Category: Technology

THE “FINALLY ORGANIZING YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS” ZOOM HANG OUT CALL

This started by me posting on Substack Notes, a screen shot of a bunch of folders filled with my digital photos dating back to 2002. I explained how I got all those photos extracted from Apple Photos (formerly iPhoto), and into their own folders. Then how I backed them all up via Backblaze.

This got some traction, so I wondererd if people would be interested in hopping on a Zoom call and talking about it. I set up a landing page using Tally, and got over 30 replies.

From there I set up an event in Luma, and emailed those folks, and as of writing this I got 29 people signed up to attend.

It’s on Thursday, March 20 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT. If you wanna come, register here.

​- This is definitely not for the hardcore photographer crowd.

​- This is for the casual iPhone / photographer who just happens to have a jillion photos scattered everywhere and you’re looking for a temporary support group to figure things out together.

I figured out an okay system to get all my iPhone photos off my device and stored on an external HD, again, all backed up via Backblaze (which backs up two external HDs and my laptop for $9/mo).

Because of this, I was able to cancel my yearly Google subscription for more photo storage (I was using it to back up my iPhone photos), and cut my iCloud to the .99 cents per month plan.

Thursday, March 20 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT. Register here.

UPDATING WEBSITES

It’s been so amazing to see people updating their websites. This from Zach Sprowls:

“The idea of a website HQ is not original to me. I got it from Seth Werkheiser over at SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB. His ideas, encouragement, and the community he’s building over there have been invaluable. Thank you, Seth!”

And then this from Menka Sanghvi:

“Totally echo Zach’s words. I have built my new website HQ too, and it even has a “microblog” where I go to first, whenever I get that strong impulse to share on social media! Thanks Seth.”

Just look at their incredible micro-blog set up!

I mean it – we’ve dumped years of text and photos and video onto these social media platforms. It’s no wonder no one visits our websites – we’re not updating them!

Filling out websites with everything we’ve been giving away for free to social media is a great start. Set up your own Twitter-like feed on your own site. Make it easy to publish new things on a platform you control!

SUBSTACK PODCASTS ARE MORE PLATFORM LOCK IN

So I had a handful of video interviews on Substack. They were sent out as newsletters, but they were also posts that I wrote. Not just show notes, but like… full posts.

Well, I didn’t like the way Substack handles podcasts… I mean, no individual episode art? The organization was a wreck, too. I just didn’t like how it felt.

I signed up a free trial of Transistor – for $19/mo you get unlimited podcasts. And they’re all just, like, in their own sandbox. Like, if I just delete one, nothing else is touched.

I learned the hard way that this is not the case with Substack. I uploaded all the audio from these videos to Transistor, and it worked great. Seriously. What a solid system. Everything just laid out in a way that makes sense, unlike how Substack sort of blurs together a post and a podcast episode.

Continue reading “SUBSTACK PODCASTS ARE MORE PLATFORM LOCK IN”

BACK UP THE DIGITAL WITH THE PHYSICAL

With all my digital dumping lately, been thinking a lot about digital media.

This from Patrick Rhone:

Here’s a (admittedly costly and privileged) thought: Instead of downloading your Kindle books and hacking the DRM from them, use the titles as a list to go buy from your local book store. Or, cheaper option, to keep an eye out for in a Little Free Library.

Back up the digital with the physical.

I’ve cancelled Disney+ because I watch the same old Star Wars movies, and the price keeps going up. I thought, gee, just buy those movies digitally via Apple or Amazon, so I can just stream them whenever I want, right?

But maybe I should just buy a blu-ray player and the actual discs. That way, if the internet goes down or I somehow lose access to my accounts or digital files, well, I can still watch those movies.

I thought this too with digital music – I was digging around for a media player that isn’t Apple Music, and oh my god, everything is atrocious.

But instead of re-building a system which keeps all my files inside my laptop, why not try to buy the CDs (and cassettes)? I can even burn digital files to a CD and play them on my CD player.

ORGANIZING IPHONE PHOTOS ON MY OWN DEVICES

So all my photos dating back to 2002 are in folders, grouped by year, on my external HD, which is then backed up regularly via Backblaze.

I have a reminder set for the 1st of every month to download all my photos from iPhone (via Image Capture) to my Mac, where I put them into a folder, organize (delete a lot of videos and screen shots), then add them to my monthly folder of photos I take with my DSLR.

I was using Google Photos to sync everything from my phone, but that’s $20/year going to Google. No thanks.

And now that I’m not backing up photos via iCloud, my iPhone back ups are smaller, so I was able to downgrade to the .99¢ plan, which is just $12/year. Maybe I can look more into the back up stuff and whittle it down to the free plan at some point, but this is acceptable.

MAKE REAL STUFF

From Joshua Heath Scott:

“As artists and creatives, we face the challenge of standing out against the digital tide. Han explores the importance of making real, physical art that holds emotions, memories, and true community value, unlike the fleeting nature of digital information.”

This really makes me want to start putting together a print version of Social Media Escape Club. Of printing photos every month. Of making newspaper projects with Newspaper Club.

Via Zach

I just switched to the Brave browser, from Chrome, and I’m practically giddy about it.

Tonight I archived a bunch of old emails from my Fastmail account. Exported to Zip files, put ’em on external HD. Just like, 1000s of random sent emails, automated receipts and shit. Sure, I could have gone through and deleted a bunch, but nah.

This weekend I’ll be shutting down my Google Workspace account, and shuffling that email back to Fastmail. The less money I give to Google, the better.

LEAVING GOOGLE WORKSPACE

I’ve exported all my Google emails in .mbox format and threw them into my Apple Mail app, which I don’t ever use, but it’ll be there for safekeeping (and easy searching).

I’ve exported all my Google Drive docs as xls and doc files. Anything shared with clients and such, I told them to make a copy so they own it.

I’ve been changing a lot of emails I use for services away from this account, so if anything happens when I transfer my MX records, it won’t matter so much.

I think I’ll do that this weekend – copy all my existing MX records from my DNS host. Then update the new info from Fastmail, so all those emails go into my existing account. I don’t get a lot of emails at this “work” account, so it’ll be fine.

I have a Gmail account I can use if I need to view / share Google Docs or Sheets.

Email is taken care of.

Those are literally the two things I used Google Workspace for. Years ago I worked with some VAs, and they needed email accounts with my business, and that worked out well. But hey, Google Workspace is like $7/mo now, for something that I don’t really need. It’s going up to $8.40/mo for all this new AI bullshit that I really don’t need, so whatever.

The $100 I save per year can buy some groceries, which is lot more useful than the garbage AI that Google is pushing.