Take Control of Your Digital Storage, 2nd Edition
Take Control of Your Digital Storage, 2nd Edition

Author: Jeff Carlson

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2022-07-07

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1990783066

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The Mac user’s guide to mass storage Version 2.3, updated July 7, 2023 This book demystifies storage on the Mac, from mechanical hard drives to solid-state disks, and covering topics such as network-attached storage (NAS), cloud storage, repairing and managing disks, encryption, filesystems (including APFS), and managing data. As the amount of data we store continues to grow, figuring out where to put it and how to access it becomes more complicated. It’s not just that we need to find space for our increasingly large collections of photos, videos, music, and apps—we want it to be available whenever we need it, and be sure that it’s safe from hackers and thieves. Every Mac includes internal storage in the form of a hard drive, SSD, or Fusion drive. But you may also have one or more external devices (such as hard drives, flash drives, SD cards, or RAID devices), not to mention network-attached storage (NAS) devices or cloud storage (like Dropbox or iCloud Drive). Making sense of all your options, managing your stored data, choosing new devices or services when you're running out of space, or even just figuring out what's where can drive anyone to distraction. Fortunately, Jeff Carlson has a book with all the answers! After decades of working with Macs and accumulating massive collections of photos and videos, Jeff has pulled together a wide-ranging book about Mac storage that contains just the help you're looking for. Among many other topics, this book covers: • How to choose a new (internal or external) hard drive, SSD, or hybrid drive • Determining how much storage space you need • What you need to know about APFS, Apple’s new filesystem • How to use APFS snapshots (a.k.a. Time Machine local snapshots) • Formatting and partitioning disks using Disk Utility • How to repair a misbehaving disk • RAIDs: what they are and how different types compare • How to tell when a hard drive is about to fail, and what to do about it • What to do with a hard drive when it has outlived its usefulness • When to use a flash drive or SD card • How to create and use disk images • Deciding among local, network, and cloud storage for various types of files • What a personal cloud is and why you might consider using one • Strategies for freeing up extra disk space NAS devices get special coverage, including: • Why you might want a NAS • How to choose a NAS—and when it's a better idea than an external hard drive • Using a NAS with your Mac for a wide variety of purposes • Special considerations when using a NAS for digital photos Jeff also digs into details about numerous storage-related technologies: • How to tell if your third-party SSD needs to have TRIM enabled (and what to do if the answer is yes) • How to create a software RAID using Disk Utility or SoftRAID • What you need to know about filesystems—and how to choose among APFS, Mac OS Extended, FAT, and ExFAT • Why and how to encrypt a disk using FileVault or the Finder • Using iCloud Drive's Optimized Mac Storage feature If you've ever been stumped at the difference between a volume and a partition, need help figuring out whether to buy a big external hard drive or a NAS for extra storage, or wonder whether Apple's new APFS filesystem is right for your needs, this book will tell you what you need to know.

Take Control of Your Digital Photos, 3rd Edition
Take Control of Your Digital Photos, 3rd Edition

Author: Jeff Carlson

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2023-08-28

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 199078335X

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Build a stress-free workflow to import, rate, tag, and organize your digital photos! Version 3.0, updated August 28, 2023 This book gives you the information you need to build and maintain a digital photo workflow that makes it easy to import, rate, tag, and store photos to find them quickly and easily later. It helps you spend more time on the enjoyable aspects of photography—capturing and viewing your photos—and less on the mundane but essential task of managing all your photos. It also puts you in the best position to quickly find and edit your most promising photos. Are you drowning in a sea of digital photos? Unable to find the shots you’re looking for, or to stay on top of managing all the photos you’re taking? Digital photography expert Jeff Carlson gives you a plan for tackling this problem, starting with preparing your camera ahead of time, then choosing the right app to manage your photos, judging and organizing your photos, and backing up your photos for safekeeping. In this book, Jeff offers advice to cover both macOS and Windows (along with limited coverage of mobile platforms), and to address a broad range of photo management apps, including Apple Photos, Capture One, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom desktop, Excire Foto, Exposure X7, Mylio Photos, ON1 Photo Keyword AI, and ON1 Photo RAW. With this book, you’ll learn how to: • Get started with the minimum amount of work: Take advantage of software intelligence to do some of the categorizing work for you, and find out how you can accomplish some tasks even if you have little time. • Prep your camera: Learn four actions you can take before you head out the door that will make things easier after you return with new pictures. • Manage your workflow: Choose the software and approach that best meets your needs for organizing your photos. • Import the right way: Learn how to assign valuable metadata to all images that come in during the import stage, saving lots of time and effort. • Pick winners and losers: Assign ratings to your photos, and remove or hide unwanted photos. • Remove duplicates: Use Lightroom Classic, Photos for macOS, or Gemini Photos for iOS/iPadOS to find and delete duplicate images. • Use AI/Machine Learning: Learn about AI/ML terminology, and use software tools like ON1 Photo Keyword AI and Excire Foto to apply keywords automatically. • Apply keywords and metadata: If needed, manually apply keywords to individual shots, learn how to apply geotags using location data from external devices (like an iPhone), and use facial recognition to collect shots of specific friends and family members. • Search with smart albums: Build smart albums whose contents change depending on criteria you’ve specified, allowing you to find photos more easily, even in images you add in the future. • Manage multiple libraries: Use Photos for macOS, Lightroom Classic, or Peakto to manage multiple photo libraries. • Go mobile: Find the right online service for making your photos available on mobile devices, based on your needs and which desktop photo management app you use. • Protect your photos: Learn how to implement a backup strategy that will preserve all your data, not just your photos, and how to archive photos for the future.

