According to a recent email to ADrive users:

ADrive just released its new Android app “ADrive Mobile” that allows you to upload and download files from any Android Device and access and manage all of your files on the go!

Get started with the ADrive Mobile app by downloading ADrive Mobile from the Google Play Store and follow the instructions in the ADrive Mobile tutorial.

The ADrive Mobile app is free for all Personal Premium users. Personal Basic Free users will need to upgrade their plan to take advantage of the ADrive Mobile app by signing into their ADrive account and clicking upgrade.

At the heart of the app is the ability to upload and download files between your ADrive storage and your Android device. So if you create any documents or take important photos with your Android phone or tablet, you can immediately upload them to your ADrive. Likewise, if you have any important files or neat photos in your ADrive account, you can share them anytime, anywhere you have your Android device.

The app is free to download, but as of now only has a 2.1 star rating on its Google Play page. Why? It won’t work for any free users.

Though ADrive offers a free account with a whopping 50GB of storage space, this app only works with ADrive’s premium account offering. ADrive, even with their recent overhaul, is behind the times, considering Google Drive and Dropbox both offer similar Android apps that are available to their free users.

It appears that the Personal Premium (i.e. paid account) users are rating the app 5 stars, but those ratings are outweighed by the many 1-star reviews coming from Personal Basic (i.e. free account) users who are unable to use the app.

ADrive is pushing their paid account heavily, yet their competitors offer many of ADrive’s services free of charge. This ADrive app is great news for their current paying customers, but I don’t see it attracting any new users.

If you’ve been putting off your backups, knowing that everyone will be backing up their data now should motivate you. But if that’s not enough, know that many online backup companies are offering killer deals on their backup services right now!

Think of it like our own little Black Friday (except that it’s a Saturday.)

This holiday occurs annually, with this year’s celebration on March 31, 2012. The date is meant to correspond with April Fool’s Day, using the slogan “Don’t Be an April Fool!”

The timing is in order to drive home the message that one should backup all those pictures, spreadsheets, love letters, cat pictures, and important financial documents before it’s too late. To avoid being an April Fool, all you have to do is make sure your data is backed up. That’s it.

You can see the history and more details on the World Backup Day official site or scroll down this page to see some of the deals you can get!

The hot deals for World Backup Day 2012

Here are the deals. Hurry, these are all for a limited time!

Backblaze

Backblaze is the “presenting sponsor” this year, and they’re holding a contest where you can enter to win a 1-year Backblaze account (or a new iPad if you prefer) just by signing up for a trial account!

Get started at Backblaze.com/worldbackupday.html.

Mozy

Mozy is offering 25% off any new subscription!

Use promo code WORLDBACKUP on March 31, 2012 to get the deal (it’s good for one day and one day only.) Sign-up at Mozy.com.

SpiderOak

Use code “WORLDBACKUPDAY” when you sign up and get 5GB free for life! Sign-up at SpiderOak.com.

MiMedia

Get a free 7GB Personal Cloud from MiMedia! Sign up for MiMedia and get 7GB of free storage to backup, access, and stream your digital life from anywhere.

You can also get 30% off MiMedia Premium forever with a 60 day free trial! (To redeem this discount, enter promo code WBD2012 when signing up.)

Dolly Drive

Mac user?

Dolly Drive has a 33% off promo code – WBDolly – that you can use at DollyDrive.com.

Bulldog Backup

New customers at Bulldog Backup can get 25% off their Home online backup using promo code wbday2012.

Want more??

The World Backup Day organizers will be tweeting daily deals at http://twitter.com/worldbackupday, so don’t miss out!

And compare it to today’s design:

I like the new, sleek design. It’s much more pleasant to look at. It also looks a lot more “normal,” which could be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Either way, it was about time to retire that old design that belonged in 1999.

You can see more updated screenshots in our initial review, which has been updated to reflect these recent changes.

Also, on the ADrive blog, it says to expect a “New & Improved File Manager” as well as a “Mobile App” soon.

In the mean time, in light of all these changes, I thought it would be fun to look back at ADrive’s logo through the years.

ADrive started out in 2007 in beta, with the quintessential “beta” badge on their logo.

Later, they dropped the “beta” from their logo. It was replaced with a “TM.”

With this latest March 2012 update, ADrive is abandoning the logo reflection that was so popular amongst web 2.0 start ups for years. The new logo is plain yet sleek, giving ADrive a more mature look. It is about five years old, after all!

SAN MATEO, CALIF., Nov. 9, 2011 – SugarSync, a free service that actively syncs your files across all your computers and devices, today announced that Fujitsu’s ScanSnap scanners now integrate directly with SugarSync, enabling ScanSnap users to save scanned documents directly to the Cloud.

