Mozy

Mozy Stash is the new synchronisation app from Mozy that puts your data everywhere you want it.  And it’s now available in a beta version in the UK and Ireland, so you can say hello to all your digital stuff anywhere you like.

When you join the beta, Mozy will enable you to install a single folder on your computer and any other Windows, Mac, iOS or Android devices you regularly use.  Save anything from your computer into that folder and, hey presto, it’s synced to all the other devices where you’ve installed the folder.

So, no more cables, no more USB sticks and no more emailing files to yourself – just your data everywhere you want it.

The Stash simple single-folder model complements your online backup so that all your data is available where and when you need it, even if you choose not to synchronise it.

The Stash beta service is available free today for all MozyHome customers worldwide with a 2 GB free, 50 GB or 125 GB plan. Stash runs on the same operating systems as MozyHome and MozyPro – Microsoft Windows (XP and later) and Apple Mac OS X (10.5 “Leopard” and later).

To register for Stash, simply log into your Mozy account page and click the Stash link you’ll find there.  It’s that simple.

We know you’re going to enjoy Stash and we’d love to hear your feedback, so why not comment below to let us know what you think?

Happy syncing!

According to recent research, we Brits received £2.4bn worth of unwanted presents over the Christmas break.  That’s a lot of novelty socks, cheap perfume and tat with vague golfing allusions.

For those of you who feigned a smile of gratitude we reward you with two things:

1) The link to the Oxfam shop finder

2) The chance to swap your unwanted gift for a brand new iPad

That’s right, we want to give you the chance to get the gift you really wanted, simply by sending us a picture of the gift you got.  So, before you send your unloved presents to the charity shop, email us a picture to mystory@mozy.com, tweet them to us @mozyuk or post them to our Facebook or Google+ pages.   We’ll send out an iPad to the person we think is most deserving.
Check out our competition page for more info.

If you were one of the lucky ones, on the other hand, who’s already sitting pretty with the tablet of your dreams, we have a gift for you too!

For the whole of January, we’re offering 20.12% off of our annual and biennial subscriptions to MozyHome – giving you access to all of your backed-up files from your tablet.

So, no more memory sticks, cables or emailing yourself documents so you can see them on your tablet, just access them straight through the Mozy app.

Simply enter the promocode Mozy2012 at the checkout to get your 20.12% discount.

Happy New Year everyone!

What a year 2011 was!  The News of the World closed, two Royals got married and a dog called Fenton won international fame when he accidentally shepherded a herd of deer into the road.

And things haven’t been standing still at Mozy either.  In 2011, we saw:

-       The launch of the Mozy app for Android and iOS devices allowing access to all your backed-up data wherever you are

-       The launch of the new Mozy restore process making getting your data back easier than ever

-       An improved web access experience

-       The start of the private beta for Mozy Stash in the USA that will allow easy syncronisation of files across multiple devices.

And 2012 is set to offer more of the same with the public beta of Stash on the horizon and new features and functions for both MozyHome and MozyPro so stay tuned to the MozyBlog to be the first with all the news!

In the meantime, we’d like to wish everyone a very happy New Year from all of us at Mozy.

We at Mozy (or at least the contributors to this blog and that’s who really matter) are a little bit fond of new technology, so there are a number of gadgets featuring on our Christmas lists this year (Santa, if you’re reading this, I’ve been a really good boy and totally deserve an iPhone 4S in my stocking!).

But, whilst we can’t get enough of the thrill of putting the first finger print on a touch screen, it always seems to come with the rather dull admin-like chore of migrating everything from the old devices to the new ones.

Like the technological equivalent of having to do the washing up after Christmas dinner, migrating your information tries to steal up and steal the fun out of the big day.

Because, whilst there’s always stuff you want to leave behind on an old computer, tablet or smartphone – such as buggy software or the pictures your nephew took whilst you were asleep last Christmas afternoon -  there’s also stuff you’d rather like to keep – your wedding video, tax return and the start of that novel that you’re DEFINTELY going to finish this year.

Thankfully, like the Christmas fairies (AKA Mums) who do all the washing up whilst you doze in front of the Queen’s Speech, there’s also someone to take the burden of sorting out your new laptop off you too.

If you’ve got Mozy, all you need to do is log in from your new device, and we can help put all your data on your new computer, exactly where it was before.  No fuss, no wires and certainly no ferrying data back and forth on memory sticks in a process that feels like bailing out a swimming pool with a teaspoon.

You can find out how to move to a new computer here.

