Credit: Image copyrighted/owned by Dropbox

Most people have probably heard of the handy cross-platform Dropbox shared folder service. It allows you to designate a folder on your Mac or PC and access the contents of that folder from other devices using the web or dedicated client software. Clients exist for iPhones/iPads, Android devices, and many major operating systems. Many applications have Dropbox support baked right in, too. All in all, it’s quite handy and simple to use. I know many students and academics already use it frequently.

The reason I mention it now is because Dropbox, a freemium service, is currently running a promotion by which existing or new users can associate their academic e-mail address with their Dropbox account and they’ll get 3 GB of extra space to use for 2 years, plus additional space based on how many users from their university participate. Full details are available in the Dropbox blog entry.

The space race is open to staff and students, so everyone can participate if they have any kind of Open University e-mail address. The OU has tens of thousands of students, 7000+ associate lecturers, plus faculty and support staff. We have the possibility of really kicking butt on this but at the moment we’re in 11th place with only 744 participants to Oxford’s 2788. Surely we can do better than that!

Let other people know by pointing them at this blog post or at the Dropbox space race page. Let’s see how much space we can get for ourselves!

First step is to install NoteScraper for Evernote. Once that’s done, I use the following steps:

1. Log into your Kindle account at http://kindle.amazon.com/ using Safari.
2. Click on the link to your books (https://kindle.amazon.com/your_reading).
3. Locate the book with notes you want to export in that list and click the title of it.
4. Scroll down to where notes start and choose “show your highlights only” (this also shows your notes).
5. Assuming NoteScraper for Evernote is correctly installed and the Apple global Script Menu is visible on the top menu bar, choose “Export Kindle notes to Evernote”.
6. You’ll be asked for some tags, a notebook to add it to (Kindle Notes), and whether you want each note to have its own note.
7. Done. It’s in Evernote now.

It can then be copied and pasted into DevonThink (the tool I use) or other electronic journal or writing tools you may use.

Don’t use a Mac? You can perform the first four steps and then manually copy the content from the web page to wherever you like, but formatting and appearance won’t likely be as nice.

I’ve quickly posted this based on my how-to in my own research journal in response to a Twitter question by Catulla. I’ll add some illustrative screenshots later.

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Photo Credit: Photo by Alexandra Bellink (Alex Bellink) under an Attribution Generic license.

People initially were upset because they misread the terms (possibly in an earlier incarnation than what I have here) to say that Dropbox owned anything you uploaded and could do anything they wanted with it. That part has been addressed by Dropbox, I think.

However, I know I’m confused about whether or not it’s OK to use Dropbox to, for example, synchronize journal articles between my computer and my iPad. I have the right to view and store the journal articles, but I certainly don’t have the right to grant them some of the bits they’re asking for.  I think it’s related to the bit “…to the extent necessary for the Service”, meaning whatever I have asked them to do. Surely just storing and sending the files to me doesn’t violate the terms or copyright, does it? Some fellow researchers on Twitter thought that it did. At least one of them immediately dropped Dropbox.

I believe the intent isn’t to prevent you from privately sharing things with yourself but would reasonably expect you not to be posting materials you don’t have rights to in a way that other people can access them, e.g. public shares, web pages, etc.  I’m not a lawyer though. What do the terms actually say? If you are privately sharing copyrighted material with yourself, are you in violation of the terms? Will you go blind or will the wrath of Dropbox or the publishers fall upon you? What do you think?