F-Secure's Younited is now available publicly, sort of

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 6, 2013
Updated • Feb 9, 2015
Internet
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F-Secure is best known for its security products such as Internet Security or Anti-Virus, and not necessarily for non-security related products.

The company released a private beta version of Younited some time ago, and has made available the new product publicly today. To be precise, program and app downloads are now available, while sign-ups are still limited and not available right away.

Younited on first glance is yet another cloud-based file synchronization application that you can use to keep your files in sync on all of your devices. It supports Windows and Mac, as well as the three major mobile operating systems iOS, Windows Phone and Android, and web access on top of all that.

What sets Younited apart from other services is the fact that you can integrate other cloud services into it. For now, that just means Google Picasa, with support for other services such as Dropbox or Facebook planned in the near future.

The basic idea behind the service is to make it the central location for local and cloud-hosted files.

standards
via XKCD

But wait, isn't that already possible, at least for some services? If you are tech-savvy enough, you can easily add synced folders of services such as Dropbox to other sharing services, so that they get synced using them as well.

While that is an option for users who know how to do so, most users probably do not and that's where a service like Younited may come in useful.

Once you have installed the service on your system you will notice that it creates a new folder under your user directory on Windows. This is the core sync folder where all the magic happens.

It won't do you any good right now, as you still need to sign up for a -- free -- account before you can start using it to synchronize data.

While downloads are provided on the project's website, accounts cannot be created right now. All you can do is leave your email message to be informed when spots become available.

This is everything but elegant, considering that users who have downloaded the client for their operating system may be discouraged to give this a try as they cannot start to use the service right away.

The support page highlights other issues and provides additional information about the service.

It highlights the costs associated with it. The free account gives users 10 Gigabytes of free space until 2014, when it will be reduced to 5 Gigabytes for all new users. Users who need additional storage space can sign up for a Medium account for €74.99 per year and 200 Gigabyte of free space, or a Premium account for €120 a year and 500 Gigabyte of space.

That's cheaper than Dropbox's Pro plan which sets you back $99 per year and gets you 100 GB of space, and about the same price as Microsoft's SkyDrive and Google's Drive charge for 200 Gigabyte of space ($100 and $119 respectively).

Younited's unification feature may be giving it an edge, at least when it comes to the services that it supports. As far as other features are concerned, it supports version controlling, offline access, remote access on the web, and file sharing.

Closing Words

It is rather unfortunate that downloads are already available on the Younited website while the account creation is still limited. This will certainly discourage several users who download and install the program, as they will find out that they cannot use it for anything at that time.

The success of the service depends largely on the integration of third party cloud services. If it launches with just Picase, it is almost certain that it won't be as appealing as if popular services such as SkyDrive, Facebook or Dropbox would be available.

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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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