I'm pretty excited about this one. We've been using Paper internally at Dropbox (under a few different codenames) for more than a year, and we now run almost all our collaboration through it--design docs, specs, etc.
I'm on the infrastructure (storage) team, so I haven't really had anything to do with its development. My team's use started out as "dog fooding", like most internal adoption, but now we'd all be pretty pissed if it disappeared because it's simply way better than the array of tools we were using before. Great usability, speed, etc. Feels lightweight but powerful at the same time.
Awesome, a Dropbox employee commenting on this thread. Let me ask you some questions that I hope you might answer, but also understand if you aren't willing/able:
1. Will there ever be a zero-knowledge option at Dropbox? I just stopped using Dropbox in favor of SpiderOak because I wanted to start storing medical records in the cloud, and there's no way I'd do that where you (or your coworkers or hackers) could read them.
2. How do Dropbox employees feel about the Drop Dropbox campaign? Is Condoleezza Rice's involvement part of an overall culture or just a small anomaly (or somewhere in between)?
The team feature just totally hosed my reputation. I sent a team invite (because it was implied that this will be needed for Paper) and it's taken over a bunch of our team members' drop boxes, disabled 2FA, and permalinked people's personal files to a corporate-esque group that they can't unsubscribe from.
Something you really need to fix at Dropbox is multiple account support. The frankenmonster where you psuedo-merge exactly one personal account into exactly one business account might have seemed clever internally, but is a mess and not what we want. Google do a good job on multiple account support - learn from them.
There is usually some pitiful excuse about free users being able to abuse the system, but screwing things up for your paying users (all my personal and business accounts are paid) is stupid. The major thing keeping me and related companies going with Dropbox now is that you support Linux. If Google or someone else fixes that then you are likely toast!
Great perspective to hear. I sincerely hope your teams keep up the good work, and this announcement comes at a good time for me. I'm helping to build up a team and was telling a friend today that I hoped Dropbox would start releasing more email like tools.
Paper seems closer to what I want for my team. Release an email server on top and I'll buy as much Dropbox storage as I can.
Out of curiosity, would anyone know if Paper supports markdown? I like the fast lightweight formatting it provides. (edit: appears an earlier comment says its supports a subset of markdown )
My apologies for bring this up again, as I'm sure the developers worked hard on this feature, but since Rice joined Dropbox's board (http://www.drop-dropbox.com/) I'd have severe concerns using anything released by Dropbox.
With a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service.
I think all users should carefully consider if they are happy with using Dropbox in light of the views of their board members.
This is something I'd personally use. A lot of alternatives exist on the market but none of them look as refined as Paper.
Paper looks really similar to http://onword.co (by Daniel Eden at Dropbox) regarding the minimalism and limitation on formatting. I guess Hackpad team is working on the backend.
I just hope this project will not end up like Mailbox. I've been using Mailbox on OS X for half a year. Although once in a while I encounter some bugs, it's still very usable. A few months ago, they released an upgrade from 0.4 to 0.7. The UI became uglier in orders of magnitude and many basic functionalities just broke. After experiencing it for 3 days I switched back to Mail.app. I have sent quite a few bug reports and suggestions, but got no response. I wonder if they still care about Mailbox at all.
Not Dropbox employee, but I think they don't care about Mailbox. Especially since Gmail Inbox now has support for Google Apps hosted mailboxes (my primary Mailbox use case, though the org hasn't activated Inbox), and that app is probably superior to Mailbox in every way.
I'm really surprised that only one person has mentioned Quip this whole time. Quip is already solving this problem and -- i have to say -- is doing a stellar job at it. Simple and minimalist approach to collaborative content/document writing. Ive been using Quip for over a year now across multiple organisations. Its probably the most important tool for my company in terms of knowledge sharing.
Dropbox should buy Evernote, especially since they're in trouble, and fix one of the biggest problems with that service by making it sync using Dropbox (and making its data easily accessible).
Culturally speaking, Dropbox and Evernote do not fit. I've been a long time Dropbox user and in the process I've also used Google Drive and played with OneDrive.
If there's something that sets apart Dropbox from its competition is that (1) Dropbox is simpler (2) without compromising on the really important parts, like having a history or Linux support and (3) the set of available features work really well. Not sure what the right word for it is. Minimalism?
