Information is all around us. There’s that picture you took at the museum last weekend, the text you got from your best friend, even the grocery list on your fridge. Technology has made processing and distributing information easier, through various means such as social media networks, mobile applications and information design. We’ll go through a break down to address the best ways to use technology to manage different forms of information.
Photos
Depending on your reason for capturing sharing photos, there are a few different ways you can go about using technology and photos. If you simply want to share personal photos with friends and family, Facebook and Instagram are a pretty easy and wide reaching way to go. If you want to share with a more professional audience, photo sharing sites such as Flickr are more geared towards handling portfolios and high resolution works.
For editing your amazing photos, software editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP are great choices to change your photos until you’re happy with them. These tools can be used by novices and masters alike.
If you want to present your photos into a final product, such as a photobook, services like Shutterstock, Blurb or even Costco let you design and print your pictures in a great formats like books, mouse pads or desk accessories.
Lists, Actions Items, Planners
So many little details of our lives manage to make their ways onto lists that week keep. These lists are usually with information to remember or items with due dates attached to them. Online services, both for desktops and mobile devices, are incredibly useful for managing these little items that may get lost, physically or in our own memories. Many phones come with a reminders app, but I’ll list some of my favorite task managing services. Trello is my latest favorite task manager. You can create boards for different areas of your life, and then create individual “card” that contain all sorts of information (text, links, photos, lists) to complete. These cards can then be archived when you’re done. You can also invite people to collaborate on some or all of your boards, which makes it great for groups or families to communicate with. AnyDo and Wunderlist are some of my favorites for mobile devices, with relatively simple interfaces and easy work flow. For larger note taking, Evernote and OneNote are two great programs that let users create virtual notebooks with different tabs and pages to take notes. OneNote has literally saved my life throughout high school and college. Think of never having to write paper notes again! The speed, the organization… it’s a beautiful thing.
Information/Knowledge
If you have information to spread, such as details for an event or information about destructive logging practices, technology has a bunch of great options to convey this knowledge. Let’s start with simple graphics. Flyers and posters are great ways to raise awareness about a topic or event with just some basic design skills. You can get fancy with Photoshop or Illustrator, but Microsoft Publisher or even Word will do just fine. They have all sorts of default design formats for various events if you need some quick inspiration. Along with basic graphics, infographics are great for sharing knowledge on a specific topic that visually appeals to viewers. People will be drawn to easy to read designs and the constructed flow many infographics follow. Infographics are also especially good to share on social media, such as Facebook or Pinterest.
If you want to get serious about a topic or idea, there are even more routes you can take. One is to try and write on some popular news websites or blogs to share your opinions. You might need to be considered a freelance writer for something like the New York Times, but sites such as Upworthy or Medium are good places to start sharing viral and impactful content. If you really want to dedicate yourself to one idea, and you have the time, you might even consider publishing your own eBook through Barnes and Noble or Amazon. The process is fairly simple, or so I’m told. Finally, if you’re building a business around your idea, having a web site is a great way to begin establishing yourself and sharing information. You can link to your website on your own social media, and people who search for information about your idea or business can find your website too. Web design is a powerful network for navigating information, and it’s only getting better and better.
So there you have it. These are just some of my thoughts about ways to use technology to handle the massive amount of information we see in our lives each day. My only other piece of advice would be to keep experimenting with technology to see what other programs or applications you might find useful or handy in the world of information!