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Gadgets of the decade that helped unclutter our lives

Paste Magazine dedicated their November issue to the “bests” of the 2000-2009 decade. They made lists of their favorite albums, movies, books, etc. of the past 10 years. One of the lists that caught our attention was their “20 Best Gadgets of the Decade.”

As unclutterers, we were specifically fond of Paste Editor-in-Chief Josh Jackson’s poignant observation about these technologies with item #3, the Garmin GPS:

When judging new technologies, you have to remember what they replaced. And is there any vestigial remnant from the 20th century we’ll miss less than the fold-out car map? The first automotive navigation system was developed in the early ‘80s, but it wasn’t until an executive order eliminated the intentional margin of error the military had insisted for commercial use on May 2, 2000, that the dashboard GPS became more accurate and widely available. Now you can navigate with voice directions from Homer Simpson, Gary Busey or Kim Cattrall. And you never have to try to fold those maps again.

The vast majority of gadgets on the list are devices that helped to get rid of clutter in our homes and offices. Gone is the need to stash blank VCR tapes thanks to the TiVo DVR (#2). The Amazon Kindle (#6) freed up space on our bookshelves. A single USB Thumb Drive (#17) replaced hundreds of CDs and floppy disks. Other items, like the iPhone (#7) created space in our bags and purses by replacing our little black books, pocket calculators, notepads, watches, calendars, and even our iPods (#1).

For all the unitaskers and useless doo dads the past decade gave us, at least there were a few gadgets that helped to get clutter out of our lives. Check out the “20 Best Gadgets of the Decade” and head back here to weigh in on the items selected for the list. Do you think the items are clutter-ful or clutter-freeing?

Posted by Erin on Dec 17, 2009 | 38 Comments | Tweet This

Cure your e-mail addiction

I ran across an image yesterday on 43folders that I wanted to share with you:

If you check your e-mail every 5 minutes when you’re at work, then you are checking it 12 times an hour. Multiply 12 times an hour by 8 hours a work day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year (assuming you aren’t checking your e-mail while you’re on your two weeks of vacation) and this is how Merlin determined the 24,000 total.

If you’re checking your e-mail 24,000 times a year, what are you sacrificing? What are you not working on during that time? Could you reduce your rate to every 15 minutes (a yearly total of 8,000) and be more productive with other aspects of your job? Could you reduce it to once an hour (2,000)? Three times a day (750)?

How often are you checking e-mail currently? If you don’t know, track your productivity to see how you’re really spending your time at work.

How can you break an e-mail addiction? Start by turning off your notification indicator and setting an alarm for every 15 minutes. Only check your e-mail when the alarm indicates you do so. Every client I’ve worked with has found that they will not face any trouble at work if they only check e-mail on a 15-minute or 30-minute schedule. Most come to find that once an hour is sufficient, but it takes awhile for them to build up confidence to make this change. I try to check my e-mail fewer than 5 times a day (some days I’m more successful than others).

What will you do with your newly discovered time? Simply taking the time to plan your perfect day will help you manage your time more wisely.

Posted by Erin on Dec 15, 2009 | 31 Comments | Tweet This

Status update: How are your 2009 resolutions working?

Last January, I professed to Unclutterer readers my 2009 resolution to get a handle on my overwhelming e-mail situation. I had hopes of finding e-mail zen this year, and I did — until August.

Regular readers of the website will remember that in August my husband and I received a phone call and a few days later became parents. We dropped everything, traveled to the state where our son was born, and lived there in a hotel for two weeks. I continued to write for the website during this period, but I let everything else work-related go — no e-mail, no phone calls, and the other Unclutterer staffers were left to fend for themselves.

I still have 80 unread e-mail messages from this time period in my inbox. Additionally, I have another 2,500 messages that are just hanging out and waiting to be processed. My whole system fell apart the minute I walked away from it.

Since I came back to work full time, I’ve tried my best to stay on top of the new messages I’ve received. However, I constantly feel overwhelmed by my inbox because of all of the not-properly processed messages from August and September. As a result, I’ve even fallen behind on processing newer messages. My loathing has created an avalanche of more loathing.