At times it's annoying of course. For example Dropbox's native client is the best, but their web interface sucks. Like for example if a folder is too big, the web interface will refuse to move it. Comparing that web interface with Google Drive is not even funny, though the native client and the cross-platform support more than makes up for the shortcomings of the web interface.
But going back to Evernote - seriously, it's a piece of shit and I always wondered why people use it. I would rather have Dropbox build something minimalist by themselves than to acquire Evernote. Or let others build things that integrate with Dropbox. I just bought licenses for 4 different operating systems for 1Password precisely because it integrates with Dropbox.
A neat development, and I am consistently intrigued and impressed by collaboration tools for teams. As an internal tool, I could see it being constructive in some limited scenarios. If anybody can mention instances where using something like this or Google Docs with multiple people at the same time, I'd love to hear your stories to level-up my understanding of use-case scenarios.
But...in my business experience with teams across a few different industries, however, I'd say "No" so fast you'd think I had some kind of inherent bias.
Well, I think I do. The modern conference call, speed of data transfer, and online presentation tools that exist should - and do - work just fine when there is one expert at the controls. Usually that expert was me. Taking disparate pieces from different people and getting them in right, often in real-time, was part of my job. Another part of my job was helping people "talk through" what they intended to communicate, and help phrasing and spelling along the way.
Examples include responses to RFPs in a Word template, or any one of the development phases in a PowerPoint 11x17 or slide deck. These would eventually be client-facing, and could be done on the fly if so desired (rather than input/output versioning, often hosted on SharePoint). Then, when finished, it was suitable for production.
I don't see how Paper is an improvement on this process, but rather, a situation of allowing too many cooks in the kitchen. Again, I'm only speaking from my realm, and take pride in learning about new things (like JamKazam) that are still developing or even ahead of their time. YMMV.
After the disaster that is Carousel (particularly on iOS), I am extremely reluctant to use any other dropbox apps.
Carousel has had major bugs in their iOS client that have not been fixed in nearly a year. I'm talking core features, like background upload of photos not working, which could have led to the loss of priceless photos of my kids, had I not been more vigilant before taking my phone in for service.
Its a fair bet that a goodly number of dropbox customers have lost photos due to this bug. No fix in sight.
As a counterpoint, I quite like Carousel, and I haven't noticed any problems. Background uploads work for me, although it seems to wait until I am on wifi to upload.
I think Dropbox would really benefit from integrating something like Pushbullet. Both apps are concerned with syncing. If I need to send a file to one of my devices, I use Dropbox. If I need to send a link, I use Pushbullet. There's no reason why it couldn't be a single app.
Somehow simple note taking is something that really hasn't been done right by anyone. This seems like it could be nice, but I'd like it a lot more if I could host it myself.
this ^^^^ especially with regard to companies. At least in the company where I work, the inability to self host is a deal breaker. Is this different for many/any?
Another Dropbox employee here (but not part of the Paper product team or engineering). We're all super excited about this beta launch because it totally has changed how we work internally and liberates you to be creative I feel (and we've had and still do have access to a lot of different tools). Happy to answer any questions around the productivity aspect of questions curious people may have about the product who don't have access to the beta yet!
It doesn't support Markdown in the sense that your document isn't saved as plain text, but just about every feature of markdown is available: headings, lists, code blocks, inline code, and horizontal rules are all supported. The only ones that aren't are the inline formatting options (bold, italic, underline, links), but these all have the standard Cmd/Ctrl keyboard shortcuts, so it's basically just as good.
Your answer to my second question is interesting because I kind of understand the tin-foil-hat argument, but I don't totally see how Rice would create additional pressure to violate privacy. She's a civilian now and, presumably, completely locked out of the current administration.
To me (someone without a tin-foil hat), I think the issue is more symbolic. Rice is a terrible human being and a seasoned deceiver of the public. It's almost like we're asking ourselves, "If you'd allow her to be part of your leadership, what else would you do?"
When I've thought about it, that wasn't enough to counterbalance exactly what you mentioned -- the idea that a single privacy breach at Dropbox could mean the end of the company. She's barely a part of the leadership and may have almost no say in what the company does. The ultimate decisions are probably still in the hands of the executive team. That's why I was a customer until very recently.