Take Control of Your Digital Legacy, 2nd Edition
Take Control of Your Digital Legacy, 2nd Edition

Author: Joe Kissell

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2024-02-02

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 1990783295

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Preserve your data for posterity! Version 2.0.1, updated February 2, 2024 How do you want to be remembered? A will takes care of your physical possessions, but what about your digital life—photos, email, files, online accounts, and so on? If you want to pass your electronic ephemera on as part of your digital legacy, turn to tech expert Joe Kissell for advice on dealing with large quantities of data, file formats, media types, the need for a “digital executor,” and more.n We all have digital data that's important to us now, but a lot of it could also be important to our children, friends, and relatives long after we're gone. But you have to take concrete steps now to make sure that data is preserved in the right way and handled according to your wishes. It’s not all about posterity either, since following Joe’s advice will also help loved ones access your key accounts and important info if you’re temporarily incapacitated, which can happen at any time. The book will help you with these essential tasks: • Identify your key digital assets: online accounts, photos, audio files, videos, passwords, documents, email, and more. • Plan for each type of digital asset based on your priorities for today, for shortly after you are no longer around, and for posterity. Joe explains the ideal file formats to use, how to deal with social media sites, the best ways to digitize paper documents and photos, and strategies for sharing passwords with family members, among much else. • Communicate your wishes in a “digital will” and designate someone to be its “digital executor.” The book includes a template document that you can develop into a personalized digital will. • Preserve your data for the future. You’ll consider types of archival storage media, cloud-based storage services, backups, and what instructions to provide about maintaining your data as file formats and storage media types evolve. Whether you just want to ensure that your heirs get copies of your favorite family photos and a few key documents or you want to catalog and preserve tens of thousands of digital items, this book helps you make smart decisions about your digital legacy. Questions answered include: • What strategies can I use for sorting and preserving email and instant messages? • How can I ensure that my email account(s) will be available to those wrapping up my estate? • What if I have digital data that should be destroyed when I die? • What should I do with my huge photo collection (both digital and paper)? • How should I pass on control of my Apple, Google, and Microsoft accounts? • How can I make my passwords and passkeys available to those who will need them—but keep them private for now? • What should I think about when handing down purchased audio and video files? • What should happen to my Facebook account when I’m no longer around? • What choices are available for keeping my digital archive available and backed up? • How long should I expect archival media to last? • Should I write an autobituary? • Are online digital legacy services any good? • How will organizing all this stuff benefit me while I’m alive?

Take Control of Wi-Fi Networking and Security
Take Control of Wi-Fi Networking and Security

Author: Glenn Fleishman

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2022-11-21

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 1990783236

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Get more from your Wi-Fi network Version 1.4, updated November 21, 2022 Setting up and securing a Wi-Fi network can be complicated and confusing. This book helps you over every hurdle involved in picking gateways, setting up a network, adding devices, and securing the network and connected phones, tablets, and computers. It’s useful for those who have set up networks in the past and want to replace them with new gear, as well as people who have never built a Wi-Fi network before.n Perhaps you already have a Wi-Fi network running in your home and office, but you’re dissatisfied with it. Or maybe you’re setting up a new house, apartment, business, or school room with Wi-Fi and need to know the basics about what to get and how to configure it. In either case, this book is for you. After over 16 years of writing regularly about Wi-Fi and answering reader questions, author Glenn Fleishman finds that the same issues still crop up: • How do I spend the least money to the best effect? • What’s the best place to put my Wi-Fi gateways? • How can I get both high throughput (speed) on my network and solid coverage across everywhere I want to use Wi-Fi? • What can I do to secure my network against outsiders near my house and elsewhere on the internet? • How do I add networked hard drives and printers? • Interference is slowing my network; what can I do to reduce it? • What’s the best way to extend my network to a garage, yard, or nearby building? This book answers those questions in depth, as well as many others related to Wi-Fi, including how to set up a personal or mobile hotspot with all major operating systems, how to access computers on your network remotely, and why you should use a VPN (virtual private network). If you have any question about overhauling your network, setting up a new one, or just finally figuring out something that’s never worked, this book has the answer. Covers macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and Chrome OS.

