Two weeks ago Backblaze launched the Mac version of its unlimited online backup service. As part of the launch, we randomly selected 25 people who installed on the day of launch to receive a free 1-year license to the Backblaze service.

I wanted to share a few of the responses we received when notifying the winners:

“I am thrilled! I look forward to continuing to use your wonderful product!”
“Wow, what great news!”
“Love the product so far (although I hope I never need to use it!)”
“I have this installed on my shiny new MacBook Pro Unibody, and just finished my first backblaze backup. Sweet, eh?”

All of the winners can backup their computer and any USB or Firewire-attached drives - ensuring their photos, music, and other documents are safe for the year to come.

The winners who claimed their prize, including one who said “Awesome, I never win anything ” are:

Alex Vermulst
Brandon White
Jeremiah Mankin
Kevin Katz
Ramon Silva
Mark Allen
Simon O’Brien
James Kachel
Peter Kazanjy
Mike Chasman
Jason Clarke
Tymothy Bryce
Paul Hibbitts
Phillip Riggs
Neil Berkman
Dan Crane II
Cris Mitchell
Adam Simon
Ray Smuckles
Louis Plante

Congratulations to all of you and enjoy the Backblaze service!

Backblaze loves the Mac, and even tried to bring back Steve Jobs, so we’re very excited today to make our unlimited online backup service available to all Mac users.

With half the founding team originally from Apple, we couldn’t wait to support the Mac platform. We’re thrilled to do so and to see some of the reactions so far:

TUAW: Backblaze for Mac officially launches
MacWorld: BackBlaze online backup debuts for Mac
TechCrunch: Backblaze’s Online Backup Solution For Macs
TidBits: Backblaze Publicly Launches Online Backup Service for Macs
VentureBeat: Simple backup service Backblaze now available to all Mac users
MacNN: Backblaze debuts ‘effortless’ backup for Macs
TheAppleBlog: Backblaze for Mac Now Live
Download.com: Easy backups for Mac: BackBlaze
5ThirtyOne: Backblaze: Secure unlimited automatic backups for $5
MacsimumNews: Backblaze announces Mac Online Backup

At core, Backblaze for the Mac delivers on the same vision - making backup simple:
* Installing is simple - just download, enter an email and password; you’re done.
* Running it is simple - nothing to do; backs up continuously and automatically.
* Pricing is simple - $5/month or $50/year per computer for unlimited storage.
* Restoring is simple - select any files; download or we’ll FedEx a DVD or hard drive.

Here is a screenshot of the Mac Preference Pane:

While the underlying backup system was always developed cross-platform, during the beta we also learned a lot from feedback from thousand of users, resulting in us:
* Improving notifications
* Starting to backup resource forks
* Adding an uninstaller to the install package
* Excluding numerous extra application-specific temp file directories
* …and many other items that we built/fixed/changed.

We also learned Mac users love their external drives, with some users having as many as 6 USB or Firewire drives connected to one system.

While we always supported backing up external drives, we developed a new interface that showing which drives are connected/disconnected, selected for backup or not, or Boot Camp/Time Machine. Now, not only does Backblaze automatically backup external drives…but provides an at-a-glance view of the status.

We hope you enjoy the service.

Cara is a good friend of ours and a we had a great time trying to shoot something for the Backblaze home page. As a bonus, Cara does all of her own stunts so we were able to use real fire with real gasoline instead of CGI fire.

Dan Tynan’s article “The 7 dirtiest jobs in IT” hit a nerve with many an IT worker, and Dan followed it up with, “Even dirtier IT jobs.”

Number 6 on the list of the dirtiest jobs? Data crisis counselor.

This is a person on the other end of the phone from “sobbing adults who’ve lost images or videos of their recently deceased parents” and dentists, and IT managers, and tons of others who lost data and were frantic, upset, and panicked. Kelly Chessen, who has this job for DriveSavers, a firm that tries to recover data from dead hard drives, says her five years on a suicide prevention line is what prepared her best for this position.

Have you been an unwitting data crisis counselor for a friend or family member?
Make sure they backup so you don’t have to be…

Since the company started, Backblaze has offered unlimited storage for its online backup customers. However, as users have taken more photos, downloaded more music, smashed VHS tapes into their DVD readers, and generally created more data, their needs have grown.

As Nat Tumatch of Morespace, Wyoming says,

Unlimited is too limiting. Do I look like an unlimited type of guy? I need more!

