
Paper is Dropbox's new vision for how teams can work together - slackpad
http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-paper-team-collaboration-tools/
======
jamwt
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.

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.

Anyway, hopefully you all like it too.

~~~
smt88
Awesome, a Dropbox employee commenting on this thread. Let me ask you some
questions that I hope you might answer, but also understand if you aren't
willing/able:

1\. Will there ever be a zero-knowledge option at Dropbox? I just stopped
using Dropbox in favor of SpiderOak because I wanted to start storing medical
records in the cloud, and there's no way I'd do that where you (or your
coworkers or hackers) could read them.

2\. How do Dropbox employees feel about the Drop Dropbox campaign? Is
Condoleezza Rice's involvement part of an overall culture or just a small
anomaly (or somewhere in between)?

~~~
jamwt
Usual disclaimer, I am not an official Dropbox spokesperson, and these are not
necessarily company stances.

1.

The best answer I can give you is here:
[https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/28](https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/28)

The background behind it is we evaluate this option (and debate it internally)
all the time, and it's neither in line with the type of services we are
expected offer (collab, etc), and there is insufficient customer demand for
it. It is also dangerous, since nontechnical users lose their private keys
with startling frequency, and it's difficult to explain to them that we're
completely unable to help them when this happens.

We do, however, totally know there is a small slice of technical users that
want to treat Dropbox as an opaque "backup service", and they're willing to
take on the risk of key management. So we refer them to one of our partners
that specializes in providing this layer on top of Dropbox.

Never say never, so we may decide to offer this type of account in the future
--possibly to businesses. We would have to alter or disable large swaths of
collaboration features that require server-side representations/alterations of
data. But, as I said, it's a product feature under constant consideration.

2.

Once again, I have to emphasize, this is a personal take, not Dropbox's take.

I sympathize with the tinfoil hat crowd, but I think most Dropbox employees
find it a disappointing take on the company that has always strived to make
the very best cloud storage product possible, on all platforms.

We are in a segment (cloud sync/collab, not backup) with some very, very large
players. Storage is not a loss leader to us. It is not subsidized by a massive
advertising network capitalizing on customer behavioral data. Our customers
are not what's for sale--our storage services are.

If you or your business does not like our services--does not consider them
fast, secure, etc--enough to pay for them--we don't get revenue.

I very much doubt any of our competitors cares as much about your data staying
private, available, usable, etc, as we do. There is no other way for us to
capture value from the market then make you all ridiculously pleased with
Dropbox and Dropbox's treatment of your data.

So I would ask you to imagine what the culture of a company looks like that is
incentivized thusly. We obsess over doing the right thing with your data. So
threads like this are hard to read, to be honest.

And that's all I'll say about this issue.

~~~
eevilspock
_> the tinfoil hat crowd_

wow.

~~~
jane_is_here
[https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf](https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf)

------
new299
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 ([http://www.drop-
dropbox.com/](http://www.drop-dropbox.com/)) I'd have severe concerns using
anything released by Dropbox.

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.

I think all users should carefully consider if they are happy with using
Dropbox in light of the views of their board members.

~~~
omginternets
Thank you for this info. This is the tipping point for me; I'm going to start
using something else.

I humbly suggest people look into the following, and am eager for suggestions
from other HN readers:

\- rsync

\- btsync

~~~
deckard1
Unison.
[https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/)

It handles file conflicts, which is massively critical for anyone thinking of
rolling their own. It also works over ssh, so it's encrypted.

~~~
dude01
Yup, I love Unison. Been using it for years at home. Though I've been worried
that it's not being actively maintained. But I guess as long as it works...

~~~
deckard1
I think their position is they no longer have someone paid to work on it, as
the research phase has ended. But it is still maintained. Albeit, slowly. And
them using a rather outdated website and svn to host doesn't really do them
favors. They need to get someone in there to modernize it a bit. Switch it to
git. Doesn't even have to be hosted on github, but somewhere more visible
would help.

------
octref
This is something I'd personally use. A lot of alternatives exist on the
market but none of them look as refined as Paper.

Paper looks really similar to [http://onword.co](http://onword.co) (by Daniel
Eden at Dropbox) regarding the minimalism and limitation on formatting. I
guess Hackpad team is working on the backend.

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.

~~~
huac
Not Dropbox employee, but I think they don't care about Mailbox. Especially
since Gmail Inbox now has support for Google Apps hosted mailboxes (my primary
Mailbox use case, though the org hasn't activated Inbox), and that app is
probably superior to Mailbox in every way.

------
dijit
Not to be confused with facebooks paper.

[https://itunes.apple.com/app/id794163692](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id794163692)

~~~
xemoka
And Paper by 53

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-notes-photo-
annotation...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-notes-photo-
annotation/id506003812?mt=8)

~~~
brorfred
And the Papers app [http://papersapp.com](http://papersapp.com)

~~~
harlanlewis
And Papers, Please
[https://appsto.re/us/8CKV3.i](https://appsto.re/us/8CKV3.i)

~~~
ucaetano
And paper, you know, that wood pulp material we use to wipe our asses, amongst
other less important things.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper)

~~~
pen2l
I like to make pretend-airplanes with paper. But I also write on it too.

