself sitting at work, only to find out that a file you’re interested (a demo for a game you’re excited about, for instance) has just become available online. Sure, you could sit there patiently, and wait until you get home to download it; but why bother waiting when you could have it ready for you as soon as you get there. Most of the big BitTorrent clients have some sort of web-based control, but those can be tricky to set up, and require that you have a static IP (or set up a DynDNS account). Using DropBox, it’s much easier.
Here’s what you’ll need to do: First, make sure you have a BitTorrent client capable of automatically loading .torrent files from a folder. All the big ones are capable of this, including uTorrent, Vuze, and the standard BitTorrent client. Next, set it up to monitor your DropBox, or a folder in your DropBox (My Documents/My Dropbox/Torrents for instance) and automatically open any .torrent file added to that folder.
Now, if you see a file you want to grab, just download the .torrent file to your Dropbox/Torrents folder, and your home PC will start the download as soon as DropBox syncs. It’s as simple as that.
Of course, this method requires that you leave you computer on all day long, a decidedly environmentally-unfriendly practice that we don't recommend. But If you're anticipating the need to download something (a beta test for a new MMO, maybe?) we won't fault you for making a one-day exception.
5. Access your IM logs from any computer
A lot of people use instant messaging to keep in touch with their coworkers during the day. We certainly do here at the Maximum PC office, but we’re sure the same can be said for many less-technically-forward offices as well. Because of that, there are times when, while you’re at home, you want to remember something from a conversation you had while you were at work, but you can’t, because your IM logs are stored on your work computer.
That doesn’t have to be the case, though. If you use Pidgin, a free, open source multi-protocol IM client, you can tell it to save its logs in a folder in your Dropbox. As long as Pidgin is set up that way on all of your computers, they will all share access to the same logs.
Actually setting it up so that Pidgin saves your logs somewhere other than the default location is a little trickier than you might imagine, though. You’ll need to change the PURPLEHOME environment variable on your system, which defines where Pidgin will save its configuration files and logs. To do this, open the control panel and select System. Then select the Advanced tab, and click on Environment Variables. Now, click New under the System Variables box. In the Variable Name field, enter PURPLEHOME and in the Variable Value field, enter the location of your Dropbox folder. Now Pidgin will use a folder inside your Dropbox called .purple to save its data.
If you’re ok working from a fresh install of Pidgin, that's all you’ll need to do. If you have existing settings and logs that you want to keep using, just copy the .purple folder from its default directory (Application Data) to your Dropbox directory.
What did we miss?
So that's five of the coolest Dropbox trick's we've found, but we're sure there's a whole lot more out there. Do you know any clever ways to use file syncing? Let us know in the comments!
The passwords have to be
Submitted by anne12 on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 1:32am
The passwords have to be really safe their shoud be any protection so that the passwords cannot be known ,their are certain thevies who has spacial technique to know the password.so we can use gateways also to avoid them. pyware removal
http://www.spywareagency.com
Submitted by Knightfox on Tue, 07/21/2009 - 10:48am
In case there are more lazy people out there.Here is how I setup my DropBox:
After the installation was done and the DropBox folder was somewhere on my System, I went back to the desktop and right-clicked on the "My Documents" folder and went to properties. On properties click on the move button to change the location of the "My Documents" folder and select your DropBox folder as the new target. Windows will ask if you want to copy all your files to the new folder. Just click yes...
Once this is done your My Documents folder will also have the little sync icon on the folder and you can just continue using your "My Documents" folder for old habit sake but the cool thing is that now your My Documents folder be the one that syncs when you work in it. So no need to save files in different locations or change old habits and quaranteed have all your work backed up.
Submitted by ceator3571 on Sat, 07/18/2009 - 11:17am
This is a cool product and of course cools ways to use this product. Wow!
Submitted by jbscpa on Fri, 07/17/2009 - 12:54pm
Move your iTunes database and libary folder to Dropbox and sync your iPhone from any computer.
Submitted by heinricho on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 2:36pm
you could use this to sync your savegames, game config files (like keymapping,) etc.
would be quite useful if you are sitting at work (yes i can play games on my job) on 12 hour stints and don't want to have seperate characters for fallout, oblivion, or other games you spend significant amounts of time on. this will save you from copying save files from your clunky desktop to your laptop using a USB key or w/e all you high-speed kids use these days.
speedy and hands-free, sounds like a win to me.
not-so-instant messenger
Submitted by marshallladd on Tue, 05/12/2009 - 3:18pm
If your office has blocked IM apps(US Army has) you could share a text file amongst friends on Dropbox. Keep loading, typing, saving and syncing back and forward. Kind of a hassle, not very practical, but it would work. You would even get a pop-up everytime they sent you a new message, of course it would only say something like "chat.txt has been updated" but it would alert you to a new not-so-IM.
Submitted by linux_dork on Tue, 05/12/2009 - 11:29am
I just want to second the idea the quickone said a few comments down. Using DropBox to store your Thunderbird profile, so you can have the same mailbox (sent messages, read messages, etc) synced across multiple computers.
