EMC got a lot of attention last year when it commissioned IDC to write a report on "The Expanding Digital Universe". The report has been revised and IDC found that the amount of digital information generated in 2007 was 10% bigger than originally reported for a total of 281 exabytes. IDC and EMC have now trumped that report with the introduction of a slick little calculator you can use to determine how much digital information you generate a year.
You can download the calculator here.
There, you'll also find a link to the revised report “The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe.”
If you download the Digital Footprint Viewer, you will be able to calculate how much information you create each year – this is information generated on personal computers, digital cameras, cell phones, landlines, etc.
Versions of the Digital Footprint Viewer are available for PCs and Macs and the results are stored on your computer, not ones from EMC or IDC. For the risk adverse in the crowd, no tracking codes, cookies or tracking software is installed on your computer.
I downloaded the Digital Footprint Viewer on March 14. After filling out a lot of information on the number of e-mails I send in a week, what percent of those e-mails have attachments, how many photos do I take in a week and how much time I spend on a landline or cell phone, I was taken to other screens where I could record how many videos I watch on YouTube, and how many hours of television shows I Tivo’d each week.
The wizard calculated that and other information of my digital use and arrived at 6.31MB a day for a grand total since Jan. 1 of 489,709,750,150 bytes and still counting.
Check it out – see what your digital footprint is.