Google Drive Gets Search Chips, and the Productivity News This Week

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

What I Learned During My Three Days Offline

Want to Be Happier, Healthier, and Wealthier? Science Says Start Seeing ‘Future You’ the Right Way | Inc.com

Procrastination is Not Your Enemy

The death of offices and the rise of remote work could mean someone with your title makes 20x more than you

Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Dolls Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022

Google wants Chrome to become your preferred password manager

Chrome could soon give you greater control over bothersome compromised password warnings

Barnes and Noble is bringing audiobook support to their Nook App

Barnes and Noble will releasing a new e-Reader soon

Bring More Work Together In Trello: New Workspace Calendar, Saved Views, And Dashcards

Ex-Googlers resurrect Google Inbox interface as “Shortwave” email – Ars Technica

Fantastical BUSY/FREE

Google Drive Search Chips now generally available for all

Google Drive just got a huge upgrade — and it will save you a ton of time | Tom’s Guide

Task Management and Time Blocking  Summit

Google Updates Smart Canvas for Workspace: 10 New Features to Try

The new Kindle Home Screen is tied to user accounts not the Kindle itself

Cameyo joins Chrome Enterprise Recommended Program

E INK has attained Dark Sky Certification

First Look at the Bigme Carve Color 10.3 Kaleido Plus E-Note

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00

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.

Augusto Pinaud 0:13

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:14

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 98 for February 28 2020, to our last day of February, for those of you listening to the podcast, of course, as your first day of March, but today’s episode is Google Drive gets searched chips, and the productivity and technology news this week, of course, each week, Augusta and I read and review the headlines across productivity and technology related news. And we come up with this shortened list that we share with you and discuss. And so we start off with the blogosphere and the podcast world. And so Augusto, what are our stories this week, our first story this week in the blogosphere and audio sphere. The

Augusto Pinaud 0:55

first one is a story of a nightmare. A sorry, no, no wrong article is come from Ratatouille, and he says what I learned during my three days of life. And I mean, for many people that will be a horror story, not begin their phone not having access to their stuff online. The reality is, there are more bad habits as the author share in the article than the goods habits that we have from technology, you know, I left one. So one of the things that I missed the most was the weather. And it’s true, you know, you don’t watch anymore, anything in the news or anything, you just bark on any device to get the weather and you can get as many times as you want. But for other things, it was really interesting. When I mentioned you know, when I finished task, I discover a void. And emptiness that before was done by my phone. Let me pick my phone and see what emails or what else has come and say related to the article and I was reading the article made me think and what else do I need to remove from certain devices? You know, I don’t check email on my iPhone, for example, and haven’t done it. For years, I have an iPad, and my iPad is my machine. That thing is with me most of the time. That’s where I check email. But what else do I have that should come out of these devices to increase the focus? You know, one of the things he was saying in the article is, you know, I went, I was able to engage better in my reading, I was able to meditate better. And as a person who has multiple devices, it made me think Well, should I start giving the iPad Mini a similar treatment than what I gave to my phone and start reducing the thing so that way I spend more time doing the things that I want to do on that device as reading on other things.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:59

Yeah, I thought the article was interesting. I enjoyed the checklist he created because it gave me it gave me pause and reflection time in terms of what are the things what are the boundaries within which I allow the internet and specifically my my phone into my world I don’t I’m not particularly bothered at all, by my larger screens where I’m doing purpose driven work. It’s the phone that can drag me into the things that could be considered distractions. And so being able to go through that checklist and think, Okay, what are the things that would be applicable to me, I think anybody would be wise to look at that list and create their own list for themselves is very, very useful in that sense. All right, going from what I learned during my three days offline, to being happier,

Augusto Pinaud 3:48

one to be happier, healthier, and wealthier. Design says start seeing the future the right way. And it’s interesting article talks about how people see themselves in the future, you know, and basically said, you know, that based on the answer and the questions tended to put in two basic camps, the people who see you the same, and the people who see that future person completely different. And before reading the article, you know, I automatically put myself I’m on the camp who will see myself completely different. And it’s true, even if I go you know, 20 years back, it is completely different. Okay, just let’s begin there is 200 and something pounds less. Okay. What it was, I mean, I better health, you know, doing a work that I love doing so many things. So, as I’m reading the article, say, well, the people who think that is going to be different, you know, tend to be less responsible than the people who think that things are going to be the same. And those really interesting, because it was a big dissonance with me. But I agree on the responsibility part. Yes. If you ask me, where do you expect to be in 1015 or 20 years? It’s a different place than where I am. But I’m also have a plan for how I hope to get there in the next 10 years, or 15 or 20. What is the things that I’m working on? To be able to get there? I’m not expecting that they’re going to be the same.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:35