Error Control Systems for Digital Communication and Storage
Error Control Systems for Digital Communication and Storage

Author: Stephen B. Wicker

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13:

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For introductory graduate courses in coding for telecommunications engineering, digital communications. This introductory text on error control coding focuses on key implementation issues and performance analysis with applications valuable to both mathematicians and engineers.

Take Control of Managing Your Files, 2nd Edition
Take Control of Managing Your Files, 2nd Edition

Author: Jeff Carlson

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2023-05-23

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1990783279

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Take the pain out of dealing with files and folders Version 2.0, updated May 23, 2023 Your Apple devices contain an overwhelming number of files and folders, and as these items accumulate, they create more work for you. Does your file management system involve throwing everything on the desktop and then pawing through it laboriously when you need to find something? Do you even have a system? There’s a better way. This book helps you organize, search, and clean up the files on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, providing practical steps and realistic strategies to save time, reduce clutter, and decrease stress.n Apple users have fantastic tools at their disposal for using, creating, and editing files of all kinds, but few of us have any real strategy for naming, organizing, or tagging those files—making them increasingly difficult to find later on. In this book, veteran technology author Jeff Carlson helps you make sense of what could be millions of files on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad so that you can spend less time hunting for things and more time doing useful work (or having fun). Jeff starts by helping you set appropriate file management goals and develop overall strategies that fit your needs and preferences. Then he gets into the details of how to use the Finder (on a Mac), the Files app (in iOS and iPadOS), and third-party tools to make sense of your files and folders and easily find what you're looking for. This book covers topics such as: • How to keep important items in sync among your devices • Choosing when to use internal storage vs. external storage (such as an external hard drive, a NAS, or the cloud) • Whether and how to use iCloud Drive to sync your files, including Desktop and Documents folders • How to create shortcuts to your favorite files and folders • Understanding how the macOS folder hierarchy works • The best ways to use the desktop • What you should consider when creating a folder hierarchy • Why and how to use tags to categorize files • How you can automatically sort, rename, and file items on your Mac • Ways you can collaborate with others on the same files and folders • When to consider third-party information management apps (such as DEVONthink) • How to find files and folders with Spotlight in macOS, iOS, and iPadOS • Alternative search tools you might want to consider • How to work your way through a long backlog of unsorted (or poorly sorted) files • Techniques for encrypting sensitive files (and other data) • Ways to free up storage space If you're struggling with file management, this book will help you get a grip on the process—and get your devices to do more of the hard work for you.

Take Control of Your Paperless Office, 4th Edition
Take Control of Your Paperless Office, 4th Edition

Author: Joe Kissell

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2024-02-02

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13: 1990783333

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Digitize your documents and reduce paper clutter! Version 4.0.1, updated February 2, 2024 The paperless office doesn't have to be a myth! Turn paper into usable digital files, reducing clutter and increasing convenience. This book helps you assess your situation, develop a strategy, and learn clever techniques for keeping more paper at bay—with detailed discussion of the hardware, software, and processes needed to get the job done. Join Joe Kissell as he helps you clear the chaos of an office overflowing with paper. With Joe's guidance you can develop a personal clean-up strategy and choose your tools, including a scanner and the software you need to perform OCR (optical character recognition). You'll also learn about devices and services for storing your digitized documents and document management apps that help you categorize, locate, and view your digital document collections. Once you have your gear in hand, Joe shows you how to convert your paper documents to digitized files and gives you ideas for how to organize your office workflow, explaining how to develop day-to-day techniques that reduce the amount of time you spend pressing buttons, launching software, and managing documents. You’ll also master paper-reducing skills such as: • Scanning or photographing documents you find while out and about—business cards, receipts, menus, flyers, and more—so you keep only digitized versions. Joe discusses a variety of mobile scanning options for iOS/iPadOS and Android. • Creating a digitized image of your signature so you can sign and share documents digitally, rather than printing them for the sole purpose of signing them with a pen. • Using paperless options for bills, invoices, bank statements, and the like. • Cutting down on unwanted catalogs and junk mail. • Switching to (mostly) paperless postal mail. • Using your computer to send and receive faxes without a fax machine, fax modem, or separate phone line. (Amazingly, some people still need to do this even in the 21st century!) The book contains answers to numerous questions, including: • What is a searchable PDF, and why is it key to a paperless office? • What differentiates document scanners from other types of scanners? • What’s a book scanner? • What if I need a mobile, portable scanner? • What does TWAIN stand for, and should my scanner support it? • Why do I need OCR software, and what features should I look for? • How do I choose a good scanner and OCR software? • How should I name and file my digitized documents? • What are my options if I need to edit a scanned PDF? • How can I automate my workflow for scanning documents? • What paper documents should I keep in physical form? • How do I use common tools to add a signature to a PDF? • How can I access my digital documents remotely? • How should I back up my important digital documents?

