March 9th, 2009
Bye, Tech: Dealing With Data Rot
I caught another one of David Pogue’s great stories on CBS News this weekend. Thought I would share it.
Read story: CBS News
David, a blue-chip tech journalist for the New York Times, has been a consistent aficionado on home movie film, video, and photo media preservation. This story is one of many stories David has covered on this relevant and hot topic.
Bottom line, David — like me — respects the urgency and the challenge of making sure treasured personal media is brought back to life and preserved digitally — so it can be enjoyed and shared as much as humanly possible. That’s our mission at iMemories — and a personal passion of mine.
As a comment to David’s piece, I will say that with modern digital standards (uncompressed digital videos and photos), once media is converted to a rich, high fidelity digital format, it’s quite easy to make sure that it never goes away. Even if the file formats migrate or shift in the future, digital files have the luxury of being able to be converted easily, before it’s too late, to a current file format. If done properly, this ensures longevity without loss of fidelity. And, there’s one thing that’s for certain — digital is here to stay.
