All Dropbox accounts were accessible with virtually any passwords, even incorrect ones, for four hours on Monday. The blunder was made when the company implemented a code update, and it took four hours before realizing the issue, eventually having it fixed in the next five minutes.

Less than one percent of users logged in during that period, according to a blog post by Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox’s co-founder and CTO. These accounts will be flagged for investigation, and the account owner will be notified if there’s any unauthorized access:

We’re conducting a thorough investigation of related activity to understand whether any accounts were improperly accessed. If we identify any specific instances of unusual activity, we’ll immediately notify the account owner. If you’re concerned about any activity that has occurred in your account, you can contact us at support@dropbox.com.

2011 hasn’t been a particularly good year for Dropbox. Some users got upset when the company updated its terms of service in April, reserving the right to decrypt and hand over private files of any users to the government when requested, in compliance to the United States law.

The company was also alleged to have misled its users in a help article, stating “Dropbox employees aren’t able to access user files” statement.” The statement was later revised to “Dropbox employees are prohibited from viewing the content of files you store..” in the same month.

Along with the latest security blunder, Dropbox effectively went from “only you can see your files” to “employees and the government may also see your files”, and for four hours, “anyone can see your files.”

The commendable part? Dropbox admits its fault on each of these occasions, clarifying and communicating with its users through the company blog.

Protip: Regardless of any promises made by online storage service providers, if a file is too important to be seen by anyone, encrypt it yourself using free tools like TrueCrypt.

©2011 SheepTech

Dropbox Security Blunder Leaves All User Accounts Accessible Without Password

A month later, Skype released a newer version of its Windows client, with almost nothing to do with bridging calls between Skype and Facebook. All it does was adding a new Facebook tab that is nothing but another way to read your news feed. You can call your Facebook friends if they made their number public, which will of course uses your Skype credit. Free calls is only possible if your Facebook friend has a Skype account.

Far from what I expected.

Forget about Skype. Here’s an app for iPhone and iPod Touches developed by CrispApp, called the Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger enables you to make voice calls from your iPhone to any of your Facebook friends that is online.

How it works?

1. Initiate the call using Facebook Messenger app on your iPhone
2. A link will be sent to your friend via Facebook chat
3. The link will bring your friend to a web-based VoIP client, which will automatically connect itself to your call
4. Once the connection is established, you both can start talking, for free

All it takes to receive the call is just a flash enabled browser. No additional software or Facebook app is required.

While the main selling point of Facebook Messenger is none other than voice calls, it also supports push-enabled Facebook chat. The interface is just sleek, better than any other expensive instant messaging app in the App Store.

The app is currently only available on iOS, but an Android version is said to be planned. It would be perfect if it is also possible to initiate the call from Facebook itself, rather than just from mobile devices.

Sure, there is Skype for desktop to desktop calls, but not everyone has a Skype account. Utilizing Facebook’s network for VoIP makes so much more sense.

Though it is free to make calls using the Facebook Messenger app, the app cost $2.99 in the App Store.

[Facebook Messenger] (App Store link)

©2011 SheepTech

Call Facebook Friends for Free from iPhone

Just in case you are too young for this (if all you have seen is an iPhone with on-screen keyboard or an Android device with Swype installed), keypresses in this context refers to the number of times you need to hit a phone keypad in order to type a word, assuming without assistance like T9 involved.

Say to type the letter “C”, we would have to hit the number “2″ for 3 times on the keypad.

What is SmsSrc?

SmsScr is a web app that ranks lists of words according to the number of required keypresses. Guam is the easiest country name to type on a phone keypad, with just 5 keypresses, while South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands require 99 keypresses to complete according to this list.

If for any reason you need to rank words with this criteria, you can create a new list by typing manually or upload an existing text file. After previewing the list, you can choose to publish it on SmsSrc for public viewing.

You can browse existing lists to get an idea what you can do with the web app.

You are not alone if you think this web app is just plain weird, serving very little purpose. I’m was clueless too when I first tested it. Apparently it was created for the purpose of code testing, and the developer would like more people to utilize it for more intensive testing.

©2011 SheepTech

SmsScr: List Words by Mobile Phone Keypresses

Today, there is a new addition in Gmail Labs that does exactly that.

This is definitely welcoming for users who pin the Gmail tab on Chrome, and also to those who have so many tab opened that they can barely read the tab’s title anymore.

To enable, simply go to Gmail Labs and look for Unread message icon.

It’s only supported in Chrome 6+ or Firefox 2+, but what else can you be using?

The next feature Gmail Labs should work on would be sound notification. A perfect companion to the unread messages favicon.