I refuse to end the year at anything other than Inbox Zero. So, between now and December 31, I’m committing to processing 120 of the old e-mails a day. I’m also committing to going through one of my folders and filters a day to make sure that I don’t have things in incorrect places (I found an Ask Unclutterer e-mail in my Unitasker suggestions folder the other day, so I know things can’t be good outside my inbox, either).

What was/were your 2009 resolution(s)? Do you need to get a plan in action now to make sure you achieve it before the end of the year? I’m interested in reading about your successes in the comments. Good luck, and I hope your resolutions are going better than mine.

Posted by Erin on Dec 10, 2009 | 24 Comments | Tweet This

Reducing visual clutter in Mail.app

The fabulous Patrick Rhone from Minimal Mac instructs Mac users how to make their e-mail program less cluttered in his guest post today. Thank you, Patrick, for sharing your talents with us!

Take a look at the peacefully minimal Window above. That is Mail.app, the built in e-mail application on Mac OS X. You may not recognize it in that form. By default, it looks like this:

In just a few steps, you too can simplify and de-clutter Mail.app. Here is how:

  1. In Mail.app, under the View menu, select “Hide Mailboxes.” This will hide the folders along the left hand side of the Mail window. Don’t worry about being able to get to those. I’ve got a better way coming up.
  2. Next, also under the View menu, select “Hide Toolbar.” This will hide the icons at the top of the window. Once again, I’ve got a solution for accessing those items, including the Search box, that is faster and will save you hours a week.

    3. These next steps are optional but I endorse them.

  3. Install, Letterbox. This gives you the option to use that widescreen monitor to its fullest extent by placing the preview pane for the messages on the right or left side versus the default which is on the bottom. If you have the screen real estate, why not use it?
  4. Install Mail Act-On. This will allow you to navigate mailboxes, file messages, open folders, set custom actions, and much more — all using your keyboard. Using this, in combination with learning the default keyboard commands, will eliminate the need to keep items number 1 and 2 displayed and save hours each week for heavy email users.

Speaking of keyboard commands, if you want to display the Mailboxes again, Command + Shift + M will bring them right back. Also, if you miss the search box in the Toolbar, Command + Option + F will bring it right back, allow you to perform your search, and hide the toolbar again once done. See, told you I would give you a better way.

Posted by Patrick on Dec 7, 2009 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Is ‘user-friendly’ and ‘intuitive’ software really simpler?

The LaTeX CompanionI recently came across this blog post from 2007 comparing the quality of documents typeset with Microsoft Word, OpenOffice.org Writer, and LaTeX. Although the post is long, it’s definitely worth reading in its entirety. As a longtime user of LaTeX, I wasn’t at all surprised to see it best the competition in terms of the quality of typesetting.

There are a number of things I like about LaTeX, not the least of which is that it’s nice to be able to use a lightweight text editor with a smaller CPU and memory footprint to edit my documents. But LaTeX isn’t for everyone. Most people are far too accustomed to using WYSIWYG word processors to even consider learning how to format documents by marking up raw text with seemingly arcane commands.

Of course, most people don’t really know how to use their current word processing application effectively either. The software industry has placed so much emphasis on designing software to be “user-friendly” and “intuitive” that we now have a large class of users who are content to ham-handedly grope around contextual menus looking for what they think they want. These people have been conditioned to believe that it’s a usability fault in the software if they can’t figure something out in thirty seconds without referring to the documentation.

During college I worked in an office where all word processing was still done on a DOS version of WordPerfect. It definitely placed more demands on the end-user than the office productivity software of today. You really couldn’t get around needing to understand what the function keys did. Despite (or because of?) the steeper learning curve, the people I worked with in that office were much more efficient and productive using WordPerfect than many of my current colleagues are with Microsoft Word 2007. Almost everything becomes much easier when you spend a little time and effort learning how to do it properly first.

Is it better to have “intuitive” software that allows us to accomplish tasks more slowly, but without ever needing to review documentation or feel the frustration that can accompany a learning process? Or would we benefit more by using tools that require more upfront investment in learning but offer to save us substantially more time and effort in the long run?

