Backblaze is giving away one million dollars worth of the Backblaze online backup service. “Whoa”, you say, “Backblaze is like the thriftiest company ever, now they’re giving away a million dollars worth of their service, what gives?”
That’s a fair question. Here’s the deal…
Starting immediately and running through the end of World Backup Day (March 31, 2013 11:59 PM PDT), Mac and PC users new to Backblaze can sign up to receive 3 months of the Backblaze online backup service for free (a $15 value). To sign up, all you need to do is go to www.backblaze.com/worldbackupday and enter a valid email address during the promotional period. The first 66,667 unique and valid email accounts to sign up will receive an email containing their personal code, providing them with 3 months of unlimited online backup from Backblaze. That’s it. A new Backblaze customer can sign-up, get a code via email, and run Backblaze for free for 3 months.
“OK, that’s cool, but what about us existing customers, are we being left out?”
Of course not. We have entered all of our existing customers into a contest. We will randomly select 5 lucky winners and each winner will receive an iPad Mini. We’ll select the winners on April 2nd and contact them via email at that time.
“Nice, but three free months of Backblaze is nearly as good as an iPad Mini. Any chance I can get the free Backblaze?”
To use the free 3-month code, you will need to create a new Backblaze account. You cannot add the 3-month code to an existing Backblaze license. So if you have a second computer laying around that you’ve been meaning to back up with Backblaze, now’s your chance. Or maybe you’ve been thinking of getting Backblaze for your Aunt Polly or Grandpa Roger, now’s your chance. One thing to know, if you cancel your existing Backblaze license so you can use this new free 3-month code, you’ll have to resend us all of your data again – is it really worth it?
So that’s it, one million dollars worth of the Backblaze service for free for new customers. Now there’s no excuse not to back-it-up with Backblaze.
*Update* – Thanks everyone for signing up! Codes are going out soon, and the iPad Mini winners will be notified on April 2nd, 2013 (so they don’t think it’s an April Fool’s joke)!
Hard to believe it’s been almost two years that Backblaze has been in our office in downtown San Mateo. A few months back we had the opportunity to join the San Mateo Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown San Mateo Association. We thought this would be a great way for Backblaze to meet our neighbors in San Mateo as well as the folks in nearby communities. So you’ll find Backblaze at several events in and around San Mateo over the coming months. We’d love to have you stop on by and say “Hello”.
Wine Walk 2012 – The 16th annual Wine Walk in downtown San Mateo is on September 29th. Backblaze is a sponsor and will have a booth in one of the wine gardens. Come on down and enjoy a wonderful afternoon in downtown San Mateo.
Family Fair – Stop by our booth at the Family Resources Fair on October 13th at the Shops at Tanforan in San Bruno. Presented by the Daily Journal this free community event provides information, services and resources for local families.
Business Expo – On October 24th, Backblaze will have a booth at the 2012 San Mateo County Business Expo at the San Mateo County Event Center in the Fiesta Hall. We’ll be in booth 202 right across from Comcast.
It’s nice to have friends. You’ve probably heard of VIZIO and maybe some of those other companies in the picture above, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and the rest. And there’s Backblaze right in the middle – cool huh? That’s Matt McRae, the CTO of VIZIO, introducing their new PC lineup, All-in-Ones, Notebooks, and Thin + Lights. Matt gave us a nice shout out to everyone there, thanks Matt! Yup, really cool.
What all this means is that online backup has taken the first step in becoming an integral part of the PC experience. You get a new computer and one of the things it should do is protect the stuff you put on it, automatically and continuously. VIZIO understands this and reached out to Backblaze, and there we are, with all our new found friends. As part of Backup Awareness month, Backblaze recently announced survey results showing that 10% of computer users backup their computer daily or more often. Having online backup be an integrated part of the PC experience can only help to reduce the senseless loss of data that occurs when a person does not backup their system. VIZIO believes that data backup should be part of the PC experience and we agree.
To be clear we are not built in, we are an add-on service that must be installed. But VIZIO has made it pretty simple. They have a “V” button that brings up a list of services. You can download and install the Backblaze service onto the VIZIO PC, pay for it, and you are backing up your photos, videos, spreadsheet and more. Check out the press release for more details.
