Expand Dropbox with Airdropper and Habilis upload services

I’m a big fan of Dropbox, the shared-folder service that makes it easy to store your documents in “the cloud,” as the kids call it these days. You create a Dropbox folder on your computer, and anything you drop in there gets sent off to the internet. You can sync between computers or access it via the web (or mobile application). They give you 2GB of storage free (with more available for a fee), and it even tracks changes and can help recover accidentally deleted files. Different users can even share a synced sub-folder to make transferrals as easy as drag and drop.

But what if you need a file from someone who isn’t on Dropbox? Or you need to get a file without web access? There are two free services that make the whole process simple.

The first is Airdropper (currently in beta), which works like this; after authorizing it to work with your Dropbox account, you send an e-mail (through the Airdropper web interface) to your friend, along with a short explanation of the file you want.

Your friend, in turn, gets an email with a link to a secure web page where the file can be uploaded and sent to you.

After the file is sent, it shows up in a subfolder in your Dropbox.

The second is Habilis, an e-mail-based uploader. You simply authorize it to work with Dropbox. It generates a random email address to which you send a message and attach the files you want to put into your Dropbox. It works like a mobile photo uploader (Flickr and Facebook both have similar setups for sending photos), but it works with any type of file, and again, sends it to a subfolder.

Both services, like Dropbox, are free and make it a snap to receive and send files. Dropbox itself is astonishingly useful, and these two add-ons just make it more so.