Just a few weeks ago I was all set for just my fourth public
performance. I had a wad of poems printed off ready to read, all themed around
slightly adult issues. French Kissing, Losing my Virginity, The Perils of Binge
Drinking, all masterpieces in their own right.
I stepped up to the stage, carefully double-checking the
order of my poems, then looked up to my expectant audience. I was somewhat
surprised to see that the front two rows were sitting cross-legged, chin on
hands, and looking as if they had just been beamed in from a school hall. Kids,
and small kids at that. I’m left on the stage in limbo, all my material is
unusable and I’m not quick enough to edit as I read.
Without Dropbox this is where I would have had to walk off
the stage muttering apologies. With Dropbox I was able to whip out my phone,
find a suitable poem and then download it in seconds, read it, find the next
poem and repeat. My work may not have been the best but at least I was able to
deliver something to my audience.
Every piece of work I have created I have available on
Dropbox and I can access it via my laptop, tablet, phone, even from an internet
café or a hotel. It is simple to set-up, use and maintain and works across
different platforms.
I installed the software on my laptop where I keep all my
work. It creates a folder, anything you drop into that folder is then copied up
into ‘The Cloud’, that storage place in the internet that exists nowhere and
everywhere at the same time.
I moved all my work into the folder then went for a few
drinks whilst it was synched with my internet connection. Now, after this
simple step any time I edit or add a file on my laptop then it automatically
copies the changes up to the cloud.
The next step was to add my tablet. Again, a simple step.
Install the software, tell it my username and password, then leave it connected
to the internet for a while to synchronise. Now I can edit a file on either
device and the changes are replicated between them.
Then I added my phone, an Android based one, and using
OpenOffice on the phone I can read and edit my Microsoft Word documents.
Finally, once you have signed up you can access your
documents anywhere from an internet browser. Hotels, cafes, airports, all are
now available to me to be creative and keep my work secure. You get a chunk of
free space which is more than enough for a few thousand Word (or similar)
documents. I have 3.300 files in my dropbox comprising of documents, a couple
of movie clips, lots of pictures I have found interesting on the internet and
plenty of photos I have taken.
Naturally you should still take backups of your work, either
onto USB sticks or onto DVD’s and store them safely, but Dropbox as a tool for
someone who likes to be able to read and write anywhere has transformed my
writing life.
(There are now many
similar pieces of software that will do the same as Dropbox, but I do love the
simplicity of it.)
you can find it at: www.dropbox.com
PS - If you have received multiple notifications of this post huge apologies. I'm tucked up in a nice little cottage in Wales with about half a bar signal on my phone, which reminds me. Download your content from Dropbox first when you have a good internet connection, otherwise it is painful if you struggle with a signal.