“As people increasingly scan all of their important documents – such as tax, insurance, health and other files – into digital formats, there is a greater need to easily save those critical files to the cloud for safe backup and remote access from any device,” said Laura Yecies, CEO of SugarSync. “Fujitsu’s ScanSnap products are making it faster and easier for everyone to create digital versions of everything. When combined with SugarSync’s Cloud storage, users have a simple way of creating secure, digital backups of their hard-copy documents.”

ScanSnap scanners, known for their one-touch ease of use that brings multi-sheet scanning to individuals and small businesses, provide users with a variety of options when it comes to file management. In addition to enabling users to scan their files to an email, to a printer, to a particular document editing solution and more – integration with SugarSync now gives users the ability to scan documents directly to SugarSync’s secure Cloud storage as well.

In addition to scanning directly to SugarSync’s Cloud, ScanSnap users can also move existing scanned files to SugarSync via the ScanSnap Organizer file management system. Users can simply access the ScanSnap organizer, select any existing files, and then drag and drop them into SugarSync to ensure that they are securely backed up to the Cloud and accessible from any device.

“With Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners, we are providing the simplest, fastest and most compact way for people to scan their documents,” said Victor Kan, Executive Vice President and COO at Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. “Integrating with SugarSync gives the millions of ScanSnap users the added protection of being able to save their scanned documents directly to the Cloud for easy access and sharing. It’s a perfect match of digital file creation and backup.”

About SugarSync

SugarSync is a leading provider of mobile Cloud services that enable users to access ALL of their data, anytime, anywhere, and from any device. SugarSync enables mobile consumers and professionals to backup, sync, access and share all their files on-the-go, instantly and securely from any Mac, PC, or mobile device (including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices). SugarSync users can sync files in ANY folder and access and share those files via the cloud, providing a Personal Cloud service that matches the way people currently organize their folders and manage their digital lives. SugarSync’s file sharing and collaboration tools also allow users to share any folder or file with a simple URL via social networks, email, instant messaging and more. SugarSync was recently named the “Best Cloud Storage Service of 2011” by Gizmodo and has won numerous awards and product reviews, including the Mobiletrax 2011 Mobility Award and two Mobile Merit Awards for “Best Mobile Apps.”

The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. For more information, please visit www.SugarSync.com, follow us on Twitter @sugarsync or visit SugarSync on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SugarSync.

Los Angeles – CALIFORNIA – November 8, 2011 - SOS Online Backup (www.sosonlinebackup.com), the premier all-in-one solution for protecting and archiving digital information, today announced its fourth consecutive PC Magazine Editors’ Choice Award.  Rising above large competitors in a fast-growing and fiercely competitive industry, SOS Online Backup has received the award this year for its comprehensive product offerings with apps for mobile, social and desktop platforms as well as its continued rock-steady reliability and unrivaled customer support.  Read the new PC Magazine review at:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395766,00.asp

“With its intuitive and well-though-out interface, reasonable price covering five PCs, Live Protect feature, versioning, top performance and many more unique capabilities, SOS Online Backup Home Edition remains our Editors’ Choice for personal online backup, and continues to add to its lead,” reads the PC Magazine Review.

“SOS Online Backup is thrilled to be named Editors’ Choice by PC Magazine for the fourth time in a row,” said Ken Shaw, Chief Executive Officer of SOS Online Backup. “With the amount of time that users now spend managing their Digital Life, this is the perfect time to offer a truly all-in-one backup solution to protect their Desktop, Mobile and Social Life.”

Award winning features of SOS Online Backup include:

• SuperFast Backup- SOS has one of the fastest upload speeds in the industry, outperforming competitors like Carbonite and Mozy.

• Enhanced Security & Privacy - SOS uses a three-tiered military grade encryption system that encrypts data on the user’s computer, again in transit, and finally when at rest in storage.

• Social Life Backup – SOS protects users’ Facebook data, including friends, photos, videos, contact information and wall posts.

• Mobile Life Backup – Through the iPhone app, SOS backs up and protects iPhone and iPad contacts and photos, and allows users access to backed up data anywhere.

• Unlimited Versioning - Unlike many other solutions, SOS will keep a backup of each and every version of every file that you ever backup with us. With this type of protection you never have to rename files or make new copies of file versions, you’re always protecting a file that could have been lost forever. SOS protects it all!

• Continuous Data Protection - Users can engage Live Protect™ to have SOS backup files as soon as a change is detected.

• Unlimited Archiving- SOS protects and archives all of your files that you have ever backed up. Unlike other services, you can feel secure that once you’ve backed up a file with SOS, it stays backed up. We do not auto delete any of your files. SOS protects all of your data, all of the time.

