That said, we're skeptical as to how far Wuala will get. Plus, the presence of tags for organizing files and finding interesting stuff in public areas is handy and something that most major OSes have yet to discover. A friend system makes it easy to swap files online, especially ones too large for e-mail or IM to reliably transfer, and you can automatically sniff out your friends on Wuala by entering Skype or Facebook credentials. We experienced a couple of crashes when simply browsing the public image and video areas, and we also saw plenty of copyrighted content available for downloading, which is an issue Wuala will have to wrestle with sooner or later. For one, the client feels sluggish when moving or sometimes even selecting files, and UI elements sometimes don't have any labels, forcing the user to poke around and rely on a lot of right-clicking to get typical work done. Uploading files and organizing folders with Wuala was easy enough, but the service still feels unpolished in too many areas. Employing AES-128 and RSA-2048 encryption, Wuala's approach is akin to turning the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux of its users into one giant RAID array. Instead of only relying on services like Amazon's S3 for storage, Wuala uses turns every user's computer into a part of the overall cloud and stores encrypted portions of files across accordingly. While Wuala offers the typical file and folder storage we've come to expect from a service like this, its claim to fame lies in how its storage system actually works. Opting for complete cross-platform integration and compatibility, Wuala settled on Java for its client, which means it's easy to run on almost any computer and allows for things like drag-and-drop uploading, but it feels bloated and sluggish compared to native software. Previous competitors in this space like Box.net have offered a browser-based client and WebDAV access (the latter of which is clunky for the typical user to set up), and AOL's now-doomed Xdrive went with an Adobe AIR client. Hailing from Switzerland, Wuala (pronounced like the French "VoilĂ ") is the product of three years of research and a desire to make web-based file storage and sharing easy. Ars Technica went hands-on with this new social file storage service. It's the 800 pound guerilla in the space and its deep Mac OS and iOS integration will likely keep it at the top of the heap for a while.Web-based file storage and sharing is becoming all the rage, and Wuala is the latest company to toss its hat in the ring with a product that turns each of its users into part of the cloud. It's pretty tough to beat Dropbox at the moment. New encrypted database format to prevent unauthorized access to local Dropbox client database.
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