Heard of it under its commercial name of Resilio Sync although I’ve not used it. Sounds good though, but I’m not sure it would be useful if you’re mainly on a laptop.
Well, I went through the Box site many times and never found that, I also notice that the URL you give seems to be a Swedish site which didn’t come up for me. I’ve finally managed to find it through the UK site, the whole thing looking totally different … doesn’t make me enamoured.
In the meantime, Shirley has been able to set up Graybyrd’s recommendation (I think) so we’ll go with that for the moment, but I’ll also set up Box on my systems, to have it up my sleeve, so to speak.
Thanks everyone.
Mark
It appears to be a Swedish page on a .com site and I found it via a normal Google search.
Further info on Box, having downloaded their desktop app from the URL here and installed it, it won’t login to my account, which I’ve tried several times, giving me the helpful information that it is “error (2)”. On following the path that I have finally found on the server from the UK, I finally discover that to use the app I have to upgrade to a “Business account” … cost = GBP11/month.
I now remember that’s why I gave up on it the first time China blocked Dropbox and I was looking for an alternative. It’s still no use to me.
Mark
While I can well understand Ioa using it, I’m not sure I can contemplate setting up Shirley—and having to lead her on the other side of the world through setting it up on her Chinese Windows computer when I’ve never even used BitTorrent myself on my Macs—to use it for collaboration, nor do I fancy having one of my computers permanently on and open to the internet. But thanks for the suggestion.
Mark
I’m not that familiar with the GFWoC, so pardon me if this is a naive question. Can you use a VPN or Tor to tunnel through to the service of your choice?
Katherine
Yes you can use a VPN, but the system is continually tracking usage to find the VPNs and blocks them as soon as they are found. So my friends found they were continually having to look for VPNs that weren’t blocked. Then there is the problem that VPNs are not free and are normally charged in USD; so you need to have a USD account, which is not usually the case for Chinese citizens. My friends also tell me that many VPNs they have tried are too unstable to allow working with Scrivener … I guess you could make the automatic save period so long that it was essentially disabled, but that somewhat defeats the object. That said, nontroppo seems to have a working VPN at the moment.
I’ve never heard of Tor.
Mark
Now with Cubby gone, I’ve just switched to using a VPN (12VPN) and Dropbox (which works fine with Scrivener for me). VPN is complex in China as most Western companies are actively blocked or accounts are difficult to buy for Chinese people. Good VPNs are still constantly changing servers and stealth techniques to work round the GFWoC and do sometimes just stop working now and then. For most students paying for a VPN is a non-trivial cost.
Resilio seems a neat way to sync your computers, but its dependence on constant uptime of all nodes makes it not ideal for collaboration of an edited document, or even syncing between home and work (where computer may be on or off). There is a reason an intermediate cloud server is so useful.
I haven’t tried Box for quite a while, but remember not liking it much when I tried it.
Sync.com with 5GB free looks very nice and not too much more expensive than dropbox (similar to the very expensive Tresorit, they both offer end-to-end encryption). I may try sync.com when I get some free time.
The Onion Router project: aimed at anonymity, but can also be used to traverse firewalls.
Strange. When I look at the Box page and look at the alternative plans it is separated between personal and business accounts. Personal accounts are free, up to 5 Gb.
True, and I have one, but you have to have a business account to be able to use the Mac desktop sync app. I can use it as a storage repository through the web-browser interface, but that’s no good for active Scrivener projects, which I need for collaborating with Shirley. I have set up Sync as recommended by Graybyrd and will give it a try.
Mark
Even more strange. I have the desktop app on my both Mac:s and donˋt have a business account.
Maybe they have special allowances for Scandinavians! 
Mark
According to the post / link below, Box Sync should work for personal accounts…
You mean they want to stop us from thinking “outside the Box”, whereas that is usually not a problem with non-Scandinavians who won’t do it anyhow? 
Totally useless. Can’t download from the main site …
Can download from the Swedish site, but get this on trying to log in …
Tried to open a chat session, sent my question, someone answered asking how could he help … and promptly terminated the chat session! I am severely displeased.
Conversely, Sync installed without problem, I made a mistake setting up the account so got in touch with support. Quick answer, immediate solution by instant return of email … polite, friendly, efficient.
Mark
And here’s what I get when I follow the instructions in the second of Briar Kit’s URLs! No “Get Box Sync” … nothing.
Mark
I’ve been using it on two Macs for some time and don’t have a business account.
You do need to sign up to a personal account same as with DropBox. The free account is 10Gb with a max upload of 250Mb which covers me, but YMMV. The starting page is here - you need the personal account.
I have an account; it gives me 10GB and 250MB max upload, but I can only use it through the web interface. The only other thing that I can imagine is that my problem comes from having set up my account about 6 years ago while I was in China, and it is that that is blocking the whole thing. I appreciate all your help, but it’s getting me nowhere with the account that I have. The only solution might be to try setting up a new account with a different log-in and see what happens, but that wouldn’t help with collaborating with Shirley who is in China. So, for the moment, I’m not sure I can be bothered.
Mark
I’m wondering if there are different installers for the Free and Pro versions. You may be correct regarding China but where did you download the version of Box Sync that you tried? If you login to your account via the web interface, go to ‘my name’ at the top right and in the dropdown navigate down to ‘get Box Sync’. If you open that in a new tab you should get a page at the top left of which is ‘Get Box sync for Mac’. Downloading that gives you an installer. That should work, but if it doesn’t I’m out of ideas.
That probably would work but it’s down to you 