Plus, with the Mozy’s mobile app, you can simply access all of your backed-up data from you new tablet without having to move any files at all.  It’s as easy as falling off a Christmas log!

Of course, if you don’t have Mozy, it’s never too late.  Our Christmas gift to you is a free online backup account that will allow you to protect, access and move 2GB of data.

There we are – another good deed!  Santa, are you watching?

Merry Christmas everyone from the team at Mozy.

If you no longer buy CDs, stick photos in albums or hand-write letters, then you’re not alone! A quarter of we Brits no longer come home from the shops clutching our favourite pop star’s latest release and the same proportion no longer organise our snaps behind see-through plastic.

Instead, the mighty computer has taken over, with the average Brit doubling the number of computers in their homes over the past ten years and now spending over an hour and a half a week uploading our pictures.

In fact, more than three quarters of people in a Mozy survey of 3,000 UK residents said that their daily activities rely on technology and 20 per cent said they are never out of reach of an internet device.

But this reliance on technology also puts people at risk with half of Brits admitting they never back up the data they rely on and a further 40 per cent only making manual copies of their information.

If that sounds like you, why not check out our list of the top 50 things that people don’t do anymore.  But, before you do, get a free online backup account from Mozy just in case anything happens to that computer you’re so reliant on…

TOP 50 THINGS WE DON’T DO ANY MORE

1. Ring the cinema to find out times

2. Going into the travel agents to research a holiday

3. Record things using VHS

4. Dial directory enquiries

5. Use public telephones

6. Book tickets for events over the phone

7. Print photos

8. Put a classified ad in the shop window

9. Ring the speaking clock

10. Carry portable CD players

11. Write handwritten letters

12. Buy disposable cameras

13. Take plenty of change for pay phones

14. Make mix tapes

15. Pay bills at the post office

16. Use an address book

17. Check a map before or during car journey

18. Reverse charges in payphones

19. Go into the bank or building society to conduct your business

20. Buy TV listings

21. Own an encyclopaedia

22. Queue to get car tax in Post Office

23. Develop and send off for photographs

24. Read a hard copy of the Yellow Pages

25. Look up something in dictionary

26. Remember phone numbers/ Have a phone book

27. Watch videos

28. Have pen friends

29. Use a telephone directory

30. Use pagers

31. Fax things

32. Buy CD’s/ Have a CD collection

33. Pay by cheque

34. Make photo albums

35. Watch programmes at the time they are shown

36. Dial 1471 when you get home

37. Warm milk or other hot drinks on stove

38. Try on lots of pairs of shoes on high street

39. Hand wash clothes

40. Advertise in trading papers

41.  Send love letters

42. Hand-write essays / school work

43. Buy flowers from a florist

44. Work out how to spell something yourself

45. Keep a personal diary

46. Send post cards

47. Buy newspapers

48. Hang washing out in winter

49. Keep printed bills or bank statements

50. Visit car boot sales

We really enjoyed making our Back Up; Don’t Smash Up video, so it’s great to find out how many people enjoyed watching it too!

Hundreds of thousands of people have watched, shared and ‘liked’ the film in which we asked people on the streets of London if they would be willing to smash their old laptops in exchange for a brand new Mac Book.  That makes us very happy.

We were also really happy to find out that the video was commended in the Best IT Video category at the Computer Weekly Social Media Awards last night.

Thanks to everyone who stopped in the street to take part in the video – especially our the two proud owners of new Macs whose backup was up to date and who were confident nothing would be lost when we took a mallet to their laptops.  And, of course, thanks to everyone who voted for us!

If you still haven’t seen the clip, here it is again.  Keep watching and remember: back up; don’t smash up!

It’s Get Safe Online Week, a government initiative where businesses and consumers in the UK are challenged to ask “What could I do better to protect my digital life?”

To help people along the journey, those good folks at GetSafeOnline have launched a whole raft of tools on their website including some helpful hints on how to protect your computer.

Needless to say, backup is one of their key recommendations.

We’re totally behind Get Safe Online Week but wish that every week were a week when people protected their digital lives.  That’s why, any day, of any week, anyone can download Mozy for free to use to protect their most important computer files.

To find out more about Get Safe Online Week, visit www.getsafeonline.org or to get Mozy, find us at www.mozy.co.uk

Many of you know that, whilst Mozy is 100 per cent owned by EMC, the Mozy team is also part of the VMware family.  Like all families, we like nothing better than a get together – only in our case, we’re inviting 7,000 people (I don’t fancy doing the washing up after that family meal!).

