Anything But Idle
Google Wants Apple iMessage to Play Nice
Google gives up on beating iMessage now it wants Apple to join Android and the Productivity News This Week.
You will hear on the audio that we refer to episode 093, but this is episode 094. It was a typo on the Show’s Agenda.
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In this Cast | Google gives up on beating iMessage now it wants Apple to join Android
Headlines & Show Notes | Google gives up on beating iMessage now it wants Apple to join Android
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
The Right and Wrong Way to Journal
The (102)5 Method Will Help You Get More Done in a Day
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout in the Workplace
What Is the Link between Exercise and Productivity?
A Quick Guide to Planning Your Year
Block Those Notifications or How to Better Protect Your Attention Span
LastPass appears to be holding users’ passwords hostage alongside more expensive pricing plans
Report: Google Pays new focus is becoming a comprehensive digital wallet
Microsoft releases Windows 11 Build 22538 with Voice Access updates and lots of fixes
What Is Google TasksBoard? How to Use It
Dropbox Releases Apple Silicon Version of Its App to Beta Testers
Business & Finance Segment
1Password Unlocks $620M Round, Reaches $6.8B Valuation – Crunchbase News
1Password continues strong enterprise push, raises new investment at $6.8 billion valuation
Productivity Resource of the Week
A note-taking app that works like iMessage shouldn’t work, but it does
Featured Story of the Week
Google gives up on beating iMessage now it wants Apple to join Android
Google is wrong. Apples iMessage is actually a failure
Google Exec Pushing RCS Adoption Says He’s ‘Not Asking Apple to Make iMessage Available on Android’
Announcements
G Suite Legacy Free Edition users are being required to upgrade to Workspace in July
Other News
Apple loses second key chip engineer this time to Microsoft
iOS 15.2.1 is released with critical HomeKit security fix
macOS 12 Monterey: New Public Beta has been released heres how to get it
OWC miniStack STX review: External storage and a Thunderbolt hub under your Mac mini
How to Track Your Sleep With Google Nest Hub: Sleep Sensing Explained
Chrome 98 Beta adds desktop screenshots improvements to PWAs and more
Chrome OS 97 is rolling out beginning the new 4-week update cycle for Chromebooks
Microsoft makes updated Notepad and Media Player available to more Windows 11 users
Android Auto will get Lyft integration and let you watch Youtube while parked
Fossil promises Alexa is coming to its smartwatches soon
New Year’s Resolutions Are Notoriously Slippery but Science Can Help You Keep Them
Echo 2 Smartpen – Livescribe Smartpen – Livescribe Inc. (US)
Workspace Organizer ‘Rambox 2.0’ Launches with a Revamped UI and New Features – It’s FOSS News
Google is preparing a new Chromecast device powered by Google TV
How to look your best on a video call
The Case for Writing Longhand: ‘It’s About Trying to Create That Little Space of Freedom’
Microsoft Releases Office for Mac Update With Full Apple Silicon Support in Excel
Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 138 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements
The Science of Achievement: 7 Research-Backed Tips to Set Better Goals
A Simple Way to Track your Habits: The Martin System
What Is a Time Audit and Why Is It Important?
The Day Is the Only Unit of Time That Excites Me
How Your Brain Shuts Down When You Focus on Your Future Self
7 Most Effective Methods of Time Management to Boost Productivity
How To Take A Break or Rest Without Feeling Guilty
7 Ways to Increase Your Motivation at Work
Harlequin Plus is a new ebook and print subscription service
Raw Text Transcript | Google gives up on beating iMessage now it wants Apple to join Android
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity. Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. I’m Augusto and we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 93. For January 24 2022. Google wants Apple iMessage to play nice. And of course, the productivity and technology news this week. Of course, each week, Augusta and I scoured the interwebs to review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And we usually started off by talking about some of the productivity blog and podcast episodes that we’ve come across that we think you might like in the first segment, which is our productivity articles, headlines. Cousteau was our first headline this week.
