A few weeks ago we published a press release with Syabas about the integration of Tuxera NTFS into Syabas set-top boxes. Here’s a brief overview how everyone using Syabas products benefits from Tuxera NTFS inside. In the below pic you have Syabas’ Popcorn Hour set-top box at Tuxera labs ready to rock:
On the left you have two USB ports and on the right a removable hard drive bay circled. You can plug any NTFS-formatted portable hard drive or USB stick full of high-definition movies into the USB ports and it is plug & play. The same goes for the hard drive bay: take your NTFS-formatted drive from your Windows box and it works seamlessly with the Syabas media tank without any additional drivers.
We think Syabas’ example shows where the market is going. With both disk and file sizes growing, NTFS is currently the best — and in increasing cases the only — format option if you want your storage media to work plug & play with all computers from PCs to Macs and Linuxes as well as the latest consumer electronic devices.
There has been a lot of discussion around exFAT on both IP and technical details. The basis is that SD Association has chosen exFAT as the file system in the next generation SD cards. Tuxera is here to provide the actual exFAT software for companies that embed the file system into their consumer electronics products. We published recently an Tuxera exFAT for Linux white paper at Interoperability vendor alliance to showcase the work we have done on exFAT. While the white paper is rather high-level, Tuxera is happy to provide more information on how the file system and licensing works for anyone interested. Tuxera exFAT is built on a portable and reliable code base and now available for Android, Linux and other operating systems.
Computex Taipei is finally over and done for 2010. A great event, with a lot of interesting electronics. It is clear the current semiconductor hotspot is here. From NAS systems to set-top-boxes, from cameras to phones, everything is packed together in Taipei or the nearby cities. In connection with Computex we did a joint press release with Microsoft on Tuxera exFAT for Linux.
The scenery in Taipei is unique. A quick escape from Taipei101 to Meokong for an afternoon tea shows everything from modern high-tech architecture to unreachable rainforest jungle in less than an hour. While it was raining almost every day I found the climate pleasant: warm but not too hot. You could walk with a T-shirt around the clock.
Nokia and Intel announced yesterday the merge of Maemo and Moblin called MeeGo. At face value, the news were not so surprising as Android is taking market share very quickly at the moment. In between the lines, the news strongly indicate that Linux will sooner than later become the dominant platform for cool phones. Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi says:
Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too
This is good news for companies like Tuxera. We are ready to support data portability on any Linux-based mobile device, be it running Android or MeeGo. For example shooting 1080p video into the device’s flash card requires in practice a file system change from FAT32 to exFAT. Tuxera exFAT works inside Android and MeeGo to manage that change.
Following the latest release, Tuxera NTFS for Mac is receiving positive reviews all over the net. For example movie and television industry veteran David Roth Weiss has in mind a use case where large movie files are post-produced on a Mac and then submitted to clients who have PCs:
Until Tuxera, the 4Gb file size limitation made it impossible to copy files over 4Gb to a FAT32 formatted drive, and NTFS formatted drives could only be read on Macs, writing to them was not possible. … that could be a real deal breaker for many editors on Macs. Tuxera changes all that, and creates a seamless method for delivering files on hard drives to your PC-based clients.
Earlier also MacObserver picked Tuxera as the NTFS solution for Mac.
As a final note, Softpedia gave us “100% CLEAN” award 
We have been walking our legs flat the last four days at Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, meeting valued customers and partners from all over the world. Perhaps the biggest benefit one can get from a huge event like this — in addition to catching market trends — is to have face-to-face time with all those one has communicated with over email and phone during the year.
We decided CES is the right time to go public with our Windows CE work. The most common use case must be Windows CE powered set-top boxes and other consumer electronic devices with a USB plug. If I want to upload my videos and music from a portable NTFS-formatted hard drive into the box, it must read NTFS.
Another relevant market are cars, where Windows CE is gaining momentum. At CES, Microsoft had driven Fiats, Fords and Kias on their booth. Window CE is running the “infotainment” or entertainment systems in these cars. But what if I want plug in the car stereo my portable NTFS-formatted hard drive, which is full of MP3s? Yes, the system should read NTFS.
German computer magazine Apfeltalk (”Appletalk”) has reviewed Tuxera NTFS for Mac (Google translation). The product was thanked for its unbeatable performance and flawless operation compared to competition. Tuxera NTFS for Mac was recommended with a Silber-Award (”Silver Award”), something we are very proud of!