• Flexible Scheduling - SOS allows users to schedule backups that best fit their needs, whether it’s monthly, weekly, daily, hourly or instantly, without impacting system performance.

• One Click File & Folder Sharing - From inside the SOS MyAccount portal, users can share files, photos and videos with anyone via an email address.

• Global Access - Data is backed up to the SOS Backup Server Grid, allowing users to access data anywhere in the world using a web-browser or the SOS iPhone or Android app.

• SoSimple File Select - Automatically identifies and backs up files based upon user-defined file type, such as music, movies, documents or photos.

• Local Backup - SOS allows users to back up their entire computer to an external drive, network drive or USB.

• iPhone, Android and Mobile – With SOS, users can access any files anytime from anywhere using their mobile device.

• Enterprise Compression & Transfer Systems - SOS backs up new and changed files only, significantly reducing backup and performance degradation. SOS also bundles built-in open file backup and resumable transfer.

For more information or to download SOS Online Backup, please visit http://www.sosonlinebackup.com.

About SOS Online Backup
SOS Online Backup is the online backup technology leader. SOS Online Backup delivers simple, powerful and inexpensive online data backup for consumers, small businesses and enterprises worldwide. Operating a global backup network, SOS Online Backup provides continuous protection and security for customers’ valuable data investments with set apart features that include multiple redundancy and off-continental storage. SOS Online Backup has been the recipient of the PC Magazine Editors’ Choice Award since 2006.

BOSTON and Lewiston, Maine – November 4, 2011 – Carbonite Inc. (NASDAQ: CARB), a leading provider of online backup solutions for consumers and small and medium sized businesses, has completed its transition of customer support operations to the US. The news follows the company’s announcement in the spring that it would repatriate all customer support back to the U.S. and open a dedicated customer support center in Maine.

Carbonite opened the new customer support center in Lewiston, Maine in June.  The facility first began handling customer calls within its first few weeks of operation, and now employs 150 new customer and technical support team members.  With the completed transition of this operation to the Maine facility, 100% of Carbonite’s phone, email, and chat customer support services are US-based.

“Customer service is a core element of the Carbonite brand. Our customers rely on us to back up their valuable digital data, from irreplaceable pictures to accumulated music files, to important records and documents. When they experience a data disaster and need to restore everything from Carbonite, it can be very stressful for them, and we want we have the right people in place to assist with consideration and technical expertise,” said Carbonite Chairman and CEO David Friend.

“Moving customer service back to the United States is an investment in our customer experience and one that we think is well worth the resources we have devoted to it,” continued Friend.  “We are pleased to have completed this transition ahead of the timetable we communicated back in May, and are happy to have helped create new U.S. jobs as we strive to deliver the best experience for Carbonite’s customers.”

“This is incredibly welcome news during these challenging economic times and I applaud companies like Carbonite who are bringing vital jobs back to Maine and the United States. With 150 new customer and technical support employees in Lewiston, this undeniably stands as a shining testament to Maine’s legendary work-ethic and undaunted can-do spirit,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

About Carbonite

Carbonite, Inc. (NASDAQ: CARB), is a leading provider of online backup solutions for consumers and small and medium sized businesses. Subscribers in more than 100 countries rely on Carbonite to provide easy-to-use, affordable, unlimited and secure online backup solutions with anytime, anywhere data access. Carbonite’s online backup solution runs on both the Windows and Mac platforms. The company has backed up more than 100 billion files, restored more than 7 billion files and currently backs up more than 200 million files each day. For more information, please visit www.carbonite.com, twitter.com/carbonite, twitter.com/carbonitebiz, or facebook.com/CarboniteOnlineBackup.

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – Jun 22, 2011) – Box today announced a major integration with Google Docs, empowering Box’s 6 million users to easily create and collaborate on content in the cloud with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Beginning today, all users can apply Google’s real-time, concurrent editing to the more than 50 million Word and Excel files already stored on Box, and also create Google Docs and Spreadsheets directly within Box folders. The collaborative editing capabilities of Google Docs combined with the simplicity of Box’s content management provide a powerful, proven cloud alternative to Microsoft Office 365, finally due to come out of beta on June 28.

“We’re moving towards a future where cloud documents eclipse those tethered to desktop applications, and at Box, we’re accelerating this shift for our entire user base by bringing Google’s collaborative documents to Box’s content management,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. “The true power of the cloud is unlocked through deep integrations such as this, and we’re betting that platforms built around openness will triumph over the closed, proprietary approach that enterprise vendors have traditionally embodied.”

