Day: January 16, 2009

Stop ‘Reply All’ Fiascos by Using BCC

Mark Morgan pointed out this reply-all fiasco at the State Department where people hitting “reply all” to e-mail messages sent out on huge distribution lists was causing problems for the State Department’s mail server. The State Department then circulated a memo threatening disciplinary actions if people continued to “reply all” to such messages.

Stupid.

The problem is not the end-user who hits “reply all” but rather the clueless sender who is including dozens or hundreds of e-mails in the CC or TO field. If you need to send a mass e-mail you need to be putting those e-mail addresses in the BCC field for a number of reasons.

First, it prevents the stupid but inevitable “reply all” messages. Hey, even I’ve accidentally hit reply all instead of just reply when responding to such mass e-mails. If the sender had bothered to take a few seconds to paste the addresses in the BCC field, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Second, in general when it comes to mass mailings I don’t need to know who else is receiving the mail. Oftentimes the result is that the recipient now has more information about who has specific authority or access to certain services than he or she really needs.

Hitting “reply all” to a mass e-mail is bad form, but it pales in comparison to sending out e-mails to dozens or hundreds of people that reveal all of those e-mail addresses in the To or CC field.

Cheap Online Backups

Photojojo is usually a pretty interesting photo-related site/blog, but they had me shaking their head with their effusive recommendation of Backblaze for computer backup,

Backblaze is the best online backup tool we’ve ever used.

Why we love it:

  • No DVDs, no hard drives to mess with
  • Backups happen invisibly as soon as files are added
  • $5/month, no matter how big your hard drive
  • Won’t slow down your computer. Really.
  • Your online backup can’t be lost or stolen
  • Download your backed up files anytime (of course) or have them overnighted to you on DVDs or a hard drive (spiffy!)

Sigh. Okay, here’s the deal — if you really think these service that offer unlimited data backup for ridiculously low prices are sustainable, you might as well go all the way and send your life savings to Bernie Madoff for those consistent 8-10 percent annual returns.

And, no, I’m not suggesting Backblaze or other services like it are fraudulent. In fact I give Backblaze credit because they are very upfront about their business model,

How Can You Backup Everything Online For Just $5 per Month?
We have developed a highly efficient storage system that enables us to optimize how we store data. And we’re counting on some people having a lot of data and others not very much, but that it will work out on average.

Backblaze also has some interesting upselling options including offering to send users DVDs and hard drive backups of their data which is a very nice option to have.

Who knows, it could work out for them. But this is an extremely crowded space at the moment and we’re presumably talking about extremely important files. I’m not sure I’d want to count on a service that’s counting on a certain usage pattern and that is competing against any number of firms counting on exactly the same thing.

Personally I think asking “what’s the cheapest online backup option” is not a good way to think about backups. Rather, I’d start by imagining all of your data has been wiped out today — how much would you be willing to pay to recover that data? Then discount that price over time based on your income and other backup options you’re using.

Maybe ultimately backing up all your data is really only worth $5/month. If so, Backblaze certainly seem like an interesting service to explore. Otherwise, I’d look elsewhere (I’m using an Amazon S3-based system, but the caveat is I pay $50-$60/month for the 300+gb I’ve got stored there).