Too Smart
Too Smart

Author: Jathan Sadowski

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-03-24

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 026253858X

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Who benefits from smart technology? Whose interests are served when we trade our personal data for convenience and connectivity? Smart technology is everywhere: smart umbrellas that light up when rain is in the forecast; smart cars that relieve drivers of the drudgery of driving; smart toothbrushes that send your dental hygiene details to the cloud. Nothing is safe from smartification. In Too Smart, Jathan Sadowski looks at the proliferation of smart stuff in our lives and asks whether the tradeoff—exchanging our personal data for convenience and connectivity—is worth it. Who benefits from smart technology? Sadowski explains how data, once the purview of researchers and policy wonks, has become a form of capital. Smart technology, he argues, is driven by the dual imperatives of digital capitalism: extracting data from, and expanding control over, everything and everybody. He looks at three domains colonized by smart technologies' collection and control systems: the smart self, the smart home, and the smart city. The smart self involves more than self-tracking of steps walked and calories burned; it raises questions about what others do with our data and how they direct our behavior—whether or not we want them to. The smart home collects data about our habits that offer business a window into our domestic spaces. And the smart city, where these systems have space to grow, offers military-grade surveillance capabilities to local authorities. Technology gets smart from our data. We may enjoy the conveniences we get in return (the refrigerator says we're out of milk!), but, Sadowski argues, smart technology advances the interests of corporate technocratic power—and will continue to do so unless we demand oversight and ownership of our data.

Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, 5th Edition
Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, 5th Edition

Author: Joe Kissell

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2024-02-19

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1990783481

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Set up a rock-solid backup strategy so that you can restore quickly and completely, no matter what catastrophe arises. Version 5.0.1, updated February 19, 2024 Joe Kissell provides the advice you need to create a Mac backup strategy that protects your data and enables quick recovery. He compares backup software, services, and media to help you make the best choices. You’ll learn to set up, test, and maintain backups, plus how to restore files after a calamity!n Creating and maintaining a solid backup plan is essential to anyone who uses a Mac, in order to prevent the loss of important data if disaster strikes—whether through hardware or software failure, theft, human error, or other mishap. In Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, Fifth Edition, tech expert Joe Kissell explains how to design a sensible backup strategy, choose and configure the best backup hardware and software for your needs, and understand how to make your backups as painless as possible. His advice is equally useful to those who have never had a backup system and those whose backup systems are in need of an update. The book delves into the challenges presented by recent versions of macOS, M-series Macs, and the ever-changing landscape of Mac backup hardware, software, and cloud services. It explains what you need to know about bootable (and non-bootable) duplicates, backup media, and disk formats, as well as recent changes in Time Machine and the weird world of APFS snapshots. It also shows you how to include in your backups files and folders that are stored in the cloud, even if there's no local copy of them. Using this book, you’ll learn how to: • Design (or update) the ideal backup system: If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll find all the information necessary to assemble a reliable and easy-to-use backup system. If you’re updating an existing system, you’ll learn about what’s new in hardware, software, and online services that might affect the way you back up your Mac in the future. • Choose backup software: Apple’s Time Machine is both free and easy to use, but it’s not the best choice for everyone, and even if you do use Time Machine, you’ll certainly want to supplement it with other tools. You’ll learn about key features to look for in a backup app and find tips on using several popular tools. You’ll also discover the pros and cons of cloud backup services, and get help choosing the right one. (An online appendix covers dozens of apps and services.) • Shop for hardware: Depending on your needs and goals, you may need one or more external SSDs or hard drives, but the range of options (sizes, interfaces, speeds, and more) can be bewildering. Joe helps you find the best backup hardware, whether it’s individual SSDs or hard drives, RAIDs, NAS devices, or other options. • Make and maintain backups: Once you’ve selected hardware and software, you’ll need to know how to make your first backup, set up your backups to run unattended, and test them regularly to make sure they’re working as they should. This includes both versioned backups (which contain old file versions and deleted files) and—for some users—bootable or non-bootable (data-only) clones. And, you’ll learn about strategies for keeping extra backups offsite. • Operate Time Machine: If you choose Time Machine for versioned backups, you’ll learn how to back up and restore individual files, app-specific data (such as contacts), and even an entire disk. You’ll also discover why and how to encrypt Time Machine backups, how APFS snapshots work (inside and outside Time Machine), and what to do if Time Machine misbehaves. • Deal with unusual backup needs: If you deal with exceptionally large files (such as audio and video files), spend a lot of time on the road away from your usual backup hardware, run Windows on your Mac, or rely on cloud services to store essential data, you’ll want to take extra (or different) steps to make sure everything is safely backed up. You’ll also learn various approaches to backing up and restoring data from Apple’s Notes app. • Manage your media: What happens when a backup drive fills up, or becomes so old that you worry about its future reliability? What if you want to archive older files for posterity, but not necessarily maintain them as part of your daily backups? Joe explains how to deal with media management tasks such as these. • Recover lost data: Backing up data can be easy, but restoring it is often more challenging. When you discover that data is missing—whether due to a disk error, theft, or a simple mistake—you need to know the exact steps needed to recover it and get back to work as soon as possible.