Augusto Pinaud 0:50
So the first article we have is from The Art of Manliness, and he’s a right and wrong way to journal. Don’t go send interesting, so nice read. But what got me obviously was the title. It is a right or wrong, I’ve been a heavy journalist, and I do two kinds of journal, the one that I’m ever going to revisit, and that tend to be handwriting, even if it’s on the iPad with the Apple Pencil, you know, I will sometimes handwrite and that is more to it’s a thinking exercise or a processing exercise than something I plan to revisit. And mostly because my handwriting is so ugly. It’s impossible. Good. But I hope to use an application called one day or day one, one day or day one, day one, day one. And then use also the one that I’ve been using for years of yours of yours. I don’t even know how many entries are in that thing. And more than go back and say let me review my journal in the past. I once in a while. As I’m journaling, I look for clues. So if I write for example, or Anything But Idle, I go to the search box and type Anything But Idle and see what I have journal about the topic in the past that said, Do you can see there that there is a right or a wrong way? And the article talks about the journaling trap? And why you know how to get the most and what are the kind of questions you do well. What if you don’t want any of those questions, or you just want to have that place, you know to vent?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:42
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any right way or wrong way to journal for everyone. I think there is a right way to journal for you. And it’s the way in which you sit down and put thoughts to an external source. And creating that artifact is for you. Your mileage may vary if you abide by the rules of the art of manliness is you know suggestions here about asking what instead of why or those kinds of things. I think it’s a good article, if you feel like you need guardrails, in terms of your journaling, if you feel like for some reason you are being challenged by sitting down and getting those thoughts out. There is also there are so many different ways in which you could do this, you could follow Julia Cameron’s morning pages where you’re just, you know, letting loose all of the emotions and any thoughts that come in kind of a fluid river of of capture. You can do this in a very structured environment like I do I have a series of questions I asked myself every day, and I follow those questions fairly methodically. There are others of us who just like you capture what’s on your mind, and you’re just kind of, you know, thought and emotion processing in a way. There’s, there’s no right or wrong way. For all of us. I think we need to each choose a way that works for us, and helps us to deal with whatever the issue or the reason for us capturing that journal. For example, if I’m writing my journal to write a memoir someday, then yeah, sure, I want to capture some of the facts along with the emotions as the article notes. But at the same time, if I’m writing, because I’m anxiety ridden, and I want to reduce that anxiety, then I actually don’t care about the facts associated with that. I just want to get the emotion out so that I can know that it’s parked somewhere, so I can go focus on the more productive aspects of my day. So I think those are the the issues. And you know, I’m not I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not purporting to tell you the way in which you should do your, you know, do your inner work, right. And so I think that it’s important for us to remember that we should do the inner work that’s going to help us be most productive and most connected to why we’re journaling. Right. So if you’re connected to journaling, for some particular reason, that I would look for articles that focus on journaling, to get to those ends to get to those, you know, outcomes. And I think that’s How I would look at it. Great.
Augusto Pinaud 5:03
So our next article is a 10 plus two times five method to get you more on the day. And basically, the method is simply get an hour divided in 10 minutes, and a gift a two minute break. And it’s a miracle modification to certain extent of the Pomodoro Technique of Francisco Cirilo, make it even shorter period. So you make 10 minutes, take two minute break, 10 minutes, a two minute break, and five times, that will make you an hour, and you then rinse and repeat to the next hour. It’s obviously thought with the idea of BIM, procrastination. We can I don’t have many activities that can be fit on those models, sadly, plus, I, you know, the half an hour works well for me. You know, the half an hour blocks, 15 minute blocks. Sometimes most of the time, it doesn’t. But 10 minutes, it’s too short for most of the stuff I do. I don’t know, what about you, but how many hours? Can you put in 10 minutes blogs? No, it’s not many for me,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:23
it would take quite a bit of extra work than what I’m already doing. In kind of my GTD inspired system, I have context based lists. So I choose what I’m going to do based on the actions that I have available to me based on those limiting criteria. And so the reality is, is that I know at any given moment, what I need to be working on based on what I can be working on. And so the idea of shoving it into these tiny bits of time, is not productive for me in the efficiency perspective, because I’ve already done the work up front in my weekly review. So I just don’t see it being useful to me that being the case, I don’t think this is lacking utility for folks, I think that if you’re going to do a much more refined concept of say, Dr. Neil Fiore’s, the Unschedule, and you want to do this in these shorter time bits, and it works for you, right, each of the incremental actions you need to take throughout your day are like little, not many projects, but basically projects that fit into those spaces that might work for you. I can’t say wouldn’t, I know that it wouldn’t work for me, just because of the the nature of my work and the way, you know, but I in like, back when I was in my real estate world, I could see were modifying this because that wouldn’t still be 10 minutes, I would still probably need a good 20 minutes to process any particular file. But then say I would take you know, 25 five, and move it a little bit closer to that concept of like 25 on five minute break 25 on five minute break, and kind of go from that perspective. And even then to this to this day, I think I still work well, when I am tracking against a 25 five schedule. And on each of the hours kind of checking in against what Peter Bregman talks about in terms of his, you know, concept of checking in each hour and spending time just to to correct course, throughout the day, you know, his 18 minute ritual concept. So I like the idea of taking those, those points to to recalibrate where you’re going in the day. And I think all of these things, all of these, these Pomodoro technique or others, is really just a matter of clicking yourself out of getting caught in the current of emotion. And just having a moment to sit back and say, Okay, let’s reflect on what I just did. Let me reflect on what I could be doing and gaining greater control based on that. So I’m, I’m thinking that’s where this provides value to people. So choose the choose the the cadence that works for you in terms of working and breaking and reflecting and planning appropriately throughout the day.
Augusto Pinaud 8:56
Yeah, I agree with you. It’s 2555. For me, I need beeps on my watch every 2550 bucks. And so
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:04
we talked about that, I believe we talked about that in a ProductivityCast episode.
Augusto Pinaud 9:08
So we have 25 from folks go back
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:11
to the 2555 episode on ProductivityCast that they want to learn more about that. Okay, on to our next article.
