I'm pretty excited about this one. We've been using Paper internally at Dropbox (under a few different codenames) for more than a year, and we now run almost all our collaboration through it--design docs, specs, etc.<p>I'm on the infrastructure (storage) team, so I haven't really had anything to do with its development. My team's use started out as "dog fooding", like most internal adoption, but now we'd all be pretty pissed if it disappeared because it's simply way better than the array of tools we were using before. Great usability, speed, etc. Feels lightweight but powerful at the same time.<p>Anyway, hopefully you all like it too.
My apologies for bring this up again, as I'm sure the developers worked hard on this feature, but since Rice joined Dropbox's board (<a href="http://www.drop-dropbox.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.drop-dropbox.com/</a>) I'd have severe concerns using anything released by Dropbox.<p>With a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service.<p>I think all users should carefully consider if they are happy with using Dropbox in light of the views of their board members.
This is something I'd personally use. A lot of alternatives exist on the market but none of them look as refined as Paper.<p>Paper looks really similar to <a href="http://onword.co" rel="nofollow">http://onword.co</a> (by Daniel Eden at Dropbox) regarding the minimalism and limitation on formatting. I guess Hackpad team is working on the backend.<p>I just hope this project will not end up like Mailbox. I've been using Mailbox on OS X for half a year. Although once in a while I encounter some bugs, it's still very usable. A few months ago, they released an upgrade from 0.4 to 0.7. The UI became uglier in orders of magnitude and many basic functionalities just broke. After experiencing it for 3 days I switched back to Mail.app. I have sent quite a few bug reports and suggestions, but got no response. I wonder if they still care about Mailbox at all.
Not to be confused with facebooks paper.<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id794163692" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/app/id794163692</a>
I'm really surprised that only one person has mentioned Quip this whole time. Quip is already solving this problem and -- i have to say -- is doing a stellar job at it. Simple and minimalist approach to collaborative content/document writing. Ive been using Quip for over a year now across multiple organisations. Its probably <i>the</i> most important tool for my company in terms of knowledge sharing.
Here's a thought:<p>Dropbox should buy Evernote, especially since they're in trouble, and fix one of the biggest problems with that service by making it sync using Dropbox (and making its data easily accessible).
A neat development, and I am consistently intrigued and impressed by collaboration tools for teams. As an internal tool, I could see it being constructive in some limited scenarios. If anybody can mention instances where using something like this or Google Docs with multiple people at the same time, I'd love to hear your stories to level-up my understanding of use-case scenarios.<p>But...in my business experience with teams across a few different industries, however, I'd say "No" so fast you'd think I had some kind of inherent bias.<p>Well, I think I do. The modern conference call, speed of data transfer, and online presentation tools that exist should - and do - work just fine when there is one expert at the controls. Usually that expert was me. Taking disparate pieces from different people and getting them in right, often in real-time, was part of my job. Another part of my job was helping people "talk through" what they intended to communicate, and help phrasing and spelling along the way.<p>Examples include responses to RFPs in a Word template, or any one of the development phases in a PowerPoint 11x17 or slide deck. These would eventually be client-facing, and could be done on the fly if so desired (rather than input/output versioning, often hosted on SharePoint). Then, when finished, it was suitable for production.<p>I don't see how Paper is an improvement on this process, but rather, a situation of allowing too many cooks in the kitchen. Again, I'm only speaking from my realm, and take pride in learning about new things (like JamKazam) that are still developing or even ahead of their time. YMMV.
After the disaster that is Carousel (particularly on iOS), I am extremely reluctant to use any other dropbox apps.<p>Carousel has had major bugs in their iOS client that have not been fixed in nearly a year. I'm talking core features, like background upload of photos not working, which could have led to the loss of priceless photos of my kids, had I not been more vigilant before taking my phone in for service.<p>Its a fair bet that a goodly number of dropbox customers have lost photos due to this bug. No fix in sight.
I think Dropbox would really benefit from integrating something like Pushbullet. Both apps are concerned with syncing. If I need to send a file to one of my devices, I use Dropbox. If I need to send a link, I use Pushbullet. There's no reason why it couldn't be a single app.
Somehow simple note taking is something that really hasn't been done right by anyone. This seems like it could be nice, but I'd like it a lot more if I could host it myself.
Another Dropbox employee here (but not part of the Paper product team or engineering). We're all super excited about this beta launch because it totally has changed how we work internally and liberates you to be creative I feel (and we've had and still do have access to a lot of different tools). Happy to answer any questions around the productivity aspect of questions curious people may have about the product who don't have access to the beta yet!
Why can't Dropbox build something like this in their app?<p><a href="https://cryptomator.org/" rel="nofollow">https://cryptomator.org/</a>
Wow, thanks so much for the reply!<p>Your answer to my second question is interesting because I kind of understand the tin-foil-hat argument, but I don't totally see how Rice would create additional pressure to violate privacy. She's a civilian now and, presumably, completely locked out of the current administration.<p>To me (someone without a tin-foil hat), I think the issue is more symbolic. Rice is a terrible human being and a seasoned deceiver of the public. It's almost like we're asking ourselves, "If you'd allow <i>her</i> to be part of your leadership, what else would you do?"<p>When I've thought about it, that wasn't enough to counterbalance exactly what you mentioned -- the idea that a single privacy breach at Dropbox could mean the end of the company. She's barely a part of the leadership and may have almost no say in what the company does. The ultimate decisions are probably still in the hands of the executive team. That's why I was a customer until very recently.<p>All that said, I don't understand how Rice is valuable enough to counterbalance the bad PR from the tech community. Tech-y people get small companies to adopt certain brands over others, and then those small companies grow into large companies. Maybe I'm naive, and Rice offers some amazing connections or something?<p>Either way, if much of the Dropbox team has your attitude and values, I can honestly say I hope the company has a prosperous, breach-free future ahead of it.