Organise your digital life before NYE

SPRING cleaning doesn't just apply to your home, it's essential for your digital life too. Here are 10 ways to get your act together before summer.

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SPRING cleaning doesn't just apply to your home, it should apply to your digital life as well.

Here are some handy tips to help organise your digital life before the new year begins in earnest.

1. BACK UP

It's not sexy but it's essential. When you back up your computer it takes a snapshot of your hard drive so that if your PC gives up the ghost you can simply reload it onto a new drive and pick up where you left off. But this means you need to back up frequently to avoid losing any files.

Buy two hard drives, back up your computer on both drives and keep the second drive stored somewhere outside of your home so that if you set your place on fire, you can still recover the contents of your computer.

Don't get ripped off by electronics retailers. You can get a 1TB hard drive for about $85 from MSY in Ultimo, Sydney.

Back up your essential files to the cloud. You can use a number of services including DropBox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, iCloud and others.

2. CREATE A FILING SYSTEM

Not that kind of filing system.

Again, this may seem droll but it really does help when you're trying to track down that photo you took of your mate's 21st birthday seven years ago.

Organise your files by type and date. Create a folder for all of your photos and call it "Photos". Within the folder create new folders for every event and organise them by date.

For example 2013-10-17-Claire's Birthday.

Likewise for files organise by topic and then date.

For example > Create folder called work > save files into individual folders such as 2013-10-15-Work-Stories > Name your files by date and topic such as > 2013-10-15-Organise-Your-Digital-Life.doc.

You should have three or four main folders that house the bulk of your documents. That way your desktop or documents folders won't be choccas with files.

Back up your computer again so that these files are all saved onto a hard drive.

3. ORGANISE YOUR MUSIC COLLECTION

Is there anything more soothing than organising your music collection?

Import all of your CD's onto your computer, import them into iTunes. Download missing album covers.

Create some playlists to house your favourite songs. You can have some fun with this and create playlists like "Songs for the gym", "break up songs", "Getting ready music".

Back up all of your music to your aforementioned hard drive and then delete any music that you no longer listen to. No need to take up unnecessary space.

Once that's done take the time to reorganise your physical CD/record collection.

If you're feeling particularly self loathing you could do a Rob Gordon and organise it autobiographically.

For the less tortured you could organise it chronologically, alphabetically or theme-based (such as chick rock to the front, '90s pop to the back).

But what if - like me - you feel like your music collection is so vast it has actually prevented you from evolving? A music streaming service like Spotify can help evolving your musical education.

Which brings us to point four:

4. CREATE A MUSIC STREAMING ACCOUNT

iTunes is for your current music, streaming is to listen to music you've never heard before.

Whether it's Spotify or I Heard Radio or Rdio or Grooveshark or Pandora or the plethora of other services, a music streaming account will ensure you continue to evolve your musical tastes.

Streaming services allow you to see what your friends and other connections are listening to. What better way to find out about new music than through your friends?

You can create and share your own playlists or subscribe to ones created by your friends.

A free account will mean you will have to put up with the occasional ad. A paid account will cost you about $9.99 (prices vary depending on the service you choose).

5. ORGANISE YOUR PHOTOS

Get organised. Get your photos in order.

No doubt your phone and camera are both full of photos you've never bothered to transfer to your computer. Good god man, transfer them.

How many stories do you read about people losing everything after installing a new update or after the device dies.

Transfer them to your computer and organise them using the filing system recommended above.

Back up to your hard drive and cloud account then delete the ones you don't need from your phone or camera in order to make space for others.

6. CREATE A CALENDAR, AND USE IT

Build a calendar you'll actually use and stick to.

If you're like me, if it isn't written down, it doesn't get done. But like me, you're also lazy.

For once in your life get organised.

Get rid of your collection of Post-It notes around the house and write it in your calendar! Add birthdays, meetings, lunches, dinners and any other event you already have planned to your calendar. You might choose to use the one on your phone, or you can set one up with Google, Outlook or any number of services on offer.

Synch your calendar to your phone and email. That way you have your whole life planner in your pocket and you have no excuses left to delay committing to that dinner by promising to check your diary when you get home.

7. UPDATE YOUR ADDRESS BOOK

CamCard is one of the easy ways to create a digital roladex.

Want a promotion or new job? Your contact list is just as important as your skills.

Business cards are more important than you think but they never seem to be around when you need them most.

