Overview

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History Data is a methodology for managing digital recordings of real-world events. More specifically, History Data is a way of organizing, annotating, and protecting digital photos, sound files, and video files.

Do you own a digital camera, digital audio recorder, or digital camcorder? Do you digitize photos with a scanner, or digitize analog recordings with an audio/video capture board? Do you purchase Photo CDs, or receive pictures from friends via email? If so, you're building a collection of digital content that tells a story: a history of you and the people in your life.

The good news is that digital technology keeps getting better and cheaper, so over time your collection will grow into a rich history with more and more content of better and better quality. The bad news is that as your collection of content files grows into the hundreds and thousands you may find yourself drowning in a flood of disorganized data.

The History Data approach helps you get the most out of your picture, sound, and video files while keeping afloat of the rising tide of digital content:

• Organize content chronologically
  Easily locate all files from any given time period. View all types of content from all sources in chronological order - like a documentary of your life.

• Annotate content with descriptive information
  Describe people, places, things, equipment, settings, or any other aspect of your content with extensible attributes. Locate and filter files using various combinations of attributes.

• Protect content from damage and incompatibility
  Store, access, and share all content and descriptive information without any special software or proprietary file formats. Back up and convert files periodically to protect from damage and obsolescence.

The History Data methodology is so simple you can implement it entirely by hand without any special software. From the History Data home page, you can download a white paper that includes all the information you need to get started and turn your digital content into History Data. You can also download several software tools that automate key aspects of managing your content. All of these resources are available for free, so put the History Data approach to work for you today!