Augusto Pinaud 9:17
So the next one is from the novel Academy and is breaking the cycle of burn out in the workplace place. And, you know, the problem was burnout is the resting sensation that you do as a workaholic in recovery as I call myself. Okay, I have used all of those excuses in the article or some of them at least, okay, I’m the Olympian Oh, well, some people don’t get it. Okay. My family may be counting on me. And was that there was a time in my life where I work or work was day life. There was nothing outside of that and I I don’t recall for me that or not, I’m sure there were not happened when I decided to walk away from that. But there was not an incident, there was a long period of time. And then a moment I say, I’m done. And I walk away. But but it’s important, you know, now as a coach, I don’t see it as other time. But as a coach, I work more with people to find how to avoid this and how to bring you more to, to a violence stage. And something that I tell clients often is, balance is unique. The balance that works for me may not work for re may not work for the listeners, that is fine. Figure it out and define what balance means to you. And then aim to that, most likely, I still work more hours than some people want to work, and that is fine. But I get some flexibility. I get to take the kids to school I take to pick the kids to school I take to take them to the swimming, and other things I really involve in my kid’s life. That for me is developed. I don’t care about other work, I’m lucky that I enjoy the work. So I don’t it’s something that is really fun for me. But the balance came for me when I decided, okay, work me to fit into the kids is scheduled in my case, and how I’m going to have that flexibility that I will be able to grab my laptop right now. And run so I can take them to whatever activity it is. So that’s what I think is important on this article. Yes, burnout happen. They are here, what 12365 ideas that you can use if you are on those, but careful how you are justifying yourself. workaholics are great and justifying themselves.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:05
Absolutely. And I think the best advice and the articles that if you are feeling levels of burnout, kind of that that up and down cycle of, you know, manic, you know, and then depression and manic and then depression, or mania and depression kind of cycle in psychological parlance, but in the burnout, you know, you feel refreshed and then burnout refresh and then burnout in in some kind of cycle, you should probably talk to someone find, find a a trusted friend, a trusted colleague, you know, potentially seek out psychotherapy, and figure out what is causing you to feel like you’re not enough and or whatever is going on under the hood. I can’t say that that’s the case. But like there’s something going on under the hood telling you that you need to be more than you already are. And and you need someone to someone you trust to tell you that you are enough the way you are. And that is difficult, right? Because there’s some some something underlying that’s that’s speaking to you forcing you to want to work more than you need to. It might be financial, it might be any number of particular reasons. And it’s good to it’s good to talk to someone that you trust, to be able to kind of figure out what’s under the hood, and then do some of those behavioral interventions that are necessary to make yourself burnout less. And it’s not about never burning out again, because you may. But the but the point is to burnout less so that you’re capable of really having a sustainable practice that you’re not going to feel bad about yourself at the end of the day for what you didn’t do, but celebrating the successes of what you actually did accomplish in any given day. And I know that I’m challenged by that, you know, I get to I get to the end of some days, where if I don’t look back at what I have done, then I can easily work my sense of reality and say, Oh, I could have done 50 Other things, when in reality I didn’t I already did 100 things today, why am I beating myself up about the 50 things I didn’t get done when I actually got quite a substantial amount of work done. And this is one of those cases where it has nothing to do with anything outside of me. It’s this is inside of me that needs to be consistently checked to make sure that I’m in reality, which is I’m highly productive. And I did get work done. And I should value the work that I did do because I chose to do that in the moment. And I have to trust my intuition, you know, quite often throughout the day, and so I need to trust that I did the right work at the time I did. That’s why I do a weekly review. I plan out the work I’m going to do this week because it is the most meaningful work. And sometimes, at least for me, the reason I will say to myself, Oh, that felt, you know, like I didn’t do the right things is because considering the limiting criteria of what I could do in that particular time, I chose to do the things that that I needed to do because of that those things, those limiting criteria. That meant I had to push off other things. And that’s the cognitive dissonance that you feel about having to prioritize the most important thing first. And that’s always going to be the nature of it or the You know, the stuff you did was really mundane. It was necessary but really mundane, right? So you feel like, ah, you know, I didn’t do the stuff that was fun. I did the stuff that had to be done right, and sometimes just a little bit of a friction piece there. All right, on to our next article from facile things.
Augusto Pinaud 15:16
So the article, Doug says, are exploring the link between exercise and productivity and bring to two quotes. One is from a 2005 study by the University of Bristol that suggests that exercise before work or during lunchtime help eliminate stress, and boost productivity. The other one is a quote, or quoting Richard Branson, who in an interview was asked, you know, what makes him more productive, and I said, train when fit. And at least on that interview, Branson was quoting that he gets three to four hours, more productivity, because it’s the ability of stay on focus, stay concentrate. So I am not a great exercise person I have growing into understanding the importance of it, but I, I didn’t grow up exercise, I didn’t grow up on any of those. And at some point, I was too fat to do any of that. So. But he’s it is, as the article says, Well, this is a time of the year what everybody but put more exercise on the list, it is in life.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:29
Yeah. And again, the goal is to kind of push through and keep that momentum going beyond the initial kind of phase of really being excited about New Year’s resolutions. And, you know, getting fit is a start of the year kind of thing. And then it kind of subsides, you need to reengage with that process, and keep it more exciting. Even beyond that initial kind of honeymoon phase of it. In that sense, I have a lot of thoughts about exercise and productivity, I think they are fundamentally linked to each other, our biological fitnesses need to always be supported for us to be productive. And you know, like, if you don’t have the physical fitness to get up out of bed, or if you for some reason, don’t have the physical fitness to have the physical stamina, like the literal physical stamina to be able to do the work you need to do, you would figure that out. And yet, we’re biological creatures, our mental emotional health is based on our physiological physiological needs. And we tend to ignore those in deference to just the baseline stuff. And so I think that it’s really important for us to continue to explore that, you know, there’s a lot more research that needs to be done. But I think we each can individually know that a balanced diet, making sure we’re getting enough sleep, making sure that we’re active in our daily lives. Remember, humans are meant to be moving, we spent a lot of time not moving, whether we’re seated or standing, if we’re not moving, we’re still not moving. You know, so I really love my sit stand desk, I love being able to stand up. And I do feel more productive when I’m engaged in that standing position. But I’m still not necessarily moving, which is why I have my watch, timing me to move from my desk so that I’m actively moving, which inevitably makes me more productive, because just stepping away from my desk means that I’m looking at distances beyond my computer monitor, which keeps my eyes healthy, you know, like those kinds of things that are just like these little tiny interventions in keeping my whole body healthy, as I’m engaging with my work. And so don’t think that some of these things that take you away from your work, aren’t maintenance items that are helping you be more productive sustainably. So all right on to our next article from Zen Habits dotnet we have about oh,
Augusto Pinaud 18:42
Liam about the talks about what is his process of planning another year obviously start why it’s important how to deal with burnout that we just talked you know, how he plans his years so you know, reflect on the past, clear things out, imagine what it really want to start choose and create then a structure for make these plans happen. And it is important to plan where do you want to go you know, I don’t remember where, where or who said, If you don’t plan for your own path, somebody will tell you where to go and you will be doing other people calls. So it is really important. He said really many of the things of Leo i i enjoy about that. So it is a really well written article. And if you have not plan your year yet, and you have not gone through that exercise, this may be a good guy for you to go and start.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:42
Absolutely. Wonderful. Great. Next article. Now on to Charlie Gilkey, productive, flourishing.