And, while I only make simple things with paper, some other people are able to
make fantastically complicated strcutures with it.

------
krmmalik
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 _the_ most important tool for my company
in terms of knowledge sharing.

------
edanm
Here's a thought:

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).

~~~
bad_user
Culturally speaking, Dropbox and Evernote do not fit. I've been a long time
Dropbox user and in the process I've also used Google Drive and played with
OneDrive.

If there's something that sets apart Dropbox from its competition is that (1)
Dropbox is simpler (2) without compromising on the really important parts,
like having a history or Linux support and (3) the set of available features
work really well. Not sure what the right word for it is. Minimalism?

At times it's annoying of course. For example Dropbox's native client is the
best, but their web interface sucks. Like for example if a folder is too big,
the web interface will refuse to move it. Comparing that web interface with
Google Drive is not even funny, though the native client and the cross-
platform support more than makes up for the shortcomings of the web interface.

But going back to Evernote - seriously, it's a piece of shit and I always
wondered why people use it. I would rather have Dropbox build something
minimalist by themselves than to acquire Evernote. Or let others build things
that integrate with Dropbox. I just bought licenses for 4 different operating
systems for 1Password precisely because it integrates with Dropbox.

------
6stringmerc
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

------
mathgeek
Wood tabletop? check

Moleskine notebook? check

iPhone? check

This passes the generic tech news site photograph test.

~~~
odiroot
Well Moleskine are pretty good notebooks. Although I get your point.

~~~
ansgri
I thought it too, until started (resumed) writing with fountain pens. The ink
leaks through the page awfully.

~~~
fernandotakai
it's so hard writing on my moleskine with anything other than ballpoint pens
-- the smudges are just insane.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I absolutely love the feel of a gel pen, and tried out the Pentel Energel
Liquid Gel Pen (picked it up at Walmart on a lark). Its phenomenal. I still
get the gel feel while writing in my Moleskin, but the ink dries in under a
second (I've tested this!). Very satisfied (its the only pen I purchase now).

I'm using the 0.7mm point, but intend to try the 0.5mm point in short order,
as most of my writing is diagramming infrastructure/code/etc.

[http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Deluxe-Retractable-
Ink-...](http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Deluxe-Retractable-Ink-
Value/dp/B00FGQ0RKQ/)

~~~
voltagex_
Meanwhile, in Australia: [http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Pentel-EnerGel-Deluxe-
RTX-Retract...](http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Pentel-EnerGel-Deluxe-RTX-
Retractable-Liquid-Gel-Pen-Medium-Sky-Blue-12-Pack-/390988076368)

(it doesn't seem to be sold directly here)

Edit: found [http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/pentel-
ener...](http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/pentel-energel-
bl17-gel-pen-black-pebl17a?searchTerm=pentel)

------
abtinf
After the disaster that is Carousel (particularly on iOS), I am extremely
reluctant to use any other dropbox apps.

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.

Its a fair bet that a goodly number of dropbox customers have lost photos due
to this bug. No fix in sight.

~~~
binhex
As a counterpoint, I quite like Carousel, and I haven't noticed any problems.
Background uploads work for me, although it seems to wait until I am on wifi
to upload.

~~~
Tehnix
I too quite like Carousel.

Regarding the background upload, I think you can enable cellular in the
settings for the app?

------
Grue3
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.

------
state
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.

~~~
marcstreeter
this ^^^^ especially with regard to companies. At least in the company where I
work, the inability to self host is a deal breaker. Is this different for
many/any?

~~~
sergiotapia
Working on a solution for this. ;)

~~~
luchadorvader
Really? If so I'm interested. I would love to help with a project like this,
I'm tired of passing word docs, excel sheets around to customers with the
chance that I might have something out of date.

------
huac
Looks exactly like Quip.com

~~~
pinaceae
yes, exactly. right as Quip just closed a new round of funding.

------
daniel_iversen
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!

------
chishaku
Is Paper significantly different to Hackpad or simply a rebranding?

~~~
lhl
I was a relatively heavy Hackpad user (still using it, actually) and have been
beta testing Notes/Paper for a while - it started off very Hackpadish, but has
evolved a bit, enough that it may actually be suitable for my small company to
finally migrate off of Google Sites.

For me, the biggest missing piece for Hackpad, and why it was always a non-
starter for any serious knowledge collection purposes was its lack of
hierarchical structure. A few weeks ago, Paper finally added support for
folders, which while still a bit clunky/not-ideal (the sidebar doesn't give
you a tree nav, there's no way to see the whole structure), it at least meets
that minimum bar for organizing say, more than 20 notes.

I haven't done much group collaboration work (the teams/org stuff was just
introduced, and honestly, the thought of Dropbox completely messing up my/my
coworkers personal Dropbox accounts terrifies me - the horror stories posted
in the thread don't help assuage my fears, and I am not sure I have a
conceptual understanding/trust of how Dropbox models accounts/teams), and
while Folders have permissions, I can't figure out how to assign/inherit
permissions (crucial for working with clients, contractors), but on the bright
side, it's not literally insane like Google Sites' permission system (it
involves modifying global inheritances to give access to specific sub-trees).

