Tag Electronic files

Spring cleaning

Michael 2 Comments

I did some electronic spring cleaning tis morning. I fear this is a battle I’m doomed to lose. Of course by electronic spring cleaning I don’t mean deep cleaning my living space with robotic assistance. A robot vacuum might be fun to have around, but until they come up with one who can wash down the cabinets, keep the appliances sparkly, daily clean the bathroom, and tidy the bedroom – like Rosey on the Jetsons! – I’ll do the physical cleaning on my own for as long as I can. No, the spring cleaning was going through apps on the phone and tablets, reviewing bookmarks on the browsers, moving image and document files to cards or cloud storage or deleting them outright, and getting rid of those nasty cookies (which unfortunately eliminates the helpful ones also which is why I so rarely take that on).

2 + 2 5 (8)

It went relatively smoothly except for one tablet which makes me wonder if I take things too literally.  The tablet in question is an older Samsung that I’ve threatened to put out to pasture at least once a month for the last several years. But I’m used to its quirks, it fits me and my expectations, and I guess I like it enough to poo-poo my attempts to use the newer but still not completely set up tab sitting on my desk (which is now certainly itself hopelessly outdated).

The odd thing about this particular, older unit is the help that it wants to provide, particularly at clean-up time. It knows its storage limits and can clue me in on where I can reclaim valuable storage space. What it has a hard time with is knowing what’s stored where. Let me explain. As an older tablet it has limited storage, only 16 GB, so each little chunk of that is valuable. It wants to be a helpful little thing so this morning it told me that 970 MB was holding onto pictures and videos. No need to have them there but also no need to use up space on the cloud account with them when I have plenty of room and can move them to the SD card. Except when I tap the icon to show me the detail of what makes up those 970 MB of treasured photos, it gets confused and shows me all the files the tablet can access – internal, card, and cloud storage. It very graciously tells me how much each destination holds but not which files are at which destinations. So I go through file by file to find what goes where Sigh.

Another thing the poor old piece wants to help with is shedding itself of unused or rarely used apps. Every handheld device has a means of displaying all its resident applications by frequency of access. Except this one hasn’t learned the English definitions for always, sometimes, rarely, and never. I’m just certain that it would get so confused trying to complete a survey it would give up after the first few questions. Anyway, it listed all my apps by often used, sometimes used, and rarely used. Except that they aren’t. My crossword app that I use daily was in the sometimes used pile while Facebook that I haven’t accessed in the last several months was among those often used.

After hours more than I wanted to devote to the project I feel good that all my electronic, connected devices are as trim as can be and for a short while I should be able to enjoy efficient downloads, speedy uploads, and generally smooth, glitch free surfing on the Internet on my own little intranet.

I just really hope I didn’t delete my WordPress account.  Well, here goes nothing! (Hmm, let me know if you didn’t get this.) (Thanks!)

And to Aunt Shirley I Leave My Blog

Michael Leave a comment

The Uniform Law Commission made a monumental decision this week.  It released information to the general public letting everyone know it exists and what it does.  No, we’re just kidding!  That’s not it.  We still have no idea who belongs to this group and what they actually do.  But very recently we read that the Uniform Law Commission (ULC to its closest friends) has published legal guidelines for what to do with all of your electronic accounts once you are no longer you.  All that has to happen now for this to become law and close a gap that has been widening like a pothole on the information highway is for every state legislature to adopt it as law.

Apparently people have actually sued on-line providers for access to accounts held by deceased relatives.  On-line files at e-mail, file storage, and social media sites are being compared to records kept in vaults, safes, and shoeboxes from another era.  Banking, insurance, and ownership records are just some of the items kept in today’s on-line shoeboxes.  These are things that would be of much interest to the executor of an estate and importance to the estate.

The way the proposed law addresses the release of information is that a designated person, presumably the executor, would be able to access the files but not act on the files.  He or she could read the posts on a social media site but could not post to the site, could read the files at a cloud storage site but could not copy the files from that site, could read e-mails but not send e-mails from that account.  Does that help?  We’re not sure.  It seems that still leaves a lot of room for someone to commit identity theft.  That room might be made smaller if the law gave the designee the power of action.  We may not want someone to read every e-mail we’ve ever saved over years (nor may they want to) but we certainly want someone to purge our banking information before the bad guys get to it and clean out our accounts.

In the spirit of excess, people are already reading more than the practical applications into the proposed rules.  In reporting on the ULC’s actions, the Associated Press said “Imagine the trove of digital files…and what those files might fetch on an auction block.”  Now the AP was specifically referring to Bill Clinton and Bob Dylan and their electronic writings which would fetch an attractive sum at auction.  They might fetch even more than The Real Reality Show Blog posts will.  (Don’t you just love the use of “fetch” regarding high prices returned of sold items?  Come on fella, go fetch those millions of dollars!  But we digress.)

Do we need a law to make this happen?  Not really.  Just like you can put into your will who gets access to your safe deposit box, you can put into your will who gets access to your electronic storage areas.  It might sound funny today but in a few years it could be routine to read at the opening of a will, “And I release all my Instagram pictures to my friend John Doe,” or more likely, “And I allow full access to and disposition of accounts held at the First National Bank on-line banking service by the Executor by way of the user name and password found in the addendum to this will.”

Of course, Aunt Shirley will get control of all the posts to this blog and whatever they fetch at auction or the garage sale, whichever is greater.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.