With storage becoming cheaper every day, we’re becoming more and more of a media producing and consuming culture. However, in-hand storage only goes so far—and when we want to work with other people, what we have in-hand isn’t as helpful as what we’ve got in collaborative-cloud space.

Box.net has increased free, personal storage to 5Gb from 1Gb—a huge improvement to be sure. They provide a personal cloud-based storage product that is accessible anywhere, similar to a lot of other current services, that makes personal computers even more interoperable with other users. Services like Box.net make collaboration a lot easier by permitting sharing of data (in the form of files) between multiple users, access-control, and real-time synchronization.

This innovation comes along with a great deal of growth of the personal cloud through similar services. As people collaborate more in their personal lives, it becomes more useful for them to store information in the cloud where they can connect with others. Want to share photos from your trip in Waikiki? Easy enough with cloud-storage services like Box, just drop images and movies into the folder and it’ll synchronize all our friends. Especially our friend still in the States, and when we return we can access it from our personal computer (which synced with our mobile) and make a slideshow.

They have also just rolled out a giant overhaul and makeover of their UI. Creating a simpler interface for users to access by cleaning up menus, organizing by context, and offloading some of the more advanced functions. Amid their more advanced functions, Box also tracks contributors, task lists, and even pending tasks that should produce or change content in the Box.

The company expects to use these services and functions to help IT departments stop worrying about their storage and collaboration solutions, allowing them to work harder and smarter without an increase in technical overhead. Businesses too benefit from the expansion of storage having gone up to 500Gb of shared storage space in the basic package at $15 per user per month. Some of the customers who currently use Box as their cloud-based collaboration storage solution happen to be Panasonic, Dell, MTV, and Skype.

Box also combines the best elements of the personal-cloud with collaborative software by integrating other cloud-based business suites such as Google Apps and Salesforce.com.  This update comes shortly after a BoxSync feature release this summer.  Tools around the personal cloud are growing, pumping the entire industry.