Dropbox doesn't want to be just storage space for your digital photos anymore, it's also hoping to become the primary way you access and share them. The cloud storage company yesterday launched Carousel, a new iOS and Android app that serves as a gallery for all your photos and videos.
The new app shows photos from all folders of your Dropbox account and can be accessed through any of your devices. There's an obvious limitation though, and that's the storage amount permitted by your Dropbox plan.
You can use Carousel's sharing tools to share collections of photos with your email and phone contact lists irrespective of whether the recipient has a Dropbox account or not. "We designed this to feel like chat...to feel like SMS" said Gentry Underwood, co-founder of Mailbox, which was acquired by Dropbox last year.
Another key feature is that the app can be set so that any video and photo on your smartphone is automatically backed up, in full resolution, directly to Dropbox. This means you can clear up local storage and only stream media to your device if needed. With Carousel, Dropbox has put itself into direct competition with giants like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. To give Carousel a ride head here for the download links.
In separate news, the company also announced that Mailbox is now available on Android and coming soon to OS X.