Dropbox Sync Feature Coming To Games, Email Apps
Dropbox today introduced new tools for programmers that could make it more commonplace for playing games and using apps to be a seamless experience across devices.
Dropbox is extending the sync feature across devices to more types of files, the company said on Tuesday during Dropbox's first developers conference in San Francisco.
Dropbox unveiled new tools for software developers that would allow games, email apps and other programs to store and retrieve information from Dropbox.
Instead of storing saved games on a smartphone, the files get stored to a hard drive owned by Dropbox and connected to the Internet. The app connects to the Dropbox hard drive through the Internet to get the data.
"Imagine a task-tracking app that works on both your iPhone and the web," Dropbox said. "If it's built with the Datastore API, you can check off items from your phone during a cross-country flight and add new tasks from your computer and Dropbox will make sure the changes don't clobber each other."
Three new services aimed at developers that Dropbox is rolling out: Sync API, which is meant to simplify the app developing process to let apps communicate more easily across devices; Drop-Ins, a tool to let end users access files that may have been created within an app on another device; and Datastore API, which will let users access not files themselves but the content created within apps on other devices.
The Drop-In tool, for instance, lets developers create what Dropbox calls a "Saver" button that can be placed on a website to quickly upload files to someone's Dropbox account.
Over 1 billion files are saved in Dropbox every day, according to the company.
Dropbox users get 2GB of storage for free and can pay as a low as $10 a month for additional space.
Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft offer similar services.
Dropbox unveiled new tools for software developers that would allow games, email apps and other programs to store and retrieve information from Dropbox.
Instead of storing saved games on a smartphone, the files get stored to a hard drive owned by Dropbox and connected to the Internet. The app connects to the Dropbox hard drive through the Internet to get the data.
"Imagine a task-tracking app that works on both your iPhone and the web," Dropbox said. "If it's built with the Datastore API, you can check off items from your phone during a cross-country flight and add new tasks from your computer and Dropbox will make sure the changes don't clobber each other."
Three new services aimed at developers that Dropbox is rolling out: Sync API, which is meant to simplify the app developing process to let apps communicate more easily across devices; Drop-Ins, a tool to let end users access files that may have been created within an app on another device; and Datastore API, which will let users access not files themselves but the content created within apps on other devices.
The Drop-In tool, for instance, lets developers create what Dropbox calls a "Saver" button that can be placed on a website to quickly upload files to someone's Dropbox account.
Over 1 billion files are saved in Dropbox every day, according to the company.
Dropbox users get 2GB of storage for free and can pay as a low as $10 a month for additional space.
Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft offer similar services.
