Balloon

A drop box for your Dropbox

4 followers

A drop box for your Dropbox

4 followers

Visit website

File storage and sharing apps

•

Cloud Computing Platforms

Launch tags:Web App•Storage•Tech

Launch Team

Render Sandboxes: a computer for every agentIsolated compute, persistent state and a real filesystem

Promoted

Your Week

This is a really nice concept! I love the simplicity. Could you explain how it's different from Dropbox's own 'file requests' feature?

Report

11yr ago

Hocus Focus

Maker

@gmph Thank you Graham :) Honestly we've been ideating and working on this for quite sometime. Even before the file requests feature ( I believe that was rolled out on Jun 17th). With balloon, its more of custom links supporting multi file uploads. Comes with a nice little image preview too! In the next version, we will be rolling out a password protection feature too. Let us know if you have any other questions!

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@gmph Graham, Balloon and Dropbox file requests aren't too dissimilar. Balloon is just a friendlier and more playful 3rd party version of it. But with plans to integrate other cloud services, it will grow beyond Dropbox file requests capabilities.

Report

11yr ago

Astronomer

@gmph Another difference is that Dropbox's File Requests send you an email when new files are uploaded.

Report

11yr ago

Your Week

@jsngr Supporting multiple third-party services for uploading might be interesting too! For example if someone had a Google Drive folder with photos from an event and you had a Dropbox folder, making transferring between those services as simple as Balloon is now would be nice.

Report

11yr ago

I thought that DropBox already announced this functionality recently? Isn't that what "file requests" does?

As others have said. I dont' think your website really explains what you do at all. It would be great if you could show some screenshots or something.

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@_jacksmith It is in fact very similar. But with the opportunity to support more than just Dropbox, Balloon becomes more versatile, and a friendlier and more playful version of it. Can you elaborate more on what you're finding confusing? If the tagline or homepage copy isn't doing it justice, something isn't right. Have you tried it? Just connect your Dropbox, create a Balloon, and share it so that people can send you files directly to your Dropbox, that's all :) Send me something to give it a try https://balloon.io/jordan

Report

11yr ago

@jsngr I didn't want to connect my account before knowing what it does. the example is helpful. So to understand, presently there's actually no difference vs Dropbox file requests, but in the future you'd support more platforms, which would be the difference?

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@_jacksmith That would be correct.

Report

11yr ago

@jsngr @_jacksmith OneDrive support would be great!

Report

11yr ago

Cool idea, but I feel that it is not explained very well in the homepage and when others receive the balloon link :)

Report

11yr ago

Enki

@jenssegers Hmm yeah, I don't understand what it is or does.

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@rogerdickey @jenssegers We pushed an update just now that makes the homepage details section more visible. Was that the issue before? Thanks!

Report

11yr ago

@jsngr @jenssegers still doesn't make sense to me

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@_jacksmith @jenssegers What can I help clear up?

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@datbayev it's not you who would be doing the uploading. You'd share your Balloon with your wedding guests and they upload the photos they've taken of your wedding. Balloon is all about others sending you files directly with just a link

Report

11yr ago

Hocus Focus

Maker

Hello Product Hunters! Thank you for the amazing response. Balloon is a drop box for your Dropbox. Share your Balloon to receive files, collect photos from an event, and so much more. Files go straight to your Dropbox and accessible on any device. No more signups and no more manual downloads. Jordan and I wanted something like this badly for ourselves to use and then we decided to make it open for all. Our core idea was to make sending and receiving files super simple and super easy to use. The possibilities are endless. A teacher could create a balloon for a particular assignment and share it with all the students. Something similar to balloon.io/Harvard/CS345/Assignment1 It is also a tool for anonymous file sharing. A company can create a feedback balloon and lets any customer share their feedback without having them signup/login. Future updates : Password protection. Multiple cloud services. Try it out and give us your feedback or any feature request :) Or you can send them privately to balloon.io/shiv too ;)

Report

11yr ago

Zengo wallet

@shivkanthb stupid question: do apps who connect to my dropbox have access somehow to my dropbox files? can you read them?

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@ourielohayon @shivkanthb That's not a stupid question :) And nope! only read/write access to the Balloon.io folder.

Report

11yr ago

Zengo wallet

@jsngr @shivkanthb read/write access means you *could* read my files no? or did i miss something?

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@ourielohayon @shivkanthb We only have read/write access to the files in your Balloon.io folder, not your entire Dropbox. We *could* read the files in your Balloon.io folder, but we don't :)

Report

11yr ago

Zengo wallet

@jsngr @shivkanthb great. but how do i know you won't ? i just have to believe you? [sorry just trying to understand]

Report

11yr ago

I love the idea. The only problem is that the interface is not communicating sufficiently what's going on the screen / what should I do. E.g. I should drop files here, now I can go away because they were successfully uploaded and so on.

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@uxboy Thanks Michal! We were going for simplicity, but you're totally right as far as how it can get confusing. Thanks for the feedback!

Report

11yr ago

@robinraszka @uxboy Imagine sending someone that link without context.

Report

11yr ago

Headless Dropshipping Starter

Great concept although I'd feel more secure with a random URL given to me I could share instead of creating a name someone else could guess. I don't know how I feel giving the world write access to my Dropbox.

Report

11yr ago

Hocus Focus

Maker

@notrab Thank you Jamie :) We will be rolling out password protection for write access pretty soon. We have made creating and deleting balloons as easy as possible. So once you feel you have received your files, you can simple delete the balloon from your dashboard and the link will be no longer active for upload. Hope that helps :)

Report

11yr ago

Kanbanq

@notrab I agree with Jamie. I tried creating a folder called test something and it told me the folder name was taken. So i picked another one, but since i knew this other folder existed already, i just typed it into the url and uploaded .rtf describing how it got there. This should be controlled more so you dont idiots like me uploading random files to ppl's dropboxes. :) Random hash names for the url would be a big help. Great idea though! Love it :)

Report

11yr ago

Elimi

That's awesome, I love the simplicity. Would it be possible for guest to see what's in the balloon? P.S.I encountered some issues with drag'n'drop on Safari9.0 (i had to click the balloon to upload file)

Report

11yr ago

Automator for Figma

Maker

@mzygar Thanks Michal! Sorry about that, I'll work on a fix!

Report

11yr ago

1 2 3

•••

Reviews