Yeah, I would, I would recommend anybody who’s interested in this kind of article to look out the lookout for the book when, by Dan Pink, and Daniel Pink has written the book when and I think it there’s a lot of, I think overlap here with regard to how we see our current self, how we reflect on ourselves and how we think about the future. And so good, good, interesting article by Jeff Hayden. All right, on to our next article,

Augusto Pinaud 6:01

procrastination is not your enemy. I didn’t did not read this article. No, procrastinate about it. But but it’s a good point, we put the procrastination as the enemy. And we were always trying to sell well, if you beat procrastination, you will have no more problems because procrastination is the biggest enemy. And it’s a problem. Yes, it’s a problem that you solve will solve every problem. Now, not only it had sometimes, as the article says, procrastination is a good thing. The issue for me and the article don’t go into that is when is conscious procrastination and when is unconscious, procrastination on the article identical take action, you know, get your list divided into four quadrants, you know, important and urgent, important and urgent, unimportant on an urgent and unimportant and origin. And, yeah, it sounds really easy to get your task and split it on those for my experience, life is not easy. Okay? But on what are the reasons you are procrastinating? But what I will say these days, if you find yourself procrastinating on many tasks, find out the why. But no, why am procrastinating on all these things? No, no, grab one by one and spend time looking into what he because they’re, in my experience three things. One is you don’t know what you’re doing with what you need to do to get that task moving forward. And that is the first one you know, you see a thing. David Allen, his books are programmed, tell the story will you know change tire? Why you haven’t changed the tire? I don’t know. Why do you think I need to gold Ray? Okay, because Ray recommend this place. Okay, then the next action is not changed. Dyer is called Ray, how many times you’ve seen ray in the last seven days? Well, at least one last week when we record the show. But that is the first one. The second one is understand is something emotional with the task. Okay? And if it’s something emotional, what can you do? Or not do? Okay, beating yourself over assumption emotional a task is not going to make the task better. And the third decision is, is this the moment to do this task? And sometimes the answer is no. No, yes, it is in the system. Yes, I should be doing but there is intuition something telling me? No. Well listen to that. And but be aware of why you are procrastinating. And the moment you understand that procrastination can be used to your on your behalf.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:03

Yeah, I mean, this this again, you know, is one I think tactic for or one strategy for addressing procrastination, what you’re talking about are some others. And I think that generally, you need to look at this from what’s what is your set of symptoms? And how do you approach it with the right as we talked about in kind of cycle psychology and psychological parlance, you know, behavioral interventions, what are the things you’re going to do to address these these issues? And I think then you can put together the right recipe of things to be able to get at the heart of why you’re doing procrastination, why you’re procrastinating in, in the way that you are, and if it’s actually hurting you, like many times we think about procrastination, we think of it as deleterious. But in reality, it’s not actually harming you in any grand way. We want to focus on the things that are actually causing you to to not optimize your world and if that’s not actually impacting you there, then I’m not too worried about it for most people. It’s when it becomes It becomes dysfunctional that it becomes really a problem. And since I’m in a feeling of of sharing books, again, I think, you know, the now habit by Dr. Neil Fiore is really, for me the, the, you know, seminal work on this topic for being able to think through, what are you doing in terms of procrastination? And how do you create strategies or in this case, you know, the various strategic moves that Dr. Fiore talks about in terms of overcoming procrastination. All right, on to our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 10:29

