Project Composer

Credit:techcrunch

In the past few years, there has been a tremendous growth in the use of cloud file sharing services. From what it looks like from the rumours in the market, Dropbox seems to be looking forward to bring back the HackPad.

Dropbox has acquired HackPad, which is a collaborative documents service company a year back. This Y Combinator-backed start-up grew up to be the most preferred choice of the people and the most important tool for taking down notes at any event, conference apart from the classroom.

The main reason for the immense popularity of this tool was attributed the simple design, easily usable, and had the nature of being real-time. Now out of nowhere we have the new entrant with the similar feature as well as the remarkable resemblance to the HackPad has appeared in the market and this is called the Composer.

The project composer: 

One of the users of the product Hunt spotted out this project. This is the websites which highlights the best products available in the market based on the voting of the users from the community itself.

As of Today, Adam Waxman, from the SeatGeek product posted out a link to the composer however most of the users replied that they are unable to get access to this link. Even though the app is currently available on the domain of Dropbox.com, looks like the name has been taken from an internal ongoing project.

This project will first request for authentication from the users to access their files and folders of the Dropbox account. Even though most of the people are able to clear the initial rounds of authentication for the composer, they end up getting the error message indicating that they are not allowed to use the service as if now.

Just incase the user finds that they have received this message in error, they can send email to the company at feedback@dropbox.com. However one of the users was able to get access to the composer and stated that it looks much like Evernote as it allows collaborative note taking. She further added that the composer users will be able to Dropbox files, and tables with their notes, add tasks.

At the end what it looks like is the transformation of HackPad and its integration with the Dropbox. Even though Composer might not be as popular as Evernote but it can still become a cause of concerns for other companies as the users of the Dropbox cloud storage facility will be relying on the composer. Even though the Dropbox Company has denied giving information about the Project composer, they have stated that additional information will soon be released.

Compose has been able to keep the essence of HackPad but the company is working on it to make it future ready. Companies can certainly expect tough competition in the market but they have the advantage of minimal features and ease of understanding. The project has currently received mixed response in the market, but Dropbox is working on the improvisation of the project.

Microsoft to Integrate MS Office with the Dropbox for Increasing the Cloud Productivity

In the recent times, we have seen many market giants and rival companies collaborating for increasing the quality of their product or even their service. One of the latest additions in this is the approach from Microsoft.

Microsoft is coming together with one of their major competitor and has struck a deal with the DropBox Company; this will allow enhanced interoperability between the Dropbox’s cloud storage and Microsoft Office and further improve the file sharing services offered to the businesses as well as consumers.

This partnership was announced on Tuesday and took the entire industry by surprise as it was being terms as a “coopetition” relationship which indicated co-operation as well as competition. This was due to the fact that Dropbox’s name sake consumer service as well as Dropbox for Business was competing against the Microsoft’s OneDrive and OneDrive for Business.

What is the motivation behind this deal? 

The main motivation behind this step is to make the life much easier for the company’s vast number of customers who are currently storing 35 billion Office files in the Dropbox. Although in Microsoft, almost all the Office users completely rely on the OneDrive for Business and OneDrive, Dropbox has managed to amaze people with 300 million people using their service and on the other hand Microsoft Office has about 1.2 billion users.

The driving force behind this deal is one the same line with the other motivations which has encouraged Microsoft to get into partnerships in the recent times. The Company has made a deal with IBM about cloud computing and tie with Salesforce.com.

According to Satya Nadella, CEO, they will keep on looking for possible partnership deals as long as it will yield a considerable amount of benefit for their existing customers by ensuring they are developing products that work together more efficiently and being offered by the teaming up of Microsoft and the other companies.

What in-stored in the future? 

According to Nadella, they will keep on looking for all possible partnerships in the coming months. They understand that at the moment we have “heterogeneous mobile-first cloud-first world” environment and partnerships are becoming the best way to provide excellent services and products to the customers.

With this new partnership of Office and Dropbox, the users will be able to access Dropbox from their office interface and this is being achieved by focusing on the Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Users will be able to make changes to their office files in Dropbox interface and the updated file can be synched between many devices.

In the coming weeks, this updated is expected to be rolled out on Office apps for Android and iOS. The company is hoping to release the web version of the same during the first quarter of 2015. According to this deal, Dropbox will be required to develop a mobile app for the windows platform in the coming few months. This most recent feature will be available to office users having access to Dropbox account as well.

HTC wants to boost its range with One

After a successful year 2010, HTC has struggled in 2011 against the side of Samsung Android devices. The Taiwanese manufacturer wants to revive in 2012 thanks to its new line HTC One. 

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