Wuala Blog

Tuesday, 9 February, 2010

Wuala: Safe Online Storage

Ktipp, the Swiss magazine devoted to possible concerns of consumers, published a solid article about online storage in general.

Their findings: Online storage is a nice alternative to external hard drives or flash keys with the advantage of sharing data with friends, having access to the data from anywhere and being abe to access previous versions of a file. However, not all online storage services are safe: Files should first be encrypted on the computer, before they are uploaded to the servers. If this is not the case, the online storage provider has complete access to data of the user.

Here Ktipp mentions some of the services that are 'partly safe' (left) and some that are are 'safe' (right). We are proud to see that Wuala has been mentioned as a 'safe service'. Just to repeat: With Wuala all your data gets encrypted on your computer before it is uploaded to the Wuala-Network and to our servers. This means that you have full control over your files and none of us - not even our developers - can see your private files.

You can find the whole article on Wuala (in German).

Wednesday, 3 February, 2010

Effective Usage: How To Use An Old EeePC As A Wuala Trading Server

This post is written by guest blogger M.A. Uwe Hauck who is 42 years old and living in Schwäbisch Hall, Germany. Uwe has been working with computers since he was 16 years old and is now a Computer Scientist working for a IT Service provider of a financial institute. He is active in several open source communities and expecially trying to evangelize as many people as possible to use Linux and of course Wuala as their primary online storage system. He is happily married and father of three kids.

There was this old EeePC 900a in my closet. In fact it still worked fine, just the mousebuttons were broken. So I decided to set up this device as a dedicated EeePC Trading Server. But to make it really convenient I decided I wanted to administer the whole thing while on the road, which in my case means, from another EeePC online via UMTS or from my Android Smartphone.

Setting up the server itself was rather simple. I used a standard Ubuntu installation and just installed the standard Wuala Client and added the machine to my WLan Network (and yes, of course opening the necessary ports for real exchange). But wait. I wanted it to be reachable through the internet. That was the moment when my AVM Fritzbox came in handy.

The AVM Fritzbox has an option to always post the new IP-address after disconnecting from the net to special dynamic dns services. In my case it was DynDNS which I set up in the Fritzbox to automatically reconnect my EeePC with the internet. Next step. Open the ports for ssh (22) and vnc (5900 and 5901). Since I also wanted to run a Mediawiki and a JSPWiki on that little machine, I opened the ports 8080 and 80 for web access. First tests showed me that the setup was fine. So here we go, I have a low power web server (consumes about 11 Watt) sitting under my desk which is always on and serves Wuala 32GByte of space through a plugged in SD Card.

I also set up the rest of our PC equipment (3 more netbooks and two notebooks) to use Wuala for data exchange and backup purposes. I have earned about 70GByte of online space by now. And yes, to support the Wuala idea I also bought 10GByte of non sharing web space.

I simply love the idea of trading space and recommend it to all my customers.

Friday, 22 January, 2010

Daily Life: The Event Calender

Marketing Chuchi
Yesterday the Marketing Chuchi, a regular meetup of Marketing & Sales professionals working for Swiss Web startups, took place in our office. Presenting was Lukas Fischer from Guzuu.com, Switzerland's leading online platform for buying and selling handmade products. He gave us a presentation on community management and showed us the tools they are using to support the community manager in his daily business. As always, it was a great Chuchi with many different inputs and insights.

StartupCamp Switzerland
The next StartupCamp is approaching! On February 13, 2010 the second version will take place in Basel. Aimed at young and future entrepreneurs, it transfers knowledge in a relaxed atmosphere of a Barcamp by including tracks such as web technologies, marketing & PR, writing a business plan or fundraising.

We attended last year's StartupCamp and can highly recommend it. Join us and spread the word! There are still places left.

Wednesday, 6 January, 2010

Introducing: LaCie CooKey and LaCie WhizKey with Wuala Inside

We are proud to announce our first joint product: Wuala has been integrated into the newly lanuched LaCie CooKeys and LaCie WhizKeys.

The eyecatching USB flash keys come with a capacity of up to 32GB and an additional 4GB of online storage on Wuala for two years. This offers you a unique storage experience: Your data at your fingertips, a secure offsite backup and the ability to share digital content with just one click.

More information can be found on the product page, the press release or head to the stores to get your own key.

Monday, 4 January, 2010

New Team Member

Hi Wuala fans!
My name is Marcel and I just started at Wuala. I have studied CS at ETH Zürich and then worked at IBM on the Jazz Platform (http://jazz.net) and RTC for three years. As a first topic at Wuala, I will work on the client UI.

