Jungle Disk Blog

We made 3.05 available on this site earlier this month, introducing one-way sync, improved backup vault cleanup, and a number of additional improvements. After the release, we continued to get feedback (some from customers already running 3.05) that pointed to a few more items needing our attention.

We don’t like subjecting our customers to overly-frequent version changes, but in this case we felt it best to knock out a few more improvements and get them into the hands of our users. So today, we’re releasing Version 3.06 for each of our product editions. In it, you’ll find even better backup vault cleanup performance, optimized uploading of backup vault database files, and a number of other improvements.

For a complete list of changes, please review our release notes. You can download the new version of your edition from our Download Center.

For the Mac and Windows customers who prefer upgrading with the automatic update feature, we anticipate switching this on for 3.06 later this week (you can select “Check for Updates” from Jungle Disk’s Help Menu to see if the new version is available).

Today we’re releasing Version 3.05 for all editions of Jungle Disk. A big “thank you” goes out to all of our customers who shared their experiences in our Support Forums and ticket system. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made a number of performance and usability enhancements, and even added a few new goodies that didn’t appear in 3.04.

One notable enhancement is the addition of a “One Way” option to our Sync capabilities. With this feature, you can sync files from your network drive to your local folder (or vice-versa), without a requirement that the synchronization happens in the opposite direction. This feature is useful when you know the master copy of a document always exists in once place or the other, and you want to overwrite copies with the master version (regardless of whether the copies changed or not). Be sure to read the release notes on this feature, so you can set it up with exactly the behavior you want.

Other enhancements include improved cleanup of deleted data in Backup Vaults, and support for Growl and Snarl messages in Windows (and similar notifications in Linux). Linux customers will be happy to find that we restored the command-line utility that existed in versions prior to 3.0.

For a complete list of changes, please review our release notes.

You can download the new version of your edition from our Download Center — and we plan to enable automatic updates early next week. Once we do, Windows and Mac customers can upgrade to the new version by selecting “Check for Updates” from Jungle Disk’s Help Menu.

Last fall, we introduced the Jungle Disk Server Edition with tremendous reception and many requests to make it available for resellers.   Well, we’re happy to say that day is near!  But, before we launch, we’d like to invite our reseller community to participate in a public beta test for the Reseller Server Edition.

The product feature set is the same as Jungle Disk Server Edition, but white-label branded for the Reseller community.  The beta will include a 30-day free subscription with 10GB storage included.  Normal cloud storage fees still apply after the first 10 GB and the account will convert to paying after the 30-day evaluation period, unless canceled.

Specific areas we are looking for feedback on:

• Process of generating a license key
• Ease of creating a new license
• Installation and activation with that license
• General product evaluation

Getting Started is Easy!

Simply visit the Jungle Disk Reseller Support forum to get started.  Instructions for the beta, a reviewer’s guide, and beta feedback areas can be found at:  http://support.jungledisk.com/forums/129660-jungle-disk-reseller-server-edition-beta

Note: If you are a reseller and you do not see the Reseller Community Links under “Forums” on the right hand side of the support page, simply submit a support ticket to request access.

Thanks in advance for your help evaluating this product for our reseller community.  Your feedback is very important to us and we appreciate your efforts in making this the best product possible.

Thanks,

The Jungle Disk Team

We have exciting news and savings for our Amazon S3 customers that we’d like to pass along!

Effective Feb 1st, Amazon Web Services announced that they are lowering AWS pricing for outbound data transfer by $0.02, which will reduce the per GB fee from $0.17 down to $0.15.  Of course, Inbound Data Transfer is still  free of charge until June 30^th.

These pricing changes will be reflected in your next statement.

It’s really exciting to look back at all of the great things we accomplished at Jungle Disk in 2009, however, we believe that 2010 is our opportunity to do even more great things! We wanted to outline just a couple of the areas that we’re looking to target over the next year.

Collaboration
We love that you trust Jungle Disk to backup and store your valuable files, but now we want to empower you to do more by offering cool new features like collaboration tools and public file sharing.  At the end of the day, Jungle Disk is going to be the complete solution for any individual, team or company looking to do just about anything with their data. Store it? Archive it? Back it up? Version it? Share it? Sync it? Collaborate with it? Access it through the web? Yes, Jungle Disk does that.

Usability
We’re going to make a big push to improve product usability across the board. That means a rework of our existing offering and also putting more thought into usability as we roll out new features.  Certainly, our efforts to improve usability applies not only to the software, but the Jungle Disk website as well.

What else?
Rest assured that we have a lot of awesome things to roll out over 2010!  In addition to a host of new features and improvements for all of Jungle Disk’s products and services, you’ll want to keep coming back to find out more about how we’re taking your ability to store, sync, access and share your data to the max!