Posted by PJ on Nov 23, 2009 | 44 Comments | Tweet This

The Dymaxion Chronofile and our ever-expanding personal digital archives

In 1917, Buckminster Fuller began to catalog all of his personal documents into the “Dymaxion Chronofile,” a chronological filing system that included all correspondence, newspaper clippings, notes, sketches, itineraries, daily schedules and other documents relevant to his personal and professional life. By the time he died in 1983, the Chronofile occupied nearly 270 linear feet of space. This record of a human life divided into 15-minute increments is now the centerpiece of the Buckminster Fuller Archive at Stanford University.

Buckminster Fuller

Whenever I think about the Dymaxion Chronofile, I find myself wondering if there exists a small subset of compulsive hoarders who are both completely functional and meticulously organized.

Although this type of record-keeping may initially seem shocking when one considers the sheer amount of paper involved, many of us might be surprised to realize that we are unwittingly engaged in the same basic undertaking in the digital realm. Today I have 97,839 emails in the archive folder of my mail client. I can easily search through all of them with just a few keystrokes and they occupy just a small fraction of the space available on a laptop hard drive that is roughly half the size of a pack of cigarettes. In fact, it is completely reasonable for me to assume that my personal digital archives will one day surpass the size and scope of Fuller’s Chronofile.

As long as we have tools that enable us to easily organize and manage our ever-expanding personal digital records, should we really worry about the overall size? I’m interested in reading what you think about this question.

Posted by PJ on Nov 12, 2009 | 42 Comments | Tweet This

Ask Unclutterer: CD storage

Reader Christy submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I use iTunes and have burned all my CDs to iTunes. I also have a huge box in my basement of all the hardcopy CDs.

Is there any reason I would need to keep them (computer crash or something), or am I safe to start giving them away?

Christy, the idealist in me says that if you have burned all of your CDs in a lossless format and you have your computer backed up to a secure online location, you should be fine getting rid of your physical CDs. However, the pragmatist in me has to admit that there is a box of CDs in my basement and I wouldn’t even do what I just suggested.

Also, from a legal standpoint, you aren’t supposed to have a digital copy of a CD without also having the physical copy.

I guess when it comes down to it, my official advice would be to simply get rid of the jewel cases (they can be recycled in most communities) and store all of your hardcopy CDs in a CD Notebook. If you do this, you won’t have to pay the fees to store all of your lossless music data online and you’ll cover your arse if the RIAA ever comes knocking at your door.

Thank you, Christy, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Posted by Erin on Oct 30, 2009 | 61 Comments | Tweet This

Organizing medical billings and paperwork

Professional organizer Julie Bestry speaks from personal experience on how to organize medical billings and paperwork to avoid bankruptcy in her article “Don’t Let Hospital Billing Errors Bleed You Dry“:

Harvard University research indicates that approximately 62% of U.S. personal bankruptcies are caused by unaffordable medical bills. Given that, it’s vital to keep track of medical billing, particularly hospital billing, to make sure you are being charged a fair and accurate amount. In fact, some medical billing experts believe that up to 80% of all hospital and medical bills contain at least one error, underlining the importance of vigilance in scrutinizing your medical billing paperwork.

She discusses how to detect errors in your bills and also has a wonderful guide to how to organize this paperwork:

These five posts are a fantastic resource. Again, this is a time when I hope that you won’t ever have to use this information.

Posted by Erin on Oct 6, 2009 | 16 Comments | Tweet This

Eliminate collaboration clutter with Subversion

Collaborating on files with a group presents a unique set of challenges. Where do you store the files? Who has the latest version? What changed?

Let’s say you’re composing a song about Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. You get your band together, you lay down the tracks, and there they are on one computer. You can go back and punch in a solo, cut vocals, or whatever else you need to do. No sweat. But what if one of your bandmates lives 800 miles away?

One option would be to keep sending a file back and forth for each change. The problem is that it’s difficult to keep track of changes, and eventually you each end up with a folder full of files and no way to tell who has the latest version.

A better solution is Subversion, a version control system designed to be a single repository for current and previous versions of files.

In my example, the file happens to be a GarageBand file, but Subversion can just as easily handle any other type of file. Developers have been using it for years to keep track of source code and documentation.

