It’s good to have options. It’s no different when it comes to working with your files on Box, which is why we’ve added even more third-party services through our OpenBox platform. You might have noticed a few recent additions, including the ability to launch a web conference with Fuze Meeting and print and ship documents to FedEx, all within Box.

Google’s been a big part of our family of OpenBox services - you can send file and folder links directly to Gmail or Google Apps Mail and view download stats on files with Google Analytics. We’re happy to add Google Docs Viewer as the newest OpenBox service, which lets you view PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and TIFF images with Google Docs. We have been working with Google on this feature the last couple of months and are excited to finally bring it to you.

You can add the new Google Docs Viewer action from the OpenBox Services page. When you want to preview a PDF, PowerPoint or TIFF image, just click on the blue actions button where you can select “View with Google Docs.”

Happy viewing!

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager

Many of our customers are the driving forces of their companies’ marketing engines, utilizing our platform to share presentations and other assets that serve as resources for an entire organization. As much as we love the cloud and the benefits it provides, there are times when hard copies of files are still necessary; whether it’s marketing collateral for a trade show, quarterly reports for board members or sales presentations for a big meeting, paper still has a time and place in our professional lives.

We’re pleased to introduce a new OpenBox service, FedEx Office Print Online, which lets you print and ship documents to any of FedEx Office’s 1,600 U.S. locations directly from their Box.net accounts. Now, you have instant access to high-quality, professional printing services, including presentations, brochures, flyers and even photos, which can help save time and money.

For example, say your head of business development is meeting with several partners and prospects across the country. He packs his bag with all the materials he’ll need, but good news! One of your hottest leads changed their mind and wants to meet up when your head of biz dev is in town. Instead of printing documents back at the office and rushing to bind and ship them overnight, Box now provides the power to right click on a file, select a FedEx Office location nearby and have the documents printed there ready and waiting for him.

Do you want to start printing? Here’s how:

- Add the FedEx Office Print Online service from the OpenBox services directory.

- After adding the FedEx Office Print Online service, pick a file that you would like to print and select ‘Print to FedEx Office’

- You will then be automatically directed to FedEx Office’s Web site and walked through a step-by-step process on printing your file. Make sure to enter promo code BOX015 when placing your order to receive 15% off!

The next time you want one of your files professionally printed, save some time and money and take care of it directly from your Box account. Just another benefit of our OpenBox platform, enabling us to bring the best services and applications from the Web into the Box environment for your convenience.

Post by Amy White, Marketing Programs Manager

As you may know, our ultimate goal at Box (apart from making sharing simple) is to empower our users to access, share and collaborate on all their content from any place, any device and any application.

Last week, Ning, the online social platform for interests and passions, launched Ning Apps, which offer Ning Network Creators new features they can provide to the members of their Ning Network. Box, a Ning App Staff Pick, provides a special Ning App for Ning Network members that allows them to store, access and manage their Box content from within their Ning Network.

So now, if your company or organization has a Ning Network set up, you can share and collaborate on the files you have in your Box account, as well as use our more than 25 OpenBox services, while logged in to your Ning Network. 

We hope Ning’s 1.5 million Networks and 33 million Network members will take advantage of our Ning App to share documents, create shared workspaces and collaborate with each other. Tonight we’ll be celebrating with Ning at their launch party, where we’ll be demoing the Box.net Ning App and answering questions.

Want to add Box.net to your Ning Network? Have your Network Creator sign up here, or call our sales team at 877-729-4269 for assistance.

Post by Amy White, Marketing Programs Manager

When Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs mentioned in an interview how especially fulfilling it is to build a product you can’t wait to use yourself. He thought they could make a better phone and, wouldn’t you know it, had another hit on their hands selling millions of phones and creating an all-new platform - and a whole new market - for sophisticated mobile apps. In short, they changed people’s expectations for what you could do on a mobile device.

Today, people are creating all kinds of content on their mobile device. We’re creating mind maps, documents, presentations, audio memos, project plans and rich media content, all on-the-go. It’s really powerful stuff. But once you create this content on your mobile device, where can it go? How do you share it? How can you access content from other places on your mobile device? And as you create more and more content, how do you deal with the fixed amount of space that’s on your phone? We face these challenges as users everyday and we wanted to solve them.

That’s why I’m particularly excited to announce a new developer program called OpenBox Mobile. OpenBox Mobile gives mobile app developers free, easy-to-use tools that will help users make mobile content accessible and sharable to other apps, services, desktops and other people in just one click. We have been working with a number of iPhone app developers behind the scenes, including:

- iThoughts (mind-mapping)
- QuickOffice (document editing)
- iBlueSky (mind-mapping)
- Smart Recorder (audio recorder)
- iRec (audio recorder)
- JotNot (image and document archiving)
- mySticky (notes and to-do’s)
- Readdle (document access)
- Pixelpipe (document access)

We’re pretty lucky to be working with a great bunch of enthusiastic developers that are doing some amazing stuff. For example, you can use iThoughts or iBlueSky to create a brainstorm map, save it straight to Box and make it instantly available to your project team. Or you can take Smart Recorder, record a meeting, save it to Box and automatically share it with a colleague who couldn’t be there. The possibilities go on and on.

Needless to say, this is only the beginning. Starting today, we’re getting this out to mobile app developers everywhere and, together, we really hope to build a whole ecosystem of mobile apps that lets you access, manage and share content across all your apps in lots of productive and creative ways. We know that developers will be able to use OpenBox Mobile in ways we haven’t even imagined, which is truly exciting.

If you’re a mobile app developer and want to see how you can use OpenBox Mobile, visit http://www.box.net/developers/mobile. Here you can learn more about the program, watch some cool video tutorials, link to developer documentation and sign up to get started.

Like Steve Jobs said, it’s fulfilling to build something you can’t wait to use yourself. Now that OpenBox Mobile is out in the world, I can’t wait either.

Update: Check out the snazzy new video on our OpenBox developer programs

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager