Washington, DC — March 31st has been declared World Backup Day. With so much of our lives, photos, and videos being stored in digital form, it is imperative that we begin to make backups of our precious data. Backing up your data is one of those easy to do procedures that many people ignore.

People now create and generate over 1.8 zettabytes of data per year. That's over 57 billion iPads! Hard drives fail at an annual rate of 3 percent and this rate gets higher as the drive gets older. With a three year-­old hard drive, the annual failure rate hovers around six percent. Backing up your data will protect your life's work if that hard drive fails. World Backup Day is here to make sure that people actually start backing up.

World Backup Day can easily be observed by spreading the word of data integrity and automatic backup. Share World Backup Day with all your friends and family. The virtues of both local and offsite data backup sites should be extolled. People should relay the dreadful tales of devastating data disasters like the loss of an entire season of a children's television series or the near complete loss of customer data by Microsoft's & T-Mobile's Sidekick. So sad, all they needed was a simple backup strategy.

There will also be a giveaway on World Backup with backup related prizes like free hard drives, online backup accounts, and awesome swag like World Backup Day t-shirts and magnets.

And to all the IT professionals saying "Hoho! I'm good. I already got backups." March 31st just happens to be a great day to check and recheck your backup restores to see if they actually work. Wouldn't want a nasty prank to bring your backup drives down, would we? After all, a backup plan that doesn't work isn't much of a backup plan.

About World Backup Day

World Backup Day was chosen to be the day before April 1st (April Fools) in order to drive the message that one should backup all those pictures, spreadsheets, love letters, cat pictures, & important financial documents before it's too late.

World Backup Day began it's inaugural celebration in 2011 by a few concerned users on reddit.com just a week before March 31st. After a fast and furious week of developing and designing, the World Backup Day holiday was born on March 31st. It was a hit in the tech industry with virtually all tech news sources reporting on World Backup Day. For 2012, World Backup Day has partnered with many media partners to promote the holiday. This is just the beginning for World Backup Day. World Backup Day will continue to grow and promote regular data backups.

These tales, backup information, and exclusive discounts & offers from participating companies can be found on www.WorldBackupDay.com on March 31st, 2012!

Don't be an April Fool. Backup your data. World Backup Day is March 31st.

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World Backup Day is March 31st.

www.worldbackupday.com

Twitter: @WorldBackupDay

Facebook: www.facebook.com/WorldBackupDay

Google+: +World Backup Day

Many of us share our digital photos in a variety of ways. We share them on Facebook, Twitter and various photo sharing sites. All of these sites are public and allow many other people to see our digital photos, not always just the people we want to share them with.

I would like to introduce you to a new way to share your photos. It is an application you can download to your desktop, iPhone or your iPad. It is called Linea and its free (up to a certain amount of storage).

With Linea you create a line by uploading a selection of photos. A line may be photos of a specific person, event or collection. You upload the best of your photos to Linea and invite your friends and family to view your photos and to add their own photos too. You can caption and change information on your photos and you can all comment on them. This is ideal for a special occasion or party.

Linea gives you an initial amount of free storage space so you can try before you buy with an annual subscription of $99 (about £63). If you decide after the first year its not for you then you have 120 days to download your photos in exactly the same resolution as you uploaded them.

We think you will be hooked at what a fantastic resource linea is for families. Imagine mum and dad have the account, the children and grandchildren get to add to their lines as they snap away with their iphones and grandparents also get to see the results too. Obviously this requires the account holder to share the relevant lines with everyone but try it, you won't be disappointed. You will need to create a linea account, download the ipad or iphone app and also download the desktop viewer too. You can't view your pictures from the uploader section of the website.

Linea displays the photos in a beautiful mosaic pattern. To see a picture in full view all you have to do is tap the picture. This allows you to edit the information about the picture, create a caption, and add comments.

Try it today and email us or post on our facebook page any comments you may have. We must admit there are the bare minimum of instructions on the website at the moment but watch this space that likely to change over the next few weeks.

As a photo organiser I have always been very happy with Photobox as a supplier for my own family photos. I like the fact that I have unlimited storage, that I can create products and their system will store them in case I want to re -order. I also like the preview facility that allows me to share my photos. They are also very reasonably priced and the quality is good enough for the bulk of my photos.

However I felt that maybe I should give a few of the other on-line photo companies a chance to prove their worth and therefor placed a number of orders with other suppliers. The results have yet to be compiled as I am still awaiting delivery of some.

Much to my amazement today I received a very large envelope that I wasn't expecting for the small number of photos that I ordered and was horrified on opening it to receive somebody elses photographs!

Rest assured these pics won't be ending up on the internet, they are after all somebody's holiday photos with not only teenagers in their swimwear but little children too. How did this happen? I'm not sure what quality control practices are in place within this company but they seriously need to review them.

Now I know it's not fair not name and shame and that accidents do happen but it begs the question just who is looking and handling your photos. What if I thought I was being helpful and put them on Facebook with 'Do you recognise yourself in these photos?' What if they belonged to someone in my village with a similar postcode?

What have I done with them, well I'm holding them until the company in question tells me what to do with them.

So will I continue to use random photo sites to print my photos? Probably not and what I would advise you to do is check out the terms and conditions and privacy policies within each on-line company that you use. Check out your local photo printer too, they may not be the cheapest but if they are reliable and dealing with your order in house will that give you a greater peace of mind.

How do you feel, are you worried, does it bother you who looks at your photos? Perhaps you take the view of price beats all risks? I'd love to know, leave me a comment below :)

Lately I have been creating one or two products for small business's namely portfolio photo books and promotional product/service videos. There is always lots of confusion surrounding the legal side of such products so I thought it a worth while exercise to list one or two of the pitfalls when creating them for business use.

If you are creating a photo book for your business you need to make sure that you have the permission to use the images that are being displayed. You cannot just copy and paste images from the internet into your own personal or business book. Likewise if a photographer has taken photos for you you need to have his/her permission to use those shots. Don't take any chances - get it in writing.

As a matter of courtesy to your clients its always best to ask their permissison if you are using a photo of a product that you have created for them. Most are overjoyed and you never know it might earn you some extra business.

That bit was easy but once we start talking about photo videos, its mega confusion on a big scale. I'm trying to keep this blog simple and just point out the big no no's, there may be exceptions and I'm not a lawyer. Having been originally misinformed by my own lawyer I'm not even sure they know the whole picture.

There are many photo video creating software packages out in cyberland such as Animoto, Hallmark etc and some even allow you to create a small video for free. Always check the small print, I've never come across one that allows you to use them for business use. Some will offer a pro license which is what you need for your business but again check the small print, it isn't just a case of having the pro account to create the video, you need to have the licence in order to show 'your performance' on the net.

If you are creating videos for other business's you will usually need a current re-seller licence too. So unless you are making lots of videos and can justify a pro or reseller account then these are the ones to stay away from. Although on a plus point you will have a selection of royalty free and licensed to use songs for business music at your fingertips if you are abiding by the rules.

Whilst on the subject of Royalty Free Music even that isn't as simple as it sounds. Many people are under the impression that if a record is listed as Royalty Free then they can use it where and when they want and as many times. Again always check the small print and ALWAYS get a copy of the licence you are purchasing. Websites come and go and performers change their minds (which apparently they can do with no notice). Some are sold as one time only use and some you have to credit the performer on your video. Some are for your business and some can be used in videos for other business's.

So you have made your video, sourced your royalty free music and have loaded it to Youtube and Facebook. Now to overcome the copyright notice that Youtube etc may slap on your account because you 'may' have broken a copyright law. You see they have software that vets its uploads and sometimes it gets it wrong. Whilst you may be confident you have done everything the right way, you then have the hassle of proving it to Youtube. I haven't yet had this problem with Facebook but I'm sure it won't be long before I do. I always recommend to my clients that they purchase their photo video on DVD and upload to their websites directly, however with Youtube being the second biggest search engine after google (which of course it is part of) you cannot ignore the traffic generated towards your comapny via Youtube. That is assuming of course you have placed it in the correct category, have an appropriate description and inserted meaningful tags!

So what can happen to your production while this is going on? Well they can just mark it on your account, they can refuse to upload or delete your video, place advertising on it or they can mute the sound. In the case where you aren't above board of course you are at the mercy of whoevers copyright you have broken in the law courts. Repeat offenders usually have their account deleted.

If you are using vimeo to host your business video then you must have a pro account (currently approx $200 per year).

Now you are really feeling scared, I'll tell you the best bit. If a video has lots of hits or goes viral then Youtube will leave it up regardless of any copyright infringement - How fair is that!!?? This is why you may be surfing the net and thinking how are they getting away with that? I've heard rumours that youtube leave the video up and split the advertising revenue with the copyright holder. Is that true I hear you ask? Well I'm not sure but it would make sense wouldn't it?

I'll leave it to you to weigh up the risks :)

If all the above seems a little bit to much like hard work then send your photos over to me and I will create, host and source the correct royalty free song and copyright for you. I currently have an introductory price of £30 for a Youtube version with a £10 surcharge to provide you with a personalised Lightscribed DVD (very handy for showing on your lap top at trade shows and craft fairs).

My videos are cheap and cheerful and I don't pretend to have all the marketing answers. I just love what I do and if I can brighten up your pics for your small business in the process then I feel blessed X

You can view some of my photo videos on my Youtube Channel Blessewe1

There must be someone in your family that is impossible to buy gifts for, probably a senior that has everything they could possibly want. Well Olive's family were pulling their hair out especially as it was her 97th birthday on Christmas Eve. Nothing is impossible for us personal photo organisers and as we got our thinking caps on we came up with the idea of 'This is Your Life' in photos. Olives memory was failing and although it would have been great to present her with a photo book, time was of the essence and the family would not have had the time to have recorded her lifestory in an album (in time for Christmas) as they would have liked. Our idea was to come up with a storyboard of Olives life from baby to childhood and teenage years. Through marriage, motherhood and on to become not only a grand-mother but a great grand mother. We are planning to place these same photos in a book once her family have helped Olive to recall her lifetime of memories aided by our Heritage questionaire. We hope you enjoy our attached image. Feel free to email us for a copy of our Heritage questionaire to get started on recording the life history of your loved ones. Families always want to celebrate a life of a loved one in photos at funerals, but its so much nicer to celebrate their lives while they are still here to share it with you.