How To Digitize Your Old (Analog) Movies, Music, and Photos

Digitize Your Analog Life

In researching a client’s question about scanning documents using Optical Character Recognition, (that led to yesterday’s “quick reco” article) I came across a series of articles by Jon L. Jacobi, published by PCWorld, which is a comprehensive How To for converting your analog media into high-quality digital files.

Digitize Your Analog Life includes recommendations for the hardware and/or software you (might) need to get the job done. Here are the articles by category:

• Digitize Your Music »
  “In my lifetime, music has been delivered on vinyl, cassettes, eight-track tapes, CDs, and audio DVDs. How do I listen to it now? Usually with a PC or a smartphone, and occasionally with an MP3 or other media player. I downloaded much of that music or ripped it from CDs, but the rest of it came from LPs and cassettes.“
• Digitize Your Movies »
  “Analog movies can be the easiest–or the hardest–medium to digitize, depending on the format you’re working with. While older camcorder and video formats such as 8mm and Hi8 or VHS and Betamax tapes are easy to transfer, digitizing film can be difficult at best.“
• Digitize Your Pictures »
  “Film degrades with time and exposure to the elements, albeit far more slowly than you might imagine. Fortunately for posterity’s sake, it’s easy to digitize and even restore some of the original luster of your film, using today’s flatbed and film scanners, plus appropriate software.”
  [related: How To Scan Slides]

• Digitize Your Documents »
  “Scan your documents into your hard drive. We have tips on scanners, OCR software, Web OCR, and converting your books to e-books.”

There are many advantages to digital over analog, and let’s face it, it is getting harder to find working betamax machines, and needles for the phonograph… If you are ready to take on the project of converting your old media into digital format, reading Jon’s tips are a great place to start.

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Hotmail Account Upgrade (Phish)

Hotmail’s spam filter failed to catch this “notice” of an “account upgrade” and let it slide right into my Inbox.

We are upgrading our database to serve you better. Your Windows Live! Account details are required for the upgrade and to keep your account active.

The information below are needed urgently for the exercise upon receipt of this mail to avoid an immediate deactivation.

Name:……………………………

User Name:……………………………..

Password:……………………………

Date of Birth :……………………………..

Country or Territory: ………………….

Ensure every detail requested above is provided correctly upon receipt of this notification to enable the upgrade.

Incomplete details and wrong passwords forwarded will result in suspension or closure of your account for security reasons.
–

Note: YOUR DETAILS WILL NOT BE SHARED.

We’ll keep making Windows Live! the best email service around.

Sincerely,

Windows Live Alert Team

Microsoft Corporation

Okay… they made some text a red color..  and some text they made blue.. so it must be true..

Wow.

You know, I am almost at the point where I would not feel sorry for the victim of this scam… Anyone *naive* enough to fall for it – in 2011 – shouldn’t be on the Internet. Right?

But instead I’ll simply say: this is a CLASSIC scammer’s mass-mailed “phishing” email, hoping to snare some people’s passwords.

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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