Starbuck's dashboard

I've talked with the Drop.io guys about different kinds of assets in addition to the default Note, Link, Audio, etc. These might include Tasks, Appointments, Contacts, or other custom types like Recipes, or collections of Pokemon cards. So far it doesn't look like their development is going in that direction.

I think part of the problem is that the Drop.io team would ultimately be responsible for supporting all of the details of each asset type that they support. By this I mean if they support a Task asset type, then they would also be responsible for supporting the browser interfaces that rendered that data in a useful format.

In my opinion, their underlying design unfortunately boxes them into this position and I think they've made a mistake on that side of their development - but it's not something that can't be fixed/addressed.

In addition to output types like email, twitter, etc, I think Drop.io needs to evolve to allow drop managers to provide HTML templates which render whatever kind of asset they host in their drop. So, for example, each of us can use the default template for displaying a Note, but we can provide our own cusom template for Notes as well. And Drop.io might not support a Task template, but people like us in the field can come up with some.

Another concept that comes up with your request is "what is Drop.io for?" It's really a storage medium with lots of inputs and outputs. It's not an application platform that supports calendars, tasks, blogs, forums, and features found in other sites that specialize in such things. In other words, they're not providing the part that "does something", they've created an environment where it's becoming easier to get data from any one thing that "does something" into something else that "does something" - and to let you know that some data has moved in the process.

So to answer your question about tasks, if you can't get this with Drop.io, check out the web-based http://teuxdeux.com/ or look at the ToDoList application for Windows, one of the most popular CodeProject projects, and completely free and open source: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applica...

For CodeProject, I can envision a plugin that imports and exports from Drop.io, so that people can share task lists and reports on activity. But I don't see Drop.io as being a platform where someone manages their tasks within the environment. I believe this is the answer to many "can I do X with Drop.io" requests that we see now and then.

But that's just an opinion from another guy who happens to use Drop.io. YMMV.

Broadcast audio with DropCaster! http://drop.io/DropCaster

Just yesterday I was using the uploader .swf which I have as a link on my site for clients to drop me files. Out of 8 files it looks like we got 6. To re-upload the last 2 we had to refresh the browser (IE7) a couple times. We didn't see the uploaded files at first. After we saw them, we couldn't download one of them because the context menu on the drop.io page showed all options except download. I renamed the file through the drop, and it showed the download link. Of course since that has nothing to do with the actual file name (long-term issue) when we did download it came down with the original filename (which was fine, just weird).

It's unfortunate that I experienced all of these issues while trying to show one of my colleagues/contractors how useful Drop.io is.

Try hitting refresh in the browser. I've been seeing some funky things too. Items missing from the list, sorted wrong, named wrong, etc.

This is a frequent topic of discussion. I don't know why this user is being asked for an example.

Why is it such a challenge for Drop.io people to understand that we do not want the names of files to be changed? Just don't do that. It's not a feature, it's a daily nuissance. If you need to uniquely identify the file internally, generate your own identifier and hide it from us - but please stop modifying and displaying file data. C'mon folks, how tough a concept is that to grasp?

And please take off that "company says this solves the problem" flag. The problem isn't solved, there's an open inquiry - major difference. – Starbuck, on December 02, 2009 19:44

Since some time has gone by on this... I haven't tried this but to my understanding there are several ways to go about this.

One would be to get a Google Voice account, and forward calls to your full drop.io phone number, "somehow" embedding a pause after the drop number and before and after the unique code. This would be a free solution.

A variation on that would be to have your GoogleVoice account send voice mail audio and the transcribed text to your drop.

Another way would be to use PBX software, hosted or local, free or for fee, and have calls routed from there to your drop.

Another way would be to use a service like twilio.com, and write some code that accepts a call and then forwards it to a defined drop number. With this mechanism you can prompt the user for a drop by name, like "press 1 for marketing, 2 for sales, 3 for support..." and pass the call to different drops based on the response.

Of course it would be much better to use a solution provided by Drop.io. the question everyone needs to ask themselves is: do I want this now, or do I want to wait until some day when "maybe" the feature is provided entirely through Drop.io?

Send me a note if you want something coded for a "now" solution.

HTH

Follow-up: This issue has to do with   codes embedded in the Note HTML. For example:

This is some text.

That displays as: "This is sometext."

The codes are inserted into the HTML when two consecutive spaces are typed. The result is the   followed by a single space. Someone typing text may be inclined to remove the redundant space, leaving something like the example above. You can't see this without looking at the source. A single   should render as a space, but for some reason it's being ignored when rendered.

HTH

DropCaster v1.0 is now production. You can download from http://drop.io/DropCaster. Please share info on bugs, usability issues, or any thoughts you have, by adding comments to the appropriate Notes in the drop. Comments are welcome here as well.

Before finding this, I just posted another note equivalent to your point #2. Agreement on others.

I believe all of these can be programmatically via the API. Like most interesting ideas here, I doubt there would be demand for a third-party offering to actually make that happen.

I've noticed it in IE7 over XP. I don't have any plugins that would parse your text inbound or outbound or otherwise interfere with the text stream. I believe the data is corrupted on the server because it not only renders with the missing spaces, but when I edit the Note the spaces are also missing. So this isn't a rendering issue. The problem occurs either during the post of the Note or somewhere on the server. – Starbuck, on November 19, 2009 20:54

I just posted an enhancement idea to save a chat name in a cookie. It occurs to me that another enhancement could be made so that Drop.io "regulars" could add that name to assets simply by clicking a checkbox. Nothing should be automatic but this does allow guests to choose to be less anonymous as they surf the "droposphere". :) – Starbuck, on November 17, 2009 18:02