Here’s how it works:

  • Create a Subversion repository. You can create a free repository at Beanstalk
  • Get a Subversion client like Versions. There’s a 21 day free trial period.
  • Create a bookmark to your repository in your client. You can find Versions-specific instructions here
  • Check out a “working copy”
  • Add folders and files to your “working copy,” or make changes to existing ones
  • Commit

When you commit a change, Subversion updates the current version of the file with the changes that you made, but also saves the previous version so that you can revert back to it if you need to. If you try to commit a change to a file that someone else has recently changed, Subversion will let you know. If it’s a text file, you can see what the differences are, and choose to merge the changes together.

091001-subversion

By keeping all your files updated and in one place, Subversion is a great tool for eliminating collaboration clutter.

These are the basics, but If you want to indulge your inner egghead and understand more about how Subversion works, I recommend O’Reilly’s book.

Posted by Brian on Oct 1, 2009 | 17 Comments | Tweet This

Bento 3 adds sharing and security, integrates iPhoto

bento_box
Back in May, I reviewed the iPhone version of Bento, Filemaker’s personal database application. There were a couple comments asking whether Bento supported encryption and sharing, and, as of yesterday, I’m happy to say that it does.

Bento 3 was released yesterday, and they’ve added not only the ability to secure fields and share libraries over your home network—just like iTunes—but Bento integrates iPhoto so you can create personal databases that help you organize photos, iCal events, emails, Address Book contacts, spreadsheets, lists, PDFs you’ve created with your ScanSnap, and pretty much any other clutter in your digital life.

Be sure to check out the Bento Template Exchange to check out database templates other users have created, or share your own.

Bento is $49 ($29 upgrade).

Posted by Brian on Sep 30, 2009 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

Free time-tracking applications

Keeping track of how you spend your time is a necessity when you’re billing segments of your workday to multiple clients, but it’s also valuable for determining your efficiency and productivity. Lifehacker recently reviewed and rated the Five Best Time-Tracking Applications and awarded Klok (free and usable on all platforms) as the top application:

Built with Adobe AIR, Klok is a lightweight and cross-platform tracking solution. You can create a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects in the task-management sidebar and then track the time spent on each by dragging and dropping them into the workflow for the day. While you can delve into the details of each block of time, simple adjustments like expanding the amount of time you’ve worked on a project is as easy as grabbing the edge of the block with your mouse and tugging it down.

Also on their list are Manic Time (Windows), SlimTimer (web-based), RescueTime (Windows and Mac), and Project Hamster (Linux). All five of the applications mentioned in the article are free to access or download.

If you haven’t tracked your time before, I recommend keeping records for at least two weeks to see how you spend your time. The data you will acquire will give you insight into your most productive hours of the day, your low-performance times, when people tend to interrupt you, and how much time you waste during an average day. Then, you can start to tweak your work habits to get the most out of your time in the office.

Posted by Erin on Sep 23, 2009 | 19 Comments | Tweet This

Reducing résumé clutter

In the comments to last week’s post on organizing a job search, a reader asked if we might be able to put together a résumé organizing post. Since I haven’t put together a résumé in more than five years, I thought it best to turn to a professional. Today we welcome guest author Tiffany Bridge who worked for many years as a recruiter for a job placement company. Welcome, Tiffany.

Usually, uncluttering is about organizing your stuff in such a way that life is simpler for you. Résumé uncluttering is a special challenge because it’s about organizing your stuff so that it’s easier for someone else — most likely someone you’ve never met.

Common causes of résumé clutter and how to combat them

The One-Page Résumé. This is one of the most pernicious lies ever to haunt hiring managers. Yes, the Career Services people at your college were right that you should keep your résumé to one page when you’re just coming out of school, but once you have some real experience to talk about it’s needlessly constraining.

Solution: Your résumé should be exactly as long as you need to describe it, and no longer. For most people, this is about two pages, but even three are fine if you need them. You generally only need to cover about the last 10 years of your experience for most fields.

The Functional Résumé. This is another one of those things that your college Career Services people tell you about, which kind of makes sense when you’re getting out of school, but is completely useless once you’ve had a job or two. Hiring managers want a sense of career progression, how you got to where you are now, and a functional résumé completely obliterates any ability to observe it. It’s also commonly used to play down embarrassing gaps in one’s work history, so the hiring manager starts wondering what you’re trying to hide — firing? nervous breakdown? prison sentence?

