Carbonite and Others

Okay we're heading into the first week of the job hunt, and already I've found some great opportunities!

There's a small marketing firm in Nashua, that I have worked with over the past couple years.  We’re in discussions about bringing me on board as the Dir. of Web Development. This is a really exciting opportunity, but not without its significant challenges, and I have much to consider before proceeding.

I'm also looking at a startup company in Boston called Carbonite. I began initial discussions with them and it looks like a great company.

Carbonite basically offers an online file backup service. You subscribe annually and can back-up as much material as you want. It's fully automated and includes some decent encryption.

Carbonite seems like a nice backup solution for the masses. It focuses on initial backups of the My Documents and Settings folders, which for most computer users will contain the majority of content that they have personally created. Savvy users can add any additional system files that they want as long as the individual files are smaller than four gigs. That seems like a fairly reasonable size limit to me and will only prevent a small number of users from backing up entire DVDs of data.

One of the things that jumped out right away at me was that Carbonite solution takes data encryption very seriously, encrypting files twice before they leave the computer.

There no limits the amount of content, you can back-up. The only psychological limits are your bandwidth divided by your patience.

One of the absolute sexiest usability features this software has is the smooth, non-intrusive way it indicates what files have been backed up, are pending back up or won't be backed up at all. The local software installation will mildly change the standard system icons indicating with a colored dot a file's current state. This is a slick approach, and very similar to a feature I've always liked about Tortoise SVN.

To a PC user to Carbonite backup basically looks like a mapped drive. To restore content or files, you basically browse to them on the drive, right-click and select restore.

Currently Carbonite only works on XP and Vista. There is a planned release for a Mac version in mid-2008. Hey wait didn't mid-2008 already go by??? Oops.

There's a lot of competition in the online data backup arena. Amazon has a very inexpensive, online storage API that can be accessed using a low-cost utility that will map a drive just like Carbonite. While it doesn't include the nice automated backup features it is very cost competitive when compared to Carbonite. There are also more extensive backup services coming out from EMC for a wide variety of data. This is a market that Carbonite could play in with some basic product development.

For me personally, I use Cobain backup 9, with my existing hosting accounts. While it's a pain to set up, it's free if you already have the hosting.

Thanks for all your kind wishes and suggestions. I'll keep you posted as the search continues.