Augusto Pinaud 19:48
Yes, so blocked the notifications. So you can get you can protect your action, spam. And you know, the reality is Companies, one that thing, one that you know, you are, if you are not careful, you will get remember the numbers now, but it was seconds, okay between one thing and the other game between email and social media and Twitter and everything else. The problem is, every time that happen, you lose the focus, we have been proven scientifically, extensively, that we cannot multitask. So if you don’t keep those distractions, if you don’t limit those distractions, what happened is, that’s what you can’t do cannot do your best job and their help available their applications on the iPad, you can select now the focus and define what has, you know, on or off those distractions, there are many things that you can do even my cell phone for years, I think I did that around 2013. So now we’re going to almost 10 years. Since I did that, I set the default ringtone to a no silence, and you need to earn the right to make the phone vibrate, but the phone is on the desk, it doesn’t vibrate that loud. So I can have it in there and then vibration I on purpose big one that is almost like that’s it. So I need to be that’s fine, leave the voicemail, send that text message, the next time that I put my attention out of that on the phone, I will find all that and then I will be able to respond accordingly. But by general rule, most people don’t make noise on my phone.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:52
Yeah, I’m a little bit more, I don’t want to say draconian, but literally, I just recently got a new laptop, which is not uncommon, but I got a new one that’s going to be a part of my regular, you know, everyday carry. And so I got the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro. And you better believe the first thing I do I have a startup checklist for all of my new devices. And the first thing is to shut off all notifications not like shut down all notifications on everything that could possibly do that, which requires a little bit of in depth looking through the system, you know, like is Microsoft Edge is going to start prompting me with things as you know, is the mail application going to start bothering me with things they had a bit of bloatware on here with some McAfee security software, I don’t want that garbage on my on my laptop. So I had to go through and get rid of that because it kept prompting me for you know, the the subscription, you know, give you 30 days or something like that. And then it was just I was like, Nope, this is gotta go. So, you know, just viciously getting rid of all of the notifications that the system could give including the update notifications, I want them to do the updates, and then schedule the the restart of the device outside of my time, when I’m sleeping, go do that stuff. Don’t bother me about it. And I think that everybody needs to kind of have whatever level they’re comfortable with. But I want no notifications. And then I want to slowly but surely bring on the notifications that I do want only on the devices that I want. And for those of you who might only be working on one or two devices, phone and a computer, that’s fine. But for me where I have six devices in front of me at any given time, I need to make sure that I’m not getting dinged in being across any of them. Because then it’s a cacophony, right. And unlike you, like I can’t even have my phone, do a little buzz, that’s enough to like pull me away, it’s just too much. And so I’m just more sensitive, I think to to those kinds of notifications than others. And so I have to make sure that I put myself into the light. So when my watch is connected, the phone needs to go silent, which is an automated connection between my phone and my watch. Like I’m I go through a pretty aggressive mechanism for getting rid of those kinds of distractions, so I can really, truly focus, and I don’t take live phone calls. Right. So that’s just a you know, unfortunately, I get a lot of spam calls that get through lately as a function of frustration lately, it’s been a lot
Augusto Pinaud 24:12
one way car insurance, I sell it to you.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:17
Right, isn’t it? I don’t understand it. It’s just a bit crazy at the moment. But anyway, um, you know, so I’ve had to, I’ve had to now go even more aggressive and, and eliminate phone calls from ringing as well. And, you know, I’m sure there’s a business impact on me because of that, but it’s just too much distraction, getting all of these spam phone calls and spam text messages that come through. So I think it’s a really good practice and a good reminder here from Charlie Gilkey to to take some time to think what is pulling you away from your attention. You know, your your faculty of being being able to attend to the thing in front of you, by virtue of these, you know, is tick tock or clubhouse or any of these other social networks. You know, pinging and digging you to come over to their, you know, wonderful, interesting posts at the moment, that novelty is raping you of your ability to do the meaningful work that you need to do. And so I think it’s an important thing to keep in mind. Alright. We have reached the end of our blog and podcast articles or productivity articles for this week, we’re gonna take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor this week, which is co working space by personal productivity club. And then when we get back we’ll cover the tech articles, our our business and finance segment, which we’ve added this year, we’re going to talk about our new tools, our new productivity resources this week, and then we’ll cover the featured story of the weekend. So we’ll see you after the break.