Solution: It’s fine to have a functional component of your résumé if you have a job history that’s not a straight line toward your goal or if you’re trying to change fields and need to pull all your relevant skills together. However, you still need to be able to show the actual chronological history of your career.

The Objective Statement. This is a waste of an inch or two of space you are trying to use judiciously. If you’re bothering to apply to a job, clearly your objective is to get that job. No one needs to be told that.

Solution: A summary statement is a nice alternative, especially to pull together disparate experience, as long as you avoid tired phrases like “customer service-oriented,” “team player” or “seasoned professional.” Or you can skip it altogether and just jump straight into “Experience.” Your cover letter will explain your objectives better than a statement on your résumé.

In short, remember that the HR person or hiring manager giving your résumé the first review is going to be scanning, not reading. Keep the most relevant information (your experience) near the top, avoid pointless and outdated conventions, and don’t be afraid to take enough space to help the reader connect the dots of your experience and skills to get a complete picture of your strengths.

Posted by Tiffany on Sep 22, 2009 | 30 Comments | Tweet This

Recovering from an e-mail interruption

The October issue of Real Simple magazine quotes a Microsoft and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study that claims it takes 17 minutes “for a worker interrupted by e-mail to get back to what she was doing.”

If this statistic is true, and I know from experience that there is a refractory time after any distraction, it is strong evidence against leaving the notification alert active on your e-mail program. Instead, you should schedule time in your day to check your e-mail. Based on the type of office environment you work in, you might need to check your e-mail at the top of every hour. However, most people can get by only checking their e-mail two to four times during the work day.

I also recommend checking e-mail during the times when you are usually distracted during the day. Whether this is when others tend to interrupt you or when your mind typically wanders on its own, it’s best not to try to do high-functioning activities when you plan to work through your e-mail inbox. For me, this is right after lunch when I find it difficult to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. I check e-mail, return phone calls, and do a little bit of filing.

Try turning off the notification alert on your e-mail system and only checking e-mail on a schedule and see if it improves your productivity. If the interruption refractory period really is 17 minutes, you should immediately notice significant gains in your focus.

Posted by Erin on Sep 17, 2009 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

Storing small memory cards

I don’t know if I’ve ever publicly admitted this, but I’m a gamer. I play at least half an hour every day, and usually more than that. I have numerous electronic gaming systems and even a huge collection of board games for when I want to be away from a computer. I’ll play any game at least once, and when I find a favorite I’ll spend days working to master it.

I didn’t grow up playing video games like many of my peers, but got into it in college thanks to my friend Clark. (Clark also introduced Stevie Case to computer gaming their freshman year of college … small world.) I like solving puzzles and gaming is my constant outlet for that aspect of my personality, and I’ll always be in debt to Clark for being my guide.

There are a couple Nintendo DS Lite games coming out in the next few weeks that I’ve pre-ordered to take with me while I’m traveling for my book publicity. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very organized method for taking all of my DS Lite games (about 30) with me. After a little research, I’m looking at getting one of these:

A Memory Card Album with anti-static pages that can hold three games (or SD cards or MMC cards or other small discs) per page:

Or, a Memory Card and Manual Holder that has places for games and the instruction manuals that come with the games. It too could easily hold other small memory cards:

Do you have multiple games that are stored on small discs or do you carry small cards for work or your camera? How do you keep them stored in a safe and organized fashion? I’d like to know what you use. The smaller memory cards get, I think the more we’re going to address this issue.

Posted by Erin on Aug 20, 2009 | 31 Comments | Tweet This

TuneUp your iTunes collection

I use iTunes to organize my digital music collection and, for the most part, it suits my needs. I say “for the most part” because similar to the problem I’ve been having with the photographs that I had scanned, not all of my music has correct information associated with it. Fortunately for my music, though, I don’t have to go through my entire iTunes collection song-by-song to straighten out the missing and incorrect data. I have found a program that simply corrects my data — TuneUp.

Based on algorithms and other technical things I don’t fully understand (kind of like the iPhone app Shazam), TuneUp picks up where iTunes leaves off at properly identifying the music in my collection. I no longer have seven Track 03s on my playlists. All I have to do is drag the misidentified song into the “cleaner” and TuneUp pulls up possible matches. (The cleaner function is displayed at right.)

