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Old 08-10-2008, 10:43 AM   #1
Bob Russell
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File rot? - NYTime's David Pogue wants to interview you for TV!

Well-known New York Time personal technology writer, David Pogue, is doing some interviews in advance of a CBS News Sunday Morning show about how people are losing important personal data. The reason? Always changing data formats and storage media issues. While he doesn't specifically mention DRM issues, I'm sure it will be deserving of a prime spot in his story.

Most likely, there are readers here with legitimate collections of personal files, pictures, music, home movies and of course e-books that have been lost because of various problems associated with storage and formats.

In fact, I've recently done what I could to try (unsuccessfully) to recover some lost photos and a memorial tribute video for a family member. He recently served overseas and lost someone he served with, and these are the surviving memories, as well as the tribute he had created. Unfortunately, the hard drive didn't survive the harsh conditions and professional recovery services run something like $1,000 even with military discounts. It's especially sad because I'm sure this sort of scenario happens to multitudes of people, and we're only on the "front end" of the danger curve. The average person doesn't go to the trouble to do backups of their files, and even those that try to do backups are still bitten by data loss.

Assuming he is still collecting stories, be sure to contact David if you have a significant loss that would be of interest for a news show. Every bit of publicity for this topic is a step forward. Here's the full blog entry "Casting Call!" from July 30...
Quote:
So, I’m preparing a story for CBS News Sunday Morning about data rot/format loss: how the never-ending succession of recording and data formats can leave important memories and documents unplayable.

I’m looking for someone we can interview. Someone who has recordings or data files that are COMPLETELY unplayable/unopenable. Maybe the data files are fine, but the software that can open them is no longer available. Maybe you’ve got films or tapes in some oddball format that you can’t play anymore because the playback machines don’t exist anymore. (16-millimeter film reels, Betamax tapes, 3.5 or 5-inch floppy disks and 8-track tapes don’t count; those aren’t made anymore, but they’re still findable if you’re determined.)

Also let me know if you have recordings that have completely deteriorated with time. VHS tapes of a wedding, maybe. Or important audiotape recordings.

If you’re up for it, and you live in NY, LA, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., or Dallas, drop me an e-mail at pogue@nytimes.com!
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