Our next article comes from Yahoo Finance, the deadly emphasis on the rise of remote work cool mean, someone was your same title making 2020 times more than you. And, yeah, make a good point. But that’s the reality today in the office, I don’t know for everybody, but when I, before I had my business working on an enterprise, as a salesperson, there was people same title, sales manager sales, doing 20 times more, 20 times less, that’s, I don’t think that’s a effect of remote work, I don’t think that’s an effect of not people going to their office, that’s an effect of the talent and the results these people will bring into this. What is interesting, and I agree with the article is that I’ve been saying this for years, as soon as companies start opening the frontiers and opening where they have, they are going to start finding a much more interesting, full of people, where they can get better talent, you know, anywhere, it’s, that’s the future, I think,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:41

it’s gonna be difficult, I think, just generally, for everyone, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, right? This is a, this is a period of time of dramatic change. And I don’t know how it’s going to fall out, I don’t, I don’t know how it’s going to work out in essence. But outside of fortune telling, I can, I can understand a couple of things. One is that we are in an in a time when companies right now are reckoning with what is the appropriate pay for individuals who are living in one place where the economic standard of that place is, in essence, lower than the amount they’re being paid. So you know, if you if you if your cost of living, or what they call a cola, if your cost of living is, is x, and you’re making x plus y, by being in, you know, by working for a company, but living in this lower cost of living environment, they’re trying to grapple with that point, right? Because they don’t want to pay you that much more. That means some people are getting paid decreases. That’s demotivating. And then, of course, there’s the productivity component here, which is if we have people who are much more highly productive than their counterparts with the same title role, what have you do? Do we then pay them less for being less productive, and pay the people who are more productive more? And what does that really mean for the the individuals who are going to become aware that, you know, Joe, or Sally or Bob are making way more money than me, and I feel like I’m doing the best work that I can do, right. And not everybody can produce the same results with the same resources. And I don’t necessarily know with that level of identification of productivity is how you identify how much you pay a person to live a standard of life. So I don’t know, I just like literally, I don’t know if that’s the right metric to set standards by, I know that I have my own standards set by my own levels of productivity, if someone arbitrarily came to me and said, arbitrarily, but even if they had a some kind of algorithm, and came to me and said, hey, you know, what, Ray, you get x number of output in regard to your company, and I think you should be paid less, when I’ve decided that I should be paid the same amount I was making, I think I would leave that company, I would, I would start looking for another job that appreciated the work that I did. And even if they said, you know, hey, you know, Joe over here, and Sally over here are doing, you know, to x your output. And so, so why is that being the case? And, you know, it could be I’ve a bad supervisor, I have really lazy direct reports, you know, like any number of things that are causing me, in my particular, you know, channel to be less productive than my than my counterparts have the same title. So I’m not quite sure the algorithm should be so rudimentary. So I think we should start thinking through how we do this. I think different companies are going to try different things, just like we see with the four hour, the four day workweek, and, you know, all kinds of machinations of different work styles of hybrid and remote work and so on and so forth. You have to test things. We’ll see what works, and we’ll see some level of consensus across Corporate in enterprise environments. So all right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 15:05

So our next story is from Julie vestry, and he struggled to get things done paper goals, advice and Task Manager, oh, and talk about the summit, but really like this, this article, because comes into a point that we have come to, to ignore, or at least I have come to ignore. And is, there isn’t me going in, you know, things change, but we went into this change from whatever we were having to this pandemic will thing and, and right now, we have been trying to play whack a mole for the last years, you know, we’re ready, and we pulled ahead of the curve, he doesn’t add on, send us back. And as of the pandemic has worked, and people have made it work. That doesn’t mean, I remind people, you know, we were going into this for two months, great pandemic was going to be for two months, and we’re now over two years. So are we going to plan to continue this life or we are going to plan to go back and I think, as we seem to be closer to some kind of return, this has produced really break the systems that we somehow put in place and increase the expectancy of coming to an more normal life and all that and it is causing issues across the board. So I really like you know, what, Julie has, you know, put a structure in your life, you know, enhance novelty, you know, create a vivid sensory clues for passing time, you know, get what, you know, you need and take a technology break, I get it, not everybody will I will not but think about it, what is your relationship with technology? And based on that, you know, look where you are, you know, and, and as she said at the end of the article, maybe you are stuck in the past. You really are looking forward to going back to December 2019, or you’re looking forward to April 2022.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:21

And she makes note of the task management and time blocking summit 2022, which is starting this week, and we’ll talk about that in the announcements of gusto. Yes. Okay, wonderful. So, with that we have reached the halfway point in the show, so to speak. And so we’re going to take a break from the show right now for a word from our sponsor. When we get back we will cover our technology articles, our productivity resources of the week, and then our featured story this week, and so we will see you after the break. Well,

Sponsor Voice Over 17:48

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:58

Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined with Augusto Pinaud for the second half of our show. And we’re going to get into the technology articles this week or productivity related technology articles. Who Cousteau what’s our first article?

