Ten Ton Sword (Technology)

Businesses and people, both LOVE technology. The smell of a freshly opened box, the hum after the first power-up, the crisp speed of the initial load… It’s all very exciting, no matter what the new technology be; HDTVs, DVRs, computers, iPods, iPhones, or software. But everything technological comes at a price, beyond that of the sticker price.

It seems more and more often I amaze myself, when it comes time to get into bed. I find myself asking “Where did the night go”? Running through the list each night, I have started to notice how much time I spend not only enjoying my wonderful technology, but configuring it.

For example:

DIGITAL PHOTOS: Pictures are a great place to start. Pictures are perfectly suited for a digital medium, because pictures are taken to be shared. We can share pictures via e-mail, on websites like flickr, shutterly, and facebook, or we can order prints of these pictures from a multitude of sites and have this shipped to us or pick them up at most local stores.

THE PROBLEM: Managing pictures has become one of the most difficult things for me to manage. For example, the decision must be made on how you are going to categorize your photos. Will it be by date, event (birthday party), subject (the baby), quality (good), action (to print), or some combination of factors? And once the decision is made, you have to commit to that decision, and not resort back to “dumping” in your My Pictures folder. All of that work, just to know what pictures are where.

And while pictures aren’t the only digital media we have to manage, it makes my point. The time I spend taking, importing, categorizing, touching up, tagging, emailing, and uploading pictures can take up a whole evening. Throw in a music library (adding, deleting, editing, moving), movies (ripping, converting, uploading), tv shows (ripping, converting, naming), and so many other things, it really becomes a gruesome task.

I guess what I really want to know, is what other technology snags people run into, and what you do to cope?