One of my favorite new online applications is Dropbox. Dropbox's main purpose is to keep a folder of files synchronized between multiple computers. It does this through an operating system plugin that you install, The most exciting part is it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. So no matter what computers you use in a day or what operating systems they're running, you can keep all your files accessible and synced up, up to 2GB worth, for free.

Another feature I love is the ability to have shared folders with other users, right from your Dropbox to theirs. This is very cool if you're working on a project together or just want to share documents with the family. Instead of emailing files back and forth or setting up a complicated Version Control system, you can just share a folder in your Dropbox and work right off of the desktop.

Speaking of version control, Dropbox also stores all of the past revisions of all of your files. That means that whenever you're working on a file, every time you hit save, it stores a copy of the file at that time. Even if you delete the file from Dropbox, you can recover it using the getdropbox.com website.

This is an excellent way to keep a quick remote backup of actively worked on files. I love using it for text due to the built in versioning feature and the fact that whenever I hit save, it uploads a new version of my document. Also, with 2 gigabytes of space for free, that's plenty of room to work with. When I'm done actively working on something, I can move it to another folder that is part of my remote backup and frees up the space on Dropbox again.

My only slight problem is, even though Dropbox uses SSL to encrypt traffic to and from the Dropbox site and then encrypts my data on Dropbox's servers, Dropbox itself still has my encryption keys and can view my data whenever they please. I'm sure they don't, but I wouldn't exactly put my tax returns or a passwords file out there. I'm kind of a stickler for who has access to my data.

Even so, I recommend Dropbox for everyone who actively works on their computers. (Should be everyone, right?) If you do a lot of text editing or even graphic design and would cry if you lost something or overwrote something you're working on, working on it in a Dropbox folder that gets actively versioned could be a real life saver. Also, if you are constantly sharing files with others via email or IM, get Dropbox going on all of your machines and it'll make a world of difference in how you collaborate.

While Dropbox is not a full remote backup solution, it is great for what I call active file backups, incremental backups of actively changing files. I'm sure that it can fit in your workflow somewhere, so go and download it today.