Cloud Storage provider, DropBox has announced that it has acquired iOS email app Mailbox. All fourteen members of the Mailbox team will join DropBox. The email app has garnered critical acclaim and currently is not available as users have to join a cue to download the app. DropBox has said that MailBox will continue as a standalone app but it will be enhanced using DropBox’s proprietary technology.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal came through when the two companies started talking about a deal for email attachments. This is one of the reason’s people opt for Mailbox. That said this feature is also available in now Google owned Sparrow.

Google for its part has also started delivering large attachments via Google Drive, which is a direct rival to DropBox. A TechCrunch report indicates that DropBox bought MailBox for well above $50 million, and the number was closer to $100 million.

Dropbox has been getting quite a few updates with the introduction of things like PDF viewing, sharing of photos and much more. Dropbox today announced its latest update, which adds a new menu on the desktop client to help a user keep a tab of all his Dropbox activities at one place.

Users can now accept invitations to view shared folders, see links or photos that people have shared and keep tabs of all the changes from the menu itself. A ‘share’ button on the menu makes it easier for people to share files, photos and links with others. The menu also incorporates a real-time notification system wherein a user will get notified whenever he gets an invitation and can view it later on by clicking on the Dropbox icon.

The new menu has also been deeply integrated into the Dropbox app on Android and iOS and notifications for shared folders will also simultaneously show up on your devices.

Dropbox has released an updated version 2.1 of its iOS application. The cloud based storage app provides additional space to store file and access them anywhere on the go. It has now added three new features to make it even more user-friendly and organized.

Dropbox app on iOS could be used to view images, documents and more, but what it missed was support for PDF files. The updated version has been enhanced with a built-in PDF viewer to enable users to view PDF files making the app handier than before.

Other improvements include push notifications and sorting of files by date modified. The push notification will notify the user whenever there will be some folder being shared with them, thus enabling instant visibility of the folder. Moreover, users can now sort files by modifying dates to find your file out of the clutter.

The application is available for iOS 5.0 and above, and can be downloaded from here.

DropBox has released an API for Android and iOS devices that simplifies its integration with applications. From a technical standpoint it does not add any new syncing features that were not available to developers, but the tools have been simplified to such a degree that it could propel adoption of the already popular service. Currently, the biggest advantage that DropBox has going for in its favor is its 100 million strong user base, something which Google, Microsoft and Apple are all training their crosshairs on. While Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive and Apple iCloud come along with he respective mobile platforms, DropBox has had the first movers advantage and additionally it has been cross platform for the longest time. Apple’s iCloud on the other hand is only for Apple made hardware, SkyDrive is the most ubiquitous of the lot but still struggles with user adoption and Google’s Drive is the newest player in the market.

DropBox in the last few months has continuously been refining its craft. It has been moving beyond the core file-system nature of its product and is trying to make the experience more seamless where the user does not have to worry about where their content is going. More importantly, DropBox is currently focusing on getting its users to sync more data, rather than capture more users because this way it will be able to build more value add services around its core product. For instance, a couple of weeks back it launched the ‘Photo Album’ feature. Recently, it purchased cloud based streaming service AudioGalaxy, which could point towards the impeding launch of a DropBox plugged-in music service. Additionally, audio streaming apps like AudioBox also tap-in to DropBox to pull music.

More importantly though, it is noted that the new APIs are simpler to implement than Apple’s iCloud APIs which means that DropBox has set its eyes on capturing a lot of users from Apple’s cloud product. And when one takes into account that DropBox is a cross platform service, this move could attract users who are not solely planted in Apple’s ecosystem but use products from multiple different vendors.

DropBox has expanded its service beyond a basic cloud based file storage solution. The service now allows users to preview documents in the cloud, via the web interface, though excel sheets are not yet supported. The biggest advantage of this feature is that the user need not download the file first, he can preview it if editing is not the order of the day. In addition to this users can share photo albums on social networks like Facebook.

The interface for handling images as become more seamless as now it picks up images from a different folders and arranges them in one cohesive interface. Users can create virtual albums and share them on Facebook or Twitter or Email them as always.

This photo feature is already at a ‘beta’ stage on the Android app and should be coming soon to iOS.  As far as document support is concerned, PDFs, Word, PowerPoint files are supported. Now all these features have not been rolled out yet, most probably its a staggered rollout.

Only a week ago we reported that the Windows Store was growing at a very rapid pace and it had crossed the 35,000 app mark. Today, popular cloud storage service DropBox also enters the Windows Store with a Metro Style DropBox app, which will work across Windows 8 and Windows RT devices. Before this, DropBox offered an app that worked on Windows 8 machines but would not work on Windows RT machines that do not support legacy applications.

Microsoft had previously showcased the app at its Build developer conference in October and the app has finally hit the Windows Store.

The new app allows users to open and edit files from other Windows 8 apps and share files or folders using the Share Charm built-in the new operating system. DropBox has also added support for the search Charm, so it’s quite a cohesive app.

DropBox has released DropBox 2.0 for iOS that brings a total redesign of the popular cloud storage app. The main new feature of the app is the new ‘Photos tab’ which offers a simplistic way of scrolling through all the photos one has uploaded on the cloud storage service. Mobile users in particular on Android and iOS platforms already have the ability enable a ‘Camera sync’ feature that automatically uploads any photo clicked from the phone, so the Photo pane allows the user to simply scroll through all the images hosted on the service in a simple gallery like format.

Apart from this, the app itself gets a visual overhaul, and color theme goes away from the traditional DropBox sky blue to a deeper shade of blue. The main menu of the app still behaves like a traditional file manager so, this redesign should not worry longtime users. There is also a button in the ‘Photo Gallery’  for sharing, so users can now send their photos to Facebook or Twitter and can directly mail them also like before.

A few days ago, Dropbox had teamed up with Taiwanese vendor HTC to offer 25GB of cloud storage for free on its One series of devices. However, a group of devs managed to crack this app which then allowed users to take advantage of this promotional offer (strictly meant for HTC One devices) on any handset. Here’s what the Dropbox team wrote in their forums – “To earn the extra Dropbox space you will need to link your HTC Sense 4.0 device to your Dropbox account and complete Get Started”.

Dropbox also clearly wrote that the method to earn 25GB which is being circulated on the XDA Developers forum and on other blogs is illegitimate and it shall soon remove any space received using this method. So basically if your friend or someone else is using this promotional app, the cloud storage company is advising you to stop using it and to better download the app the right way from the Google Play if you own an Android device.

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