From the 18^th to the 20^th of October, Mozy will be at VMworld in Copenhagen on stand #63.  And we’ll be showing off exactly what being part of the EMC and VMware family means.  So, drop by if you want to hear about:

• Mozy Data Shuttle – which uses hard drives from EMC sister-company Iomega to turbo initial backups into the Cloud
• Mozy Stash – which uses the technology Mozy developed for VMware’s Project Octopus to share data across multiple devices
• The Mozy Apps – which give you access to your backed-up data from iOS and Android devices

The Mozy Apps are already available in Europe but a visit to the Mozy stand is a great way to get a heads up on Data Shuttle and Stash before they reach European soil.

For more information about Mozy at VMworld, follow @MozyEU or #VMworld on twitter.

The Mozy iOS app now supports data decryption for customers using personal key encryption. Android update due  within weeks.

Since its initial release in March this year, the Mozy app for iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices) has quickly become a favorite feature for Mozy customers. With the app you can access any file you have backed up to Mozy right from your mobile device. Complete with photo previews, document viewing, and the ability to open files in other applications or send them via email, the app makes Mozy more than just a way to protect against data loss. Along with similar access through any browser, the app provides a way to access all your personal and professional files from anywhere.

With version 1.2, now available at no charge from the App Store, we’re able to offer a feature that many (often quite vocal) customers have been awaiting: personal key data decryption.

About Personal Key Data Decryption

To protect customer privacy, Mozy online backup always encrypts the data for each file before sending it to Mozy. About 95% of our customers opt for Mozy’s default encryption. The remaining 5% opt to employ a personal key for encrypting their backups. When you encrypt with a personal key, it ensures that the only person who can readily decrypt your files is you. Of course, this also means that Mozy has no way to decrypt your data if you forget your personal key.

Data Decryption Comes to the iOS App

With this latest release, you can set the personal key used for backup on each of your computers (even if each uses a different key). The mobile app can then download any file, use the key to decrypt its content, and then allow you to use the file as you need. You can view it, email it, or even open it in another app.

Mobile & the Trade-offs of Using a Personal Key

There are certain services that Mozy performs online to support the Mozy app. For example, the file names used by digital cameras make it hard to know what’s in a photo, so the Mozy app displays photo thumbnails.

When you view a folder containing photos, an online service generates a thumbnail for each photo, allowing the app to download a small image instead of whole photos, saving time and bandwidth.

However, if your photos are encrypted with a personal key, then Mozy can only provide a generic thumbnail indicating that Mozy cannot read the photo.

But you can still download the whole photo and–once downloaded and decrypted by the mobile app–you can view it on your device.

Your Turn: Go Rate the Update

We know many Mozy customers have been waiting for this update. If you’re one of them, please rate the Mozy app in the App Store.

A Note to Android Users

We know you want personal key support, too. We’re working on it right now and aim to release the 1.2 update for Android before the end of October.

One of the great things about having a camera on your phone is that it’s always with you so, even though you couldn’t know in advance that your mate was going to fall flat on his face in the mud, you’ll still be able to make sure that the rest of the world can share in his humiliation through the awesome power of Facebook.

But, for the really important occasions, most of us still like to take a conventional camera.  Weddings, christenings and barmizvahs demand a better quality of picture that you can generally get with six-times optical zoom on a clam phone.

So, we end up with two tiers of photos: everyday photos on your phone and special photos on your camera.  Which is all well and good until you want to share your pictures.  When trying to show off your boyfriend to colleagues in the bar after work, that picture of him in the mourning suit at your sister’s wedding is on your laptop at home and you have to choose between a snap of his Dot Cotton impression and that time he managed to balance a pizza box on his face.

And September can be one of the most frustrating months as you realise that all of the holiday pictures you took in Cancun are at home and your only record of summer is the check-in queue photo that you posted to twitter in an attempt to shame the airline into an upgrade.  How are you going to trump Dave-in-Finance’s pictures from Kavos with that?

Enter the Mozy App for iPhone and Android.  Mozy lets you access all of the data that you backed up on your computer right from your smartphone.  So, once you’ve synced your camera with your laptop, your back up will give you access to all your photos on your phone, regardless of which device you used to take them.

So, should you want to prove that the fish you caught on your trip really was ‘this big’ or the girl you met in Marbs really was ‘this hot’, all you have to do is reach for your phone.  You can even use the app to post the picture to Facebook so the rest of the world can witness your glory.

Of course, if your friends download the Mozy app, it may mean that they have every picture they’ve ever taken of you to hand at all the least opportune moments.  We apologise in advance for any future incidents where anyone reveals that experimental haircut you thought made you look edgy when you were 15.