Daily Life: Photokina 2010 Recap

Last week I went to Cologne, Germany, to represent Wuala at the LaCie booth at Photokina 2010.

LaCie highlighted their professional storage solutions, while I showed visitors how to include Wuala into their professional workflow. When talking about online storage, I realized that even though there seems to be a lot of interest in this 'new' way of storing files, most people are still a bit skeptic of storing their files online, as they prefer to have physical control over their data. However, when I asked them what would happen if their external hard drives were to be stolen, most looked at me helplessly.

Wuala as a tool for replacing FTP and accessing data on the go, seems to be the solution most professionals have been looking for. Many were interested in learning how to use Wuala in their workflow for exchanging confidential data either with their own team or with customers.

Since we seldom have direct contact with potential users, being at a fair is a great opportunity for new insights: How do newbies react to online storage? Do they want to use it? For what would they use it? These various reactions help us a lot.

From my point of view, it was a pleasure connecting with new users - I look forward to seeing you again at the next Photokina in two years!

Top 10 Questions and Their Answers: What The Local Cache Is Good For

Last week we gave you a few tips on how to protect yourself from catching a virus. This week will will explain the local cache and its role.

One of Wuala's main characteristics is that all data is encrypted before it is transmitted. This means that no one can access your files without your approval.

While uploading files, an encrypted version of the complete file must be created first. This encrypted file is saved in the local cache. Once created, the file is split into many fragments and sent to our servers before it is being maintained in the Wuala Cloud.

The Role of the Cache
The main role of the cache is to store encrypted versions of your files during the upload process. In addition, files which have been downloaded will be stored in the local cache and maintained in the Wuala Cloud, if necessary.

The local cache will be filled up until the maximum size is reached (per default 5 GB). Once full, completely uploaded files will be deleted in order to free space for new files. If uploading a large amount of files results in an exceedance of the cache, the encryption process will pause during the insertion. It will proceed as soon as the previous files have been uploaded in order to free space for the subsequent unencrypted files.

In this case, we recommend to change the size of the local cache to speed up the upload. Just go to Tools > Options > Local Cache (Win/Linux) or Preferences > Local Cache (Mac). If you have plenty of local storage, you can also set the cache size to large values like 50 GB. If you do so, large files won't fall out of the cache that fast and you won't need to download them twice.

Daily Life: Wuala at photokina 2010

This year we'll be joining LaCie at photokina. photokina, taking place on September 21 - 26, 2010, is the leading fair of photography and imaging, and the highlight for all photo enthusiasts - amateur photographers, professional photographers or photography aficionados.

You'll find us in Hall 04.1 at with the exhibitor number G039. Shoot me a line if you're there!

Top 10 Tech Questions and Their Answers: Can I Get A Virus?

Last week talked about our new feature sync. This week we want to follow up with something completely different: Malware.

One of the frequent questions we hear sometimes is: Can I get a virus if I download a file from Wuala?

The answer is simple: You can get a virus from any file you download regardless of the source (e.g. email attachments). But while the sender of an email can easily be forged, the uploader of a file in Wuala is securely authenticated, so you can trust that the file belongs to that user.

How To Protect Yourself
In order to protect yourself from malware, we recommend the following:

• Only open files from users you trust. You can check the owner of the file by right-clicking on the file and choosing 'Propreties'.
• If you are collaborating in a group, only allow others to edit the files if you trust them.
• If you are using sync, please check that no one else has access to your local sync folder on your computer.
• Be extra cautious with executable files.

Since all files are encrypted, we cannot scan the files for malware ourselves. If you want to have your files scanned, we recommend to install an anti-virus software. If you think you came across a file containing malware, please contact abuse@wuala.com. We will take appropriate measures.

In a Nutshell

Adding malware to a file stored on Wuala is not possible. All files are encrypted and have a fingerprint, so in order for a file to contain malware, the file itself must have been infected beforehand. Only open files from people you trust.

New team member!

Hi there!

I'm just about finishing my first work day here at Wuala. I will spend the next five months here doing my internship. So you might already have guessed it, I'm still a CS student at ETH.

I'm really looking forward to get an insight into the Wuala world and forget about the study duties :-)

Greetings
Luki