We told you the reason our online backup service could offer unlimited storage for just $5/month was as a result of our incredibly efficient cloud storage built on our custom-designed and open-sourced Storage Pod hardware.
It has arrived. This holiday has no painted eggs, no tree, no turkey, and no costumes. But it does have gifts: an iPad, five 1-year unlimited online backup licenses and more. More importantly, it has the ability to save your memories and give you the undying love of your friends, family, and co-workers.
Take a moment and help your friends with the 1-minute task of making sure their photos, music, movies, and memories are safe. And if your friends start a free trial by April 2nd, 2012…they’ll also be entered to win a new iPad and one of 5 free one-year subscriptions. Just send this this link: www.backblaze.com/worldbackupday
Whether you’ve been on reddit or not, stop by iama.reddit.com on Wednesday 3/28 starting at about 10:00am PDT. Backblaze will be engaging the reddit community with the IAmA:
“We are the team that runs online backup service Backblaze. We’ve got 25,000,000 GB of cloud storage and open sourced our storage server. AUA”.
For those of you who are new to reddit, IAmA is short for “I Am A” and AUA is short for “Ask Us Anything”. Everyone is invited to join the conversation by submitting posts and votes and interacting with Backblaze and the reddit community until the moderators throw us off…
This is just one of the many activities going on for World Backup Day on March 31, 2012 The audacious goal of World Backup Day is to have everyone backup their files, photos, videos – all their data – on that day. Backblaze, as a Presenting Sponsor for World Backup Day, is helping organizers to spread the word through leading community driven news sites such as reddit. On reddit, users provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what’s good and what’s junk. There are thousands of subreddits with active communities of users who interact with users of similar interests each day.
World Backup Day was started by a couple of concerned reddit users as an independent grassroots initiative meant to raise awareness about the importance of doing backups. The audacious goal of World Backup Day is to have everyone backup their files, photos, videos – all their memories – on March 31st. There are many ways you can backup your files; DVDs, USB Flash drives, external hard drives and of course an online backup service like Backblaze. Whichever method you choose, don’t forget to backup on March 31st. Oh, and if you are using Backblaze – we’ve already got you covered on March 31st and every other day too with automatic continuous backups.
World Backup Day 2012 Contest – win an iPad 3rd generation
In concert with World Backup Day, Backblaze is also sponsoring a contest. Just download, install and activate a free trial of the Backblaze online backup service from www.backblaze.com/worldbackupday between now and April 2nd, 2012 (11:59:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time) and you will be entered into the contest. Winners will be chosen at random from all valid entries with 5 lucky winners being awarded a one year subscription for the Backblaze online backup service and 1 winner receiving a 3rd generation iPad (16GB Wi-Fi).
Here are the rules…
1. Try Backblaze online backup free to enter the contest:
Enter a valid email address and choose a password.
Download and install the Backblaze online backup service to a PC or Mac.
2. One entry per email address will be considered. Backblaze reserves the exclusive right to remove any entries from consideration it considers improper.
3. No purchase required. Purchasing will not increase your chance of winning.
4. Winners of the Backblaze service and the iPad will be selected at random by Backblaze from all valid entries. Winners will be contacted by email using the account information provided for the free trial.
Ignite is a “Fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global” evening of “high-energy 5-minute talks by people who have an idea.” Specifically, as the presenter you get exactly 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. No running over. No slide remote control.
The theme of the evening was “Lean Startup” a set of principles (clearly communicated by Eric Ries) of building startups in a more efficient manner.
I presented the 5-step process of building Petabytes on a Budget. It was a blast and I highly recommend Ignite events and the Ignite format to anyone wanting to communicate an idea. As they tell you when you prep, a TV commercial tells an entire story in 30 seconds; if you’re crisp you can communicate a lot of ideas in five minutes.
Here is the presentation:
And here are the slides on SlideShare:
Thank you to O’Reilly for starting the Ignite concept and facilitating the community, Sarah Milstein for organizing the entire event, Tony Stubblebine for MC’ing, pariSoma for providing a great space, and DreamSimplicity for providing the video.
