Ricoh Expands Online Storage Service

Pronounced "kwan-puh," quanp is short for what Ricoh calls "quantum paper." Quanp was in try-outs in Japan last year and began in beta in the U.S. in June with features more attuned to the American culture, and is obviously aimed at the younger set.

"Online storage is vitally important but hard to do right," said Sho Harada, senior manager of quanp, in a statement. "It's mostly a boring backup function, and not enough people do it. But it doesn't have to be that way."

Quanp stores content such as documents, videos and pictures. Users can locate files by keyword, tag and date searches as well as a new 3-D sorting system. On the social networking side, a "Share Place" feature lets users send invitations to others; once invites have been accepted comments can be posted back and forth.

The updated beta version, quanp.on 2.2, enables users to create tag lists for organizing files and has an option that can show files as a full-screen slide show.

Another new feature is quanp drop, an animated widget that sits on the desktop with automatic drag-and-drop uploading.