

New Dropbox API v1 with search and revision - edwincheese
https://www.dropbox.com/developers_beta

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vaporstun
I am a little turned off by the fact that I have to log in to view this
information. What is the point? Is this now Facebook?

I'm interested in the API but don't feel as though I should have to alert
Dropbox, by being forced to login, that I am interested in it in order to
learn more.

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nicksergeant
Really? Going a bit far, I'd say. Logging in on the web is a fairly trivial
task, and I'd argue that there's a good business reason to gauge interest in a
consumer API before dumping a ton of man hours into building it.

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vaporstun
Right, and they can gauge interest easily and anonymously without requiring me
to tell them specifically that I am interested in it.

I value my privacy and find it silly that I have to log in. They offer no
information as to why I must log in, I am just hit with a log in page. If this
were under an NDA or something and it was an agreement into which I entered
willingly, I would not be so opposed. As it is, they are simply farming my
data and I don't like giving that up freely.

I think there is the growing problem that most people are increasingly willing
to divulge their personal information, specifically online, and then have a
backlash at anyone who doesn't feel comfortable doing so. It's trivial you
say, just as it would be trivial for me to be forced to show identification
whenever I get on a bus, but that doesn't mean I am going to be alright with
doing so. Like the argument that only people who have anything to hide
advocate for privacy. This example may sound a bit extreme but it is
essentially the same argument.

Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinion, but I don't think it's going too
far to be perturbed at giving up some of my privacy to look at an API.

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kordless
Loggly's site and app are on two completely different stacks. The app is what
you log into, and most of it sits behind authentication. I'm speculating here,
but if we were to do some type of semi-automated documentation, it would
PROBABLY sit behind authentication as well, as it would live in the app side
of the house. Not because we wanted to 'track' someone. We can do that when
you write a program and then test it! :P

I'm certainly not speaking for Dropbox here, but my point is that there do
exist reasons why a company might want you to log in to see documentation.
Maybe you are on a beta trial of V3.0 of the APIs, and need to see alternate
docs, or some of the examples require you to have a hash that is used in
examples, or...etc.

Seems to me you are being a bit pedantic. I doubt seriously that Dropbox is
going to violate your privacy.

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seddona
Dropbox are making a play to be the storage platform for all your cloud data.
I.e I design a wiz bang SaaS collaboration app using their API and you get
"control" of your data.

Justifies the valuation if they can pull it off..

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sunchild
I don't really understand Dropbox's strategy. As a service, Dropbox does one
thing pretty well – syncing data so that users can get a more or less seamless
online/offline experience using data that's shared on multiple devices.

However, sharing a Dropbox with other people is a disaster. Anyone can delete
or change anything in a shared volume. No access control is offered at all.
All invited users are treated as fully trusted users by default.

I suppose you could use the API to roll your own access control, but it
baffles me that the default sharing defaults to such a potentially disastrous
setting.

Their documentation claims its because it's impossible to retain cross-
platform access control settings, but that seems wrong – why not just verify
access via the Dropbox app layer instead of trying to embed permissions
metadata at the OS layer?

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RVijay007
The strategy is that they need to grow their company and potential revenue
sourcing methods. The strategy for many is to build an ecosystem; for them,
having developers that make it super easy to to put any kind of information
anywhere into the cloud is going to cause users to mindlessly start using it
as their online hard drive, and thus push more users from free to paid, thus
capturing more revenue. The mobile future means that even more uncapturable
data now becomes capturable in digital form, and they want people to store on
their services. Sharing is awesome for them as it eats into both people's
storage for the same amount of data on the cloud, so it's basically pure
profit.

