That may have been the most understated title for a blog post about a day like today.

Less than 3 months after our Windows launch, today Backblaze announced a fully-featured Mac online backup service into private beta that followed the same “backup everything; no configuration setup; unlimited storage; $5 per month” approach.

This happened so quickly due to the team’s deep love for the Mac and continual commitment to cross-platform development. Every line of code for the backup engine always ran on the Mac and Windows ensuring the system’s robustness since all Backblaze customers worldwide already use it. The UI, on the other hand, was written natively to ensure that it was a true Mac product. Stay tuned for a post from our CTO about developing cross-platform code, but for now, more about today’s launch…

At 6am PST, the updated website appeared, Cara lit a laptop on fire, and the first reviews went public. Here are some that covered the launch:
* The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): Backblaze beta launches for Mac
* TechCrunch: Backblaze Brings Its Dead Simple Online Backup To The Mac
* Ars Technica: Backblaze: online Time Machine for Mac, and we have invites
* TidBITs: Backblaze Launches Mac Beta of Online Backup Service
* Mac News Network: BackBlaze reveals web-based system backup for Mac
* Macsimum News: BackBlaze announces private beta version of its Mac software

I want to say a big thank you to the bloggers and journalists who helped us spread the word about the Mac online backup beta! Throughout the day we watched the comments on these sites, the Twittering about Backblaze, and the feedback sent to us; it was great to see so many people passionate about backups.

As many of you found, we had such an overwhelming response that, unfortunately, we had to shut off access for new beta users pretty early in the day. I know several thousand of you did not get in and we are doing everything possible to enable everyone to access the beta. Please bear with us and if you submit an email request, we will contact you as soon as we have space available.

Again, a big thank you to everyone - we’re very excited to help you backup easily.

Backblaze online backup launched publicly on Tuesday, September 16^th, which US News called gutsy in today’s age of perpetual betas. I wanted to share a bit about what has transpired over the last few months that led us here.

Backblaze launch visitors

After four months in a stealth beta, we expanded the Backblaze private beta to a broader set of users on June 2^nd, which resulted in a very exciting week when TechCrunch, Ars Technica, and SimpleHelp wrote about the service. We received volumes of excellent feedback…upon which we immediately set to work.

We stayed true to our core

• Backup all data – the fundamental Backblaze philosophy that you should not need to figure out what to backup because all data should be backed up
• Unlimited storage – give you the ability to store all of your data without worrying about running out of space
• $5 per month – no complicated per-GB charges or overage fee concerns
• Extreme ease-of-use – the one-click install that anyone can do

While adding new features you requested

• Support for files up to 4 GB – for those of you with very large individual files, Backblaze can now back them up
• Outlook backup – and Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and other email programs are automatically backed up
• Private encryption key – some of you wanted to ensure no one could ever access your files and this option enables only you to ever access your files
• Incremental backup – file changes are now broken up into small pieces, ensuring only the changed pieces ever need to be backed up
• Block-level deduplication – identical files or file pieces are only uploaded once, to increase how quickly you can backup
• Unlimited free restores – we switched to a new file format for restores to enable unlimited restore downloads and kept them available for free
• Speed test – since a common question you asked was “How long will my first backup take?” the Backblaze Control Panel will now tell you based on the amount of data you have and your Internet connection
• Backup speed improvements – a combination of bug fixes, code optimizations, and datacenter scaling, your backups should happen as fast as your Internet connection allows
• Monthly/yearly billing – both have been available, but now you can switch between them as you wish; switching to yearly billing gets you two months free

While working toward launch, Backblaze presented at the excellent SF New Tech and SF Beta events, was chosen as a winner of the AlwaysOn Top Global 250 Private Companies, selected for game-changing technology and market value, and was reviewed by Rafe Needleman of Cnet’s Webware, who called Backblaze, “Possibly world’s easiest online backup” and by US News’ David La Guesse who said it is the “Simplest Way Yet to Back Up PC Files.”

Exactly three weeks ago today, Backblaze made its online backup service fully available to the public. TechCrunch wrote about the one-click backup and VentureBeat said “Backblaze makes it dead simple to backup your files online.” It has been great to work with all of you that helped us refine the service on the way to launch and we’re thrilled to make it available to everyone now.

If you’re not backing up your computer yet, you really have no excuse. Take one minute and start backing up now!

Wow. This was not your typical Monday.

The Backblaze online backup service has been in a very private beta since early February. Monday we made our beta a bit more public.

We showed Backblaze to top 10 blogs TechCrunch and Ars Technica, and great tutorial site SimpleHelp and gave them about 1000 invites total to hand their users starting at 6am PST Monday morning. At 6:01am, it got very exciting.

TechCrunch penned Backblaze: Online Backup With Time Machine’s Finesse and The Washington Post reprinted it; Ars Technica published a detailed hands-on piece titled Making off-site backups brainless; SimpleHelp wrote a review the next day. Traffic on our site shot up, installs were blazing, requests for a Mac version were ticking in twice a minute, hundreds of requests for beta invitations arrived from people who didn’t visit Backblaze through one of the these sites, the corporate phone rang non-stop with vendors calling to sell us drives and bandwidth, companies emailed asking about affiliate and OEM opportunities, and we even had a job request.

By late afternoon, thousands of people visited the site, all invites were used up, and we had to shut off the custom links, sending people to request a beta invitation for the next time we open a sneak peak. When I looked on Google later that evening, we were the #3 result for the search “online backup.”

Users signed up from all corners of the world, providing us feedback from as far as Australia, Argentina, Europe and Japan. We received some adoring emails saying “I love this backup solution” and “I am testing out backblaze and so far it was super easy to install and start backing up.” We also received lots of interesting feedback on what we could do better and we’re reading every email and working to get that feedback reflected in the service. We are scaling up our operations to fulfill more beta requests (if you missed the sneak peak, get an invite at www.backblaze.com.)

I want to say a big thank you to TechCrunch, Ars Technica, and SimpleHelp for looking at Backblaze and helping us in our mission to make sure every user is backed up - and to all of you that installed our online backup service and have been providing us with invaluable feedback.

It was definitely not your typical Monday.