Wuala, A Better File Sharing Network Service for Free!

Wuala, an upcoming online file sharing network, is coming to us from Switzerland. Wuala’s plans are to change the way file sharing works by using both online storage space plus your computer's storage for file sharing. Wuala will use high-grade security for protection, which apparently other services do not offer to the same level, for one reason or another, according to Wuala.

Dominik Grolimund, Wuala Founder/CEO had this to say in an interview with Allen Stern on centernetworks.com:

“I am 27 years old and have studied computer science at ETH Zurich. In 1998, I founded my software company Caleido, and developed the Caleido Address-Book, a professional contact management software, of which over 35,000 licenses have been sold to-date in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.”

Dominik goes on to say in his interview that, “In 2003, I did an exchange semester at the TU Delft, the Netherlands, as part of the Unitech exchange program, focusing on business and management. …In 2004, a six-month internship followed with Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, New Jersey… where I worked in the "Intelligent Vision & Reasoning" department, developing a product for power plant monitoring."

He continues by saying, “After returning from the US, I started the project Wuala (code-named 'Kangoo'), together with Luzius Meisser, as part of my computer science Master studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 2004. We founded our company Caleido in 2007 and now, after these three years, we are ready to show a sneak preview of Wuala…”

As for the meaning of the word Wuala, Dominik informed Allen that, “The name comes from the French word "voilà" which means, "look there". For us, it means, "wuala, here's your file."

Wuala" is pronounced like "Voilà" (vwä-'lä)… and rhymes with "koala".

C/Net’s Rafe Needleman on the Daily Download had this to say about Wuala:

“If you want to share files–music, videos, anything–with your friends and family, it will let you do it for free, with no file-size or bandwidth limits.”

“The catch”, Rafe noted, “You get 1GB of storage for free. Beyond that, you get access to free storage in proportion to the amount of storage from your own hard drive that you share with the Wuala community. Everything you share gets sliced into 500 or so pieces and then distributed in tiny bits, and redundancy, to thousands of other users. When you, or someone you're sharing the file with, wants to load or play a file, it's pulled in from users, BitTorrent-like.” According to Rafe, “Grolimund's company is working on a Facebook app and is also discussing with possible partners about integrations…"

What is Wuala and How Does it Work

Who better to define how Wuala works then to go right to the source on the Wuala web site itself. Following are some excerpts:

It's a free desktop application for Windows and Mac that brings you a convenient and secure online storage. Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers…. This new technology has a number of advantages and it allows us to provide you a better service for free.

Note: While there is not a Linux version yet, but it is on Wuala’s to-do list. "Our Linux crack in the office says we're not that far off — basic functionality is running (it's written in Java, after all)."

You start with 1 GB provided by us. If you need more, you can simply trade some space on your hard disk for additional online storage.

Security and privacy

Wuala is secure and protects your privacy: All files…are encrypted…only you and those authorized by you can access them. All encryption and decryption is performed locally and your password is never sent to us - so not even we can access your files.

Conclusion

Wuala is a breath of fresh air. First, because I was unable to find any negative reviews and secondly and more important is the fact as I thoroughly scoured the program to formulate my own personal opinions I cannot help but join in with everyone else and give Wuala my blessing. I found it to be simplistic in design to the point my 76 year old aunt would have no problem using this program and she is already a self taught Facebook user.

Wuala may only be in Alpha at the present state but I can only foresee it getting better, if that is possible, as additional add-ons come into play. Overall, it will be interesting to see how it develops. As Wuala presently stands, I give it two thumbs up.

Wuala is presently in a closed alpha phase with limited users testing it. Anyone interested in checking it out in advance for himself or herself, I have 4 invites to give away on a first come first served basis. Just post your request in the comments along with the address I am to send the invite to. Alternatively, you can sign up and Wuala will send you an invite as soon as they are ready to add more people.