It may have escaped your notice, but the FIFA World Cup is almost upon us. We're big fans here at Carbonite, especially of the goal keepers. Why is this? Because we're both all about saving. Goal keepers save shots on goal, we save people's data.

During World Cup, we're running a Twitter competition asking you to guess how many goals will be saved during selected World Cup matches. One lucky winner will win a brand new 16GB Wifi iPad, worth $629 (£429.00), and 12 entrants will win a full year subscription to Carbonite, worth $54.95 (£41.95) each.

To enter all you need to do is watch out for World Cup tweets from @carbonite and RT with your guess of the number of saves for each match. For example, when you see this tweet:

•World Cup competition: Round One England vs USA [how many shots saved?] RT for chance to win an iPad and Carbonite online backup #WC2010

You need to retweet with:

•RT @carbonite World Cup competition: Round One England vs USA [3 saves] RT for chance to win an iPad and Carbonite online backup #WC2010

As soon as you tweet, you'll be entered into the competition. You can tweet a guess for as many matches as you like, but only one guess per match per user will be counted. Winners will be selected at random from entries with correct guesses. Any guesses after kick-off will not count.

We'll be running the competition on the below matches. Keep an eye for our tweets before each match and make sure you enter!

• ROUND 1 - England Vs USA (12th June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• ROUND 2 - Slovenia Vs USA (18th June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• ROUND 3 - England Vs Algeria (18th June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• ROUND 4 - Slovenia Vs England (23rd June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• ROUND 5 - USA VS Algeria (23rd June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• ROUND OF 16: 1C Vs 2D (26th June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• ROUND OF 16: 1D Vs 2C (27th June 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• QUARTER FINAL: W49 Vs W50 (2nd July 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• QUARTER FINAL: W52 Vs W51 (3rd July 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• SEMI FINAL: W58 Vs W57 (6th July 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• SEMI FINAL: W59 Vs W60 (7th July 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

• FINAL: (11th July 2010)
   Stat: Total Shots on Target Saved

Winners notified after each match. The lucky iPad winner will be chosen at random from all correct entries and notified after the World Cup final on July 11th 2010.

Full terms and conditions can be found at http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2796

— Alison

I ran across this blog post last week:

“

My heart goes out to local music composer Roslyn Catracchia. Thieves broke into her Aina Haina home the other day and stole, among other things, two computers and a backup drive containing her life's work of of musical scores and musicals. That includes the musical score for stage production of "The Princess and the Iso Peanut," which will be running at the Hawaii Theatre this month… if Catracchia had backed up her computer using Carbonite, resurrection of the last files would be a simple download to a new computer.

This reminds me of a similar incident a few years ago involving film director Francis Ford Coppola — someone broke into his house and stole his computer and backup hard drive and he lost 15 years of photos, screenplays, and writing. This sort of thing happens all the time. Lenovo published a report a few years ago that suggested that almost 10% of laptops eventually get stolen or lost.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

Bill Blinn of TechByter Worldwide interviewed our CEO, Dave Friend, for the November 15, 2009 TechByter podcast.

As a Carbonite fan, Blinn discussed his confidence in our online backup service as he introduce this week’s TechByter podcast, "The real safety net, and it's one that has saved me more times than I like to admit, is Carbonite. It's easy to make a dumb mistake that deletes files I need. I can get them back from my hot backup or from my Acronis backup. But more often than not, I've recovered them from my Carbonite backup."

Dave's interview can be found on www.TechByter.com in two parts:

Listen to Part 1 (Audio 5:07)

Listen to Part 2 (Audio 1:13)

— Alison

Our Mac product, which launched earlier this year, continues to receive a good reception from the media.

We've recently had reviews published with MacFormat and MacWorld magazines.

Christopher Phin from MacFormat awarded Carbonite 4/5 stars and appreciated our efforts to design a Mac version of the product:

“

Unlike many companies that have developed a PC application and then gone on to make a Mac version, the developers genuinely seem to have 'got' the Mac."

MacWorld magazine also awarded Carbonite 4/5 stars. Karl Hodge noted how the low cost is small price to pay for piece of mind.

“

The client is highly configurable and can be set to run when it's convenient. Costing around £3 a month to run, it's a low price for a little peace of mind."

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

If you run a small business, backing up your data is critical. In fact, in the UK, all businesses are legally obligated to keep certain data records for a minimum of seven years. Not doing so could lead to a hefty fine or even prison sentence if vital data cannot be provided upon request.

I recently wrote an article for SME Web that addresses how SMEs with a limited IT budget can still protect themselves against losing critical business files.

SME Web is an online resource for owners and managers of small and medium sized companies in the UK, offering them best-practice advice on how to run their business. If you're interested in reading the full article, click here.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

Another nice recognition of Carbonite comes from the UK magazine Which? — similar to Consumer Reports in the US. They gave us their Best Buy rating, and that's apparently not easy to obtain. What they said is,

“

This accolade is far from easy to obtain. In fact, Best Buys are only awarded to those products that have performed to the highest standards in Which?'s rigorous testing and analysis, and cannot be requested or bought. This coveted award can be seen in the national advertising campaigns of popular brands including Miele, Panasonic and Procter & Gamble."

“

Our magazines do not carry advertising, we do not accept sponsorship of any kind and — just as a consumer would — we buy all of the thousands of products we test each year. It is for these reasons that consumers can truly trust the unbiased information we provide."

