The Good Patrons of 750 Words

4 cups

OVERVIEW: Daily writing would be saved to the user’s Dropbox to serve as an archive and backup of their work.

INITIAL SETUP: The user could link their 750 Words account to their Dropbox using the latter’s authorization API. // The user would then select an existing folder in their Dropbox, or choose to have 750 Words create a folder, in which their daily writing would be stored. // At this time, the user could choose to export all previous days’ writing to their newly-linked Dropbox.

ONGOING OPERATION: The feature would require no further interaction or maintenance from the user. // At the end of each day, once the user’s latest writing had been locked from further editing, a file named with the current date (e.g. ‘2011-04-15.txt’, or perhaps ‘2011-04-15.markdown’) would be uploaded to the user’s Dropbox. // 750 Words could also export to Dropbox with each incremental save, if this would not create undue load on the server. // These files would be for archive/backup purposes only. Changes would not be reflected on 750words.com.

BENEFITS: Search – Users with local tools such as OS X’s Spotlight could easily search their archive of writing. // Portability – Users could export their writing into other journaling software or convert it to alternate formats. // Security – User data would be preserved in the (unlikely) event that 750 Words were to experience data loss or termination of service. // Feature parity – More and more text-based services are allowing users to sync, export, and backup their data to Dropbox. Dropbox export would be an attractive feature for 750 Words newcomers and a welcome addition for existing users.

RECOMMENDATION: The Dropbox API is well-suited for this purpose, and plain text files require very little bandwidth overhead. Implementing automatic export of users’ daily writing to Dropbox will enhance the usefulness of the 750 Words service and provide substantial benefits to users for minimal development cost.