Well, we heard you. We gave our engineers Red Bull-infused, coffee-flavored, energy bars and said we need more space. And they delivered. After deeply analyzing the complex theorem of infinity:

…They, well, then just multiplied it by 2.

Today, Backblaze announces “2x Unlimited Storage”:
The Most Unlimited Storage Available Anywhere:
* More than on your computer.
* More than on your external drive.
* More than Google Gmail offers.
* More than Backblaze offered before, um, we doubled it.

Be among the first to experience the revolutionary “2x Unlimited Storage.” Try it now >

Cloud service are forecast to be a bright spot amidst dire economic times. Reaching $56.3 billion by end of 2009, cloud services are expected to generate 2x the revenue of Google (which is partially included) and a growth rate that exceeds the company’s 18% year-over-year rate. By 2013, Gartner expects cloud services to reach $150 billion in sales.

Revenues from cloud application services (such as Backblaze) “were almost twice as large as the market for systems infrastructure and will continue to show strong growth,” according to the Gartner report.

While there is a lot of discussion about terminology and taxonomy (”cloud services” vs “SaaS” etc.)…there is no doubt the market for infrastructure and applications provided over the Internet has arrived.

Kodak Gallery, formerly known as “Ofoto”, claims to be the leading online digital photo developing service. Customers upload photos to the site, use it as a way to store and share photos online, and count on it as a photo backup.

However, today Kodak updated its storage policy to say that it will delete your photos if you do not purchase products from the company each year. Specifically, every 12 months customers storing:
* Less than 2 GB of photos need to purchase at least $4.99
* More than 2 GB of photos need to purchase at least $19.99
With a $100 digital camera shooting at 8 megapixels, just 500 compressed photos or 40 uncompressed photos would take you over the 2 GB limit.

Kodak Gallery provides a good photo developing service and should be able to charge for it. However, if you are counting on this as a backup of your photos - think again. Forget to purchase your minimum requirement one year? Bought your minimum, but then added some more photos and went over 2 GB? Your photos may be deleted.

Kodak Gallery’s terms of service say,

“You should keep a copy of each image you upload in a secure place. We are not responsible for deleted images.”

Ensure your photos are safe, in a secure place, forever. Back them up with Backblaze.

Online backup service provider Carbonite was all over the news this week for suing two of its suppliers, claiming the vendors setup the systems that were responsible for losing 7,500 customers’ data. First published in The Boston Globe, the story was picked up by TechCrunch, Computerworld, Cnet, and at least 20 other media outlets.

A large number of users losing their data certainly makes for good headlines and stories about the risks of cloud computing, but I think there is a different story here.

Carbonite’s CEO complained the media response was overblown. He claimed, correctly, that the majority of these reports were misleading. While 7,500 customers’ data was lost, only a small percentage of users (54 in total) actually lost data because this data was a backup and most people still had the the files on their computers.

Numerous articles also used this as an opportunity to raise doubts about using “the cloud” in general. Again, this seems to be a red herring. As a whole, cloud computing is generally more available and reliable than systems users put in place themselves. What’s more, backup is the ideal cloud computing application because it adds to the reliability by having data offsite that you already have locally.

What was missed in the news is that a company who’s core business is to provide online backup outsourced their online backup. Carbonite hired a system integrator, and now by suing this vendor, they are effectively denying responsibility for the backup systems.

This would be the equivalent of Google outsourcing search technology.

Building robust online backup technology is difficult. There are certainly lots of complexities involved to ensure data is backed up, redundant, and secure. It is the role of the online backup service provider to have the technical expertise and laser focus to work through these items. Pushing it off on an outside company just seems a bit …risky.

Update: After writing this post, David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, emailed me to state that while they purchased the Promise Technology boxes from system integrator, Interactive Digital Systems, they now write their own software.

Nearly 50,000 swimmers nationwide rely on the U.S. Masters Swimming organization for training, competitions, and various local programs. Started in 1970, the organization has grown to support 500 local clubs and its website, www.usms.org, is the hub that helps manage this large, distributed non-profit.

Yesterday, during a routine import, the database containing all the member records became corrupted. Access to the website was shutdown to prevent additional errors while the team tried to restore the systems, but to no avail.

Luckily, the USMS team understood that data gets lost and rigorously prepared for such an event. Data was backed up in three ways: incremental, transactional, and tape. Even so, it turned out their first two backups failed. Fortunately, the third backup worked, and the organization lost 3 days, not 30 years, of data.The USMS team says:

“For the next six hours, five experts attempted to recover the corrupted data and it turned out to be impossible.”