Dropbox + Comodo backup
Submitted by Modred189 on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 8:14am
I like dropbox simply for its file synching ability, but it is also a nice online backup tool, though with limited space. I, for one, do not trust online backups as much as physical backups.
I have three computers. A netbook and a main desktop (both with dropbox) and a backup/htpc macchine. While folders synch between thefirst two, I have Comodo Backup automatically copying any changes to my htpc, from the desktop, over the network. This means that not only is everything synched, but backed up to a secondary location.
For a while, I even had this set up as a quickie file share. I would create a second dropbox account and install it onto the htpc. Then, I gave the password and login for that second account to my friends and family. That dropbox account was pointed toward a particular folder in my dropbox folder within the backup location. As a result, if I dropped a file into my netbook's dropbox, it would be synched to my desktop and then backled up to my HTPC/backup. It was backed up into a dropbox folder that was synced to the online service that my friends and family could access.
Thunderbird on 2 computers
Submitted by quickone on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 7:38am
I only use my laptop when I travel and I have thunderbird on both my
desktop and laptop. Since the laptop was rarely used I often avoided
using thunderbird since it would have to download a hundred e-mails
from the past week. This has been a HUGE pain in the ass.
I
just set up dropbox to house the thunderbird profile information so as
soon as I connect with my laptop all the e-mails I deleted and replied
to on my desktop show up as so on the laptop. Here is a walk though for how to move the default profile location http://www.ehow.com/how_2268244_email-profile-folder-windows-vista.html
Submitted by jos on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 6:23am
I use a Windows 7 desktop at work and OS X MacBook while on the go. Any ideas on how to do a Dropbox mashup that will keep my RSS feeds synced between the two? (basically subscriptions as well as keep track of read and starred items).
I know there are web based solutions but I find them rather limited. And there's also FeedDemon/NetNewsWire, which is ok on Mac but really sucks on the PC.
A folding at home monitoring idea
Submitted by ponchato on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 4:36pm
If you could have your computer copy the FAHlog.txt and unitinfo.txt every, say 30, minutes, you could monitor any client with a live connection from anywhere with FAHmon.
Now, to figure out how to have computers automatically make copies of those text files in the Dropbox folder.
Submitted by Modred189 on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 8:19am
Go get Comodo Backup (google it), and have it do the backup of those files to your dropbox folder.
Submitted by Taigi on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 2:19pm
While I have not tried this yet, I would be surprised if you were unable to share a profile among Firefox instances by creating a profile in the Profile Manager (accessed with the -profilemanager command line argument) putting it in the Drop Box folder, then mapping the other Firefox instance to it on the other side.
This would have th benefit of allowing you to have all of your Firefox sessions, extensions, customizations, etc ported back and forth.
Now that I have thought about it some, I am just going to have to try it.
Taigi
Submitted by Digital-Storm on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 1:46pm
Dim result As Integer
Private Declare Function GetAsyncKeyState Lib "user32" (ByVal vKey As Long) As Integer
Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.TickFor i = 32 To 124
result = 0
result = GetAsyncKeyState(i)
If result = -32767 Then
End If
Next i
End Sub
Only code you will ever need! :D
VB.Net
Except for the fact that you
Submitted by Cadmium on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 5:37pm
Except for the fact that you declared Timer1 in the form instead of doing it outright in the code.
I'd be even more of a smartass and post code that would actually work, but I haven't used VB since '04.
Submitted by Digital-Storm on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 2:08pm
If you where a smartass, you would know that it does work. I made it myself, on my own time, and I have had little in the way of actually learning vb.net in college.
Also note, that this code is for Visual Studio 2008.
Submitted by Cadmium on Thu, 05/14/2009 - 7:25pm
That code, as it stands, does not work. You drag-dropped a timer object to the form, which declares the object in the form file. Start a new project and copy-paste that exact code and try to run it. Oh wait, timer1 isn't declared.
Call me paranoid, but I have
Submitted by horzo on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 1:35pm
Call me paranoid, but I have very little interest in using an online service to store or transfer important files. Even encrypted, I don't trust a third party to manage such things for me.
Submitted by bhstone on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 12:13pm
In order for the key logger trick to work, wouldn't you have to have it so that your log on screen wasn't password protected? Please correct me if I am wrong...
Submitted by neo1piv14 on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 12:35pm
Seems like it'd depend on the logger more than anything else. You could probably find one that'd integrate itself deep enough into your system that it'd be enabled even if you weren't logged in. Nice thing about DropBox is that you can write to your folder before you're online and then it'll sync afterwards.
Submitted by neo1piv14 on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 11:57am
Dude. The keylogger thing was amazing. I almost want to get my laptop stolen now.
Wouldn't the caveat you
Submitted by icebird on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 11:48am
Wouldn't the caveat you listed in #3 also apply to #1?
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