World Backup Day: Mozy app puts backed-up files at your fingertips

Here's another product for World Backup Day. Mozy, a well-respected and veteran cloud backup solution for Mac and PC, has delivered Mozy to the App Store. This app, which is a free download that works with any iOS device, gives you access to all of those files from your computer that have been backed up to Mozy's servers.

If you're a subscriber to Mozy's service, you can view files from any of the computers backed up to your account. The app tells you when the last backup was completed, and navigating to the individual folders is a matter of a few taps.

Once you've found a file that you're interested in using, numerous actions are available -- with a tap, the file can be emailed or opened in a compatible application on your iPhone or iPod touch. Photos stored on your computer can be published to Facebook, viewed in high resolution, or saved to your local camera roll as well.

What's cool about this is that it provides much of the functionality of Dropbox (cloud storage) while ensuring that your Mac or PC is being backed up at the same time. Of course, the Mozy app doesn't provide the offline access that Dropbox for Mac and PC does, but neither does the actual Dropbox iOS client. (Update: According to commenter Rdnymllnsktr, it is possible in the Dropbox app simply by tapping the star below a viewed file. That downloads the file as a Favorite, and it is then available to open in a compatible app.)

If you have 2 GB or less of critical data that you need to back up, Mozy provides a free account. This is also a great way to try out the backup service. Paid accounts are available over the 2 GB limit for US$5.99 a month for 50 GB (and one computer) or 125 GB (and up to three computers) for $9.99 monthly.

Here at TUAW, we're trying to get out the word about World Backup Day to make sure that you're not part of the estimated 80% of computer users who don't have current backups of data. As I always tell computer users, if you haven't lost data yet, you will. "Set and forget" backup services such as Mozy, Backblaze, BackJack, CrashPlan and Carbonite are a low-cost and simple way to keep a copy of your data offsite in case of a local catastrophe.