Continuing to show diligence and savviness, the USMS team has developed their plan to go forward:

What we are doing short term
We are going through all auxilliary sources of data including credit card transactions, automated emails and batch processes. We have hired extra help and we are manually copying the data from these sources as soon as we receive it.

What we are doing Long Term
We are purchasing additional hardware and leasing a separate facility to do real-time secure backups of transactional data thereby efectively adding a fourth set of backup data that is accurate up to the last transaction. In addition we have established a new set of protocals to further mitigate potential data loss.

If there is are some lessons to be learned from the USMS experience:
* Make sure your data is backed up.
* Backup to more than one place (e.g. local hard drive and online backup service.)
* Periodically check your backups.

You can never be too careful with your precious data.

It’s 6:30pm on Friday the 13th, so if you’re reading this, it probably wasn’t a completely unlucky day.

Did you avoid walking under a ladder today?
Stood a bit further back from large windows?
Drove a little slower?

According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute, about 1 in 15 people in the U.S. are affected by a fear of this day. Many people acquire good luck charms - horseshoes, lockets, or feathers. However, as R. E. Shay said, “Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.”

At least if you have been backing up with Backblaze, you don’t have to worry if your computer was lucky today.

Ma.gnolia.com was a bookmark storing and sharing service (similar to Delicious.com) that has shut down due to data loss. The company started several years ago and built a small, but adoring user community that liked Ma.gnolia’s easy-to-use API and caching of linked pages. The service was the work of Larry Halff who nearly single-handedly built the service.

Alas, as for many companies without a good backup, data loss caused a mortal wound: Ma.gnolia completely shut down on February 17th, 2009.

Larry explained that when he started the company several years ago, no good cloud-based backup services existed, thus requiring him to develop his own backup. The backup was doing a file sync over Firewire to another computer. Unfortunately there was no integrity checking, no versioning, and the system was never tested to see if the backups worked. When it came time to restore, it turns out they did not.

People often assume simply setting up a copy or sync process is sufficient for backup, only to discover the issues with this when a restore is needed. At Backblaze, every file is compressed, encrypted, de-duplicated, and integrity-checked to ensure the backed up file exactly matches the original.

Larry intends to develop a new service and says when starting the new company, “My first priority is better backups.”

We wish Larry the best with his new service and hope others benefit from Larry’s pain.

HP is shutting down its Upline online backup service
No official announcement has been made, but HP has sent its users a notice (shown below) saying it will shut down the service on March 31st. TechCrunch has reported about previous trouble the service had and the current shutdown.

Backblaze is offering HP Upline users a special 20% one-time discount
With this discount, the Backblaze service is over 30% less than HP Upline. HP Upline users can switch to Backblaze by purchasing with coupon code “upline2backblaze” by March 31st, 2009. Sign-up now >

Start your backup now to ensure there is no interruption in your data backup.

Email sent to HP Upline customers:

Thank you for your interest in HP Upline.

HP continually evaluates product lines and has decided to discontinue the HP Upline service on March 31, 2009.

HP will no longer be backing up your files to the HP Upline servers as of Feb 26, 2009 at 8 am Pacific time. HP will keep the file restore feature of the Upline service operational through March 31, 2009 Pacific time in order for you to download any files you have backed up to Upline.

If you have a paid subscription to HP Upline, you will be refunded the full amount of the fees you paid for the service. That refund will be credited to the credit card account or PayPal account that you used to subscribe to the Upline service. If you do not receive the refund prior to March 31, 2009, please contact our customer service team at https://www.upline.com/support/email.aspx.

HP looks forward to offering you additional technology products and services in the future.

Thank you.

HP Upline team

TechCrunch is holding its next roundtable on Feb 27th asking the question, Who’s Cloud Is It Anyway? Assembling 275 people together, TechCrunch intends to discuss whether clouds will be closed warring platforms or open, interconnected systems.

Other questions I believe should be discussed include:
* What is the appropriate level for a cloud to exist at? (providing raw computing power? API-level applications? complete services?)
* Build vs. Buy - when should organizations build their own clouds?
* Should consumers and businesses aim to consolidate into a single cloud or distribute their reliance among clouds?

I’m looking forward to a fascinating discussion. Sign up for the event, email me if you would like to meet there, and follow Backblaze on Twitter for event updates.