I was presenting today in Turin, Italy, at Europe Unlimited’s venture contest before an international investor and expert panel. At the end of the day I was thrilled to see Tuxera was awarded as the event winner! We are thus among the top 100 companies selected from different events around the Europe during the fall…
During the day I had interesting talks with investors and other entrepreneurs. One of the most positive and energetic persons was undoubtedly Rick Salmon who runs Xelerator out from Oslo, Norway. He answered to those who said you should start from local markets that when a company finds the right focus the market is and must be global. Cannot agree more. Tuxera’s market has been global from day 1.
Update 27.11. Here is a short video clip of the award ceremony and my interview after the event.
We have finally opened the Online Shop for Tuxera NTFS for Mac registration. Please let us know if there is anything in the store that could be simplified. We decided to start with an e-commerce and credit card operator but plan to simplify the process in the future with a fully integrated payment system. The shop currently accepts VISA, MasterCard and PayPal.
I am giving company presentations in various events. Tomorrow I will once again invade Moneytalks event in Espoo, Finland, this time with a seven-minute pitch.
Next month I will talk at Eurecan European Venture Contest semi-final in Turin, Italy. Date is November 5 and I expect it will be very exciting to network with central European companies.
Mac OS X comes with an NTFS driver but it does not support writing to NTFS volumes out-of-the box. The fix is here. We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Tuxera NTFS for Mac Trial. You can download it here. Please note that this is a release candidate version and the final one will be available before the 15-day trial period is over.
After installation, Tuxera NTFS becomes visible in your System Preferences.
There are many options you can play with. See the manual for explanations.
This is a release candidate version and a major upgrade from our previous open source NTFS-3G for Mac. Performance has been significantly improved along with other enhancements. We are pretty sure this is the fastest read/write NTFS driver you can have for Mac. We have successfully tested it on Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard. Please send us any issues you find and we will fix them before the final release is out and available for purchase.
We are currently in IFA in Berlin – touted as the “Leading Business Event for Consumer Electronics and Home Appliance’s”. This is a huge exhibition where you can see everything from cutting-edge kitchen electronics to digital media. For us, it has been great to note we have created an impact building on the excellent foundation of our open source work. Seems that demand for file system compatibility is on the rise, and who are we to say no to that challenge…
It has been an interesting week. Our Microsoft PR went through the media pretty much as expected. Some coverage:
Brief answers to frequently asked questions so far:
- The agreements do not allow us to distribute end-user or open source exFAT drivers for Linux. We are communicating with Microsoft and hope to do that in the near future. A solution is needed before exFAT becomes a de facto standard.
- The agreements do not change anything regarding NTFS drivers. We will continue to distribute and support NTFS-3G both under GPL and commercial licenses.
Spent this morning at Microsoft’s BizSpark event in Espoo.
It was a three hour session with a number of short talks and enthusiasm to get Microsoft partners to work and cooperate together. Keynote speaker was Petri I Salonen who runs IAMCP and TELLUS International in the US. A well motivated talk from a seasoned software entrepreneur.
I also explained Tuxera to Artur Surov from Technolopolis Ventures and I am going to pitch Tuxera again 10.9.2009 in their MoneyTalks event.
Overall it was a surprisingly lively morning event and also productive for us. It was nice to get direct feedback on who we are and what we do at Tuxera. I am confident we can find opportunities with other partners in the Microsoft ecosystem in the near future.
At Microsoft. From left: Anton Altaparmakov, Mikko Välimäki, and Szabolcs Szakacsits.
“I can’t believe we are here!”, Szabolcs remarked as soon as we had driven from the Seattle airport to Redmond and signed in to our mighty American-size hotel rooms. It was indeed a trip with a lot of preparation. Our talks with Microsoft had started almost a year ago when the company was founded. I had changed my role from an outside counsel to a company man sometime in March. First and foremost to get this deal done.
We came to Redmond to have an agreement, and in the end that is what we got. Three days of intensive meetings and talking — it was very impressive to see a big company work very effectively when they finally wanted to go for it while we were there.
After we had signed, someone from Microsoft asked: “Have we ever done a deal so quickly?” “I don’t think so,” was the answer.
A quick signature for a man, but a giant leap for the company.