drop.io

Response to Yahoo’s plans to shut down delicious

Warning: This is an emotional response to yesterday’s announcement by Yahoo! that they are shutting down the popular, absolutely essential, epitome of web 2.0 tool delicious.

What the hell?! First Facebook and now Yahoo! have screwed me (us) over. Two really simple, very functional, extremely valuable web2.0 tools that I’ve been preaching and pushing all year b/c they are/were incredibly useful — delicious and drop.io — and the parent companies pulled/are about to pull the plug.

  • October brought us the announcement that Facebook bought drop.io and that free accounts were to quickly disappear and paid accounts discontinued Dec.15.
  • Yesterday brought us even more shocking news that Yahoo has decided to sunset their very popular social tagging tool delicious.

Damn them.

Now what do I tell faculty? What are you going to tell your faculty? How are you going to sell them on some really amazing online tool that does something incredibly useful for their class and yet runs the serious risk of being acquired by [huge company name here] and very quickly wiped out?

Yes! I’ve found this great tool that helps you meet that learning objective, keeps your students engaged, encourages active learning … but just an fyi — don’t get too dependent on it, b/c it’s very possible someday you’ll suddenly have to export everything, find a new tool, and figure out how to migrate from one to another.

[Update: Now Yahoo! Says Delicious Will Live On … Somewhere Else]

Collaboration, file-sharing, podcasting and more with drop.io

Sorry for the very long delay in posting. The new job and my one-year-old are taking up 113% of my time.  Just wanted to let you know about a new tool a co-worker discovered at Educause Southwest Regional.  Drop.io is a file hosting site that gives users the ability to upload images, documents, audio, video, and more.  A free account gives you 100Mb of space to set up your “drop” (area where you can upload your files), and users can then view a web-friendly version of the file or download the original.  

Adding content to your drop couldn’t be much easier.  Drop.io gives you an email address that you can use to email or MMS files that are auto-added to your drop.  You also get a phone number that you use to call in and record audio which is then saved in mp3 format and auto-added to your drop (read: easy-podcasting).  You can even fax directly into your drop.  A Firefox add-in allows you to drag and drop directly into your drop.

Content can be protected by setting a guest password.  You can even give guests the ability to add their own files, leave comments, and even delete files. Drop.io also gives you the ability to set an expiration date for the files you upload.

Viewers of your content have multiple methods of being notified any time you add content to your drop.  They can sign up for email alerts (which you, the drop owner, can customize both the alert message and the welcome message) that are sent out any time you add content.  Users can subscribe to an RSS feed or add it to your iTunes as a podcast.  They can even get SMS alerts – they just choose their service provider and enter their phone number.  Add drop updates to your Facebook feed so friends see when you add content, or add the drop directly to your profile.  Users can tweet any file added to your drop.  Users can even add a widget for your drop to their website.  I could go on.  

The educational possibilites are endless: podcasting, collaboration, team building, to name a few.  So, do you use drop.io?  Are you interested in drop.io?  What ideas do you have for using drop.io in your class?

Click image to view drop.io demo.