Broadband connections in the United States are 10 times slower than those in South Korea. In fact, we are number 15 based on average connection speed, behind not only Japan, Finland, France and Sweden (which are all at least 3 times faster) but also countries including Iceland, Poland, and Portugal that are blessed with significantly faster connections.

Cloud computing, VoIP, eCommerce, Internet TV, telemedicine, telecommuting, distance learning and a myriad of other drivers of communication, business, and social benefit rely on fast, accessible, reliable broadband connectivity.

Published on Friday, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides grants to service providers to build out broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas. Grant requirements include mandated speeds of:
* Advanced Broadband Services: 45 Mbps downstream, 15 Mbps upstream
* Basic Broadband Services: 5 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream

Under this definition of basic broadband service a user could download 1.5 TB and upload 300 GB of data in one month - enough to watch a movie a night, download hundreds of photos or songs a day, backup an average computer online, and still have room to work remotely and do some video-conferencing.

Part of this Bill requires “a plan for use of broadband infrastructure and services in advancing consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety and homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, worker training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth, and other national purposes.”

History shows that connectivity not only links us in ways that are obvious at the outset, but drives innovation that is beneficial and unforeseen.

So will we have fast nationwide broadband tomorrow? Of course, not. Within a year of the passage of this Bill, a national broadband plan is required to be created. Best case is another year or two before individuals and businesses see available connections. This plan will not put the U.S. on par with South Korea, but it is a good step forward, and within several years we may start seeing the benefits of the broader availability of faster broadband.

Jobs was sorely missed yesterday at Macworld. Loved for his hyperbole, showmanship, and black turtleneck, Steve bowed out of Apple’s last Macworld. Rumors circled that he was ill, Apple had nothing to announce, he was stepping down, etc. In the end, Steve issued a statement. Macworld would not be the same without Steve Jobs’ keynote.

Yesterday, after camping out all night to get in, thousands showed up to see Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, present Apple’s final keynote. Apple fans waited for the rumored iPhone Nano, a revamped Mac Mini, a netbook, or even just a bump up to 32 GB for the iPhone. Alas, it was not to be. Phil did a good job with the announcements he had, but Steve Jobs’ flair was missed.

As the person who is synonymous with Apple, it must have been hard for Steve to not give the last Apple Macworld keynote. So, Backblaze made some flyers to let him know how we all feel in just four words: Bring Back Steve Jobs.

We attempted to hand them out to the people in the keynote line, but Macworld security said we were not permitted on the sidewalk, and had to stand on the corners. We handed the flyers out there, only to be shut down by Apple’s marketing group soon thereafter, with the rest of the flyers confiscated.

People loved the flyers. Some jumped out of line to come grab one from us. Others hung them off their badges. A few told us they would pin them in their offices.

To bring Steve Jobs back seemed to hit a nerve. SFGate, CRN, and NBC News had photos of people holding them up; The Guardian UK, ABC 7 News (second video), and Channel 4 TV included it in their video coverage; and Content Now and TheAppleBlog mentioned it.

If you got one while we could hand them out, you’re one of the few. Keep it as a memento; a reminder of the legacy of Steve Jobs’ “one more thing.”

JournalSpace, a 6 year old blog hosting service, closed shop on Tuesday after losing all of its users’ data. Details are sketchy, but the company claims the cause was either an OS failure or a disgruntled employee that deleted the data.

Regardless of the cause, since the JournalSpace had no backups, in addition to the death of the company, all of the bloggers who hosted their sites with the company lost their data. Many are trying to reassemble their years of blogging from a combination of Google cache results and other pieces.

Read more about this story at Slashdot and TechCrunch or read the company’s post “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper” where they are also listing the domain for sale.

A few key takeaways:
* Mirroring - JournalSpace had been mirroring their data, meaning two drives would have the exact same data. While often mistaken for backup because this protects from a single hard drive failure, this is open to all other causes of data loss such a virus, fire, user error, etc.
* Data Recovery - most people realize they should do backups, but they put it off, and in the back of their head think “worst case, I’ll take it to one of those drive recovery places.” Alas, as JournalSpace discovered, even the professionals at DriveSavers can only recover data in certain lucky cases.
* Cost - if you think doing backups is too expensive, try not doing backups. JournalSpace says they spent as much on their attempt to recover the data as they had made in the entire year prior, did not succeed, and paid the ultimate corporate price.

Six years of effort building a company and volumes of users’ data lost is really unfortunate; if you have not been doing backups, make this your wake up call.