Many Dropbox users have expressed concern over the policy change on the Dropbox website and on other Internet sites. Neowin, never shy to put a finder into a wound, even claimed that Dropbox could legally sell all files of their users to third parties.

The policy was updated again yesterday, it now reads:

We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service.This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission.

The bold part as been added by Dropbox to clarify the policy.

Another aspect that has not been mentioned by sites like Neowin is the fact that the wording is more or less an industry standard. When you look at Google’s terms of service you read under 11.1 for instance:

You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

Facebook’s Terms of Service state:

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

I’m no lawyer and cannot really say if those rights are necessary or if they could be cut down and simplified further. Users who are openly against the terms of service can either encrypt their files before they are uploaded and synced, or leave the service.

What’s your take on the new terms of service?

There is unfortunately no official portable version available. Veteran Dropbox users have used the forums to find portable Dropbox versions, with the problem that there have been quite a few developers who started and ended portable projects. And with hundreds of thousands of posts, it became more than a nuisance to find a new working version.

Dropbox Portable AHK promises to change that. The developer has created a permanent home for the software that offers downloads, instructions and support.

In case you are wondering, AHK means AutoHotkey, a popular scripting language.

So how do you use the portable version of Dropbox?

You download the latest available version and unpack it to a directory on your system. Once done open the directory and launch the DropboxPortableAHK.exe application. It triggers the download of Dropbox files on first run, which are required to use Dropbox (doh!). The files are downloaded into the same directory, and setup information are displayed once the 15 Megabyte download has completed.

It is possible to configure a new Dropbox folder, or use a previous Dropbox configuration (the latter did not work for me). Updates are set to be downloaded and applied automatically both for Dropbox Portable AHK and the Dropbox application.

Dropbox Portable AHK launches the official setup of Dropbox afterwards. Here it is possible to create a new account or configure an existing account. Existing users need to supply their username and password, everyone else needs to follow the account creation steps.

The setup is a one-time process. Once setup Dropbox can be started with a click on the portable executable in the application folder. The files can be copied to USB devices or other computer systems without the need for another setup phase.

Users may notice that the context menu entry does not work on a portable version of Dropbox. The developer has posted instructions on how to re-add the feature, but notes that it creates files on the target system.

A portable version of Dropbox offers several advantages over the installation. It is for instance easier to maintain multiple Dropbox profiles on a system and use Dropbox from everywhere, even on computers that do not allow the installation of software (if Windows is the OS) and where you do not have administrative privileges. Dropbox Portable AHK keeps Dropbox and itself up to date if the default configuration has not been changed during setup. (via)

Much like DropBox, with Ubuntu One you do have to sign up for a service. And, as I mentioned in the previous article, Ubuntu One has two levels:

• Free: The free account offers 2 Gigs of storage space.
• Paid: The paid account offers you 50 Gigs of storage space for $10.00 USD per month.

Once you have signed up with an account, you can then install the client, and finally enjoy all the syncing between Ubuntu computers you need. In this article you will see just how to install the client and begin using Ubuntu One.

Signing up

Before we get to the installation process, we must first visit the sign up process. It’s actually quite easy. Go to the Ubuntu One Plan page and select your plan. Once you have signed up for your plan, you then can proceed to the installation process.

Installation

After you have signed up you can then install the software. I will assume you are using Ubuntu 9.04 for this installation. The first thing you need to do is make sure your 9.04 is up to date. So run the Update Manager (found in the Administration sub-menu of the System menu). Once that is done you need to add the correct repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. There is a very simple way to add these repositories to your sources file. If you click on this link allow GDebi to install the .deb file which will create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d called ubuntuone-beta-sources.list with the following contents:

# Ubuntu One Beta PPA sources
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntuone/beta/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntuone/beta/ubuntu jaunty main

Or you could add the above code to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

I would suggest going with the automatic method, because it will also add the GPG key for you.

Once you have done that you can open up Synaptic (Not the Add/Remove Software tool) with the command sudo synaptic and follow these steps:

1. Search for “ubuntuone-client-gnome” (No quotes).
2. Accept all of the dependencies.
3. Click Apply to install.

Once installed you fill find the Ubuntu One entry in the Internet sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Using Ubuntu One

Figure 1

When you start Ubuntu One for the first time it will also start your browser to the Ubuntu One page. From this page you will need to create an account or sign in to your account. After you sign in you will then have to add the computer you are using to the account. You can add as many accounts as you need. After you add the computer the Ubuntu One icon residing in your GNOME panel will appear, show your files being updated (if there are any), and then the icon will disappear. If you want the icon to remain on the panel you just need to start the application again where you can then configure the icon to appear at all times (see Figure 1).

Here you can also configure Ubuntu One to start upon login as well as limit bandwidth usage.

If you find that the Ubuntu One icon does not show up after the initial sync, make sure you have it set up to connect automatically on start, log out, and then log back in. You should then see the Ubuntu One icon in your panel (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

The Ubuntu One icon you see in Figure 2 is the second from the left (between the Google Desktop icon and the DropBox icon).

You are ready to use Ubuntu One. You will find a new directory created in your ~/ directory called Ubuntu One. Any file you place in this folder will be sync’d with your Ubuntu One account. As soon as you add a file to this folder you will see it automatically start to sync with your Ubuntu One account.

Final thoughts

Ubuntu One certainly one-ups DropBox for simplicity. This tool will make using Ubuntu on the business level all the more easier. You will be able to easily sync all of your files between home and work. Give Ubuntu One a try.

The software client basically uses one source folder on the hard drive where all the files and folders are stored in locally. Uploading files is just a matter of moving files and folders into the Dropbox zone on the computer or by creating and editing files already in that special folder.

When the Dropbox client is running the files and folders will get automatically synced with the online client which keeps the most recent copies of the files and folders including file revisions. The web client of DropBox can be used to download or view files without having to run the software client. The client can also be used to upload new files to the service.

Dropbox currently has a 2 Gigabyte limit for every user which is definitely enough for many purposes. One of the interesting features of Dropbox is being able to share a folder with another person. It pretty much works the same as sharing a folder between different computers.