Augusto Pinaud 19:11

So the first one is how Google wants to become or seems to want to become your preferred Password Manager. And they’re really making efforts. Last week we talked about their two former indications. This week, we’re going to talk about Google wanted to help you control create better passwords, use better passwords. And as I recommend external applications LastPass or one password specifically, I think it’s good that Google is quote unquote, forcing people to save their passwords in a more secure way. Using them it’s at least the users that use Google Chrome because otherwise people passwords will continue in under the keyboard, you know, and being 123 password

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:06

or password on a post it note on their on their monitor. If you don’t how many of those I see, when I when I go into clients offices, you know, they have a little posted and it’s you know, the password to the computer is sitting on a posted on the screen. And yeah, I think I think anything is better than nothing. You know. And I think that it’s good for Google to be making these inroads. Again, I think your recommendation is my recommendation in terms of having an external Password Manager is a little bit more work in the upstart cost, but the the back end, savings and time and energy and so on so forth is so remarkably, more powerful if you have that external tool, because your passwords are locked inside of of your Google account when you use Google as the password manager. And it’s just much more helpful to be able to have a tool that sits on your operating system, and is capable of helping you access and log into any application on both desktop and mobile. And so I just I really like having an external Password Manager for that reason. That being said, like you, I laud Google for making the efforts here, including being able to add notes to your account, so that you can add some metadata associated with this particular saved item. Many times you know, your username and password is not all that you want to save related to that thing you want to log into. And now they’re giving you that other place, sometimes there’s a secret, you know, question that you need to add a secret security answer to, and you want to be able to put that somewhere. And now having a note field is really helpful there. So really pleased to see this coming to Chrome.

Augusto Pinaud 21:48

Next, I’m untitled with was that, you know, soon you Google Chrome will give you more control, you know, not only he will check if your password has been compromised, but it will let you know that, you know, it’s compromised, you will be able to even go if you don’t want if you’re aware if compromised, and you don’t want to change it for a refund. But I don’t understand. But I have patterns. So I see it. Okay, they will be able to go and toggle that off. So they don’t get the notification consistently. for that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:22

Well, I will I will explain this as one of the Google Chrome product experts. You know, I volunteer in the Google Help Forums, to help folks with these kinds of issues. And this is not necessarily that your password has been compromised, but that Google is alerting you that you’ve shown up in one of these lists. And so, for example, I get these accounts, notifications all the time, I have changed my passwords, I have done all of the sanitisation I need to make sure that I’m secure. But Google Chrome, if I allow it to will continue prompting me with notifications. Because these databases are still prompting them that you’re caught up in some in some some kind of breach. It’s being able to mute those breach notifications that you can do now, virtue, these new virtue of these new features. So it’s helpful on a level, I think it’s absolutely helpful on one level, it’s even more helpful to mute the damn things when when they just keep pinging you over and over again. And you know that you’ve dealt with that particular issue. So very, very helpful. But

Augusto Pinaud 23:19

my concern is a B boys going to mute it, because they’re going to dealt with that later. And we’ll never have

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:24

now of course, of course, there’s always going to be that level of willful ignorance, I suppose. And you just you have to overcome the desire to set this aside, because the longer you wait, the more likely it is someone who is a bad actor, you know, basically a cyber criminal is going to go out there and exploit you because you’re low hanging fruit. So it’s well worth dealing with upfront. So from Google Chrome on to Barnes and Noble.

Augusto Pinaud 23:48

So Barnes and Nobles is bringing out a book support to their nuke application. I wasn’t aware that they’ve been selling out ebooks since 2014. I am not a big customer of Barnes and Nobles, apparently, I wasn’t aware of that. But they are integrating that with their nuke region application in the iOS, so you can now be able to see, you know, both things, and in one place. Yeah,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:19

I think this is this is gonna be great, especially for folks who have a Barnes and Noble membership. And they’ve been, you know, all along, not able to access their audio books inside of the Nook application. So I think this is really great. It’s a great step in that direction. And, you know, I’m not a big Barnes and Noble NIC user, but it’s still nice to know that that’s going to be available to people now. Next up,

