This has to be some kind of record – a startup launching a public beta on the day it said it would. Wuala, the P2P ’social grid storage’ startup from Switzerland, launches its public beta tomorrow at www.wua.la. Users will be able to simply click on a button on the site to start the service (it’s a Java app). That’s it. You can drag-and-drop stuff into it for file backup, photo and video sharing, or making files available publicly.
Here’s a more detailed description, from our post on the company last month:
The underlying core tech behind Wuala is based on research conducted at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). The files are held in tiny encrypted pieces distributed across the “Wuala Grid” of users, and mirrored on Wuala’s servers – so you don’t have to rely on other users being online to access your data. Users start with 1 GB of storage but can get as much as they want, either by trading idle disk space or by buying additional storage. You start off with 1GB of free storage, and then if you want more, you can make more space available on your own hard drive for other Wuala members. But users don’t have to trade storage – you can buy extra storage, like 100GB is 100 Euros. All files are encrypted on the user’s computer and the user chooses who gets access to which folder. No one else – including Wuala – gets to see the files. None of the fragments of files from other people stored on your computer are executable. Unlike Web storage, you can drag and drop files into Wuala on or offline.
Wuala competes in the storage space with Xdrive or Box.net, but it has a number of significant differences. The files are held in tiny encrypted pieces distributed across the “Wuala Grid” of users, and mirrored on Wuala’s servers. Unlike Web storage, you can drag and drop files into Wuala on or offline. TechCrunch UK broke the story about Wuala back in October last year. Last month, the site offered a sneak preview to the public.
Worst logo ever
That’s not a problem. It can be adapted over time.
The logo is not bad. It has some kind of Islamic significance, I think. It also looks Arabic.
Cuil part deux
Their logo looks like of middle eastern origin
“but it’s way more different than either of those services.”
Wow.
Right on. Glad to see most bloggers using the Chicago Manual of Style when writing
Predictions? (linkback) Thrive or Fail? Wuala -your files on other people’s computers in encrypted chunks [VOTE] – http://www.thri...rfail.com/5279b
Most users will either not know or not care about what’s happening behind the scenes with their data as long as the service is generally known to be trustworthy.
theres probably issues with this type of service in a corporate environment…
How can it compete with Xdrive if Xdrive is now dead?
Not to ask the obvious, but: how can you be reporting that they launched on time if they haven’t launched yet?
Interesting question
And in fact they were about 50 minutes late – I was keeping an eye on them since I had a post scheduled for the embargo time and was worried the service was down for some time after I published it.
Wow.
Horrible logo, horrible name and the app is pretty crappy too. It’s all Java and has a clunky interface that wants you to put a fork in your eyes. I’ve tried beta long time ago and uninstalled 10 min after.
Actually… if you read their logo in Arabic.. it says… “Mamas” or “Mams”
and the word Wuala in many arabis countries means.. “Swear to god”
Really weird why they would choose that word… :/
Any other arabic person agrees with me?
I see boobs in their logo.
http://www.imageco.com... our logo designs are boob free (so far)
So do I.. that’s a good thing. We need more boobs in our logos.
If your data is already backed up Wuala’s own servers, what is the point of having your data replicated in fragments across the internet? Is this a way for them to save money on redundancy?
It can download a file from hundreds of computers in parallel, which will be a lot faster for the user and considerably cheaper for Wuala
Is it just me or is that a little scary? I don’t care if my files are wrapped in chains I don’t want them on some Joe blows computer.
The point is that “some Joe” will never see the files. Maybe the guys from wuala should just call it “real save file sharing”. That’s what it is. I agree that the interface is crap, but the tech behind it is pretty amazing IMO (see http://www.slid...-online-storage).
I just like the logo, interesting design.
Agree Wes, the Logo is beautiful if not very legible. As for the technology sounds promising as a way to encrypt user content preserving their privacy and ensuring redundancy and speedy retrieval in a clustered configuration. If it finds some success it just may be purchased by a bigger player to use internally.
Originally, this may have been a half-good idea. Top it with a poor execution (JS interface not behaving very well in all browsers, questionable logo etc etc) and you get the current Wuala. Nothing worth writing home about, really.
Java != JavaScript
it would be nice if Java weren’t needed, but at least its cross-platform
try the download version if you are having browser issues:
http://wua.la/en/launch/
wuala is derived from the french word “voila”, meaning “there you go”, “here we are”, “that’s it”.
“Unlike Web storage, you can drag and drop files into Wuala on or offline. ”
This is a little vague, you can only drag (save from Wuala) a file you have already downloaded. If you drop (upload to Wuala) a file from your computer when you are offline, it will save the file and then proceed to upload once you are online again. This is all done through a cache, the size of which can be set by the user.
I myself use JungleDisk, a native application front-end to Amazon S3 with versions for Windows, Mac, Linux. It integrates with the OS file browser (on Windows, it just becomes another drive, where you can drag and drop files). The application is a one time purchase of $20.
My files resides on Amazon’s servers, which (for most part) has solid reliability, and the storage cost is cheap.
One thing lacking in JungleDisk, unlike Wuala, is that you cannot share files with others.
yeah that is supposed to be a good program, the nice thing about Wuala though is you can trade space on your computer for space in the cloud
it can use the same account on multiple computers, so for example my home desktop can share 10gb of space, my home server shares 50gb, and my laptop shares 5gb giving me 65gb total space, and i don’t have to pay any fees for bandwidth or storage space