Housekeeping tips for your digital assets

As we tuck in the year, everyone has gone agog sending recycled digital video, audio, pictures and text in the name of holiday greetings and well wishes.

This seemingly unending pounding of the devices and in boxes with memory-draining content can weaken its performance.

To save your devices from death by this digital deluge, the end of the year is the apt time to clean out all the junk.

So, clean out all trash on your phone: Unwanted pictures, memes and videos. You will realise that much of the digital content you curate is not worth the space it is sitting on. By shoving off unwanted content, you may give your device a new lease of life, and start 2019 with more efficient devices.

SPACE DWINDLES

If you use the cloud-based email applications such as Gmail, your inbox space dwindles every time you receive an email. More than half of the emails raining on your inbox are unsolicited. Unwanted. They are garbage — forwarded litter that tickle your friends who in turn push it your way thinking that you too, would be animated.

While at it, go to Google photos and wipe out all the unwanted photos and videos.

If you don’t, you will soon run out of space and your phone will not be able to upload your priced holiday pictures on the Google Photos.

Don’t stop there: Weed out trash from Google Drive as well. Google resources are not unlimited. They fill up faster than we would expect.

The next stop should be at WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the ilk. Sweep them too. Space is expensive and there is no need to curate digital litter.

LIST OF APPS

Some of the social media platforms like Facebook have messaging apps that are probably chock-full of needless content.

If your phone is slowing down or the battery is not keeping the juice long enough, it is possible that some pesky apps are haemorrhaging your phone.

Review the list off apps on your devices and kill the ones that you don’t need. Some are running stealthily in the background, effectively slowing your phone. Find them and stop them. Or delete them.

One more thing: Remember to sanitise your phone over this Christmas. Your phone is probably your filthiest possession.

HAND SANITISER

Studies show that phones are so dirty that a toilet seat has less germs in comparison. To clean it, use a piece of cloth soaked in alcohol or hand sanitiser. You could also clean the devices with a moist soapy cloth, but take care not to squeeze water into the phone.

Parents, it is a sickening idea to give babies your phones to play with especially if they are at the age where everything ends in the mouth. Laced with dangerous germs, phones could be an effective conduit for terrible diseases to your loved ones.

Happy holidays!

Mr Wambugu is an informatics specialist. [email protected] @samwambugu2