All that said, I don't understand how Rice is valuable enough to counterbalance the bad PR from the tech community. Tech-y people get small companies to adopt certain brands over others, and then those small companies grow into large companies. Maybe I'm naive, and Rice offers some amazing connections or something?
Either way, if much of the Dropbox team has your attitude and values, I can honestly say I hope the company has a prosperous, breach-free future ahead of it.
> Rice is a terrible human being and a seasoned deceiver of the public.
This is a pretty callous thing to say, even for HN. I think there's a real discussion to be had here about data privacy and the power of law enforcement agencies, but demonizing Condoleezza feels like creating a straw man. She's just a board member-- it's not like she's VP of Product or CEO or something.
I get your point, but calling her a "terrible human being" is kind of extreme, don't you think? Not sure that statement adds to a well-reasoned argument. I personally don't agree with all her politics or behavior, but I don't think she ranks up there with the truly "terrible" humans. She was a professor at Stanford, is an accomplished musician, has done a lot for international US diplomacy, was the first woman in many of her roles, etc. etc.
These attempts to blackball people in their professional lives for their political opinions (see Brendan Eich at Mozilla) and political decisions (this DropDropBox stuff) are really no better than the Hollywood Blacklisting during the McCarthy witch-hunts that we all look back on as a dark chapter of American history. It really goes against the spirit of tolerance and plurality that America has embodied at its best. I can only hope that just like for McCarthyism, we will all wake up from this binge in a few years and realize just how far we've strayed from our best ideals.
[+] [-] jamwt|10 years ago|reply
I'm on the infrastructure (storage) team, so I haven't really had anything to do with its development. My team's use started out as "dog fooding", like most internal adoption, but now we'd all be pretty pissed if it disappeared because it's simply way better than the array of tools we were using before. Great usability, speed, etc. Feels lightweight but powerful at the same time.
Anyway, hopefully you all like it too.
[+] [-] smt88|10 years ago|reply
1. Will there ever be a zero-knowledge option at Dropbox? I just stopped using Dropbox in favor of SpiderOak because I wanted to start storing medical records in the cloud, and there's no way I'd do that where you (or your coworkers or hackers) could read them.
2. How do Dropbox employees feel about the Drop Dropbox campaign? Is Condoleezza Rice's involvement part of an overall culture or just a small anomaly (or somewhere in between)?
[+] [-] nroach|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|10 years ago|reply
There is usually some pitiful excuse about free users being able to abuse the system, but screwing things up for your paying users (all my personal and business accounts are paid) is stupid. The major thing keeping me and related companies going with Dropbox now is that you support Linux. If Google or someone else fixes that then you are likely toast!
[+] [-] elcritch|10 years ago|reply
Paper seems closer to what I want for my team. Release an email server on top and I'll buy as much Dropbox storage as I can.
Out of curiosity, would anyone know if Paper supports markdown? I like the fast lightweight formatting it provides. (edit: appears an earlier comment says its supports a subset of markdown )
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] new299|10 years ago|reply
With a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service.
I think all users should carefully consider if they are happy with using Dropbox in light of the views of their board members.
[+] [-] octref|10 years ago|reply
Paper looks really similar to http://onword.co (by Daniel Eden at Dropbox) regarding the minimalism and limitation on formatting. I guess Hackpad team is working on the backend.
I just hope this project will not end up like Mailbox. I've been using Mailbox on OS X for half a year. Although once in a while I encounter some bugs, it's still very usable. A few months ago, they released an upgrade from 0.4 to 0.7. The UI became uglier in orders of magnitude and many basic functionalities just broke. After experiencing it for 3 days I switched back to Mail.app. I have sent quite a few bug reports and suggestions, but got no response. I wonder if they still care about Mailbox at all.
[+] [-] huac|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|10 years ago|reply
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id794163692
[+] [-] xemoka|10 years ago|reply
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-notes-photo-annotation...
[+] [-] teaneedz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ConAntonakos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilovecomputers|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krmmalik|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edanm|10 years ago|reply
Dropbox should buy Evernote, especially since they're in trouble, and fix one of the biggest problems with that service by making it sync using Dropbox (and making its data easily accessible).
[+] [-] bad_user|10 years ago|reply
If there's something that sets apart Dropbox from its competition is that (1) Dropbox is simpler (2) without compromising on the really important parts, like having a history or Linux support and (3) the set of available features work really well. Not sure what the right word for it is. Minimalism?
