It’s a new year, and that means it’s time to make some technology resolutions. Here are five resolutions that you may not have thought of that will make living with technology easier. I’ll offer five more in an upcoming column.
1. Download the Firefox Web browser — Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser is easier and more useful than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It’s built on an open-source platform, so there are thousands of third-party applications or “extensions” that you can download to enhance your surfing experience, such as an application that controls music or a pop-up blocker.
Different Web pages are displayed as “tabs” instead of multiple windows, and if your computer crashes while you have several tabs open, the next time you restart Firefox, it gives you the option to restore the Web pages you had up when your computer crashed. The newest versions of Internet Explorer also have tabbed browsing, but I find Firefox to be a faster browser, especially on an old computer.
2. Buy your domain name — Even if you don’t plan to put up a website, it’s not a bad idea to own the domain name of your name. You can make sure nobody else snags it and you can have that page redirect somewhere that has good information about you, like your bio on your company’s website.
With more employers and even potential spouses running names through Google, it’s important that the search results that come up accurately reflect who you are. Having a website at is a good way to make sure that the information you want out there ranks highly in search results.
3. Get a USB flash drive — These drives can be had for as little as $10, and many of them fit on your key chain. These drives are a portable, easy alternative to e-mailing files to yourself or burning a CD to transfer pictures between computers.
It’s a good idea to load them with files that you may want to keep on you at all times, such as your resume, family photos, or business-contact information.
4. Photo management — If you are like me, you’ve probably got dozens of photos sitting on your digital camera’s memory card. Resolve to get them off and do something with them. Transfer them to your computer, upload them to a photo-sharing website, print them out, it doesn’t matter; just do something. Now is also a good time to get started on scanning in all of those old photos you’ve got in a shoe box.
5. Clean out your computer — Photos, videos, music and unneeded applications — and the files that you download to install them — can slow down and clutter your computer.
Go to the place where you store these items on your computer, and choose to view them by “details,” or “list,” if you are on a Mac. Then click on “Size” to sort your items by how big they are. Try to delete as many large files as you can. If you are unsure about deleting a file, look at the “Date Modified” field to see the last time you used that file.