Sponsor Voice Over 25:46
Well, working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating. And there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually, that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core, we provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit anything but idle.com forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiast. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do to, again, head over to anything but idle.com forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:56
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith, joined with Agusta pinout for the second half of our show, which is our tech articles to start. So what is our first tech article this week? You know,
Augusto Pinaud 27:10
the the first tech article it’s gonna set because, yes, I am a user of one password. But I have also recommend last passed in the past and going to the article, you know, apparently they have been holding users passwords hostage. So it may be as the article says, well, they have a lot of bugs in the deck. Next up plugin that they have not yet fixed, or it seems different. But they seem to have the articles describing they may be violating the article 20 of the GDPR. And they are really making difficult for the users to extractor passwords and things so they can move to a different platform.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:50
Yeah, I would imagine that that I don’t know where their head is, you know, but if it’s up their rear, and they’re not paying attention to the the clear writing on the wall that that portability of our own data needs to be had than they should get pushback from their users. I’m a LastPass user and I will continue to be. But I absolutely want the ability to take my data out of their system and to migrate it anywhere I want to. So I think it’s important and imperative really, for something as important as our password management, to push against them in anything like that. And I say that to, you know, to Evernote, I say that to Trello I say that all all of them, Google has really led the charge here. And I hope that Apple steps up to the plate here, because Apple equally has not done a very good job of being able to have portability of some of the data that really is like underlying pieces of your system. And I think they could do a better job of that. But for the most part, you know, I think that we should be strong with all tech companies that we own the data that that that is in our accounts, and we should be able to migrate that data or at least have the access to it for purposes of export and backup. Just it should be trivial to do that, you know, just like Google Takeout I should be able to go to, to, you know, take out.apple.com and download all data associated with my Apple account. And and so I think that, you know, we need to we need to push back on companies a little bit more than we currently do. And we can’t leave this up to legislators. This needs to be you know, both a consumer based and business based pushback as well as a legislative piece combined. Alright, on to our next story about notion.
Augusto Pinaud 29:36
Next door is a notion and they add a new way to navigate between the databases pages do not open any database patient and click on the top left to go to the previous one. You know and work in is working no view. So again, we are seeing notion moving forward to making the application a lot stronger. No not not amused. notion user, but I know art Gelwicks, who has been hearing the show is an he was one that was really happy with it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:07
Yeah, I actually recently migrated a library over to notion to kind of play with it, I had all the records in another system. And I really liked the fact that now you can switch between the various database pages via keyboard shortcut on the Mac and Windows side. So very, very helpful to be able to switch between them. And still, I think that sync blocks in notion are so so powerful, I just love the ability for you to be able to have that sync block, and put them in multiple places and have those synchronized pieces as well. So there’s a lot of really nice features in notion, I just still think they’re too complicated for the average user, you know, notion is a is a highly complicated tool. And most people want something very simple that they can organize with. And so I think that ends up being the differentiator for yourself, if you’re choosing something like a OneNote, or an apple notes, or Evernote or you know, any of those more simplified interface, user experience type note taking applications, versus a note a notion or an air table or coda, or fibery, those end up being a little bit more complicated to set up, because you have so much flexibility within within which you can kind of organize the data. So just ends up being like, I also think about use case like I wouldn’t want to set up a library database in Evernote. That wouldn’t make a lot of sense to me. Whereas I would not want to keep a journal in notion, because that seems like over manufacturing. And I’m, you know, I’m, I’m not one to say that I don’t over manufacture my system, right? Like, I’m the first one to raise my hand. I know. But at the same time, I have to I have to put a check on that and say, No, really, I don’t want to overdo the system, I want to I want to make it right size to what I need. And I think notion is a little bit overkill for many of those things that you need. Okay, on to our next story.
Augusto Pinaud 32:04
Our next story is Google Play a new focus into becoming more comprehensive digital wallet. And even that back in October, apparently, Google Pay cancel Plex for the bank accounts and the cards and all that
Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:21
that was in partnership with Citi, right, they were working with city to do that, or a bank, they were working with a bank to bring out the Plex card. They they cancelled that project. And I think it’s because they wanted to be able to recalibrate what was going on with cryptocurrency and some other things here.
