Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've eagerly awaited the release of this new book, as it appears to be the only source of information in book form to deal with its topics. And it deals with them superbly. Digital immigrants like myself who have an avid interest in photography and music will easily come away from every page of ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL LIFE having learned something both interesting and helpful. It offers time-saving tips, uses clear terminology, is well-organized, has a good index, and explains IPTC, WAV, SATA, RAID, DNG, and many other acronyms. In addition, it offers a slew of websites, brand-names, illustrations, and helpful advice and cautions. Another plus is the physical makeup of the book: glossy paper, clear type, nice graphics, eye-appealing layout. Looking for help with backing up photos, storage options, finding an online community for your photos, online radio, or converting prints, negatives, analog cassettes, and VHS into digital files? Here's the source. Wanting to learn more about organizing your digital files? Here's the source.

The problem with this book? It will be out-of-date sooner than readers would like, given the fast-changing nature of our digital world. But that is the ONLY problem with this clear, articulate, well-organized, helpful title. Congratulations to National Geographic and to Aimee Baldridge for offering such a fine resource.

As noted by previous reviewers-this book is great. It starts by stepping you through how to think about going digital, presuming you have lots and lots of artifacts that you will convert from analog or earlier digital formats. It then provides specific guidance for photographs, film, and music.

Unfortunately for me, what it means by "personal documents" is passports, other legal documentation of your life, and passwords. My own digital life was looking for a bit more support for *.doc, *.xls, and *.etc files, which isn't here.

Quite possibly, any one or three of the topics addressed in this book is covered in equal depth in somebody's website. However, I know I haven't found all of the topics addressed to this depth in one place. Similarly, Amazon itself is not providing any links to other books on this particular topic (at least, not as I write this review).

If you are willing to put some significant effort into organizing your own digital (and/or converting analog to digital) files, this is a good book to own.

I'm a smart person but I have felt frankly dumbfounded and frustrated by the barrage of digital media that has overtaken my life in the past 5 or so years. Finally there's someone to help me figure out how to safely store and clearly organize my photos, documents, movies, and music. This book is extremely clear and detailed and gives very helpful and explicit instructions. It has greatly improved my relationship to my digital life. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it, and it would make an excellent gift.

If your just getting into the digital age, then this could help. If you already know how things work, its not for you. It does cover everything from old tech to new tech.