Forget poring over a love letter this Valentines Day trying to identify the handwriting, says survey findings.  Forget choosing the perfect red rose at the florist.  You can even forget identifying a blind date by the rolled-up newspaper they’re holding under the station clock.

Recent research commissioned by Mozy, the world’s most trusted provider of data protection and availability for consumers and businesses, uncovered a dying trend for romance in the UK as new technology is vanquishing many of our traditional romantic gestures.

Don’t expect to receive a scented handwritten note from a secret admirer this Valentine’s Day, as over a third of Brits no longer hand write letters, with 18 per cent no longer writing love letters at all.

Mozy’s research revealed that 21^st Century lovers are no longer left with much to cling to as physical tokens of affection increasingly give way to cyber versions, which are harder to preserve over time.

Remember those halcyon days, when making a mix tape of moody melodies was the ultimate way to signal your feelings for a sweetheart? Well, 34 per cent of us no longer bother.

What about printing out photos of loved ones to create a photo album of memorable moments? Forget it! 24 per cent of those surveyed by Mozy no longer entertain the idea.

And just how has technology impacted on our present giving over this romantic holiday? 17 per cent of us no longer make the effort to buy flowers from a florist, preferring to rely on the internet instead.

The demise of paper mail has heralded the swan song for this most intimate of Valentine’s Day acts. Love letters truly played their part in the past, existing as the long-treasured link to first love and long distance romances.

Claire Galbois-Alcaix of online backup company Mozy, which carried out the survey of 3,000 consumers across the UK, said: “In the past, Valentine’s mementoes were things like dried roses, scented love letters and photographs of your loved one that could be stored away in tissue paper and shoe boxes to be returned to and looked over with fond memories. Now, with social media, text messages and email, technology has changed the way Brits express themselves, choosing Facebook photo albums over the printed variety, an email over a handwritten love letter, and a playlist over a mix tape.

“If you’re not careful, these mementoes can become transient and lost forever with a phone upgrade, a computer crash or simple theft.  To make sure that your memories are there for years to come, it’s a good idea to ensure everything is securely backed up online, so it can be accessed anywhere, anytime from the cloud and this is something Mozy already help many customers to do.”

Romantic gestures featured repeatedly in Mozy’s TOP 50 THINGS WE NO LONGER DO AS A RESULT OF TECHNOLOGY

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

Mozy is proud to announce the winner of our Pathetic Presents competition.  Conor Buckley won with the mismatched present he received from his wife.

“It was funny but a little disappointing to find out that I’d bought my wife a new MacBook for Christmas and only got some novelty boxer shorts in return,” says Conor.  “But winning an iPad in Mozy’s competition really makes up for it!  I think that Mozy’s great and now we’ll be able to use Mozy Stash to synchronise data between my prize and my wife’s Christmas present.  Hopefully, that way, we’ll be more ‘in sync’ with our Christmas presents next year!”

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition.  We had some truly great (awful?) entries – it’s a good job you guys have such a great sense of humour!

We’re sorry that we couldn’t make you all winners but, if you didn’t win the prize, we’d still love to give you a free gift in the form of our MozyHome Free accounts.  Simply visit www.mozy.co.uk/home/free to download a free account.

We’ll be offering other chances to win with Mozy in the future so stay tuned!

Congratulations Conor!

But, with more of us than ever being able to work from home, Snow Days for most people are a thing of the past.  To compound the misery, Mozy research shows that a quarter of us only work from home when we have to, leaving us rusty when it comes to making sure we’re still productive when forced to work from the spare bedroom.

For everyone who wants to minimise the frustration caused by an unavoidable day (or days) at home, here are Mozy’s top ten tips for surviving the Big Freeze.  And they’re all things you should do today before you go home!

1)   Make sure you know how to access your voicemail remotely.  You’ll normally need to set this up in advance and secure your access with a PIN.  If you can’t answer your desk phone, you’ll at least be able to listen to your messages and get back to people.

2)   Scan the stuff on your desk that you use all the time and copy it so that you can access it from home.  How many times a day do you look at the phone list on your pin board? Make sure you’ll be able to get at the info when you’re not there.  Make sure you include the sticky notes on your desk in this process too.

3)   Sync your smart phone with your computer.  If you usually only do this to update your playlist, take time to do it today to make sure your contacts and diary are up to date.

4)   Check you have the numbers you need.  Sure, you’ve copied your phone list but how many of those people are going to be at their desks if you need to contact them?  Double check you have the number for IT support – if you’ve lost VPN access, you won’t be able to look it up on the intranet.

5)   Take your charger home with you. Yes it’s heavy and, yes, most days it’s unlikely that your laptop will run out of juice overnight, even if you are checking emails into the wee small hours but there’s precious little use to be had from a flat thinkpad if you need it to run all of the following day.

6)   Check you know your passwords for everything.  If you’re not used to using the web interface for the apps you use in the office, it’s easy to forget your password or let it expire.  It can be infinitely easier to get it reset whilst you’re still on your office network.

7)   Pack your laptop carefully when take it home tonight.  It’s slippery out there and you don’t want to spend all day tomorrow squinting at a cracked screen.

8)   Find out what your suppliers/clients/partners are doing how you contact them if they’re not able to make it in either.

9)   Install a file syncing service on your computer and drop all your current work into it.  That way, whatever happens, you can get at the files you need.  You can get a free 2GB account for Mozy to use on our Stash file syncing service at www.mozy.co.uk/home/free

10)                  Lock away your chocolate digestives!  Anyone who does make it in through the snow is going to be looking for a carb and sugar hit to fend off the cold and you might not be there to defend them!

Hopefully, a little bit of preparation can help to make an unexpected day of working from home a little bit easier, so you can spend your lunch break creating snowmen rather than recreating all the work

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