Augusto Pinaud 32:38
Correct. And then now you will be able to, you know, they’re trying to bring all that not only, you know, bring that and many other things. So that turns into your digital while they’re already doing airline passes, apparently vaccine passports too. So maybe the Google Wallet, you know, it’s going to finally come to be something a lot more powerful.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:03
Yeah, so they’re not doing those things yet. So So tickets, airline passes, and vaccine passport, all of those components are going to be soon caked into Google Pay. And I would just say that one of the things that they they have done recently is in the Google Pay application, they have kind of hidden, like my library card is inside of Google Pay. And they kind of they’ve hidden it now. So when I go to library, it used to actually prompt a notification in the top of my screen, it was really nice, very fluid. And now all those things seem to be kind of gone. I don’t like that I you know, I want to be able to scroll through my various various loyalty cards, my various library cards of which I have many. And I want to be able to, I want to be able to see those and pull those up, it is as easy as searching right, you can just go to the search bar and search for those things. But there’s, there’s a lot more like offers and sales, the stuff up front in the application, and a little less functionality up front. And I understand why they’re doing that because people just don’t even know those things are there if you hide it from them, but I hope that they can kind of get their head around this project because Google has such a strong capability of helping me with the way in which say an application like truebill or into its mint, these kinds of applications that help you manage your finances. Google has so much of my data, the financial data mixed in with it would be even more helpful to me in with the right setup, but they just haven’t gotten their act together in this category. So you know, it’s kind of just like okay, I’m using them for the NFC payments so that I can pay by phone at the grocery store. But that’s pretty much it you know, in terms of things and adding Coinbase support doesn’t doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t really care about holding cryptocurrency and Google Pay like that doesn’t that’s not a that’s not a thing I need. Alright, you know there there are plenty of sufficient cryptocurrency wallets out there, both hardware and software wallets that I can use. This seems like a bit of a A distraction, I need to see them really make strong forward movements so that I can actually be more productive with my finances. In the space I’m already playing, right? I’m in the Google ecosystem, make this useful for me, right? Make, for example, make our Google Payments profiles, operational. I mean, it just seems like so outdated, antiquated and just not very useful. So when you go to paid on google.com, from the browser, it takes you to your Google Payments profiles and shows you what subscriptions you are subscribed to, and other payment mechanisms and whatever else, and the whole system has just kind of like, come on, this could be so much nicer, right? They could bring this Google Pay stuff where they have offers to the browser, and so that I could see them and I can look at them and a little bit more, you know, I want to see it a larger screen, you know, just experience it better, and they don’t. So I feel like, I feel like they need to they need to get the Google Pay team on the same page as consumers, because it seems a bit off track here. And you know, I love Google, but come on, you know, like, let’s not, let’s not, let’s not mince when it comes to the stupidity that they have going on there in the Google Pay world. Okay, on to our next article.
Augusto Pinaud 36:15
Our next article is about Windows 11, Windows released the bill 20 258, with voice access updates, more fixes. You know, Windows 11 has been an interesting because it was something that apparently nobody wants it, but everybody’s been happy installing. Before they release it, the comments on the street and the people, I don’t know, I don’t want to install it. And the people that I know has been installed, early adopters. And non early adopters have been really, really happy with what Windows 11 has brought to the table.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:51
I think Microsoft got this one, right, which is make everybody naysay up front. And then when once the application is on the system, everybody is pleasantly surprised that it’s not breaking anything. And you know, like Windows 11, for me has been, I mean, the easiest transition from from Windows 10. From from any other Windows version, I’ve always felt a little bit of the shift of, okay, these things are not working for me those kinds of things. But really the the number one thing I recommend to everybody on Windows 11 is right click on the Windows icon. And you will find all the things that were missing for some reason in the interface. But other than right clicking on the Windows icon, really everything else about Windows 11 has been pretty much surface, they haven’t really been anything that I’ve found to cause me great alarm or great adulation, it’s just okay, it works. Everything just works. And, and so everything, at least that I use, and I’m, you know, pretty heavy keyboard user, so I want everything on the keyboard to be working for me. And I haven’t found any, you know, major issues with with regard to the way in which windows 11 operates in my day to day. So that’s been a nice, you know, benefit in the upgrade. Alright, on to,
Augusto Pinaud 38:07
to use that. He said, What is the task board and how to use it and dashboard. It’s a way to integrate your Google task and make it look like boards make it look more like Trello? Is this a solution for a problem or a problem looking for a solution? No,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:33
no, actually, this is I’m using tasks board right now. And I’m actually very pleased with the way in which they set up this application, the free version is is very generous and the way in which they have given you the capability of setting up and utilizing tasks board. But for those of you who are in the Google Tasks, ecosystem, Google Tasks has left a lot to be desired in its interface. It’s caked into very nicely into Google Calendar, as well as in Gmail, and also within its own separate world inside of spaces if you’re in the Google workspace environment. And so I like all of the things that Google Tasks represents, especially now that we have recurring tasks and Google Tasks. But the biggest problem for me is the lack of flexibility. With that interface, you can get that little tiny side static bar, and you are capable of clicking on a special link that you can find on the internet. That takes it to a full screen, you know, page, but nothing is fluid as the taskbar. And I actually think I brought this up as my productivity resource of the week, a few weeks ago. And so task board, I think is a really, really good tool, if anyone is is using Google Tasks, and they want to kind of bring Google Tasks to that next level for managing projects. And also team collaboration because the tasks board premium gives you them that greater level of of managing Google Tasks with your team. It’s really, really well done. I really liked the way in which it’s it’s implemented, the system doesn’t have everything. But it also shouldn’t in a way, because it’s just taking all of your Google Tasks data and synchronizing that so that you have a little bit more control over the visualizing of that work. Right? Well, it just like a personal Kanban system. So I really like it. I think this is a good article for anybody who’s interested in wants to get to know more about Google Tasks board. All right, next up.
