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Balloon — A drop box for your Dropbox
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Replies
love the simplicity. as a new user I would benefit from text that told me to click the balloon to upload a file. I've used dropitto.me in the past and am glad someone is creating a more appealing experience.
I thought that DropBox already announced this functionality recently? Isn't that what "file requests" does?
As others have said. I dont' think your website really explains what you do at all. It would be great if you could show some screenshots or something.
@_jacksmith It is in fact very similar. But with the opportunity to support more than just Dropbox, Balloon becomes more versatile, and a friendlier and more playful version of it. Can you elaborate more on what you're finding confusing? If the tagline or homepage copy isn't doing it justice, something isn't right. Have you tried it? Just connect your Dropbox, create a Balloon, and share it so that people can send you files directly to your Dropbox, that's all :) Send me something to give it a try https://balloon.io/jordan
@jsngr I didn't want to connect my account before knowing what it does. the example is helpful. So to understand, presently there's actually no difference vs Dropbox file requests, but in the future you'd support more platforms, which would be the difference?
Looks like a neat idea! The new balloon name is confusing as it doesn't accept every character. I agree with @notrab that URLs should be random. Nice UI though even if the background of the balloon on the upload page is a slightly different colour :)
I just needed something like this yesterday! What kind of security protects file transfers? Are they transferred through your servers or directly to Dropbox?
@shlomofellig Thanks Shlomo. We are working to ensure that Balloon's aren't attacked by a singular IP. We go through our server first, then to Dropbox.
Would be nice if I could accept or deny an incoming file. I don't want random massive files to randomly show up in my dropbox if someone stumbles on my url. :p
Great concept although I'd feel more secure with a random URL given to me I could share instead of creating a name someone else could guess. I don't know how I feel giving the world write access to my Dropbox.
@notrab Thank you Jamie :) We will be rolling out password protection for write access pretty soon. We have made creating and deleting balloons as easy as possible. So once you feel you have received your files, you can simple delete the balloon from your dashboard and the link will be no longer active for upload. Hope that helps :)
@notrab I agree with Jamie. I tried creating a folder called test something and it told me the folder name was taken. So i picked another one, but since i knew this other folder existed already, i just typed it into the url and uploaded .rtf describing how it got there. This should be controlled more so you dont idiots like me uploading random files to ppl's dropboxes. :)
Random hash names for the url would be a big help.
Great idea though! Love it :)
I know a lot of people commented on the UX being not intuitive, but I actually really liked it. Super simple, fast, snappy. As far as functionality goes, I don't know that I'll use over Dropbox File Requests for 2 reasons:
1. It feels weird to not know who uploaded a given file (seems susceptible to attack).
2. I really like the notifications Dropbox sends when a new file is added.
@kicksopenminds Thank you Taylor :) So, we will be rolling out a password protect feature pretty soon along with a native ios app for managing your balloons. Later versions include expanding to other cloud services as well. Does any of these features interest you ? we would love to know.
I get the whole simplistic design thing (does look very nice) but agree with comments here that the offering is very unclear on first glance. I think one of the main issues is, at first glance people don't know what a 'Balloon' is (in your context of the word). In fact I still don't really. Then in the second line of text you say 'Share your Balloon to receive files, ... etc', which isn't very helpful as no-one knows what a Balloon is at that point, how it works, what it looks like. An animated gif would be more help actually showing you....
The product is very simple.
The communication of the product is not.
(This is something I've built myself for a different vertical, but haven't released to the public yet).
Great idea. Nice and clean UI. This is much better than asking people to send files. Can be a clear cut alternative for countless photo sharing apps. (Including some wedding photo sharing apps.. I don't see much value there) You should make mobile apps as well. There got gotta be a way to send notification if someone does not upload files in x number of dates.
I love the idea. The only problem is that the interface is not communicating sufficiently what's going on the screen / what should I do. E.g. I should drop files here, now I can go away because they were successfully uploaded and so on.
@uxboy Thanks Michal! We were going for simplicity, but you're totally right as far as how it can get confusing. Thanks for the feedback!
Hey really like the idea. I think you also could solve a few common problem people requesting files from a group of people tend to have
You should allow me to restrict file type (only PDF, Doc) for instance to prevent email exchange back and forth (sorry, I can't read your pages file. Can you send it again)
Another big problem is inconsistent file names. It would be great if user could build small forms around this
So user must type in
Last Name:
Class Setiocn:
For a ballon called Assignment3
Rename the incoming files then
Section-lastname-Asssignment3.pdf
Often times renaming and organizing files lands up being a huge part of making sure everyone has submitted
Hey really like the idea. I think you also could solve a few common problem people requesting files from a group of people tend to have
You should allow me to restrict file type (only PDF, Doc) for instance to prevent email exchange back and forth (sorry, I can't read your pages file. Can you send it again)
Another big problem is inconsistent file names. It would be great if user could build small forms around this
So user must type in
Last Name:
Class Setiocn:
For a ballon called Assignment3
Rename the incoming files then
Section-lastname-Asssignment3.pdf
Often times renaming and organizing files lands up being a huge part of making sure everyone has submitted
That's awesome, I love the simplicity. Would it be possible for guest to see what's in the balloon?
P.S.I encountered some issues with drag'n'drop on Safari9.0 (i had to click the balloon to upload file)
Cool idea, but I feel that it is not explained very well in the homepage and when others receive the balloon link :)
@rogerdickey @jenssegers We pushed an update just now that makes the homepage details section more visible. Was that the issue before? Thanks!
@jsngr @jenssegers yeah, I think I didn't get the idea as well. Why should I upload my wedding photos to Balloon if I can do that with Dropbox?
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