Augusto Pinaud 24:45

so our Nexus also in Barnes and Nobles, they seems to there’s rumors that there is a new device coming in. So they got the certification and They seems to be for the for the specs, you know, pretty interesting is faster. So it has memory. So there is not a lot of information yet, but seems like they are going to or the author of the article things that they are going to continue in the tree excuse settings, and they have. So this model should fit, you know, to cost under 99 bucks. So that way they keep, you know, their 99 foot 149 and the cheaper one, and go and compete with Amazon because Amazon is been selling these devices for nothing. Recently, the Kindle Paperwhite was selling for 20 or 30 bucks, I almost get one because just because it was 20 bucks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:52

Yeah, and I don’t know if it was last year that I swapped out my Kindle Paperwhite. Just because the one that I had purchased prior to that had half the memory than the one that came out just a few months later, they just basically doubled the memory on on the device. And it was worth just swapping it out to get the get the newer version for the capacity. And so these devices are becoming less expensive. But as you are want to note, the competition I think is really good for us here. Because what it’s going to do, it’s going to light a fire under Amazon, to look at their Kindle devices and to start pushing more of the innovation faster for us. And so I’m I’m glad to see Barnes and Noble making that those those inroads. All right, onto some Trello news.

Augusto Pinaud 26:38

So Trello bring more work together in Trello, the new workspace calendar save us on dashboard. And I’m going to let you talk more about that Simon, no big heavy user of Trello, to be honest with

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:52

you. Yeah, so So the primary thing that we’re going to see is that we now have the ability to have a calendar for a workspace. So this is really great, because workspaces contain multiple boards for a team. And now you can set due dates on particular items. And now you can see that in a in a master calendar. You can also see this in other types of Trello views, whether that be table timeline, a dashboard and maps view. And so this gives us just more flavors of being able to see embedded cards within boards on a higher plane, and integrated between different things. So say you had five or six different project boards. And now you want to see them all in one space, what Trello is doing is giving you these Trello views to now see those integrated with each other across the various boards. And so I just think it’s really great to be able to see what you have going across a workspace and then to be able to see that and, and so I’m just really happy to see this, I think it’s really a nice kind of flavor for being able to see what’s going on. And you can filter these things. So you can say I only want to see these particular items on this workspace calendar view. And that I think is going to also be very helpful because you can actually look at, say milestones across all of them, as opposed to each and every single card that contains a specific due date. So this is this is the next generation of really project management on on the on the clear and classical sense of it of project management. So you can go ahead and say, Okay, this is what needs to happen in this way. And, and then they’ve also announced dash cards, and dash cards are something that I have not yet looked into in great depth. So I can’t speak to dash cards, but dash cards are a new power up. And they’re supposedly a way for you to be able to create a attract work. So you can actually identify what is going on, on a particular list. And, and by moving things from one list to another, these dash cards are updating in real time to be able to give a visual cue as to where you are. So they can actually display how many cards match a particular filter within that list. So you can say, Okay, if I’ve labeled something, a, then when I put when I create that dash card, any thing that’s labeled A on that list will show up as a count in the number display for that dash card. So I see so many really great opportunities for that kind of thing. And we’ll see what happens I need to play with it a little bit more, I need to see how it works in my own system in my own, you know, Project boards, and then I’ll be able to know a little bit more whether or not it’s useful to me, but I’m very, very interested in seeing how dash cards become more useful to people as they’re as they’re using them. And so if you are using dash cards or start to use dash cards, let us know your experiences because we’re really be interested in hearing them. Alright, we’ve reached the end of our technology related productivity stories. And that brings us on to our productivity resources of the week. And so, every week Agusta and I score the interwebs. For stories sometimes, there are busy news weeks, and sometimes there are slow news weeks. And but either way, we come across many different productivity, tools, apps, resources, books, and so on, so forth. And so we use this time to really share with you one each that we think you might like. And so I’m going to bring up the resources. And I apologize, I did not do that before. It seems to stagger my system when I do this. I can’t see my keys. Alright, there we go. So the first one I wanted to bring up is a tool called shortwave. And shortwave is basically a resurgence of Google inbox. And so for those of you who have in the past used Google inbox, which was basically G mails, other application for this kind of thing, not sure why this is, oh, I need to still add this there. There we go. Now you should be able to see my, my screen. And so shortwave is a product of ex Googlers, who came together and rebuilt the Google inbox interface. There’s a lot similar to the original Google inbox. And there’s also some really interesting things that are different. And so the weird thing about this is similar to Google inbox, shortwave is an overlay. So it is not, it is not a new email service is a an overlay of your Gmail account. So by using it, you’re not doing anything to the underlying email necessarily, you’re just putting a skin on top of it. But it is very handy. I’ve played around with it. I think that it’s a very interesting concept. I think that the pricing structure is going to be a little bit limiting for those folks. If you’re talking about $9 per person per month, you can use shortwave for free, though, by the way, it just limits your email to a 90 day access point. I don’t think that’s actually all that problematic to me. But everyone I’ve talked to about it was like, Oh, well, what if I want to search email before that timeframe, that’s going to limit me from being able to use it as my primary email tool, from my perspective, opening up a tab and going to gmail.com. And searching doesn’t seem to be that bothersome to me. But either way, I think that, you know, it’s going to be a limiting factor. If everyone I spoke to said that was a problem to them. I found that to be, you know, strange. But if you loved Google inbox, then shortwave may be something that you also equally love. Because it has all of the same kind of flavors and feelings of those bundles that Google inbox had, and the way in which it thoughtfully kind of swiped away items as you archived messages. So just wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention that shortwave is here to replace Google inbox, which has been gone for like two years. Already. Good. So what’s your tool this week, your productivity resource.

