How To Contol Data Overload

Reprinted with permission from ACP Media (NetGuide).

It's called data smog and it's caused by computers and the Internet.

It's called data smog and it's caused by computers and the Internet - a downstream digital flood of e-mails, chat messages, newsgroup postings, software downloads,  upgrades, patches, pictures, movies and music. Keeping your computer in order with this influx can cause a form of cyber-anxiety for some, with a creeping feeling the Internet is in control and not you. If you want to organise your computer better there are tips, techniques and good free software (you'll have to download it of course!) to help you manage the flood.

Both Macs and PCs use a directory system that looks like an upside-down tree. The root and trunk is the first directory (folder) with other directories sprouting out like branches. Each one of these branches can have sub-folders and sub-folders to those too. Once you start wading through this maze of folders, it's easy to get lost and to lose things. Managing this tree can help a lot.

Establish a file flow through a logical directory structure. When you download files, have a default place to download them, (for example a folder called Downloaded Files). I download everything to my desktop, where it's instantly available. This is the starting point for my file flow After I've played/viewed/read the downloaded file it gets moved to the appropriate folder or trashed or archived. The same flow works for email, where you can organise messages into sub-folders and archive older stuff. This keeps your In-Box from filling to the point where you can't find anything without a lot of scrolling. Don't stop there. Organise your browser favourites and bookmarks into folders to avoid a drop-down menu the length of your arm. Applying the same process to your Windows Start Menu is a good plan too. You can safely delete any items you never use from here as they aren't the programs, just a link to them.

Analyse and organise: Windows offers the Internet Explorer interface as the primary way of browsing and organising your files, but it's actually easier to use Windows Explorer for file management. Its split window makes dragging and dropping files and folders easier. Even so, it can be hard to visualise the complete directory structure on your hard drive. To help you, there's a 165k freeware utility called Scanner . It represents your drives in colourful concentric rings so you can see how much of what is where: it's great for finding space - hogging trash.

Take out the trash: So you've organised your directories, cleaned up and tossed out the junk? Still, the job never ends and junk starts accumulating as soon as you start surfing - cookies, gifs, jpegs, cached pages and temp files all clog up the works. Windows has some functions for tidying up.

Back Up: An important part of the file flow is shuffling non-essential files off your hard drive. Stuff them on a Zip disk, CD or (worst-case scenario) a floppy disk. When your archive grows, it can be hard to find things you've backed up. Try a freeware utility such as DiskCat at only 216k. It creates and stores a searchable database of all your CDs, Zips, Jaz disks, floppies and hard disks. Lastly, schedule system maintenance (on a PC) to happen automatically. That way it will happen. Defragmenting and optimising your computer system will help keep the file trash under control and improve performance.

My favourite bookmarks: Organising your cyber-life often starts by knocking a few pegs into the ground. These are your Bookmarks (Navigator) or Favourites (Explorer). They work well by giving you easy access to often-frequented sites, but they're only a few snapshots from your cyber-travels when what you need is really a Camcorder.

Internet Cartographer is a 1307k shareware solution that records your surfing history. It creates visual maps of sites and their relationships based on links and keywords and automatically classifies pages into categories based on terms and links. You can then search through these elaborate maps for pages you once encountered.

Bookmark management can get quite sophisticated and there's a good range of software available at www.zdnet.com.There's also a brilliant freeware utility (240k) called URL Menu . It sits in your task bar and provides one-click access to all your bookmarks. This includes searching them, organising them, verifying they still work and getting rid of the dead ones.

Internet Organiser is 2.5MBShareware program costing $US43. It stores FTP sites, email addresses, Newsgroups and other Internet resources in a database environment, allowing you to search through a keyword-indexed database of Net resources.

Remember - The Net delivers a huge amount of information and a good coping strategy is to strip things to a minimum and organise them well. If you're suffering over load, sorting out your email is a good place to start. Limit the email you receive by unsubscribing from low-priority mailing lists and news letters, get yourself on no-spam lists, and ask your email-addicted friends (who daily send 10 funny things they've found) to back off a bit. Remember - you're the boss.

 

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