Okay, I’ve been sitting on these too long. At the Web 2.0 conference, I met a young Swiss entrepreneur named Dominik Grolimund, who is the CEO of a peer-to-peer storage application called Wuala. TechCrunch UK covered it here. The first 1,000 TechCrunch readers who sign up will get into the alpha. (Enter code “techcrunch”).
Wuala is a P2P competitor to Xdrive, MediaMax or Box.net.. You start off with 1GB of free storage, and then if you want more, you need to make more space available on your own hard drive for other Wuala members. (The amount of extra storage you get also depends on what percentage of time your computer is online). The files you want to store get broken up into 500 encrypted fragments, each of which get stored on another Wuala member’s computer. In this respect, it works a lot like a RAID storage system with redundancy built in. But instead of being stored on a central server, all your files are distributed across other peer computers. You drag and drop files into folders just like on your desktop. You can also stream videos or music to a computer with Wuala installed on it. But, unlike BitTorrent (or Oink, for that matter), the service is more about storing your own files than sharing them with a massive amount of other people. Although, I’m sure people will figure out how to use it as darknet service. Thankfully, none of the files stored on your computer are executable.
What country is .la? Switzerland?
In case anyone is interested, here is my interview with Dominik from last week:
http://www.cent...minik-grolimund
He goes into how the service works and the security behind it. Makes me think of a better version of usenet files in the way it splits them up.
Finally, the cloud comes to the masses in a big way – I love the concept and can’t wait until someone writes a standalone app (of the mobile, lives on a USB key variety type) that lets you mount your Wuala “drive” from another computer and copy files off of it without installing an app…
This is surely a great engineering project, but is total bullshit in terms of usecases except sharing of illegal stuff (darknet). I don’t believe in the arguments (privacy, scalability) as web storage services are getting more ubiquitous every day.
Storing files on a Gdrive or any other web storage provider is sufficient for 99.99% of usecases.
Deadpool…
The only way this service will get off the ground in the US is if he changes his brand to a non-terrorist looking identity. That logo looks like it was created by Osama himself!
I agree with Rupert, Deadpool…
Space and storage is so cheap now, it is hard to see how this service can be a good business model. Gmail Drive already maps out to your gmail account for easily 4 gigs.
Lame logo. I prefer http://www.allmydata.com for P2P storage. They’ve been working on it longer and it seems more robust, probably because they’ve just iterated longer.
This sounds too complicated to be feasable.
if my file gets fragmented into 500 pieces and sent to 500 different computers. I depend on those 500 pc’s to be online when i want to retireve it.
hmmmmm . . ..
I wouldn’t compare it to allmydata. Wuala offers all the typical 2.0 features like tagging, sharing, comments, etc. while allmydata is only for backups. So they have a completely different usecase (though a similar technological background).
That logo looks terrible.
Yeah don’t see how this one will survive given its business model. Gmail offers 4 gig using something like Firefox Gspace to access it, so what is the advantage of using this one. I also don’t like the idea of my files being distributed among other peer computers — how is that safe security wise? It’ll take a lot to compete with Xdrive, MediaMax or Box.net right now. To me a distributed peer to peer storage system is a bad idea and will cause more headache than not for a user. Sad to say but this one might end up in the Deadpool pretty soon and yes the logo is horrible!
I failed human authentication. I am not a human.
Ok it worked but the first time the authenticator was simply incorrect. Waiting up to 48 hours for my invitation. I’m interested in trying it even if it sounds infeasible at this point. Interesting concept that could become mainstream. I hope the encryption is very strong.
#1, “.la” is Los Angeles. Check out http://www.la/ BTW, Los Angeles is the first city in the world with its own top level domain.
And its not executables I’m worried about. How about people storing child porn on my computer. Encrypted or not, I could still be liable for having child porn on my PC. I ain’t going to jail because some judge and/or jury can’t understand that wuala put the files there and not me.
TC should put this company on death watch. Once the VC funding runs out, it’s toast. Or the first time someone gets arrested for having illegal files on their PC.
Server maintenance
For all of you who want to sign up, please wait a couple of hours and then try again. We were prepared for this, but our data center does its server maintenance exactly today (well, it’s in the middle of the night in Europe)
Please try again and thanks a lot for the awesome feedback from those who’ve already signed up.
i want
shmilcc@msn.com
I am too concern more about the privacy part, I would like to go through reviews from real users.
Erick, you forgot mentioning the most exciting thing!
I can define with whom I actually want to share what pictures!
With wua.la, I can hide the Vegas Pix/Vids from my girlfriend, but share those with my buddies that were in vegas too!
I pretty much like wua.la.
John
I’m not an expert in this field but I think we should all read first their website before judging it. Oh, I’m not defending Wuala. Example, the logo does look like… that, but can not blame him/her if he’s an Arab and/or Muslim, but why be biased? (Israel developed the first IM – ICQ, but no one objected.)
Now back on topic, according to Wuala,
1) your free 1gb is stored on their servers
2) you do NOT share your PC’s storage and bandwidth unless you SPECIFY it to be so
3) your content starts to be put on other people’s storage once you start “trading” your own (in other words, once you start getting more than 1gb)
So if you are worries your files will be on different computers, then do not trade, do not go beyond 1 gb.
4) all our encrypted pieces of files have backups, and thus, we do NOT need to rely on all those PCs to be online just to get our files.
* Special note: I may have mis-understood some or all of it, but that is what I understood nonetheless from Wuala’s official website and by playing with their application.
Useful or not? I do not know.
Can be trusted or not? Wait-and-see.
I will use Wuala for non-sensitive data since it’s easier to transfer files and update files from my home PC to my work PC… and if I’m accessing from a friend’s terminal or public terminal.
That’s all.
I’d say the logo is no coincidence and the name is more likely from “Wallah” i.e arabic for something along the lines of “by Allah (I swear it’s true)”. And if you look at how to write Allah in Arabic you will see definite similarities with their logo. If they really wanted it to be from the french Voila (as is claimed by the founder in various on-line clips)… then they could probably have used that very word.
However, other than this white lie – does it matter?
Just Email Me For An Invite, My E-Mail Is:- betainvites@live.com!