Augusto Pinaud 33:11

So my productivity resource is fantastical, you know, I, my calendar, you’re either Sub Sub Sub clients that I need to work with their windows or their things, and I want to be able to integrate the three and the BC an apple, for some reason has decided to still not make that easy for the world. So fantastical is the tool for where I can come and do all those changes. So I can see fi free BC and move things around. It’s not my main calendar. I use it just when I wanted to change things. But if you are looking for a more powerful calendar on the iOS ecosystem, this is a really, really, really solid one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:00

Fantastic. And so this is available for Mac, iPad, iPhone and the Apple Watch. Corrales so watch iOS. So those of you who are Windows or Linux or Chrome OS are not going to be able to utilize this. No. That’s okay. All right. So productivity resources of the week out of the way. That brings us along to our story of the week. What is our story of the week this week Google

Augusto Pinaud 34:27

Drives shirt chips are mostly available for everyone. And this is exciting because google drive us Dropbox as they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger with the years of putting stuff in there and search getting challenging and challenging. So I am particularly excited about the chips and how the chips are broken. You know you can do now search for Okay, let me look for image or let me look from where it went. or last modified or the title, you know, or even if you have the Google to do is you can look for approval follow ups, and stuff like that. So I think they easier. And the more thought is been put into this, the better will be to storage or content there, but also to be able to retrieve it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:21

Yeah, this is a beta that started in November of last year. And so now this is coming into stable public release. And so this is the GA, or general availability version of it. And so this has just been great, since it came out. You know, there have been minor bugs here and there. But for the most part, as I’ve been using it in the in the beta versions, it has been great. So now being able to query things based on the search chips, and for those who are not aware of what search chips are, what we mean by search chips, is that when you are looking at the Google Drive interface, in in the web environment, you will see now underneath the primary search bar, new little pillbox items, those pillbox items have little disclosure arrows or disclosure triangles associated with them. And when you are looking at a particular item, you can click on it, and then it gives you a drop down with further refinements to that search. So in essence, it is a filter for you to use before you do search or after you do search. So it basically further filters to things. So you can, you can filter based on a bunch of things, we’ve had some level of this to an extent, from the primary search bar in Google Drive for a long time, when you clicked inside of the search bar, you would see a drop down and you’d see a set of chips for the type of document for example. So you see docs, you’d see slides, you’d see sheets, and so and so forth, you could click on one of those things and would filter based on those items. Now we’re getting those visible in the interface in the UI. And they’re more of them, as Agusta noted, so there’s some really interesting things here for being able to search by file type, by the people you’re working with by the location. Just like if you’re in a shared drive or in your in a specific folder, the modification date for a particular file, whether you’re searching based on the title of the files alone, or whether you want to include some of the metadata associated with it, or the contents of that particular file, shared labels for things. And then whether or not those have tasks resident, are associated with them. So we’re getting a lot more here within Google workspace that I think is really helpful for being able to do these kinds of searches. And of course, they’ve made a bunch of improvements. So you can see spelling suggestions, and you can also do some additional date based searching here. I I just think this is, as Augusto noted, as we get more and more data into these cloud storage facilities, we need to be able to further refine and see what’s in them so that we can stay productive with all of this data in there. So while I very much appreciate and believe that you should be setting up an organization system, you know, the file structure system so that you can get stuff in so that you can get stuff out. I’m having the tools that when you have made your file storage system, a bit of a junk drawer, and that can happen in an organization very quickly and easily. Or in a team based environment. It’s nice to be able to have the features to be able to get the stuff out, look at them, and then organize them based on that. Plus, remember that Google Drive has the ability for you to create shortcuts. And so shortcuts allow you to be able to place links to files so that you’re not duplicating things. So if you like something one particular way, you can set it up in Google Drive your way. And then if somebody else has stuff in their system, their way, you’re not actually changing the way in which they have things organized, you’re just setting up your own redundant view of those things. And so it helps you to kind of like, you know, have your cake and eat it too, in a lot of ways by by having your own system set up that way. Very pleased with the with the interface, and the modifications to the search chips and the refinement of the search results for for Google Drive within workspace. So any other thoughts or Gousto? Any other thoughts?

