Collaborable, web apps & tech startups

The Dropbox REST API is going to forever change the way people interact with web apps for business. It allows your web app to put and pull data from any user’s desktop or mobile device.

What this really means is that users of web apps (specifically small business) don’t need to struggle with your crappy UI, and you don’t need to reinvent the spreadsheet to unlock powerful new interactions and possibilities. Holy shit. Do you see it? Is it coming to you now?

Imagine: your customer can modify web app data in their desktop app of choice.

Example: Jimmy runs a small e-commerce business. He’s not a technical person and understands little about how the web functions. He typically puts internet passwords on sticky notes around the office, and gets frustrated when he needs to find one. However, Jimmy spent 12 years prior working for a financial services firm, and knows how to mash up data in an excel spreadsheet like you wouldn’t believe. With Dropbox and a smart web app, Jimmy gets to manage all of his e-commerce product information in a local excel spreadsheet, sitting in that magic box on his desktop.

Time to upload an image for a new product on Jimmy’s site. He puts it in the folder called “product images”. Magic!

It just works.

What can you imagine doing with the Dropbox REST API?
Let me know what you come up with @ericingram.

Discuss it on Hacker News

Update: This afternoon I wrote some code to explore the idea in my language of choice. This is a method of a model in the Fwd PHP framework, demonstrating how I could theoretically pull products from a CSV file to update products in my web app:

class Products extends Model
{
    function update_from_dropbox ()
    {
        foreach (get("/dropbox/products.xls") as $row)
        {
            put("/products/{$row[0]}", array(
                'sku' => $row[0],
                'name' => $row[1],
                'price' => $row[2],
                'description' => $row[3]
            ));
        }
    }
}

Update #2: brlewis posted in a Hacker News comment:

"... here's what I do that should scale to tens of thousands decently:

I run dropboxd on my web server. Instead of using the API, users share a folder with my app. Dropboxd gets the stream of changes, and my app polls the local filesystem for changes instead of polling across the net."

I’m going to try this technique myself. Thanks brlewis!

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