Take your collection of business cards and add them to your address book. If you're paranoid like me and you don't want to add them to your phone lest you accidentally pocket dial them, you can store them in an app such as CamCard.

CamCard allows you to take a photograph of a business card and then extracts all the information from it and saves it as a contact. The app does allow you to save the contact to your phone as well, but it's optional.

Google also offers a similar function in its Google Goggles app, however I have found that it doesn't work particularly well.

The app is available in the Google Play and App Store. (On the iPhone the feature is part of Google Search. Simply download the Google Search app, login and select the Goggles feature, hover your phone over the business card, hit the camera button and a).

If you're a traditionalist you could also spend the time creating an excel spreadsheet of all of your business contacts. Save it to a hard drive or USB. It helps to save your contacts as you go to avoid spending huge amounts of time manually entering information off your pile of business cards that you haven't bothered looking at for weeks.

While you're at it, invest in a Roladex to store your business contacts in. Organise them by category or alphabetically.

8. CREATE A SUMMER READING LIST

Read all of the articles.

I guarantee this will start off as a summer reading list but it'll soon spill over into Autumn, Winter, Spring and the rest of your entire life. It's good to have a reading list. It means you're always searching for new things, always aspiring to read and learn more. But make sure you commit to reading the stuff on your list. Commit to finishing something, make it a digital resolution for the new year.

Apps like Pocket will help you keep track of important stories you haven't had a chance to finish.

It's free from the App Store and Google Play.

Download, register an account on your phone or tablet. Then install the bookmarklet on your browser (unfortunately, it only works on Google Chrome). That way if you don't have time to read something, all you have to do is click the Pocket logo next to the URL bar and it will automatically save the story to your reading list.

On the Twitter app go to Settings > Services > Tap Read Later > Select Pocket > Enter your username and password > hit save.

Then whenever someone tweets a link you don't have time to read simply hit More > Pocket to save it to your reading list.

Unfortunately, there is no Pocket feature for Facebook yet so you'll simply have to click on the link and then hit the Pocket logo next to the URL bar to save it to your account.

9. LOAD YOUR DEVICE UP WITH EBOOKS

Transmetropolitan will set you free.

It's always nice to know that wherever you are, there's a good book waiting to be read.

Buy some good books off Amazon or iTunes, Book Depository or Google Play and add them to your phone, tablet, Kindle or other reading device of choice.

While you're at it, treat yourself, buy a subscription. Good writing is worth paying for.

If you're into comics, download the Comics app for your phone, create an account, browse through the vast collection of comics and graphic novels. Prices start from 99 cents.

Here are some recommendations:

Magazines: Wired, The New Yorker, MIT Technology Review

Comics: Transmetropolitan, Constantine, Hyperbole and a Half,

Non Fiction: The Signal and the Noise, The Fry Chronicles, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Don't Get Too Comfortable, Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, I am Malala, Lean In, Consider the Lobster

Fiction: The Corrections, Gun Machine, Game of Thrones series, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Other Boleyn Girl.

10. GET INTO PODCASTS

This podcast will improve your life. I guarantee it.

Podcasts are fantastic because they allow you to learn all manner or stuff you would otherwise never hear about while you're on the go.

Got a spare minute on the bus? Why not find out the folly of prediction, or how Jane Austen was actually a game theorist, or listen to Daniel Radcliffe talk pop culture or John Oliver make fun of the US and UK government? There are a plethora of things to listen to, delivered in all manner of forms be it radio documentary, satire, talk back or interviews.

Here are some of my recommendations:

Technology: Vergecast, Download This Show, Verge Bookclub, Iterate, Top Shelf with David Pierce, Tested

Gaming: The Indoor Kids, Good Game

Economics: Planet Money, Freakonomics

Documentary: This American Life, BBC Documentary of the week, Triple J Hack, Hardcore Histories, Stuff You Should Know

Movies: The Spoiler Guys, Marc Fennell: That Movie Guy, Filmspotting, At the Movies

Comedy/Satire/Current Events: The Bugle, Sunday Night Safran, TOFOP, The Joe Rogan Experience, the Ricky Gervais Podcast, Real Time with Bill Maher, Hollywood Babble On

Pop culture/interviews: WTF with Marc Maron, The Nerdist, Harmontown

Space: Star Talk with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Skeptics Guide to the Universe