Today, LaCie announced a merger with Caleido AG, the creators of the innovative online storage service, Wuala.

Luzius Meisser, Co-Founder of Caleido said, “Wuala is an exciting technology that builds its reliable and secure cloud storage by harnessing idle resources.”

Wuala assembles centralized and distributed storage; the result is a reliable and scalable service. Once files are placed in Wuala, they are securely encrypted before being cut into several redundant fragments disseminated and stored on a cloud of computers.

“Users will gain online storage while trading disk space; that way, they will securely protect their valuable data. They can access it from anywhere and easily share files with selected peers. As privacy tends to be a major issue when talking about digital life and data management, everything is encrypted and a robust rights management system protects files from unauthorized access,” said Dominik Grolimund, Co-creator of Wuala, “We will also bring this technology to enterprises and professional customers, who will soon take advantage of our services with both cloud and data center-based storage.”

LaCie has plans to implement this first real “cloud storage” technology into its ranges of storage devices, offering a powerful and combined solution for storage–local storage on devices for fast access, and secured remote storage on the cloud, for easy sharing and complete data versatility.

“For 20 years, LaCie massively promoted hard drive technologies; today, as a leader on storage market, we will be a first mover in the next leading technologies: flash-based storage, and cloud storage. With this merger, LaCie will morph from a pure hardware manufacturer to a solution provider. These new technologies will be amazing for our customers and will enhance their experience,” Philippe Spruch concluded.

Don’t you just love those smug Mac users talking about how easy it was for them to create a photobook of their latest vacation and how they did it in like, “2 minutes; that’s it!”? I know, you secretly wished you had a Mac so you too could be sporting on the iPhoto but you’re stuck with a PC. Well, don’t worry, ’cause you don’t have to wait an eternity for Microsoft to make a good iPhone clone because Rocketlife did it for them.

Rocketlife is an online photo processor that lets you make calendars, cups, posters, and, yes, photobooks. With just some of your photos, Internet Explorer, a broadband connection, and some creativity, Rocketlife is going to set you up with one sweet photobook…in just minutes. Now you can be like our reviewer, Rebecca, and take your sweet time to nail down that awesome custom look if you want, but it’s not required. Either way, Rocketlife offers a pretty impressive option to iPhoto-wishing PC users to use. Take a look at Rebecca had to say in her review. You may never look at iPhoto again!

ebrary, a leading provider of eContent services and technology, today announced that it will begin testing its new Java-based Reader in August and is currently seeking beta testers. The new ebrary Reader(TM) will replace its current proprietary plug-in and will provide better functionality and ease-of-use.

Libraries, publishers, and other organizations that participate in the program will receive institution-wide access to a select collection of ebrary’s eBooks and other titles for one year, subsidized by ebrary. Organizations that are interested in participating should email marketing@ebrary.com.

“It has long been ebrary’s belief that the computer can do more to increase user efficiency when interacting with information, and that is why we originally developed the ebrary Reader plug-in with InfoTools,” said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. “With the help of our customers, partners, and end-users who have been providing us with valuable feedback, we have developed this new Reader that will replace our current plug-in to provide an even better and more valuable service. We are very excited to begin beta testing this new technology and encourage libraries and other organizations in all parts of the world to participate.”

ebrary’s new Reader will initially be tested on Linux followed by Windows and Macintosh environments. The new Reader will launch on all platforms simultaneously later this year.

The ebrary Reader enables documents to be viewed online, page-by-page, eliminating the need for cumbersome document downloads. It also gives the ebrary platform all of its rich functionality including ebrary InfoTools(TM), which enables integration between multiple online resources and instant, contextual linking when end-users select words of interest in a document.

Key enhancements and new features include the following: Read the rest of this entry »

I couldn’t begin to tell you how many clients I’ve had that call telling me in near tears that their hard drive just took a dump and begging me to please save the data on it. My first question (even though I already know the answer due to the desperation in their voice,) is if they’ve made back-ups. No is always the answer. Always. After some deep probing using some sweet tools on hand, I usually am able to recover missing data most of the time. After I do return the data on DVD-ROMs, I go into the “make sure you do back-ups regularly” speech and offer my services in this department. I know it falls on deaf ears. (In fact, one client called me three different times with the same problem within a years time. The third time was not the charm. Dead drive that I could not help with.)

I practice what I preach. In fact, I’m paranoid with my data. I have two local archives done on-site and one set of archives online. My mail is also on an Exchange server hosted outside my office, thus that gets the triple-protection stamp. With the online service, I have to be stingy with what I back up since I have hundreds of gigs of data, mostly due to my pictures and music. That is until I found Carbonite.

Carbonite is unlike any other online service I’ve seen before as it makes backing up your data easy and economical. Carbonite is pushing itself heavily during its ramp-up phase and offering a free month of unlimited backup without a credit card using certain promo codes. It’s easy to find that code. Once you’re signed up, backing up is as easy as either accepting the default (My Documents folder) or going the manual route and right clicking folders or files and selecting “Back this up” from the Carbonite menu item. Really, it’s that easy! Depending on your amount of data you’ll be backing up, you’re looking at a few hours (or days) of getting all your files securely archived before real-time back-ups occur which then happens in seconds. After a file changes (or is created within a selected folder for back-up), it’s backed up according to your settings (such as wait until idle Internet usage.) Peace of cake.

Restoring is even easier. Open your new “Carbonite Secure Backup” icon in My Computer and drill down to your file or folder you wish to restore. Right clicking it reveals a menu with options such as Restore and Restore to. Select one and follow the prompts. You can also just drag-and-drop the object as well. That easy!

As for information, Carbonite does not lack here. Dots help paint a picture about your files for you. Little blue dots on your file or folder visually indicate that object is schedule for back-up, yellow defines back-up in progress, and green tells ya that it was successfully backed up. Of course the red dot means trouble was encountered. A colored themed lock icon in the Task Tray also follows the same color code chart of the dots. At any time, you can double click the lock icon by your system clock which will bring up the InfoCenter. Yup, you can guess what this will tell you.

Okay, there are some things Carbonite won’t do. It doesn’t archive data from external drives (such as USB or Firewire drives), flash drives, and mapped network drives. Files 2 GB or larger it won’t touch either. System or executables are not backed up unless you manually add them to your archive list.

Once your free trail is over, you can have all this for only $49.95 for a full year. That’s unlimited space for $50! Incredible, huh?! Now granted, who knows how long Carbonite will be able to last at this price (or last at all) and if your data will there when you need it because Carbonite isn’t, but that’s why you still do local back-ups, too. Be paranoid like me and you won’t be like one of my customers at the end of the day.