In most other ways, it is like Hackpad++ - mostly like you would have expected
it to evolve: great feeling typeahead search, instant editing, OT-based multi-
user editing, and improved/extended embeds, and adds annotations, which I can
see being conceptually pretty useful.

The biggest thing missing for me now is offline editing - it's not strictly a
requirement for our office use, since that's online-only as well, but there
are so many times traveling/offsite where it's a huge pain. The other things
are mostly niggles - ways to actually see the site/document structure, the
option to attach files (especially images) w/o them being directly embedded, a
way to view/track embeds/media/files only, but overall it may be the best
wiki-like app out there for small groups now, especially those that hate
traditional (modal editing) wikis.

~~~
jamwt
Hi!

Dropbox two account works great. It's specifically designed to keep your
personal Dropbox completely separate (and unscrewup-able) from your company
assets. We built it because people had been intermingling personal Dropboxes
with company assets and it created messes for them when they left the company,
etc.

Anecdotally, I've had my personal Dropbox account since 2007 (was one of the
first 1000 beta users), and my family manages tons of stuff in it. I started
using two account in 2013 when joined Dropbox (the company), before we
released it publicly. Your existing Dropbox gets moved to "Dropbox (Personal)"
and a second folder gets created called "Dropbox (Your Company)". Nothing
changes about the behavior of "Dropbox (Personal)".

No problems whatsoever with the separation of personal and company--and that
reflects the vast majority of our users' experiences as well onboarding a
team.

As another user in this thread mentioned, Dropbox doesn't support 3+ accounts,
so if you work for multiple companies (who all use Dropbox), that might be a
problem.

Just a guess, I think the other problem report in this thread was someone who
wasn't expecting Dropbox "for teams" to create a completely new type of
account for everyone at his/her company. They probably use basic or pro
accounts in an ad-hoc way at their company and were unfamiliar with the teams
product and the fact it is distinct.

------
teaneedz
Does it support Markdown?

~~~
jnpatel
The current beta supports a Markdown pseudo-syntax (# for headings, and * for
bullet lists) but not an entire Markdown standard as far as I can tell.

~~~
i386
Thats very much like what Atlassian did with Confluence's wiki markup when
they decided to go rich text only

------
the_watcher
If they've simply made a better collaborative word processor than a Google
Doc, that alone would be a pretty huge upgrade. Nice job

------
CephalopodMD
Can you do collaborative code on this? That's a game changer.

~~~
antonl
yes

------
mtgx
Why can't Dropbox build something like this in their app?

[https://cryptomator.org/](https://cryptomator.org/)

~~~
i386
There is likely limited customer desire - try selling "client side encryption"
in a consumer product.

------
snorrah
Good to see the legacy of Google Wave lives on

------
smt88
Wow, thanks so much for the reply!

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.

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 _her_ to be part of your
leadership, what else would you do?"

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.

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?

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.

~~~
grinich
> Rice is a terrible human being and a seasoned deceiver of the public.

This is a pretty callous thing to say, even for HN. I think there's a real
discussion to be had here about data privacy and the power of law enforcement
agencies, but demonizing Condoleezza feels like creating a straw man. She's
just a board member-- it's not like she's VP of Product or CEO or something.

I get your point, but calling her a "terrible human being" is kind of extreme,
don't you think? Not sure that statement adds to a well-reasoned argument. I
personally don't agree with all her politics or behavior, but I don't think
she ranks up there with the truly "terrible" humans. She was a professor at
Stanford, is an accomplished musician, has done a lot for international US
diplomacy, was the first woman in many of her roles, etc. etc.

~~~
underbluewaters
As part of senior leadership pushing for the war in Iraq under false
pretenses, which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of
Americans, and burned nearly 2 trillion dollars, I'd say she's earned the
adjective of "terrible human being".

~~~
victorhooi
The Iraqi thing has been done to death.

It's never a black and white decision.

Yes, we may not agree with his decisions - but I guarantee that if you go
through history, you will find _many_ political decisions that each of us
would disagree with.

I may not like a lot of the decisions my political leaders make (I'm
Australian).

However, I don't pretend for a second that political leadership is an easy
calling - it's a tough job, and a lot of pressure - which can affect people in
different ways.

I dislike armchair pundits who will dissect every decision, and then try to
force it into their own black/white view of things.

At the end of the day, they made the call to topple Saddam Hussein, and take
out Iraq.

I don't think anybody will argue that Saddam was a great human being, or that
his regime wasn't responsible for atrocities - for me, the question was more
that did we (well, America and its allies) have better things to do with their
soldiers and money?

And look, we took out one dictator and put in a democratic government - and
gave them aid and training - but it remains to be seen what they can make of
it.

~~~
harryf
> The Iraqi thing has been done to death.

That's like saying "The Holocaust thing has been done to death."

Louis CK nails this beautifully
[http://youtu.be/LQEqbTWa0Aw?t=48](http://youtu.be/LQEqbTWa0Aw?t=48)