1. Influential blogger, social media evangelist and author, Robert Scoble, will be there live and in the flesh.
2. What’s ice cold, comes in a glass and tastes great at a Startup Tweetup?  You guessed it, and the first 100 are on us.  So get there early and enjoy a cold one on Jungle Disk.
3. Awesome prizes will be drawn at random for those that are there and tweeting – so remember to tweet early and tweet often.
4. There’s no better way to kick off Startup Riot than a night of socializing with Atlanta’s most exciting and innovative entrepreneurs, techies, bloggers and social media influencers!

Conversations and fun start flowing at 6:30 pm, Monday February 15^th at Cypress Street Pint & Plate in Atlanta.  Click here for more info and to RSVP!

Please join us Monday, February 15, 2010 for a Startup Tweetup hosted by Jungle Disk and Rackspace’s building43 featuring Internet and Social Media evangelist, Robert Scoble.

As a kickoff to a week of exciting startup activities, including Startup Riot and building43 interviews on-site at the Jungle Disk office with Jungle Disk, Clearleap, MailChimp, Skribit, and RentWiki, the Startup Tweetup is designed to bring entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts, bloggers, vloggers and (okay, we’ll even take a few joggers) together.

So get your @ on and join us for a night of interesting conversation and socializing…and a chance to win some cool prizes!

The details:

• When: Monday, February 15, 2010, 6:30 pm
• Where: Cypress Street Pint and Plate, 817 W Peachtree Street, Atlanta GA

Want to give us a heads up that you’re coming?  We would appreciate it greatly! Click here to RSVP!

I have been asking “how can I help those in Haiti?” after the country was rocked on January 12th by a series of earthquakes measuring 6.5 to 7.3 on the Richter scale.  The epic stories of loss and the unexpected moments of hope coupled with jarring images of those in pain has certainly awakened the desire of each employee at Jungle Disk to help those in need.  Many of you wanting to help may have found your own way to contribute, but I wanted to let you know about a collective effort called Hosting for Haiti.

Hosting for Haiti is put together by 11 leading and highly competitive hosting companies, including our parent company Rackspace, to facilitate donations to the Red Cross International Response and Haiti Relief and Development Fund.   The donations will assist in sending supplies, financial resources or even bringing relief workers to Haiti which we are seeing daily are all in short supply.  We know that there is no organization better suited than the Red Cross to ensure that 100% of the funds donated get to the Haitians in need.

There are three ways you can contribute or help:  1) donate and 100% of your donation goes to American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development fund; 2) Spread the word by sharing this URL w/ your friends, family or colleagues via email or your blog; and 3) Utilize your social media channels like Twitter or Facebook to share the URL.

You can also follow the progress of this effort on Twitter by following the hashtag #hostingforhaiti or @hostingforhaiti.

Great things really can happen when we unite toward a common goal.

I’d like to wish a happy holiday season and a bountiful New Year to all our Jungle Disk customers and partners. I hope your season has been filled with an abundance of friends, family, and food!

It’s been more than a year now since the Rackspace acquisition of Jungle Disk, and I’m extremely proud of the progress that we’ve made since then. The team has more than tripled in size and continues to expand. We’ve released several major product updates and two entirely new products, and Jungle Disk is now available through Rackspace Email & Apps to the entire range of Rackspace customers. My role has changed over the past year as well as I’ve transferred responsibility for engineering and business operations to others at Jungle Disk and started exploring the other divisions of Rackspace.

Working with the Rackspace Cloud group, I’ve gained exposure to some of the unique challenges faced by large scale cloud operators like Rackspace, challenges that will be encountered by many hosting providers and large enterprises going forward as more and more IT services move to cloud architectures. The technologist in me is excited about the groundbreaking technology required to solve these challenges, while the entrepreneur in me sees a big opportunity to make both public and private clouds faster, more reliable, and easier to manage.  And so it is that I leave Jungle Disk in capable hands to pursue my next venture.

I’m grateful for the amazing support of Jungle Disk’s customers over the years, and more than anything I’m proud of the community that has been built around the software. The future of Jungle Disk is bright and you’ll be hearing more about those plans soon. As for me, I am and will always remain @jungledave.

We have exciting news and savings for our Amazon S3 customers that we’d like to pass along.  On Dec 8, Amazon Web Services announced that Inbound Data Transfer will be free of charge until June 30^th, 2010 to make it easier for customers to get their data in to AWS.  All other applicable charges will still apply, but you will no longer have to pay the $0.10 per GB upload data transfer fee.

Additionally, Amazon S3 EU (Ireland) storage pricing has been reduced 15% to $0.15 per GB.  They are also reducing Request prices from $0.012 to $0.010 per 10,000 GET requests or 1,000 PUT requests.

These pricing changes will be reflected in your next statement.  Enjoy this early holiday gift from AWS!