Organize Your Digital Life: How to Store Your Photographs, Music, Videos, and Personal Documents in a Digital World

194 Pages·2009·2.27 MB·English

by  Aimee Baldridge

Organize
Your Digital
Life
Also by Aimee Baldridge
The Camera Phone Book
Organize
Your Digital
Life
How to Store Your Photographs, Music, Videos,
& Personal Documents in a Digital World
AIMEE BALDRIDGE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Table of Contents
Introduction 7
CHAPTER I: Building a Home for Your Digital Media 8
Assessing Your Media Collection
Deciding What to Digitize
Assessing Your Media Organization Tools
Estimating Your Storage Needs
Choosing Hard Drives and Storage Devices
Creating a Media Storage System
Prioritizing Your Media Organizing Tasks
Archiving on Discs
Backing Up and Synchronizing
Keeping Your Media in the Cloud
Protecting Your Media from Disaster
Recovering Lost Digital Media
CHAPTER II: Photographs 48
Digitizing Prints, Negatives, and Slides
Understanding Digital Image Formats
Restoring Damaged, Dirty, and Faded Photos
Using a Scanning Service
Creating a System for Organizing Photos
Tags, Captions, Ratings, & Other Metadata
Geocoding: Organizing Photos by Location
Getting Photos Off a Camera Phone
Downloading Digital Camera Photos
Printing Digital Photos
Storing Prints and Broadcasting Photos
Choosing Photo Galleries and Communities
Distributing Your Photos Online
CHAPTER III: Film & Video 114
Digitizing Analog Video Tapes
Digitizing Films
Understanding Digital Video Formats
Using a Home Movie Transfer Service
Organizing Your Digital Videos
Archiving and Sharing Digital Videos
CHAPTER IV: Music 136
Digitizing Vinyl and Tape
Ripping Discs
Understanding Digital Music Formats
Organizing Your Digital Music
Using Subscription and CD Ripping Services
Streaming Music to Your Stereo
Taking Music With You
CHAPTER V: Valuables 160
Scanning and Sorting Important Documents
Storing and Accessing Files Securely
Cataloging Valuables and Personal Collections
CHAPTER VI: Breaking Camp 172
Deleting and Destroying Digital Files
Getting Rid of Hardware
Resources 180
Acknowledgments 187
Illustration Credits 187
Index 188
Credits 192
6 | Organize Your Digital Life
Introduction
hen it comes to our collections of photos, music, and movies, the conventional
Wwisdom that change is the only constant applies. Sometimes it seems like one
minute we were flipping vinyl discs and leafing through leather-bound albums, and
the next we were mashing up multimedia files to stream to someone’s cell phone.
Thanks to all the rapid innovations, we’ve been given new opportunities to play, share,
and publish the media we create and purchase, to transform our older media into digi-
tal files, to be more creative with our media than analog formats made possible—and
to make a big digital mess. Many of us have seized these opportunities, in the last case
by dumping large numbers of mysteriously named files into random places on com-
puters, hard drives, and other tech paraphernalia. And while we accumulate haystacks
of new digital media, the records and CDs and photos and films that we once treated
so nicely sit moldering in drawers and boxes.
In the midst of all this change, there’s one thing that remains the same: messes
are easy to make and a pain to clean up. In fact, with technology changing constantly,
just keeping up with the way all your gizmos and software work can make getting
your digital life in shape seem like an incomprehensible hassle. But it doesn’t have
to be. What you need to organize your digital life are the same things you need to
organize everything else: to know what the organizational tools available are, to be
realistic about which ones you will use consistently, and to put them to work. Keeping
your digital media organized and safe from disasters isn’t about how adept with or
interested in technology you are. If you have a computer and digital photos, videos, or
music in the first place, you can handle the tools available to manage them.
If the prospect of getting organized isn’t enough of a carrot for you, consider the stick:
Your hard drive will crash. Discs will become unreadable. It’s all just a matter of time.
Not only that, but your analog media won’t last forever either: Photographic prints and
records and tapes and films are all destined to deteriorate eventually, especially if they
haven’t been preserved in the best conditions. As much as we all love the finger-crossing
approach to media preservation, it has proven to be less than effective.
Happily for all of us, digital technology has advanced enough to provide plenty of
tools for preserving and organizing all of our personal media, both new and old. And
although using them isn’t quite as quick and easy as crossing your fingers, many of
them are probably a lot easier to use than you might expect. This book is designed to
show you what the best tools are and how to use them effectively, so that you can
spend your time enjoying and sharing your photos, music, and movies, instead of
hunting for needles in your digital haystack.
Introduction | 7
8 | Organize Your Digital Life