In addition to identifying songs, it also fixes formatting, finds rarer cover art, matches artist names, and even gives information about the songs in your collection sort of like VH1′s old Pop-Up Videos.

There are other programs out there similar to TuneUp, I just happened to find this program first and since it worked for me I didn’t try the others. If you have tried other programs and had success, please tell us about your experiences in the comments. TuneUp is free for a “limited-access” download, and is around $20 for an “unlimited” version.

If only I could find a program to clean up my digital photographs as easily …

(Image from TuneUp’s website … I fear if I show my music collection you all will make strange — but probably correct — assumptions about me! And, it should go without saying, but I wasn’t paid to write this review.)

Posted by Erin on Aug 18, 2009 | 17 Comments | Tweet This

Create intuitive and reliable Amazon URLs on the fly with AtTheBigRiver.com

Dancing Mammoth, the company that owns Unclutterer, is always working on new products and services to help people save time and use the web more effectively. In the past, we’ve introduced Nest Unclutterer and Fix My HTML.

Today we’re introducing a new service, called AtTheBigRiver.com.

AtTheBigRiver.com is a convenient way to link to your favorite content at Amazon.com. It allows you to create intuitive, functional, and humane URLs on the fly, without interrupting the flow of your writing to stop and find the “correct” URL. AtTheBigRiver.com’s intelligent technology always sends your users to a sensible location. Just take the name of the artist, author, book or other product you want to link to at Amazon, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it.

Examples

AtTheBigRiver.com works best with popular authors and artists. Suppose you want to link to The Beatles’ “official” page at Amazon.com. Finding the URL of the page is a hassle, and when you do find it, it looks like this:

Instead, you can simply use this URL:

AtTheBigRiver.com knows where the “official” Beatles page is, and will automatically redirect users to it.

The same thing works with popular authors. Compare the “official” Neil Gaiman link on Amazon.com:

To this:

If AtTheBigRiver.com doesn’t have a term in its database, it automatically redirects users to the Amazon search page for that search term. Try links like this:

Constructing URLs

The rules for constructing AtTheBigRiver.com URLs are simple. Simply take the name of the artist, author, book or other item you want to link to, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it. Our intelligent redirection technology is very forgiving. Underscores are automatically converted to hyphens, and non-alphanumeric characters are stripped out.

So these URLs are both equivalent and functional:

AtTheBigRiver.com also works with Amazon.com referrer codes. Put your referrer code at the end of the URL and 90 percent of the time when that link is clicked on we’ll pass your affiliate code along to Amazon. The other 10 percent of the time we’ll substitute our code to help cover the costs of providing this service. If you don’t include a referrer code, we’ll use our affiliate code 100 percent of the time.

For example, if your affiliate code is affiliate123, then you add the referrer code like this:

Posted by PJ on Aug 10, 2009 | 13 Comments | Tweet This

5 ways Snow Leopard will help you unclutter your Mac

Snow LeopardDuring some down time in the office yesterday, PJ and I started talking about how excited we are about Snow Leopard’s release in September. From where we sit, it seems to be a major improvement to the Mac operating system. At the end of our talk, we concurred that there are:

5 ways Snow Leopard will help you unclutter your Mac

  1. Snow Leopard occupies roughly half as much disk space as Leopard, so upgrading will free up about 6GB on your hard drive.
  2. Because Snow Leopard supports Exchange right out-of-the-box, you won’t need to run Entourage if you need to access a company Exchange server for mail and calendaring.
  3. Snow Leopard integrates Exposé right into the dock, which lets you more easily keep track of and move between open windows in a particular open application.
  4. Stacks are scrollable in Snow Leopard. You can also navigate through folders in a stack to see the files inside them.
  5. Finder has been completely rewritten, and we’re particularly excited about customizable Spotlight search options, which should make finding files even easier.

Are you like us? Are you looking forward to Snow Leopard? We’re definitely interested in seeing if the reality will live up to the hype. Just a month to go …

The upgrade from Leopard is now available for pre-order from Amazon for only $29. Family upgrade packs for 5 users are also available for $49 if you want to save money and have several Macs in your home.

