| High Tech New Year Resolutions |
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| Written by Sandy Berger | |
 It seems like just yesterday we were worrying about Y2K and looking forward to the year 2000. Now we are wrapping up 2008, and getting ready for 2009. A lot has changed in the intervening years. Being in the technology business, I was heavily into computers in the year 2000, but now it seems that everything has been completely computerized and digitized. The computer, digital camera, cell phone, and digital music player have become integral parts of my everyday life. I believe that many of you are finding the same thing in your lives. So it is not surprising that many of my New Year resolutions this year are either related to the high tech world or will be implemented using high tech devices. Perhaps these will give you some ideas for your resolutions: 1. Keep my inbox clean. Those of you who get a lot of email like I do, know that this one will probably be extremely difficult to keep. Other than setting up spam filters (which I have already done), there are no high tech helpers for this resolution. You have to go through all of your email everyday deleting the junk, moving things that you want to save to folders, and taking immediate action on the important email. If any of you have hundreds of email in your inbox, you may want to join me in my quest to keep it clean. In fact, keeping your inbox clean will not only make you feel more organized and less overwhelmed, but in many cases, it will allow your email program to work better and faster. 2. Organize my digital photos. I still have shoe boxes of old photographs that I need to sort, and now, I have taken thousands of digital photos that need to be tagged, archived, and organized. Of course, I should have done this as I moved them to the computer, but I didn't. So now I am faced with a backlog. Digital photography is wonderful, but now I take more photos than ever before and am faced with what to do with them after I take them. I will be ruthless, deleting the duplicates and keeping only what I really want to save. I will use the free Picasa program to tag the photos with names and places. I will print out the best to fill the many pictures frames that I have accumulated over the years. I know that this will be a time-consuming effort, but hopefully this will be the resolution that will be the most fun keeping. 3. Lose five pounds. Doesn't it see that losing weight is always on everyone's list of resolutions? This year, I'm going to use some high tech helpers to assist me. I'll use my Wii Fit as a fun way to work off a few calories. I'll be walking more with my new pedometer to keep me on track. And I'll be checking Weight Watchers and other online resources for healthy meals. 4. Clean out my old books. If you are a reader like I am, you know how quickly those old books accumulate. I could buy a bigger house to hold all the books, but I think a better solution is to sell or donate the books that I no longer want. I'll be donating most to the Given's Used book store and may even sell a few online. 5. Label everything. My trusty LetraTag labeler is poised to get a workout this year. You can't imagine how many power blocks I have that have become orphans because I don't know what device they go with. So this year, I will label everything...power cables, cords, files, gadgets, and anything else I get my hands on. I could go on and on as it seems there are a lot of things in my life that could be improved. But I think I'll stick with these top five for now. I'll let you know how it goes and perhaps you'll fill me in on how you are doing on your resolutions. In any case, I hope that 2009 will be the best year ever!
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