Dropbox may already be an immensely popular cloud storage vendor, but the company isn't standing still when it comes to introducing new services. At a media event in San Francisco, California yesterday, it announced the official release of two products: collaborative note-taking app Paper, and Smart Sync (formerly called Project Infinite).
Paper has finally moved out of the beta phase - first private and then public - that it's been in for over a year. Essentially, the service is Dropbox's take on Google docs, albeit it with a few more features and a cleaner layout that does away with menus and toolbars.
Paper users are able to highlight and comment on shared documents in real-time, add @mentions for sharing, and post stickers within conversations. It also comes with task-management features, such as the ability to assign employees projects and set deadlines. But probably the most welcome part of Paper is that you can import, edit, and collaborate on file types from Microsoft, Google, and others.
Rob Baesman, Dropbox's head of product, described Paper as "one part online document, one part collaboration, one part task management tool, one part content hub," to The Verge.
Dropbox also announced the launch of Smart Sync yesterday. The company first revealed the product back in April last year, when it was called Project Infinite. It lets users manage their cloud files inside the Mac OS X Finder or Windows File Explorer in the same way they would any locally-stored file. When you click on one, Dropbox will automatically download and open the file as if it was on your computer's drive, and any changes will be synced back to the cloud.
Paper is available to everyone with a Dropbox account. Smart Sync, meanwhile, is available for business and enterprise customers.