Posted by Erin on Aug 8, 2009 | 11 Comments | Tweet This

In pursuit of the dream docking station

090804-dockMaggie Mason’s recent post on WePC.com “If I Were In Charge: A Docking Station Wishlist” has me thinking about charging stations for electronic devices. For the most part, PC laptop docking/charging stations are unattractive and cumbersome. It’s one of the reasons that I use a second monitor with numerous USB ports instead of a traditional docking station. Maggie describes what she would like to see in these devices in her article:

… I don’t want a mass tangle of wires — there should be individual drawers with gratifying slots for all my gadgets. And like GBear’s idea for a streamlined dockbook, my dream docking station would connect to my laptop via a single, elegant plug.

Simple and clutter-free to the eye, my docking station would also have muscle, with heavy peripherals like DVD burner/player or secondary processor all built directly into the station, which means my laptop can be ultra light, petite, and purse-friendly.

I agree with her ideas and would add that I would also love a back up hard drive dock. What would you like in your dream docking/charging station? Tell us your ideas in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Aug 4, 2009 | 12 Comments | Tweet This

Print photographs have been scanned: Now what?

Earlier this year, I had all of my old print photographs professionally scanned (I used scanmyphotos.com and it was around $150 per box of 2,250 pics). Next, I uploaded all of my digital scans to my Flickr pro account and to iPhoto (so far, I have decided not to upgrade to Aperture) on my laptop so that I have the files backed up in multiple locations in addition to having them on DVD. As far as these processes were concerned, the process was easy as pie. (Mmmmmm, pie.)

I am now comfortable with knowing that if my house burns to the ground, decades of photographic memories will not be lost.

However, I am a bit frustrated about the next step in my photo organizing process and I’m looking for some advice. I wish to enter all of the text that I have written on the back of the photographs into the corresponding image’s Notes/Description field. And, I wish to categorize the sets of images into meaningful groups. Doing these two steps, however, seems to be Herculean.

Does anyone out in the Unclutterer readership have a suggestion for how to speed up this process?

  • What is the fastest way to enter data from the back of a photograph into a Notes/Description field? Should I enlist the help of a friend? Hire a neighborhood kid to do it? Streamline the process in some way?
  • What is the most meaningful way to categorize groups of photographs? Is date order always the best method? What other systems do people use that have proven to be worthwhile?

Let me say, “thank you,” ahead of time, because this has been a bit of a nightmare for me. I look at the box of photographs that have been scanned and feel overwhelmed by the next step in the process.

Posted by Erin on Jul 28, 2009 | 77 Comments | Tweet This

Peter Walsh provides organizing tips for Microsoft Office users

Last month, reader Bev wrote in to our Ask Unclutterer column looking for tips on how to use Entourage on a Mac to organize e-mail and create tasks. A few days before I received her question, I had spoken to super organizer Peter Walsh about the program and was able to pass along a few of his tips.

Peter has gone on to create a 15-minute video for Microsoft talking about how he recommends using Microsoft Office to organize three specific areas of one’s life (family, finance, and health). It’s on the Microsoft for Mac section of the website, but I’ve watched most of the video and can’t really see that any of his tips are necessarily Mac-specific. If you’re a Microsoft Office PC user, you can benefit from the video just the same.

A few words about the video:

  • If you don’t have Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plugin on your computer, you’ll be prompted to download it. It’s free and you don’t have to reboot your computer after installing it.
  • The video includes helpful advice, but in this specific situation Peter talks much slower than he usually does. His slow speech is obviously so that people can open up programs and move things around while following along with the video. However, if you’re not opening programs and following his advice while watching the video, you’ll probably miss his typical fast-paced, cheerful style.
  • He recommends backing up your data to CDs or DVDs. I disagree with this since a disaster that could destroy your computer very likely would destroy this disc-saved data. It’s better to back up your data online (gmail, Mozy.com, a Flickr Pro account for your pictures, etc.) at an off-site location than having your backup and the original in the same house.

I was particularly interested in seeing how he recommended using Office to help track health-related matters. If you’re a Microsoft Office user, you might be interested in checking out Peter Walsh’s video.

Posted by Erin on Jul 8, 2009 | 15 Comments | Tweet This