Dropbox's collaboration tool opens up to everyone, gets new apps

Dropbox's new productivity software is getting a big update.

The company has been testing Paper, a new Google Docs-like tool, since last year when they quietly introduced something known as Project Composer in the spring. The collaboration tool was later dubbed Paper and the initial testing group has slowly expanded since. 

Now, it appears Paper is closer than ever to being ready for primetime as Dropbox announced it's opening up the beta to all users and releasing two new mobile apps for the service.

As we noted in our first hands-on last year, Paper is a bit like a mashup of Google Docs and Medium. It's centered around real-time collaboration but it also has formatting and editing tools. You can also easily embed things like Pinterest boards, SoundCloud files and even strings of code within your document.

Though any Dropbox user can now use Paper, the company says it is best suited to teams who need to work together to complete projects and tasks.

On the web, Paper is getting a few upgrades like improved tables and image galleries and an overhauled notification system that makes it easier to keep track of comments and other interactions you have with your teammates inside of a document.

The biggest update, though, are the new mobile apps for iOS and Android. These allow you to catch up on notifications, check documents offline and edit on the go.

Though this marks Paper's biggest expansion yet, the service is still in beta so it's likely there will be at least a few more changes before the service officially launches (no word yet on when that will be.

Dropbox’s latest idea could change the way you think about cloud storage

One of the problems with Dropbox and indeed all cloud storage is the way they have implemented how you view your cloud storage on your local drive. If you want to access your cloud file system in your local file management tool, you literally need to have it stored on your drive, which really defeats the idea of having cloud storage in the first place — especially on devices with smaller hard drives.

Alternatively, you could open Dropbox.com and navigate to your files in a separate interface, an approach just about everyone dislikes.

Dropbox wants to change that.

Today at the Dropbox Open conference in London, the company announced Project Infinite with the goal of giving business customers local access to files no matter where they live — in the cloud, on network drives or local drives. In practice, this means when you open Windows Explorer or OSX Finder, you will have access to all of your Dropbox files without having to store them on your drive.

With the Infinite Drive, you have visibility across the entire system, but the files can live in the cloud as designated by a cloud icon next to the file, or on your hard drive with a cloud backup as designated by a green check mark. This enables you to manage your cloud files as though they were local, but they’re not taking up space on your drive — and that’s a huge difference.

Project Infinite isn’t really infinite, but it does provide a seamless layer between your physical drive and your cloud storage in Dropbox. It means if you have a huge amount of content that would normally overwhelm your hard drive, you have the option of leaving a file or set of files and folders in place in the cloud or only downloading the ones you need. Yet you have everything together in a unified folder system, regardless of where it’s stored — locally or in Dropbox.

Dropbox was simply announcing a preview of Project Infinite today without giving any indication of when this would be available, so if like me this sounded pretty good to you, you’ll have to wait. As such, there was no mention of pricing or availability or if it would eventually be available for consumers or just business customers.

We’ll just have to wait for GA for more definitive answers to those questions. In the meantime, Dropbox has solved a big cloud storage problem, and it’s about time.