Today, Box makes it easy for six million individuals and 60,000 businesses to share, manage and collaborate on all their content in the cloud. With the expanded Google Docs integration, users will benefit from the full capabilities of Google’s leading web productivity suite, coupled with Box’s simple, secure content management. Box users across all plans can now create Google Docs and Spreadsheets directly within the Box interface, and take advantage of Google’s real-time, concurrent editing when collaborating with colleagues. Users can then share these files with Box collaborators, view document updates in Box’s real-time activities feed, and leverage Box collaboration tools like commenting and tasks. For Business and Enterprise customers, Box’s sophisticated user permissions and advanced IT settings ensure secure management of all file types at scale.

In addition to Google Docs, the Box Apps Marketplace includes integrations with dozens of leading cloud solutions like Salesforce, NetSuite and Yammer, making Box content easily accessible across critical business applications. Box users can also share and access content from the iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The company will continue to aggressively invest in expanding and deepening its partnerships, fueled by a $48M round of funding in February and consistent 3X year-over-year enterprise revenue growth.

To learn more about Box, visit www.box.net.

About Box

Founded in 2005, Box provides a secure, scalable content sharing platform that both users and IT love and adopt. Today, nearly 6 million individuals and 60,000 companies use Box to easily manage information and collaboration in the cloud, with enterprise-grade security and oversight. Content on Box can be shared internally and externally, accessed through iPad, iPhone and Android applications, and extended to partner applications such as Google Apps, NetSuite and Salesforce. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Box is a privately held company and is backed by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners.

SEATTLE — March 31, 2011 — Mozy™, the industry-leading online backup service from EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), announced today general availability of the Mozy mobile app for iPhone – as well as other iOS devices such as iPad and iPod touch – and the pending arrival of a similar app for Android mobile devices. Mozy’s mobile apps run as native applications, allowing subscribers to access remotely the files they protect with MozyHome®. With the app, customers can view documents and open them in other applications; preview photos as thumbnails and download those they want to see in full, higher resolution; and post photos to Facebook. For more information please visit http://mozy.com/mobile.

The Mozy app is available for download in the iTunes App Store for U.S. and Canadian users for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS version 4.0 and later. The Android app will be available in the Android Market, and works on devices running Android 2.0 or later.

“When we first mentioned a Mozy app for iPhone and Android to our MozyHome customers a month ago, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive,” said Charlotte Yarkoni, COO of Mozy. “We’re very excited to announce that it’s now available in the iTunes App Store and our customers can access all of their backed up data from their iOS or Android mobile device.”

“I love the ability to access my files on the go, and having the ability to e-mail them is even better,” said Craig E. Yaris, a MozyHome customer in New York. “Also I like how I can review presentations and other documents — that works well too. It’s also great that Mozy is offering this as a no-cost value added item.”

“I think this move [mobile apps for iOS and Android] is the first step for Mozy in building a broader personal cloud offering,” writes Frank Gillett, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. [source: Post on Forrester’s Blog, March 2, 2011].

Pricing and Availability:

The Mozy mobile app is a new, free feature for MozyHome customers and is available immediately for download at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mozy/id427293902?mt=8. There is no extra cost to current MozyHome customers.

The Mozy app for Android devices will available soon, also at no extra cost to current MozyHome customers.

A similar feature for MozyPro® customers will be available at a later date.

Versions available outside the U.S. and in languages other an English will be available at a later date.

About Mozy

Mozy is the world’s most trusted online backup service for consumers and businesses with more than one million customers, 70,000 business users and 70 petabytes of information stored at its multiple data centers around the globe. Mozy was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2007 and operates as part of Decho Corporation, an EMC company. More information can be found at http://www.mozy.com.

Less than two months after DocSyncer exited beta and launched a paid version, they have made the announcement that they will be shutting down.

According to their website, DocSyncer will be shutting down on June 20, 2008. Here is what they had to say about it:

“We’ve figured out in a very short amount of time that DocSyncer is a cool tool – but not a business. With no way to pay for itself, we’d rather shut the service down than let it fall into decay as our team begins to work on a new project.”

It was indeed a cool tool, as mentioned in our initial DocSyncer Beta review. However, it was not meant to be. Perhaps Google will take note and add a similar feature into Google Docs for all to enjoy.

In the mean time, I will be looking to BeInSync to fulfill my file synchronization wishes. (Read a BeInSync review here.)

On April 7, computer giant HP entered the online backup market with an offering called Upline. Ten days later, though, HP temporarily suspended the Upline service after a few problems were reported by customers.

Fear not, Upline customers – Mozy is offering 25% off their online backup service to help you (and anyone else) get your backups taken care of, safely, easily, and securely. Mozy received a favorable review from us, and with this offer, there is no better time to sign-up.

To get your discount, use this link to Mozy.com to sign-up, and enter the promotional code UPLINE. This code will get you 25% off annual and biannual subscriptions.

But you have to hurry. Offers like this don’t last long – this deal ends on 4/30/08.