It's not hard to find an online service that lets you upload a few hundred megabytes of pictures, music, and movie clips. Some even give you 5 or 50GB. But Oosah is a service that's upping the game. By a lot. Oosah claims that users get 1TB of online storage for free.

There are some limitations. You can only upload videos that are 200MB or smaller, images that are 50MB or less, and MP3 files that are 9MB or less. And you can't upload executable files, office documents, or other files. Just movies, music, and pictures. But Oosah does accept most common media file types. There's also an option to upload media directly from your camera or capture device without copying it to your computer first.

Besides offering an incredible amount of storage space, there are a few other things that set Oosah apart. One of the coolest features is integration with YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Picasa. You can associate Oosah with your other social network/media accounts and manage your media libraries from a central location. Oosah has an incredibly simple file manager that lets you easily drag and drop files from Flickr to Oosah, from Oosah to Facebook, and so on.

Does the service really provide a whole 1TB of storage to every user? Honestly, I can't say. It would take me forever to upload that much data. But if the promise of a huge amount of free storage is a publicity stunt to get people to try to use the service, it worked. And I have to say, I'm impressed.

Right now all Oosah accounts are free. The company says it may eventually create a premium service that offers paying customers even more storage.

One word of warning. When I signed up I had to check a box that said I agreed to Oosah's privacy policy. But there was no clear link to said policy. A quick Google search turned up a list of terms and conditions which also makes mention of a separate privacy policy. But it's nowhere to be found.

[via shankri-la]

Wuala is a social file storage application that we first looked at back in February. At the time, Wuala was in private beta, but starting today anyone can sign up for an account.

Unlike other file storage/sharing services, Wuala doesn't provide you with web space. Rather, your files are encrypted and then stored on the computers of other Wuala users. While this might sound a bit scary, the upshot is that you can store large amounts of data. The more space you allocate for Wuala on your hard drive, the more online space you can access. And your files are duplicated on multiple computers so that you shouldn't have problems accessing your files even if some of the folks in your network have turned their machines off for the night.

Wuala has a desktop client for Windows, Mac, and Linux that you can use to upload and download files. Or you can access a web interface. The service is still in beta, so nobody's promising that all the kinks have been worked out. But as of today, Wuala is in public beta, not private.

Once upon a time there was a company called Streamload that let users upload huge media files to a web site fo sharing with their friends. Eventually Streamload changed its name to MediaMax and offered pretty much the same service. This year the company changed its name again, this time to The Linkup and launched a new business model: a social network based around online file storage and sharing.

Apparently the whole social network thing didn't really pan out, as The Linkup has announced plans to kill the service on August 8th. The company has posted a message on its homepage stating that it will no longer accept new uploads or new accounts. It will also no longer charge current customers. If you've got any media stored at The Linkup, you'll probably want to make sure you've got a backup before August 8th, because at that point the company will delete your files.

According to the note, The Linkup had problems transfering user files from MediaMax. That's kind of an understatement. What actually happened was that the company deleted nearly half of its user files. Many were recoverable, but some were not.

Did you use The Linkup, MediaMax or Streamload? What was your experience like? Will you miss this service or just move on to other online storage sites?

[via GigaOm]

While there's no shortage of online file storage and synchronization services these days, Dropbox has to be one of the simplest solutions we've seen. Here's how it works: You install the Dropbox client on your desktop, and then every time you drag a file into your My Dropbox folder it's automatically uploaded to the web service. You can then view your file, share the link with others, or keep it synchronized with multiple computers. There's even a version tracking history. If you edit or delete a file, My Dropbox will let you undelete it or will show you previous versions.

Beta testers can store up to 5GB online, and there's no file size limit. Once it launches, Dropbox will offer free and premium services, with free account holders getting somewhere around 1GB of storage space while paid subscribers will be able to get more space. Users who are in on the beta will get to keep their larger accounts once Dropbox exits beta.

There are Mac and Windows clients available right now, with a Linux version coming... eventually. You can sign up for a beta invitation at the Dropbox home page.

[via GigaOM]