Take Control of Preview
Take Control of Preview

Author: Josh Centers

Publisher: alt concepts

Published: 2023-05-24

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1990783287

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Discover Preview’s hidden features for editing images and manipulating PDFs! Version 1.3, updated May 24, 2023 Apple's Preview app is bundled with every Mac and yet many Mac users have only a shallow understanding of what it's capable of. Mac experts Adam Engst and Josh Centers have plumbed Preview's depths to create a cheerful, colorful book that explains dozens of techniques for importing, viewing, editing, and converting images in Preview. It also puts you in control of reading, annotating, manipulating, and encrypting PDFs.n Packed with real-world examples and tips, the book teaches you how to bring files into Preview from a camera, iOS or iPadOS device, or scanner (or just from the Finder). Once you discover Preview's surprisingly capable collection of image-editing tools, you'll soon be editing imported photos by tweaking the exposure, color saturation, sharpness, and more. You can even mark up your images with circles, arrows, and text, plus numerous other shapes. In the second part of the book, Adam and Josh focus on PDFs in Preview, describing how to configure Preview to make reading PDFs as fluid as possible. Since so many paper forms now come in PDF, the book shows you how to fill out PDF-based forms, complete with quick insertion of your digital signature. Those who read digital textbooks or who collaborate on documents will learn to annotate PDFs with highlights, notes, and bookmarks. You'll even learn how to create PDFs from a scanner, the clipboard, and the Print dialog. Finally, Adam and Josh cover various ways protect your PDFs, including encrypting them, restricting permissions, and redacting portions of them. Preview is a veritable Swiss Army Knife. Don't miss out on the many ways it can make your life easier, including these capabilities: • Import photos from your iPhone or iPad. • Scan paper-based documents and images. • Add a scanned page to an existing PDF. • Take a screenshot that includes the pointer. • Open hundreds of images in a single window. • Trash unwanted images with a keystroke. • Duplicate, rename, and move images without leaving Preview. • Play a manually arranged slideshow of images or PDF pages. • Resize and change the resolution of images. • Crop out undesirable content. • Identify people, landmarks, and objects in images. • Mark up screenshots with shapes and text labels. • Magnify a portion of an image with a loupe. • Add text captions and speech bubbles to photos. • Tweak the white point and black point in photos. • Make photos sepia or black-and-white. • Edit a photo while comparing it to its original version. • Export to any of numerous formats, including HEIC. • Put thumbnails, table of contents, notes, or bookmarks in your sidebar. • View search results by rank or page order. • Copy text and images from a PDF, and copy text from any image. • Highlight text just like you would in a college textbook. • Add notes to highlighted text and as freestanding objects. • Review notes in the sidebar or Annotations inspector. • Create bookmarks to pages you want to revisit quickly. • Annotate a PDF with customizable shapes and arrows. • Fill in PDF forms, whether or not they’re interactive. • Create and insert a digital version of your signature into PDF forms. • Add, remove, and rearrange pages in a PDF. • Rotate PDF pages that were scanned at the wrong orientation. • Encrypt PDFs so they can’t be opened without a password. • Set restrictions on who can perform various actions on a PDF document. • Redact sensitive information from a PDF.