Wuala Blog

For the first time a number of web aficionades met in our office for Web Monday.
Presentations started off with Christian Hirsig who told us about atizo. Here companies and innovators can meet, resulting in new ideas and products. Fabienne Steiner followed introducing us to WebnWine. The event was wrapped up by Dania who invited all attendees to join us and the Amazees in Berlin for Web 2.0 Expo Europe, Barcamp Berlin, LateCrunch and many others.

On the right you see the picture of us cracking up while watching the Tonchidot 2008 Pitch. More pictures can be found in Wuala.

It was great hosting WebMonday and we'll definately do it again. Next time without Fabius' confusion about his computer being gone :-)

After a bit more than a month, the number of files stored in Wuala has doubled (check on homepage)! We started off with around 9 mio. when we launched on August 14, now it's more than 18 mio. files! What a growth! Keep on storing more and more files, we can handle it. :)

The next Swiss Web Monday, a gathering of web aficionados, will take place next Monday, September 29, in our our office. Drinks start at 6.30 pm, the presentations shortly after 7 p.m. If you want to join (it's open for everyone), please put your name on the list on Amazee so that we know how many will come.

We're looking forward to seeing some old folks and hopefully meeting some new faces.



About Web Monday
Web Monday is an informal, non-commercial, and completely community-driven event that aims to connect the people who are shaping the future of the internet. Inspired by the culture of Silicon Valley, it started out in Cologne, Germany in late 2005 in an effort to help spread those sunny California vibes. Since its inception, Web Monday has spread fast: meetings are now being held on a regular basis in 30+ cities all across Germany, in Austria, Sweden, Silicon Valley as well as on Second Life. Nurturing the local web 2.0 and internet startup scenes, Web Monday’s 100+ meetings have attracted 1,000+ repeat participants so far, and good things have come out of it. Anyone involved in web 2.0 or neighboring fields who is interested in learning and sharing with others is most welcome to join. Whether you are a thinker, builder, designer, founder or funder – Web Monday is your chance to present your product, your service, your startup, or your next big idea to a growing audience of web aficionados.

As announced already earlier, we will participate at the OpenExpo 2008. There we will present two products we have developed for Wuala: Wuala Persistent Map and Wuala Webstart.

Wuala Persistent Map is a small, simple and robust database written in Java. Because it does not offer any non-basic features like transactions or concurrent access, it is very fast and most qualified if you are looking for a persistent hash map.

On the second day, we will open source Wuala Webstart, our high-performance webstarter. Wuala Webstart loads required code and resources for an application directly from a server and is self-learning. The more often the starter is used, the faster an application starts because early needed
resources are delivered first. If Wuala Webstart is integrated into an applet, it is possible to download and launch big applications very quickly and directly from the website without an installation required. For an example see http://wua.la.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the OpenExpo!

Take a look at our file counter and you will see that we're growing quickly. This means a lot of work and we can't handle it on our own. Therefore, we're looking for Java software engineers and web developers in our office in Zurich. We're seeking exceptional programmers who can delve into complex code quickly, people who anticipate and thrive in a start-up, who work hard and want to push boundaries. Of course, you also need to be a keen Wuala user :-)

Depending on your expertise and interests, you can work on different parts of Wuala, ranging from backend infrastructure, the Wuala application, or the forthcoming web integration. Sound good? Then take a look at our job page!

28 days after launch - it's time for a little resumé. In short: the launch was incredible! Thousands of new users have signed up, and many more browse around and explore public files. About 6 mio. new files have been uploaded since our launch - that's more than 15 mio. in total now, as you can always check out on our homepage. Press coverage has also been great: We've been all over in blogs, newspapers, and magazines (check out this 'brag slide') - even 'The Economist' wrote an article about Wuala today. We're so happy about this growth - thanks a lot for supporting us.

Update: ...and on Slashdot (thanks 'nmat' for pointing this out).

Hi, I'm Fabius, the latest member in the Wuala team. I finished my Ph.D. at EPFL in the distributed information systems lab. I'll be working on the core peer-to-peer technology.

Check out some of my publications on Wuala.

Wuala allows its users to access, share and even publish their content. Especially being able to make any content publicly available is a powerful feature that should be used responsibly. When freedom of expression collides with respect for others, it is often hard to find the right balance. Considering your feedback and our observations after the launch of the beta, we would like to adjust this balance by adapting our policies and by providing additional means to control abuse.

So what will change?

• In order to protect minors, we cannot allow public pornographic content any more in Wuala, even if flagged as "18+".


• We have added a feature that allows us to block private groups if necessary (e.g. if a group has been founded for a purpose that violates our terms and policies).


• We have implemented a new flagging tool that allows to address problematic content better and faster.

If you notice a public file that you consider inappropriate, you can right-click it and choose "Flag as inappropriate" to open the new flagging tool. There, you will be able to specify the nature of your concerns as well as an optional message to the file owner. Please help us keeping Wuala clean by flagging inappropriate content as such. If enough users flag a file, it will automatically be blocked from further public access. See our updated usage guidelines for details.