Seagate Ships Maxtor Fusion: Storage Solution with Embedded Rich Web Application

WebKnowHow
Friday, June 16, 2006; 03:28 AM

Seagate Technology  introduced a new way for consumers, creative pros and small business owners to quickly find, share, organize, view and enjoy their digital content and files. The new Maxtor Fusion personal media solution from Seagate provides one safe, central location on your network to hold large amounts of digital photos, videos, music and documents. It includes a simple, yet powerful interface and a rich web application, licensed from software maker Fabrik Inc., that makes it easy and fast to organize, retrieve, access, blend and assemble all types of multimedia content for sharing personal experiences, events and memories with others over the web, either privately or publicly in a secure manner.

Ideal for families, creative professionals, bloggers, scrapbookers and anyone who enjoys creating, viewing and sharing a large amount of digital content, the Maxtor Fusion solution provides a high-speed Gigabit Ethernet network port and a half-terabyte (500GB) of networked storage that can be accessed from anywhere via the web. Users of all popular operating systems can share and enjoy content from the comfort and familiarity of their secure browser. The new Maxtor Fusion solution from Seagate is being launched June 15 at J&R Music and Computer World's flagship store in New York City during their Summer Festival where a live product demo will be available.

"Seagate is addressing a growing desire for people to easily manage, share and enjoy their digital content, regardless of media type, from anywhere at any time using a web browser," said Jim Druckrey, senior vice president and general manager, Seagate Branded Solutions. "Increasingly, consumers want to easily transform their scattered photos, video and music files into organized, richer multimedia compositions that are personalized for selected groups of people or posted to public sites. The multimedia experience that our new Maxtor Fusion solution brings to consumers represents an important next step in the digital home transformation that's taking place today."

Intuitive "Webtop" Application with Multimedia Tagging
Built on a new breed of software applications designed for the web, the Maxtor Fusion personal media solution provides the flexibility and responsiveness generally associated with desktop applications. Designed for the Web 2.0 world, and with advanced technologies like Ajax, users easily flow through what would normally be a cumbersome set of tasks without disruptive browser-refreshing. Users can easily drag and drop files within the solution's browser, quickly preview and select images, videos, music and other files using thumbnails, and view content via slideshows, lists and other viewing options. Leveraging existing media player browser plug-ins, such as Windows Media Player and QuickTime, the user interface provides a smooth and seamless experience when playing slideshows, videos and music.

While many social Web sites today allow users to store and share only one type of media like photos or video, Maxtor Fusion users utilize the same simple yet sophisticated interface to tag, search, blend and share videos, music, photos and files quickly and easily. Users can organize files "anyway they think." Maxtor Fusion's personal organization structures are very flexible so a variety of multimedia files can be organized by tags, date, description, metadata, folders or any combination of methods.

Unlimited Downloads and Selective Sharing or Postings
"With Maxtor Fusion, we don't hold your data hostage," said Druckrey. "Unlike many online services today there are no monthly download limits, and the people with whom you share files with are free to download high-resolution videos, photos and other files at your discretion. We believe that your personal content is yours to share, and it's our job to make that easy."

To view shared content, invited guests simply click on an emailed web link where they're directed to the content stored on Seagate's Maxtor Fusion personal media solution connected to your home network. No online registration is required for access. If desired, users can create a number of login names and passwords for their frequent guests.

With the Maxtor Fusion solution from Seagate, users can create "microshares" to share multimedia content with small, select circles of people in a safe and secure way, or they can create "microlinks" to link personally-selected content to blog sites or online auction and social sites like eBay or MySpace. For those with content that they wish to boast to the world, the Public Site feature enables quick and easy creation of a personal web page made up of pictures, video clips, music and even documents that you select.

Bundled Online Service
As an alternative to the Maxtor Fusion personal media solution, Seagate will be bundling an online service with its Maxtor-branded solutions including the Maxtor OneTouch and Maxtor Shared Storage( product families. Instead of using a physical solution connected to your home network, multimedia content is uploaded to a secure online site giving you the same unique, feature-rich multimedia experience and flexibility to easily store, access, share and organize personal content anytime, anywhere. As part of the bundled promotion, the online service will be free for an extended period of time with an option to renew to a yearly multi-level subscription service. The promotional bundle, terms and pricing will be available this summer.

Maxtor Fusion personal media solution from Seagate is available with suggested retail price of $799 for 500GB. The Maxtor Fusion solution will start shipping to additional retailers in the U.S. this summer.