Make A File Upload Service With Dropbox, Automator, Quicksilver

Mac OS X: We’ve featured the great file-uploading app and service CloudApp, but it doesn’t give you a ton of control over your files and has some storage restrictions. Web designer and developer Andrew Heiss figured out a way to do the same thing using Dropbox, Automator and Quicksilver. Once you do it, you can upload files with a keyboard shortcut and instantly have the URL on your clipboard.

This takes a little (but not a lot of) time to set up, but once you have things working it’s really handy. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Download this “Post to Dropbox” service and install it.
2. Open the the Move to Dropbox or Copy to Dropbox service (or both) in Automator and edit the “Run Shell Script” section so it contains your Dropbox ID. Don’t know your ID? It’s the number you get from public URLs like this one: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7925/Post%20to%20Dropbox.zip. In that URL, the ID is 7925.
3. Now that you’ve done that, you can right click, go to the Services submenu, and choose Move/Copy to Dropbox. That’ll move/copy the file to your Public folder in Dropbox and put the public URL in your clipboard. To take it a little further, however, you can use the Services Menu Module in Quicksilver. To enable it, open Quicksilver’s preferences and click on the Plug-ins tab. In the long list, find the Services Menu Module and check it.
4. In the Preferences tab, make sure “Enable advanced features” is checked as well.
5. In the catalogue tab, go to the Quicksilver section and check “Proxy Objects.”
6. Now go to the Custom Triggers tab so you can add a shortcut to upload the file. When you do you’ll have a few options. In the “Select an Item” section, type “Current Selection.” In the “Action” section, type “Move to Dropbox” (or “Copy to Dropbox” if you prefer), and add you keyboard shortcut.

Now, when you select a file and press that keyboard shortcut it’ll upload it and provide you with a public URL. It’s pretty great!

Fake Cloud App with Dropbox and Quicksilver [Andrew Heiss]