Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > February > 08
Monday, February 8, 2010
Clean your computer out already — today
Yes, it’s a completely artificial “holiday” which had its origins with the Institute for Business Technology, but I can’t help but advise you to take heed of Feb. 8 as “Clean Out Your Computer Day.”
Because, let’s face it, if your computer(s) are anything like mine, you are a disgusting digital slob.
For more than a year now, I’ve been trying to wrangle my digital photos all into one collection, but the task is so daunting that I usually just curl into a ball and photograph THAT, creating one more photo that’s scattered on a hard drive somewhere.
Iolo, a company that makes a piece of software called System Mechanic, gave me a heads-up about the holiday and offered these sobering stats about our messy data habits:
- The average American adult has 1,800 digital files, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
- Americans waste nine million hours per day searching for misplaced items. On average, people spend a year of our lives looking for lost items, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers.
Gross!
So, tonight, I plan to at least clean some icons off my desktop and really think about how I might merge my photo libraries (which include photos across three computers, two iPhones and multiple copies of Picassa, iPhoto and Aperture.
Wish me luck and if you’d be so kind, post in the comments how you deal with digital clutter across multiple computers, hard drives and mobile devices. I’ll post some tips this week as I come across them.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Computers, Internet
Google scores with Super Bowl ad; GoDaddy not so much
Last night, after seeing Google’s Super Bowl ad (below), I tried to remember a better, more well-executed tech-related ad that has aired during the year’s biggest football game.
All that came to mind was Apple’s “1984.” Sure, there were some creative ones during the dot-com boom (and some awful ones, too), but Google’s ad does so much in 30 seconds, that it became one of my favorite tech company ads of all time. It’s sweet, smart, conveys an amazing amount of information and gets to the heart of why Google’s important.
I was asked this morning why Google would advertise a search engine that everybody is already familiar with and at least two tech journalists I know expressed cynicism about the usefulness of such an ad.
Let’s think about that — Google this year introduced its first hardware product, the Nexus One smart phone, has been making moves in the netbook and tablet market and is incorporating more social media information into its bread-and-butter, search results.
Google wants to be your buddy — a company you trust and rely upon every day — and a Super Bowl ad is one of the ultimate ways a company can try to ingratiate itself to the general public. The ad’s quality is high and I think the company scored.
I also thought Austin-based HomeAway’s ad (above) was quite good — it played like a short movie trailer for a new “National Lampoon’s Vacation” movie — I got two big laughs out of it, and it made me want to watch the full 14-minute version. (I haven’t yet.) A Chevy Chase comeback? I never would have imagined that. (Read how that ad came to be in this story.
Less successful for me were Motorola’s only-slightly-amusing Megan Fox-in-a-tub ad, Vizio’s TV apps ad (which was busy and visually interesting, but also confusing) and the always execrable ads from GoDaddy.com, which are typically among the worst every year (and not worth a link). This year proved no exception. I’ve seen people post online that they were outraged by the Web hosting/domain registration company’s risque Danica Patrick ads, but they’re no worse than the ones in previous years. They must work in some way because cringing at GoDaddy’s witless, smutty, soft-core-for-beer-hat-wearers ads is becoming an annual Super Bowl tradition.
More thoughts on the big game’s commercials? Read a Super Bowl ad roundup from our TV writer, Dale Roe.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, TV
