Yes, that’s how blazing fast Backblaze is at backing up your data! At least according to @joerocklin who gets a Backblaze bike jersey for finishing: “Backblaze is faster than…”

In addition to Joe’s answer, there were hundreds of other suggestions…many of which made us laugh out loud. Thank to everyone who submitted! For your perusing pleasure, below are all the ideas that came in by the time we finished looking.

Have a friend who could use a fast online backup service? Send them our way!

Thank you for voting on your favorite billboard! The votes have been tallied across the Facebook poll, comments, blog feedback, Twitter responses…and the winner is:

Kiss your lost files hello

Lee Robertson wins one-year of Backblaze online backup by voting/retweeting.

Congratulations Lee, thanks to everyone that voted…and look out for the billboard appearing on Highway 101 in two weeks!

We asked you to provide us ideas for a billboard and, wow, did you come through!
You submitted about 200 ideas!

It was incredibly difficult to narrow them down. But, after much deliberation, rigorous analysis, careful evaluation…and just some plain “I like that one!”…we came down to the six ideas below.

Now it’s to pick the final billboard that will go up on Highway 101:
Vote on Facebook for your favorite Backblaze online backup billboard!
Voting by Dec 5, 2011 at 10am PST enters you to win 1 year of Backblaze.

Peace of Mind. $5/month.

Yesterday, you said you would backup today.

Because there are some videos you don’t want to lose.

Easy backup. Quick restore. You can hug us later.

Kiss your lost files hello.

1 in 2 people will lose data. Which one are you?

So, which one is your favorite?

We will also be touching up the final picked one, so give us feedback in the comments.

Peace of mind means different things to different people. It might be knowing you can get the song your baby falls asleep to when you’re traveling or being able to find your lost or stolen computer.

At Backblaze, we believe that peace of mind comes from never having to worry about losing the video of your newborn’s first smile, the photo of your uncle passed out at Thanksgiving last year, or oops, that presentation you just deleted.

This holiday season, give the gift of peace of mind from Backblaze.

… And get rewarded for your generosity in return.

Every gift license purchased between now and midnight this Cyber Monday, automatically enters you into a drawing for your choice of hotel or flight ($250 gift card) for a little extra peace of mind of your own.

Can’t decide who to bestow with your generosity? Follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to be entered into a drawing for a free year of Backblaze.

So kick up your feet and relax, we’ve got you and your friends covered.

* Anyone is eligible.
* Licenses can be used for new accounts only
* License is valid for one year of unlimited backup
* Contests end at 11.59 PM PST on November 28th, 2011

Meet the Backblaze Peloton.
From Wikipedia:

The peloton travels as an integrated unit, like birds flying in formation, each rider making slight adjustments in response to the riders around him or her…

I would say we started a Backblaze biking group because of the inherent efficiency, teamwork, and performance of a well-executing peloton; that this is both a way to develop our team and to demonstrate it’s excellence; that this was perfectly timed to coincide with Backblaze 2.0: The Performance Release

But, realistically, it’s just fun.

Want one of these fancy Backblaze bike jerseys?
In the comments below, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter simply finish the sentence:

“Backblaze is faster than…”

For example,
* Backblaze is faster than a cheetah jumping off a rocket ship.
* Backblaze is faster than a spinning hard drive.
* Backblaze is faster than a DeLorean hitting 88 mph.

We’ll pick our favorite and send you a jersey!

Researchers have discovered that a pinch of table salt can get more data onto spinning hard drive platters. A lot more: 6 TB in a single platter!

Considering the latest drives have up to 5 platters, that would be 30 TB in a single hard drive. Put 45 of those drives into a Backblaze Storage Pod and you would store 1.35 petabytes (!) in a single storage pod; more than 10 petabytes in a single rack.

Hello, Big Data. Meet your best friend, Salt.

Backblaze continues to grow and we want to help more people find out about our online backup service. We were inspired by the great “Y U NO USE HIPCHAT” billboard and would love for you to help us make our own!

Suggest a Backblaze billboard. If we use it, we’ll send you the new Kindle Fire!

Suggest ideas by any of these:
* Write them as a comment on this blog post.
* Write them on the Backblaze Facebook page.
* Tweet them and include (http://bit.ly/bzbillboard) to link to this post.

The rules:
* You can suggest as many ideas as you want.
* Suggesting the same idea twice doesn’t increase your chances.
* If multiple people suggest an idea we use, we’ll randomly pick one of those people.

Some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
* Backblaze Online Backup. $5/month. Unlimited Storage.
* Really, a billboard?!? Why?! Because you’re still not backing up.
* (No File Found) Should have backed up with Backblaze.
* Backblaze: because Google won’t ship G-drive.
* Diamonds might be forever, but your hard drive isn’t.

What is your suggestion?

No, not 3 TB…3 GB. We stumbled across this scan of a Best Buy news ad from 1996. “30-Message Pagers”, “Motorola Cellular Flip Phone”, “28.8 kbps modem”…what a trip down memory lane.

One of my favorite ads, for obvious reasons, is for for hard drives:

At those prices, a Backblaze Storage Pod today would cost $18,000,000!
(45 drives * 3 GB * 1,000 GB per TB * $400)

The roughly 220 pods that we have at this point would cost nearly $4 billion!

I love the progress of technology.