I Have been using BackBlaze for over a year now and it is so seemless, you don’t even notice it is there.

It works for both Mac’s and PC’s. You can use the included Control Panel to  choose which folders to exempt from backups, or how much of your computer’s performance you are willing to give over to the backup, or how often to backup, or even add an private encryption key for sensitive data.

Most of the settings in the control panel are pretty self-explanatory and the reports seem fairly detailed.

Should you actually need to recover data, the process is pretty simple.

1. Visit the website.
2. Select files to recover.
3. Wait for selected files to be made ready for download.
4. Either Download your data (free), or pay for a copy to be sent to you. If you choose the paid route, there are two options:

1) USB Flash Drive 60GB max $99
2) USB Hard Drive 3GB max $189

Where does it fit in with DropBox or SugarSync? They actually can live side by side. Backblaze quietly keeps your data safe while the other cloud sync tools like DropBox let you share and sync files that you use all the time.

So far I have had one surprise which in retrospect is sort of a no-brainer: if your drive crashes, tell the Backblaze support team right away. If they stop getting data from a drive, they assume you don’t want to back it up anymore. Like many spouses, they can’t read your mind. You have 30 days before they will securely delete data that they consider to be ‘Removed’ so you have time to save up for a new drive or the money for a backup Flash drive.

I’ve contacted the support team on two occasions and they seem to know their stuff and usually get back to you within 24 hours. (Remember to check your spam folder).

The Backblaze service can be purchased for a little as $3.96/month if you pay for it a year at a time. I have been satisfied with the service.

We’ve been pretty quiet at Focus Web Works lately.

This is partly because of projects and partly because our awesome clients have asked for some research and development.

If you missed it, we wrapped up the Ed Slott project in November: edslottintucson.com

We built a support site for a big client, Event Driven Media Partners: eventdrivenmedia.org

We’ve also added a new slide show for Tucson’s Golden Corral’s specials and community service: tucsongoldencorral.com

We’ve been busy updating press releases and updating staffing pages for DeConcini McDonald Yetwin & Lacy, P.C.: deconcinimcdonald.com

On The development side, we’ve been collaborating with software developers to create one of the best survey and quiz tools/plugins for WordPress. WP Survey And Quiz Tool: It’s become a very robust tool to add value to WP sites.

We have also been leaning some sophisticated new features for WordPress 3.0+, so it’s been pretty exciting.

Click me for big version

Apple just announced the new Macbook Air. Ordinarily I would yawn this off, but this time they did a few interesting things to get my attention.

1. They made it weigh less then 3 pounds
2. It’s less than an inch thick
3. It uses flash memory instead of a hard drive soldered on to the motherboard
4. It’s almost all battery
5. Price starts at $999

In a net shell, you get a notebook with 5 – 7 hours of battery life, that would fit in a notebook. It has a full size screen with a dedicated graphics chip. Everything loads super fast. Virtual memory is super fast. It wakes from sleep instantly. No moving parts to fail (except for the keyboard).

I could easily see myself carrying one of these around all the time. It’s super light and could get me through a work day just about anywhere.

I’ll probably post more on this as my thoughts gell.