Dropbox is a great addition to my desktop...

When was the last time that you left your office for a meeting only to arrive at your destination without the right file? If that file wasn't on your laptop or a flash drive, you might find yourself up the proverbial creek without a paddle. We all suffer from the risks of working in the modern world, as it gets tougher to remain connected physically and virtually to all of the information we need moment to moment or meeting to meeting. But now, there's a family of applications that can help.

Business owners can find any number of services in the Cloud that offer virtual file sharing. Most are good, a few are great, but only one proved itself sufficiently simple and reliable to find its way to my desktop. With Dropbox, I can drag files into a folder on my desktop, and instantly pull up that file from any device with an Internet connection.

As the owner of the Project Management Office at our firm, I'm constantly working on projects with team members from different department or different companies. To keep everyone connected to the same project information, I set up a Dropbox with a folder for each project, then just keep all of the current information in that folder. I'm never more than a few clicks away from critical data. Even better, Dropbox allows me to share folders with other members of the project team, so that everyone stays connected. It comes in very handy before meetings. I simply drop my agenda, presentations, and documents into the right Dropbox folder, and by the time I walk to the meeting center, I can bring up the presentation on my screen, and everyone can share the spreadsheet on their own laptop or iPad for the discussion.

I've even set up a Dropbox to share files, photos, links and files with friends and family virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. I'll get a lot of use of this Dropbox on vacation this summer to keep everyone up to date with pictures and videos as we drive up the coast.

Your first 2GB of data in Dropbox is free, and business owners can find group accounts with great prices. I recommend taking a look at Dropbox for your file sharing and project or sales needs. I think that you will find that Dropbox is one application that really can make your work life a little easier.