Gadgetory

hey there and welcome to seen us the fix the show about do-it-yourself tech and how to's I'm Sharon Profis and I'm Eric Franklin this week it's all about spring it cleaning that's right we're clearing out the clutter think old computers collecting dust and managing tons and tons of emails yeah we have a lot of tips for you and it all starts with making more free space on your smart phone you know what I hate we were just about ready to download a new app on your phone but you just don't have enough space to do so what's even worse is that you don't even know what's picking up room on your phone or you do know what's taking up room but you're just not ready to get rid of your favorite apps for songs I'm gonna show you a few ways to free up space on your phone on iPhones using iOS 7 you'll want to go into settings tap general tap usage and from here you can see how much space is available in your phone how much is being used and after a few moments of calculation you'll get a breakdown of how much storage each app has taken up so from here you can see every app installed on your phone and you can decide which ones you're gonna keep and which ones you're gonna get rid of for example I was in Spain a few months ago but I'm really not using my spanish-language app as much as I'd like to so I'm gonna get rid of it and here's how you do that so go back to your home screen find the app do a long tap on it until it starts dancing you get this little X icon tap the X then tap delete and then tap remove to confirm and then click the home button after you're done another thing that takes up tons of room on your phone music but the great thing is that you don't even need these songs stored on your phone in order to listen to him as long as you have an internet connection you can delete any song you want and then stream it that takes up zero space for photos you'll want to back them up first by connecting your phone to your computer so on androids pretty much the exact same process if you have a lot of music or photos on your phone deleting those will give you a lot more space so how do you figure out what's taking up space on your phone well you go into settings tap storage and then you'll see the total space how much space you have available and you'll see how much apps are taken up so if I tap on apps I'll get a list of all the apps installed in my phone I can tap on one and get a little bit more information and also uninstall from here one of the cool things about having an Android device is that you can download a file manager one of the best is ES File Explorer which allows you to better organize an access to files and apps on your phone so those are some quick and easy tips on how to free up space in your phone so the next time you won't have to scramble we want to make room for that latest greatest app you notice something you probably want to do every few months depending on how many apps you're downloading and music as well and what's great about it is that it means you don't have to rely so much on cloud storage services you can all be saved on your phone alright it's time for a quick break and when we come back we'll show you how to clear out your junk mail and organize your inbox you welcome back if your email inbox is getting out of hand with unorganized messages and junk mail it's time for a little cleanup yeah here are a few tips and tricks on exactly how to do that if you've signed up for a bunch of newsletters and shopping sites you probably have dozens of emails coming in daily once and for all here are a few tips to help you organize your inbox and keep it clean first unsubscribe from any unnecessary marketing emails my favorite way to do this is to head to your inbox and search for unsubscribe then open up one of those marketing emails or newsletters scroll all the way to the bottom where it's probably hidden hit unsubscribe and then it'll take you to the website to complete the process as an alternative you can use a service like unrolled dot mean it's designed to automatically gather all of the newsletters and emails you're signed up for and help you unsubscribe from them in one fell swoop so does all the heavy lifting for you so I had to unroll dot me log in with your email select the mailers you don't want to receive anymore and you're free from any future junk once you're clear of all the junk the next step is to organize your inbox one of the best ways to do this is by using filters with them you can make any emails from a specific sender automatically labeled sent to a folder archived or even forwarded to another account I'm using Gmail but this feature is available for most email services to get started I'm going to make all of the emails from my friends sent to a friend label so I'll select a few emails then I'll go up to the more tab and select filter messages like this then in this screen I click create filter with this search and here I decide what I want to do in this case I want to apply a label so I'll check that box hit new label call it friends create and now anytime I get emails from those people they'll automatically be labeled as friends another way I keep my inbox really clean is by using shortcuts it helps me sort through new emails really quickly and helps me reach inbox zero at the end of each day which means my inbox is empty here are some of my favorites you can use J&K to scroll through your emails if you want