LaCie Intros Calibration Tool, Acquires Wuala
LaCie, the storage outfit famous for its stylish, if not overpriced external hard drives and optical drives, has two bits of news on the up and up. For starters, the company is branching out from its usual array of USB 2.0-infused enclosures to offer up a new monitor calibration tool, the Blue Eye Pro Proof Edition. Said tool is described as a "complete monitor calibration and profiling solution that ensures certified colors in a single click." And for anyone who has attempted to color calibrate their screen before, they'll certainly appreciate the ease of use.
The device was engineered to integrate with prepress and other softproofing-based workflows, and its advanced Test & Report function allows the most demanding users to perform color accuracy verifications based on the widely accepted UGRA/FOGRA Mediawedge standard colors. Eagle-eyed users can specify any target colorimetric settings, such as Whitepoint, Gamma, Brightness and Blackpoint, and the LaCie Blue Eye Pro software automatically calibrates the monitor -- creating and activating an ICC profile that ensures consistent color reproduction throughout the workflow. Furthermore, it saves to the profile the specific hardware settings that correspond to a given calibration, allowing the user to switch from one colorimetric environment to another without needing to recalibrate. The tool is available as we speak for $429.99, suggesting that only true visual professionals apply.
In related news, LaCie has decided to merge with Caleido AG, the creators of the innovative online storage service, Wuala. Luzius Meisser, Co-Founder of Caleido, stated the following in the announcement: "Wuala is an exciting technology that builds its reliable and secure cloud storage by harnessing idle resources." It's not difficult to understand why LaCie would want such a company under its belt, as trends are definitely leaning away from localized storage (LaCie's current strong suit) and towards cloud storage (Wuala's strong suit).
Dominik Grolimund, Co-creator of Wuala, summed it up nicely with the following: "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. 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."
Already, LaCie has made clear its plans to implement this first real "cloud storage" technology into its ranges of storage devices, offering a powerful and combined solution for storage with local storage on devices for fast access, and secured remote storage on the cloud, for easy sharing and complete data versatility. Sure sounds like an excellent pickup to us!
The device was engineered to integrate with prepress and other softproofing-based workflows, and its advanced Test & Report function allows the most demanding users to perform color accuracy verifications based on the widely accepted UGRA/FOGRA Mediawedge standard colors. Eagle-eyed users can specify any target colorimetric settings, such as Whitepoint, Gamma, Brightness and Blackpoint, and the LaCie Blue Eye Pro software automatically calibrates the monitor -- creating and activating an ICC profile that ensures consistent color reproduction throughout the workflow. Furthermore, it saves to the profile the specific hardware settings that correspond to a given calibration, allowing the user to switch from one colorimetric environment to another without needing to recalibrate. The tool is available as we speak for $429.99, suggesting that only true visual professionals apply.
In related news, LaCie has decided to merge with Caleido AG, the creators of the innovative online storage service, Wuala. Luzius Meisser, Co-Founder of Caleido, stated the following in the announcement: "Wuala is an exciting technology that builds its reliable and secure cloud storage by harnessing idle resources." It's not difficult to understand why LaCie would want such a company under its belt, as trends are definitely leaning away from localized storage (LaCie's current strong suit) and towards cloud storage (Wuala's strong suit).
Dominik Grolimund, Co-creator of Wuala, summed it up nicely with the following: "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. 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."
Already, LaCie has made clear its plans to implement this first real "cloud storage" technology into its ranges of storage devices, offering a powerful and combined solution for storage with local storage on devices for fast access, and secured remote storage on the cloud, for easy sharing and complete data versatility. Sure sounds like an excellent pickup to us!