Augusto Pinaud 40:26
Our next tip is Dropbox, Dropbox, I use Dropbox, I rely on that. And when they silicon, M, ones came out for Apple, so we’re not interested in that. So finally, they decide to release at least in beta. So for beta testers, right now, there is a Dropbox application that runs on the M, one on the Apple chipset, and they’re testing and hopefully soon, we will see in now the official Dropbox obligation, instead of what we’re using right now. That is the one made for the Intel chips. Yeah, I’m
Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:05
glad they’re listening to their users. And they’re responding, you know, I, you know, no one’s perfect. And, you know, we see, we see big players in the market make big mistakes all the time. And, and so, you know, I think I think fondly of Dropbox and Box and SugarSync. And many of these other applications that are challenging Microsoft, Apple and Google with their products, OneDrive, iCloud and Google Drive, respectively, it’s very difficult to challenge those companies and do well. And so all of these companies that are doing that work and doing it well, I give them great credit to, that’s one of the reasons why I give great credit to any of the note taking applications, right, because they’re challenging, again, Microsoft, Apple, and Google. And each of the them have the capability of giving away free products to their users that are very competent. And yet, some of us just don’t want to have all of our data in one system, right? It’s just a, it’s just a desire not to have Apple, Google or Microsoft, on all of us all of the time. And so I give, I give a little bit of deference to Dropbox here, maybe not so much the LastPass LastPass, get your act together, but to Dropbox, I can easily see how this is this is just an oversight on their part. And they’ve clearly made a correction. So all right, on to our business and finance segment. And so we just want to keep people up to date in terms of the business of personal productivity. It’s a it’s a big market. And I’d like to think that we can highlight here, some of the interesting things going on in the world. And speaking of LastPass, in the password management market, we’ve got a bit of news in that space.
Augusto Pinaud 42:44
So one password unlocked at 620 million round for a Series C, and that bring the valuation of the company to six point eight billions.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:00
Yep, that’s, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. Good on them. Big numbers.
Augusto Pinaud 43:04
So we are happy to see i one bathroom is what I personally use. And I’m happy to see these kinds of news means I don’t need to worry about them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:14
Absolutely. And if anybody is coming across any of this kind of business, you know, business and finance type, you know, news, please send it along to us, because we want to make sure that we’re reporting to everyone really what’s happening in the business of productivity as much as in the world of productivity. And I think it’s a really important part of our dialogue here. And it just goes to show that, you know, if, quote, unquote, a little company, like one password is valued at 6.8 billion, look at all of the other challenges in the market that may be valued equally or larger, because of their user base, you know, I’m sure LastPass is has a much larger user base than one password, I don’t really know if that’s true. That’s conjecture. But you know, you can you can imagine how much more valuation comes to those companies. And that means that they have that much more reason to make sure that they are taking care of their users. And so with that, we’re going to move on to our productivity resources of the week. And so of course, every week, Augusto and I scour the interwebs, for all the various stories and news that we bring to you. And in the productivity resource of resources of the week, we want to bring to you resources, we think you might use things that we think might be useful to you. And so the first thing is actually an iOS application. That is a notetaking application I recently came across, and I thought was really interesting. It got a really good review. And I thought I would bring it to everyone’s attention in case you were looking at this. So this is an application called note yourself. And it’s only available on iOS. So this is designed for the iPhone specifically right now. And so this developer has created this, this notetaking application that is designed around chat So kind of like some of these email applications that create a chat based functionality out of your email. So you’re, you’re emailing back and forth, feels more like texting, which for me, like kind of reduces the overall feelings of of, you know, being, quote unquote, more formal, especially internally between team members. Well, this allows you to basically chat your notes into a note system. And so they actually call the notes, chats. And I thought I was playing around with it earlier today. And I thought it was really interesting for certain types of notes where, for me, they would be ephemeral. And they’re not things that I want to keep around for a very long time. But I want to be able to just capture them in a fluid quick way on, in my case, the iPad, because I use the Google Pixel phones as my primary phone phones. So I wouldn’t use this on in anywhere that was outside my office, because the only for that, but just being able to have a place where I can capture those things that are maybe ephemeral, and very easy to capture note yourself seems to be a nice way to do that. So if anybody’s interested, they can check it out note yourself is sent to your to self is the name of the application. And it seems like it’s about $3 USD, in the app store, it’s well rated. Seems like it has a lot of neat features to come. And a nice feature happens in I forget where I’ve picked it up, it may have been tech raid radar, or in TechCrunch, or something like that, they did a really good review of it, and spoke about how well it adapted to that particular writer’s workflow. So something to check out already. Good. So what is your productivity resources,
Augusto Pinaud 46:39
mine is a physical thing. A they are the Eagle Creek, I keep pouches. And I have a bunch of them actually. And I use them to put the cables to put the things not every time I want to one to walk outside of my office, I want to carry every cable every connection that I have. So this box allows me to have them ready. So they have one for the iPad, one for the MacBook one for the other iPad, and I can just pick and choose what I’m going to carry or not carry, and leave behind without needing to open and re tried to configure every time that will never happen. But I’m having Okay, I’m going to go do I need to charger No, then I just need to bring any of this, or I’m going to do a presentation then I carry the bag that has all the connectors, the cable, the cables to power source. So I can do a presentation. And that way I have all the accessory parts, all organized in little packs that I can take in and out of the bag. So it’s been something that has helped my productivity for years.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:48
Fantastic. I have these as kind of shipping cubes for traveling. But having these kinds of like fungible packs for work bag sounds also kind of interesting to me, it’s kind of like, in at least the women’s world of like, when you call them purses, and so forth, they have those organizers, you can kind of put inside of your purse. And then that way, you can quickly switch between one fashion bag and another. I like this concept of doing this in the work setting. So you can kind of pull them out of one packet and go to the next especially as it relates to chargers, I’d like to have one package is dedicated to chargers. So I didn’t have to worry about having the right chargers. With me at all times. I have one for adapters, but not for the Chargers themselves. But I can almost see myself just purchasing duplicate chargers for every device that travels with me, so that it’s just always there in the packet ready to go. And I don’t need to think about it in that sense. So I like that. Thank you for sharing.
