Dropbox: Though in invite-only beta at the moment (yes, Carrot is pretty l33t these days), the service is fully functional and fully amazing. Your best bet is to watch the video on their homepage (if it is moved by the time you read this, here’s the direct link to the video file)… but I’ll just add a brief overview and some notes. The service is seemingly the end all answer to the problem of tracking versions of files, across different machines and operating systems. We have a handful of designers working on any given project, and while we do our best to strategically and intuitively name/date design files, it’s never a sure thing. One project may be on 5 different machines, and figuring out the most recent version during the post-launch cleanup is messy. Dropbox allows us to now sync every designer’s design folders together. If I am out of the office on a retreat into the wilderness and hardly internet accessible, no problem! Sean will have the last file I was working on because it was automatically synced, via dropbox, to our shared design folder… the instant I saved it at the end of the day.

There are of course a slew of features in addition to the blessed file sync. You can generate URLs for instant sharing of files (one of my favorite Jing features), choose to share or keep private any folder you are syncing… and you can even manage the files online, if you are away from your sync’d machines. There is likely more splendor than I have even realized yet, so do yourself a favor and take a closer look. First indications are that this will be the next big thing for organizations like ours, and we are certainly willing to pay for a subscription fee when it goes to full release

If you need a beta invite, shoot me an email.

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JING: This amazing (let me repeat- Uh-Mazing) service is currently free. This is hardly a justice to it’s capability, but the short of Jing is this- you can very quickly and seamlessly screenshot images or video of anything on your screen, within an area you select, and just as quickly choose to either shoot it to your personal ftp/site, save to your computer, or let them host it for free! The best part? If you choose to shoot it to the web, it will upload and auto place the URL into your clipboard- all you need to do is paste! This is all achieved with one click. Anyway, try it for yourself… the UI on the desktop widget is awesome. A true pleasure to use on Mac or PC

^— Screenshot of Jing menu, taken with Jing!

Do yourself a favor and check out their video demo, if you still have doubts. My only complaint is the logo… the curve/arrow on the ‘g’ makes me die a little inside, but the service itself actually makes up for this transgression.

This article is copyright © 2010