You can find me here in Wuala: http://www.wuala.com/marcelbi

Have fun!

Marcel

Thursday, 31 December, 2009

2009: From A - Z

2009 has been an excellent year! From A - Z, let's see what has happened during the past 12 months:

Awards
This year we have been nominated for various awards such as the Swiss ICT Award and Red Herring 100 Europe and we're proud to have won the following: Best Websites 2009, Red Herring Europe 100 Winner, and the CTI Start-up Label. Furthermore, Dominik has been awarded the People Newcomer Award.

Backup
A Pro feature we introduced for our Anniversary Release. Pro Users can automatically backup local folders to Wuala. See also Features; Pro User; Versioning.

Conferences
Luzius held a presentation at Jazoon09, the International Conference on Java Technology, while Dominik participated at the Open Expo 2009 and presented at NASA. You could also encounter Dominik at Lift in Geneva, Web 2.0 Expo in New York, and LeWeb09 in Paris.

Data

We have never stored so much data as this year. 50 million files have been stored in April, while we reached 100 million in November.

Events
For the first time we held a small Community Event that took place at the Rote Fabrik in Zurich. It was great to meet some of our users personally!

Features
We've been working hard during the past twelve months and have focused on one goal: to make Wuala THE secure online solution. For this we have worked on the core to improve Wuala's reliability and stability, while at the same time releasing great new features: Backup and File Versioning, two pro features, making it possible to secure your data directly to the cloud, without you having to worry about it!

Grouplinks
A feature we introduced for 'Aussersihl'. Weblinks for private groups make it easy for friends, who do not have a Wuala account or are not members of the group, to access the files in the browser and join the group instantly. See also Feature; Zurich.

Hiring
We were seeking for great minds who wanted to bring Wuala to the next level. For this we used unusual recruiting strategies: Street Ads and Wuala Cookies. See also Team.

Invitation
Invite your friends to Wuala and earn additional online storage. For every friend you invite you will receive up to 3GB (or 6GB if you're a Pro User).

Jukebox
Well...not quite. Many of our users have been using the Wuala API to build something on top. Join the API group (link) or read an overview of the different applications that have been built.

Kreis 4
A district in Zurich, also called 'Chreischeib', and home of the new Wuala Office. If you want to say hi, you are welcome to come by and visit us on January 14 from 5 PM onwards. Please RSVP. See als Zurich.

LaCie
One of the biggest highlights this year was the merger with LaCie. Together we want to build a reliable and secure online storage cloud by integrating millions of devices around the globe. Stay tuned.

Media
Wuala was covered in many newspapers, blogs, and magazines. A detailed report can be found here and on our press page.

News
Read our blog, follow us on Twitter, or join our Facebook page to get the latest updates. If you're more into tech, then have a look at our bugtracker to see what we're working on or read the release notes.

Orbit
Together with LaCie Switzerland we attended our first tradeshow in May: Orbit, the former leading IT tradeshow in Switzerland.

Pro User
Trade local storage for online storage or buy additional storage to become a Wuala Pro User. As a Pro User you benefit from additional storage and automatic backup and file versioning, two features we have introduced in August. See also Backup; Features; Versioning

Question
For questions regarding Wuala, we recommend our tutorial, our FAQs and our newly created forum. Alternatively, you can also contact our Support Team.

Restoration
A feature we introduced for our Anniversary Release. Any file you deleted on Wuala can easily be restored, saving you time and stress. See also Features.

Search
We have enhanced the Search Function in the world area, making it much faster and more precise.

Team
This year many new faces have joined us: Thomas, Alex, Dario, Marius and Bernd. We're currently a team of 12 (11 full-time, 1 part-time), while our newest team member is just about to join in a few days.

Universal
Wuala has spread all over the globe with many new users from Andorra to Zimbabwe. Thanks to a group of dedicated translators, Wuala is already available in English, German, French, Brazilian, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, and Polish.

Versioning
A pro feature we introduced for our Beta Release. Pro Users can access previous versions of a file. See also Pro User; Backup.

Wiedikon
The second release named after a district in Zurich. Wiedikon included support for Windows 7.

XL
We would like to give you an Extra Large thanks for supporting us and helping us spread Wuala worldwide. THANK YOU!

Year
Year 2010 will be a good one. We promise to surprise you - stay tuned for new features and enhancements, and especially for joint products with LaCie.

Zurich
Our releases are currently named after districts in Zurich. So far we have had Altstetten, Aussersihl and Wiedikon. Improve your knowledge about Zurich and look at the districts that are left. See also Wiedikon.

Happy New Year!