Augusto Pinaud 48:46
So then we come to this feature story of the week, there has been articles come and articles go, you know, the first one was on back world saying, hey, Google give up BNI message now one apple to join I message and then my world I think it was came with another article saying Well, no. I messaged not that great. It’s, you know, let’s be clear. And then later on Mike rivers also came with another article in which they talk about this Google executive saying, no, no, we don’t want them to come to the Google Store. We really want to adopt the RCS, that rich communication services protocol. But all that regardless if they go one place to the other, the reality is that it will be really nice to have a uniform, you know, something like what I have with telegram and I’ve been pushing people to telegram over text messages because of that, because how unreliable that gets to be and I remember Many years back, when WhatsApp came up, and WhatsApp was an incredible solution, especially for a person who deal more than they, their current country. So for me at that time I was doing business, you know, was many Latin American Canadian country, and I didn’t American countries and Canada. That’s what happened. But I was fantastic. Because it turned to be a more universal way to communicate with everybody, then the platform at the time, that was the BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger was the first thing that you have the ability to send messages anywhere in the world without having those ridiculous fees. When they I made such game, it was really nice. I could send people who I knew were iPhone users, you know, and I can send them anywhere without the payment. It is time that the big powers of this Google and Apple sit and define one that is universal. And it’s kind of ridiculous.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:08
Yeah, I think that the arguments against Apple having iMessage be siloed. And dominant on its own devices, is kind of a flat argument. Most of my reasoning for wanting them to integrate is, of course, is selfish, right? Like it’s selfish interest, which is that I want to make sure that I am not having to keep multiple devices, just to fluidly manage something that I don’t want to manage on other devices, right, you know, I get, I get messages, both, mostly by accident from clients. I’m, I’m training people on how to use technology, right. So I have to remember that sometimes people use technology in ways that they don’t know is going to going to work. And that happens a lot with my clients, they will message me, and because my phone number and email address are tied to Apple’s iMessage ecosystem, I’ll all of a sudden on my iPad, start getting messages, or on my MacBook, I’ll start getting messages from clients who think that they’re texting me, and they’re actually I’m messaging me. And that’s pulling things out of my world. Because my world’s not in Apple messages. And so I then have to use that as a teachable moment. Right? You know, like, Don’t message me? Yeah. Was that
Augusto Pinaud 52:25
a better world?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:27
No, not by any by any stretch of your imagination, sir. You know, like, I would rather train them on how to use telegram before I had them, you know, pull me into iMessage. And it’s not because iMessage is better or worse in any way, shape, or form other than the fact that it’s not in my system. So I’ll put up right up front that this is purely self interest in me wanting to not have to manage in that way. I think there are societal benefits to having at least an ecosystem whereby we can manage these tools together. So you know, I’m always going to be for not having Google, Microsoft, Apple or otherwise control a messaging platform, which is why I think signal and others like telegram and wire once upon a time, because now wires going enterprise, but, and certainly not WhatsApp, no offense, but I don’t want meta involved in my, in my communications life, the goal here is to basically have an independent party that we don’t have to worry about, you know, sucking that data into, you know, like, most of my chat messages are with people like you and and friends and family where it’s, it’s ephemeral messages, I don’t need that stuff to stick around forever, it’s not something that I need for those purposes. And where I do want those messages to stay around forever, I can select them, I can pin them and say, okay, save those things for later. That kind of thing. I would love for Apple and Google to work with one another purely because I think that it would open it up to a greater world conversation for many, many people who have family in different countries, and in different places. You know, Apple iMessage is just stuck being a US mostly focused thing, right? Because if you’re not a well developed nation, with a really strong telco that’s willing to work with Apple, you’re pretty much cut out of that world plus, in most of the, let’s call them undeveloped nations of the world, they’re all Android. So if you’re not working with them, then you’re not going to really have a lot of Apple devices sitting in the hands of users. And so, you know, just from a from a, an egalitarian perspective, I think it would be helpful to have an open ecosystem. I will say though, I’m pretty pleased with Apple’s bringing FaceTime to the browser. You know, I never thought that would happen. And
Augusto Pinaud 54:50
I never thought that will happen either. I see Apple fan official Apple fan. I never thought I will.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:56
Yeah, so I think I think that they have room for improvement when When it comes to opening up their services, and I think this actually also makes for a good argument because they are becoming more and more a services company, right Apple Music, the Apple TV, and more and more they are being a service focused company, not just devices, that it may make sense over time that their services then allow, like, I would love for a technology whereby I could chat with friends, maybe not me, I would never do this. But But, but like the idea of like having your Apple Music open, and being able to listen with friends who also have Apple Music, and also use chat in the same thing. So you’re kind of like in this little listening studio with your friends listening to music together kind of having a little, you know, party FaceTime, I think has some features similar to that. I know Facebook definitely has this fate fate feature in it. So why would you not want to kind of infused messaging in and across the ecosystem? And that means having your services capable of being purchased by people who are not on Apple devices? And so you know, especially with A
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