Dropbox is continuing its push to become everyone's preferred storage solution with a bunch of new integrations. The company has launched Dropbox Extensions - an evolution of its collaboration platform that adds a suite of new capabilities for editing and managing files sorted on the cloud-synching platform.

The cloud offers lots of benefits for consumers as we all as for small business. But, as a consumer, how do you know what cloud services to use and what they're all for? Here's our dive into the world of personal cloud services.

No one is happy about how email works.

The subject of file backups and online storage came up the other day at a Lifehacker staff meeting, and resident door-holder Nick Douglas chimed in that his solution for backing up his laptop was easy: He never keeps any important files on it. Everything — and he means everything — lives in the cloud.

Many of us store images and PDFs in Dropbox that contain text. The company has announced that they will be automatically applying OCR to make them easier to find.

There are a lot of services you can use to host your files in the cloud. Dropbox is one solid option, even though it doesn’t give you a lot of storage to play with if you aren’t paying its monthly fee. Still, it’s an incredibly convenient way to access a shared pool of files across your computers and devices.

Even if it’s reached “household name” status for software, here’s a guide to getting the most out of this great storage solution.

Dropbox is facing some stiff competition as they move from purely being a storage infrastructure provider to a business that brings essential cloud storage infrastructure to companies. But they continue to boost the storage they are bringing. Customers on Dropbox's Professional and Business Standard tiers will be getting an extra terabyte of space for no additional fees from today.

All browsers: Google and Dropbox are now collaborating on a brand-new "Dropbox add-on for Gmail", which will make it easy to share the contents of your Dropbox directly within Gmail. If you're going the other way, it's also a lot easier to dump files directly into your Dropbox, saving you the step of having to pull up your Downloads folder and manually drag the file over yourself.

Google Cloud Next is in progress with the search and cloud giant, and its partners, announcing lots of new products and services as well as significant updates to existing tools we use. Here are five of the highlights.

Electronic communication can still create a paper trail, as former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort learned recently when his bail was revoked for alleged witness tampering while he was on house arrest awaiting two trials.

When it comes to file management, Apple fans have had it easy. Ever since Apple debuted AirDrop in OS X Lion, way back in July of 2011, moving files around your linked desktop and laptop systems (and iPhones and iPads) couldn't be any easier.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Dropbox, Google Drive, or whatever popular service you use to back files up to the cloud and keep them synchronised between your multiple desktops and laptops. However, data privacy is becoming a bigger deal and we wouldn't question you if you're ready to make the leap away from these kinds of services.

Dropbox has added a new presentation tool, Dropbox Showcase, to its portfolio as the company best known for file syncing and sharing continues to expand its collaboration toolkit. Showcase is available to all Dropbox Business Advanced and Enterprise teams along with updates to admin controls for managing the deployment of Showcase within businesses and workgroups.

Dropbox has expanded the use of their Smart Sync feature, which keeps less-used files online without storing them on your local hard drive, to all Dropbox Professional users. Alongside this addition come a bunch of new admin and management features to assist with deploying Dropbox in businesses.

Dropbox was the early mover when it came to a file sync and share service that was able to make it easy for people to save files on one device and have them available, almost instantly, on another device. But since they started, many competitors ahem come along and the core service they offered has become commoditised. That's driven the company to look for new ways to differentiate themselves and to solve different problems. And that's where Dropbox Paper comes in. Paper is about helping teams of people work together.

Dropbox has announced a partnership with Google Cloud that will deliver a bunch of new cross-platform integrations that will bring Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Hangouts into closer collaboration with their file sync and share platform. And it's not just a corporate feature - the integrations will be made accessible for all Dropbox users.

Every IT admin knows the pain of having unused user accounts lingering around. But when you run a global cloud storage business, unused accounts can be a pain in the butt. For Dropbox, which is preparing to go public and is facing stiff competition from Microsoft, Google, Apple and others, the need to better manage infrastructure costs is particularly acute. In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Dropbox has said they've been able to save over US$35M in infrastructure costs. One of the things they did was delete data from inactive users.

This year will, I think, be remembered for many things. But on the technology front, it will be the year that collaboration systems really started to hit their straps. Continuing that trend of improvement and evolution, Dropbox has revamped the iPad experience for their collaboration tool Paper as well as adding Outlook calendar integration and the ability to link events from the Google or Outlook calendars to notes.

Dropbox is continuing its journey away from being simply a file sync service into one that businesses can use for collaboration and more sophisticated information distribution. While their free service remains popular, the company is continuing to push their business creditability with the new Showcase - the centrepiece of Dropbox's new Professional offering. I spoke with Dropbox's Daniel Iversen about the new products and services.