At times it's annoying of course. For example Dropbox's native client is the best, but their web interface sucks. Like for example if a folder is too big, the web interface will refuse to move it. Comparing that web interface with Google Drive is not even funny, though the native client and the cross-platform support more than makes up for the shortcomings of the web interface.
But going back to Evernote - seriously, it's a piece of shit and I always wondered why people use it. I would rather have Dropbox build something minimalist by themselves than to acquire Evernote. Or let others build things that integrate with Dropbox. I just bought licenses for 4 different operating systems for 1Password precisely because it integrates with Dropbox.
[+] [-] brown9-2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|10 years ago|reply
But...in my business experience with teams across a few different industries, however, I'd say "No" so fast you'd think I had some kind of inherent bias.
Well, I think I do. The modern conference call, speed of data transfer, and online presentation tools that exist should - and do - work just fine when there is one expert at the controls. Usually that expert was me. Taking disparate pieces from different people and getting them in right, often in real-time, was part of my job. Another part of my job was helping people "talk through" what they intended to communicate, and help phrasing and spelling along the way.
Examples include responses to RFPs in a Word template, or any one of the development phases in a PowerPoint 11x17 or slide deck. These would eventually be client-facing, and could be done on the fly if so desired (rather than input/output versioning, often hosted on SharePoint). Then, when finished, it was suitable for production.
I don't see how Paper is an improvement on this process, but rather, a situation of allowing too many cooks in the kitchen. Again, I'm only speaking from my realm, and take pride in learning about new things (like JamKazam) that are still developing or even ahead of their time. YMMV.
[+] [-] mathgeek|10 years ago|reply
Moleskine notebook? check
iPhone? check
This passes the generic tech news site photograph test.
[+] [-] abtinf|10 years ago|reply
Carousel has had major bugs in their iOS client that have not been fixed in nearly a year. I'm talking core features, like background upload of photos not working, which could have led to the loss of priceless photos of my kids, had I not been more vigilant before taking my phone in for service.
Its a fair bet that a goodly number of dropbox customers have lost photos due to this bug. No fix in sight.
[+] [-] binhex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grue3|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] state|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcstreeter|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huac|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinaceae|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel_iversen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chishaku|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teaneedz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z1mm32m4n|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnpatel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_watcher|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CephalopodMD|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
https://cryptomator.org/
[+] [-] snorrah|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smt88|10 years ago|reply
Your answer to my second question is interesting because I kind of understand the tin-foil-hat argument, but I don't totally see how Rice would create additional pressure to violate privacy. She's a civilian now and, presumably, completely locked out of the current administration.
To me (someone without a tin-foil hat), I think the issue is more symbolic. Rice is a terrible human being and a seasoned deceiver of the public. It's almost like we're asking ourselves, "If you'd allow her to be part of your leadership, what else would you do?"
When I've thought about it, that wasn't enough to counterbalance exactly what you mentioned -- the idea that a single privacy breach at Dropbox could mean the end of the company. She's barely a part of the leadership and may have almost no say in what the company does. The ultimate decisions are probably still in the hands of the executive team. That's why I was a customer until very recently.
All that said, I don't understand how Rice is valuable enough to counterbalance the bad PR from the tech community. Tech-y people get small companies to adopt certain brands over others, and then those small companies grow into large companies. Maybe I'm naive, and Rice offers some amazing connections or something?
Either way, if much of the Dropbox team has your attitude and values, I can honestly say I hope the company has a prosperous, breach-free future ahead of it.
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grinich|10 years ago|reply
This is a pretty callous thing to say, even for HN. I think there's a real discussion to be had here about data privacy and the power of law enforcement agencies, but demonizing Condoleezza feels like creating a straw man. She's just a board member-- it's not like she's VP of Product or CEO or something.
I get your point, but calling her a "terrible human being" is kind of extreme, don't you think? Not sure that statement adds to a well-reasoned argument. I personally don't agree with all her politics or behavior, but I don't think she ranks up there with the truly "terrible" humans. She was a professor at Stanford, is an accomplished musician, has done a lot for international US diplomacy, was the first woman in many of her roles, etc. etc.
[+] [-] wildmusings|10 years ago|reply