  I was unaware of this magazine, but my friends in Europe say they swear by it. Thank you, Which?.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

I get a lot of emails from customers whose files we saved, but a couple of days ago I got one that caught my eye because it was unusually effusive in its praise. I can't resist reprinting it:

“

The unthinkable happened. Somehow, someway, completely unexpected (as it always is), a simple power failure dealt a hand that no one in my household saw coming. Without Carbonite, months of work would have been gone. A book concept, complete with photos — gone. Documents that stretched over a five year period — gone. All of my financial records in Quicken — gone. Valuable photos of my family and my new wife, and our honeymoon — gone. First photos of my brand new grandson, born just days ago — gone.

But thanks to Carbonite — NOT GONE. I used my system restore disk, putting my computer back in service minus all of my files, hoping that Carbonite would be my answer. IT WAS! EVERYTHING was restored. EVERYTHING was recovered. Every file, every photo, every document. I've been sitting in front of my computer, just quietly shaking, stunned that everything that I thought had slipped from my world is back again, safe and sound.

It is impossible for me to properly thank you. It is equally impossible for me to communicate to you what Carbonite has done for my peace of mind and my sense of security. What might have been the equivalent of an electronic tornado has come back as a clear, blue sky filled with soft clouds.

Carbonite, and you, are my heroes. HURRAY FOR CARBONITE!!

Your friend,

Ricky David Tripp”

I have to tell you that NO entrepreneur can resist feeling good when they get a letter like this. We work so darned hard, and this is the best kind of payoff we could possibly get! BTW, check out Ricky's web site, www.rickydavidtripp.com. He's a very talented dude. I have a soft spot for musicians — I was a music composition major in college. Unlike Ricky, I couldn't make a living at it. Anyway, I'm glad we saved all his stuff!

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

We all know about hard drive crashes and theft, but the following article that appeared a couple of months ago in Techworld totally blew me away. I'm not completely surprised by the spilled food statistic (I remember one of my kids giving me her "dead" laptop. "Zoe, why does your laptop smell like beer?"), but the rage thing was news to me.

One in ten portables downed by 'laptop rage'

Paul Boutin, The Industry Standard20 April 2009

“

A significant portion of damage to laptops is caused by the "anger or frustration" that employees take out on them, a study has found.

That is one of the findings of a new study entitled "Business Risk of a Lost Laptop." It was published last Wednesday by the Ponemon Institute and is funded by Dell, which is using the study to tout its data encryption and recovery solutions.

The report, described by Ponemon as a web-based survey of 3,100 IT and security practitioners located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Mexico and Brazil, found that laptop-smashing employees were cited as the leading cause of damage by one in three respondents in Mexico and Brazil.

The Brits are more reserved: Only 6 percent of UK respondents blamed angry staff. Instead, travel-related damage caused by not taking proper care of the laptop leads among the British, with just over half of UK respondents claiming it was the most common cause of damage.

Americans rate laptop rage and mishandling on the road fairly low - 13 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Instead, 34 percent of American IT pros told Ponemon that "spilling food or liquids on the laptop" is the top cause of damage. But before you roll your eyes at ugly Americans, take note: An even higher 36 percent voted food spills the top problem among the French."

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

As I've mentioned in past posts, one of the metrics I track every week at Carbonite is how satisfied our customers are with our customer support. Those of you who have interacted with our customer support team know that each interaction is followed by a short survey — that's how I get the data. Over the last 9 months we have made great strides and our "satisfied/very satisfied" numbers are now well above industry averages and still rising.

These improvements, along with the rock solid performance of our data centers, have lead to Carbonite being listed in the PC Pro Reliability and Service Award in the software category. The awards are judged via an open survey that asks PC users to express their views on hardware and software purchased over the last year. Those who are nominated are encouraged to promote voting with their customers in order to help the judges gain as much feedback as possible.

The PC Pro nomination comes on the heels of winning a Webware 100 award where we were voted up by thousands of readers.

If you'd like to participate, please click here to visit the survey. You can just click Next 4 times to get to the software page. Once you've voted and expressed other relevant feedback, you can either identify yourself or just skip to the end of the survey.

Thanks, we appreciate your support and recognition.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

Kim Komando sent me this letter that she got from one of her listeners:

“

Dear Kim:

Not really a question...What was I (NOT)thinking????? My husband and I were in Hawaii on business when we heard there was a wildfire in Santa Barbara — near our neighborhood. While trying to keep the panic down, talking with the house sitter who was caring for our two dogs and cat...I suddenly realized — OUR COMPUTERS!!! I had the laptop, but all the real stuff was on my external drive. That little black box..sitting on my desk in a house that could burn down. Our house sitter had already evacuated and wouldn't be able to get back in — perhaps our niece's husband could make his way to and in the house to retrieve the box? He did get it but I couldn't help but think of the ramifications had he not been successful.

The bottom line — I not only GOT how valuable Carbonite was — but I also GOT how stupid of me to be sitting at the airport trying to get back home and have to worry about losing all our data. It's day three and my Carbonite is still backing up. Kim — many thanks for recommending it and oh yes — we still have our house (and Carbonite).

- Maria

By chance, one of Carbonite's investors, Floyd Bradley, lives in the same neighborhood and sent me this picture from his back yard. Better believe he has Carbonite on ALL his computers!

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite