Dropbox is now open for everybody. On the blog the team around Drew Houston announced the public beta of Dropbox.
The same blogpost also mentions the availability of an option to buy storage:
Our most common request has been for more storage. Next week, you’ll be able to buy a 50GB Dropbox for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year. Don’t worry — the free 2GB accounts will always be free, and you can keep the amount of space you had in the beta. Stay tuned for more on this.
These prices are pretty much the same as Wuala offers (50GB is $95). But I have to say, personally I like the Dropbox method better. You just have a folder on your computer or Mac (Linux client comming soon) and can drag and drop your files with the Explorer/Finder. No need to start a huge, memory intense client.
So give Dropbox a try! Just download and install their client and you get 2GB of storage for free.
The Economist has published an article about the technical details on how Wuala is working.
The challenge is how to minimise the number of copies of the same file that have to be distributed. Copying costs participants both storage space and bandwidth. Yet there have to be enough copies to ensure that there is at least one available most of the time. If, for example, each computer is online 25% of the time, then a quick calculation shows that you would have to copy each file to 100 different computers to ensure that 999,999 times out of a million there is at least one copy available when a user looks.
But copying every file a hundred times is hugely inefficient. Instead, Mr Grolimund and Mr Meisser plan to break each file into chunks, which can be scattered liberally around the hard disks of participating computers, and then to use a mathematical trick to reconstruct the original file from those chunks.
This trick is called “Reed-Solomon error correction” and is actually used for CD/DVD/BluRay-Discs, DVB and DSL.
If you are interested in more details on how Wuala stores and distributes files, you should give the article a read.
Via [Slashdot]
The Wuala team informs today about the immediate launch of their services as public beta. Everybody can now try wuala and share her media over the distributed storage solution.
“After more than three years of development and ten months of testing in closed alpha, we are very proud to release Wuala to the public”, says Dominik Grolimund, CEO. “Our alpha users, who are storing and sharing millions of files, have given us tremendous feedback and use Wuala very actively and with great enthusiasm. We believe that Wuala is the right tool for millions of people to securely manage and share their files online.”
The beta offers a new way to share and manage your files: It is no longer required - but still possible - to install the Wuala client on your computer.
The closed alpha, which had been released in September 2007, has been very successful and generated a lot of buzz. Tens of thousands of people and thousands of communities around the world are actively sharing millions of files in Wuala. Now that Wuala is available for everyone, it’s ready to scale up to millions of people.
How to use Wuala
If you just want to take a quick look how Wuala works just click on the Start button on Wua.la. The web client will launch and you can browse all public files and download them. Once you have decided to install the desktop client, select “Setup Wuala on this computer”. After the installation you are asked to create a new account. This will allow you to upload your files and only share them with your friends, if you want that.
And if your need for space is greater than the 1 GB Wuala initially gives you, you can share your computer’s space or buy additional storage from Wuala.
More features can be found on the new designed web page.
Wuala, the Zurich, Switzerland located and Peer-To-Peer Technology based online hard drive and file sharing company has announced the immediate availability of additional online storage as a payed option. The price range is between 15 EUR/25 USD for 10 GB and 640 EUR/1000 USD for 1 TB.
But do not worry, the team assures that Wuala is free and always will be free. And you still can trade your local harddrive space for online storage. If you need an invite, please let me know. I love to invite you to this unique storage and sharing solution.
In other news Wuala has announced the launch of the public beta this summer (rather soon than late ;-)). This is an important step for the team and will open up their service to a much larger audience. With the public beta there will also be an online file viewer which allows you to share your files, images, documents and movies with friends and family without them having to install the Wuala software on their computers. This feature is long awaited and is very much appreciated, not only by me.