©2011 SheepTech

Gmail Labs Add Unread Count on Favicon

Can be done. Minimalist Gmail is a Chrome extension that provides option to hide almost all possible elements in Gmail, as well as other extensive customization option.

What can you hide? The top link bar, the Gmail logo, the search box, buttons, sidebar items, advertisements, navigation and just everything else (except for the inbox itself).

For customization, you can change the Gmail logo, highlight starred items with a color of your choice, replace the top links with your own links, use custom attachment icons etc.

If you have a Gmail checker extension installed to monitor new emails, you can uninstall that already. Minimalist Gmail doubles up as a Gmail notifier by indicating the number of unread mails on the favicon. You can also opt for a toast notification whenever a new mail arrives.

A must have for avid Gmail user.

©2011 SheepTech

Minimalist Gmail: Fully Customize Gmail & Remove Clutter in Chrome

Like OhLife, 280daily is a journal writing web app. The difference is you are limited to just 280 characters to sum up your day. If you feel that isn’t quite enough, you can opt to add another thousand words by uploading a picture (a picture worth a thousand words they say).

Demo entry with 171 characters (109 remaining) and a picture:

Signing up is as quick as you can enter your email address, a password, and select your time zone.

By default, 280daily will send you a daily email reminder at 4PM to write your entry of the day, which is weird since 4PM is far from end of the day. It’s however possible to set a different time, or even opt out of email reminders all together.

Unlike OhLife, you cannot add an entry by just replying to the reminder email. You’re required to login to the web app to do so. A mobile optimized version of the site is also available, making it possible to write an entry even when you are on the move.

You can export your diary entries in PDF or print them for now. The 280daily team is working on a service to print your entries on a physical book, which will be made available soon.

©2011 SheepTech

280daily: Write Your Day in 280 Characters

Every so often, Dropbox will award its users some free space for completing tasks (linking Dropbox account to Facebook & Twitter, explore “Getting Started” page), on top of the maximum 8GB referral bonus.

From 15th January to 29th January, you can snap up to 1GB of free space on Dropbox by solving their first ever Dropquest, an online scavenger hunt they have come up with.

You are required to solve a 29-steps quest that will suck your brain juice dry—requiring you to explore the Dropbox site, solve puzzles, extract answers from the given hints etc.

The quest however has been ongoing for two days now, which means answers and walkthrough are already posted all over the internet. If you don’t think you’d have enough time, energy or brain to figure all the answers out by yourself, here’s two walkthrough that will breeze you through the quest effortlessly (walkthrough1, walkthrough2).

Ready? Start the Dropquest.

Good luck!

©2011 SheepTech

Get 1GB Free Extra Space on Dropbox with Dropquest

The community. People on Quora are mostly professionals and experts in their respective fields, and this reflects in the quality of answers. There are even CEOs answering questions about their companies.

It is mandatory to use your real name, though you can opt to answer questions anonymously. You can follow topics, questions, or people you are interested in to create your own personalized feed.

I’m not gonna bore you further describing Quora. There are many articles on Quora out there, just Google if you want to know more.

Instagram CEO answering a question

Request your Quora invite

Quora is not fully opened to the public yet. An invite by an existing Quora user is required to sign up for a new account.

Apparently, there is no limit on how many invites a user can send. If you are interested in joining Quora, just let me know in the comments below.

There’s no need to publish your email address publicly. Just enter your real email address in the email field and I would be able to see it (and not others).

©2011 SheepTech

Quora Invites: Request Yours Here

Facto is a platform for you to share little known facts about yourself. Why would you need a separate service to share your facts when you can do the same on Facebook and Twitter?

That’s because amazing things happen when everyone come together and tell little things about themselves, be it achievements, pet peeves or experience. It’s cool reading random facts about random strangers living half a globe away.

You can reply to a fact using some of the preset responses; including Knew that!, Didn’t know that, Me too!, Awesome, Whoa, Weird, Boring and No way. It’s not possible to post any comments other than the preset ones, so spam is not an issue here.

You don’t need an account to just browse random facts, so go ahead and see what people are sharing there.

©2011 SheepTech

Facto: Share Your Little-Known Facts

Threewords.me is not another social networking site. It serves just one purpose, for your friends to describe you in three words (optionally add a note along with the three words).

The three word description can be submitted anonymously, so you won’t know who posted that lovely/nasty description about you. Also, there don’t seem to be any limitation on the number of time anyone can describe the same person.

Threewords.me will accept just any three words, even NSFW languages including the F word. Combine it with the ability to post more than one description, you can only imagine how your enemy will flood your page if they ever found out your Threewords.me URL.

For damage control, you can delete description that you won’t want to associate with. You can even make all the descriptions private, so that they are only available to you and not publicly.

©2011 SheepTech

Threewords.me: Testimonial in 3 Words