to select an email click X then from there you can hit e to archive the email l to apply a label or hit pound to delete it so those are just a few tips to help you keep your inbox really clean and organized so that you can focus on the emails that are really most important and you know the best part about clearing out all of your messages is that if you have the Gmail app on your smart phone and you reach inbox zero it'll tell you to go enjoy your day that's nice yeah I love it it's like a little reward it is you know I'm an old PC guy so if you have an old piece see sitting around your house taking up space we're gonna show you exactly how to get rid of it while protecting your most important files in a time where everyone seems to be getting by with their smartphones and their laptops and their tablets the age of the home desktop computer seems to be coming to an end that's it I know it can be hard to let these things go I mean I probably have all my important files on this thing backed up to a cloud somewhere my photos are on Flickr my documents are on Google and my music is stored on at least three different music services somewhere but there's something comforting about having my files nearby even on an old clunker like this so how about we compromise I'm gonna show you one of the best methods I've found so far for backing up all your documents and files on your old desktop computer and clearing out some space in your home decluttering your desk and putting this thing out of this misery alright now before we get started let me be really clear about what I'm doing here I'm not making a backup of a vital computer that I use every day that's a whole other project what I'm talking about is a computer you haven't used in years maybe even decades you're tempted to just get rid of it but there might be some files on there that you want to reference later on but you don't have the time to go sort through it all and figure it out so here's what I recommend we're gonna migrate the data over from this computer onto a network attached storage drive in this case we're using the WD my cloud a two terabyte drive here that I'm working with for 150 bucks the other competitors out there like the Seagate central but the WD mikroc a more highly recommended by Cena and once you set this up it's gonna pull over all the data all the files from your home computer and move them onto the drive and it's gonna organize them automatically and when you're done instead of the files being on some portable hard drive that you're gonna misplace the files are gonna live on your home Wi-Fi network where you can access them at any time from any computer even a phone or tablet and from anywhere in the world first step is you're going to find your home's Wi-Fi router and make sure that the my cloud is plugged in nearby because this thing actually plugs into your router and not directly to your computer you're gonna take the included Ethernet cable plug it into the my cloud and plug the other end into your router on a free Ethernet port and you're good to go next you're going to head over the computer that you're backing up and Club WD comm / setup /wd my cloud from here you're gonna download the setup software run it and then watch it find the my cloud storage drive on your home network using the software you can be prompted to plug in your name and email address in order to personalize this and then when you get to the end you're going to be prompted to download an additional desktop application and the WD smart wear application which is pc only the desktop app lets you transfer files manually just like a standard hard drive the smart wear app though is the secret sauce that automatically organizes all your content before transferring it over to the my cloud it's PC only though so Mac users are gonna have to either embrace the chaos or organize manually since this is a PC I'm gonna use the smart wear application to create a one-time backup of my computer it's gonna graph out all the different kinds of media it's gonna move over and it's a lot of stuff you do just as well to let this thing run overnight alright now once everything's transferred over it's time to jump on to your preferred laptop computer tablet or smartphone and check to make sure that everything is transferred over that's important to you you can download the my cloud application for Mac or PC or iOS or Android open it up noodle around and make sure everything important is there finally before getting rid of your old computer you're gonna want to make sure to clear all of your personal information off of it before handing it off now to do that you can dig up your old installation this for your computer if you still have them and do a full format and reinstallation of the software or you can dig up a copy of Derek's boot and nuke online and burn it to a CD our that's another way to go if you feel an extra geek geek or you can find a recycling center that will destroy your hard disk as part of the recycling process so there you go that's how to give your old desktop PC new life on a network attached storage drive giving you some extra peace of mind and look at this some extra room on your desk that's it for this week's show hopefully with some of those tips your tech is filling a queen and refreshed you want to send us feedback you can tweet me at lead opal and you can reach me at Sharon Profis see you next time bye guys you