Augusto Pinaud 39:14

No, you know, I’m really excited with the chips. I think the this is going to change how you and how fast you can search stuff into Google Drive. So I am really, really excited.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:27

Yeah, so this is available to all Google workspace customers. So everybody is going to be getting this including legacy folks. So if you’re in legacy across the board, as well as Google workspace as just a PSA, remember that if you are on one of the legacy, G Suite free accounts, you have until July and then you’re being bumped off the free and you’re going to have to pay so be mindful that you should start thinking about what plan you’re going to choose and select that. I think you have until May 1 to choose a particular plan and there I think they’re giving discounts to folks who are on the free plans, they now have other plans for those of you who have been using a Google or G Suite, Google workspace or formerly G Suite accounts for your personal world. And so you’re not running a business. And so they now have Google workspace individual plans that you can go out there and figure out if that’s the more appropriate one for you, it retains your domain, and all of those fun things, but you’re, you know, being moved out of the business stuff that you don’t need. So just just as a reminder, that is coming. I know, it seems like a distance away, but you know, March, April, May, June, and then all of a sudden, your your Google workspace account slips away, you do not want that to happen. So you know, all of that data is in there. Okay, booster, what announcements do we have before so the

Augusto Pinaud 40:43

task, the task management and time blocking summit will be third, fourth and fifth of March, there is going to be a ton of presenters, there is going to be live sessions there is going to be pre recorded versions there. Sorry, I’m looking to the page and of course, it can open. So on March 3. Sorry, I was trying to find a schedule on the page, and I cannot find it

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:24

well. So either way, what I would recommend for everybody is to read Julie bestiaries article, which is very thorough and very capable of bringing you through what you’re going to experience when you go to the summit. So if you go to Julie bestiaries, latest blog post, so Julie, best ri.com. But the but we put a link in the show notes as well, that’s going to walk you through everything you’re going to really experience at this year’s task management and time walking Summit. And yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. I’m I’m being I’m going to be moderating a debate on Thursday. And Augusta is going to be one of the debaters on on one of the four or against teams. And we’ll be we’ll be actually debating the motion, our GTD contexts still relevant. And so that’s a very interesting topic. And I’m looking forward to that debate. But in addition to that live debate, there’s also going to be other live q&a with the speakers and lots of recorded presentations. So it’s going to be a fun time and and looking forward to to seeing all the presenters in the presentations. Yes. That’s it. All right. With that, there, we have reached the end of our productivity and technology related news for the week, thanks to Augusto Pinaud, for putting together the show this every week. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Okay, on anything but idle.com by visiting anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes for this episode, and all the previous episodes that we’ve published, those contain links to all the stories tools of the week, including extra stories we didn’t cover in the time we have in the show time and text transcripts, both one that’s readable on the page, just click the Read More link. And then right below that Read More link is a download link. So you click on download the PDF. And you can read that offline after looking at the show notes. If there’s anything that we missed, and it’s a possibility, there’s lots of news out there, feel free to leave a comment on the episode page, you can tweet or DMS at Anything But Idle on Twitter, you can also use our contact form on the website. And just let us know if we missed something, we can add it to the comments within the show notes or otherwise, we can we can let folks know that that thing is happening if it’s important. You can also join us in personal productivity Club, where we have a group dedicated to this particular podcast. So if you want to go ahead and join us, you can head over to anything but idle.com forward slash community. If you go to that link, you will be taken directly to sign up and join us in the group. It’s called a channel. But it’s the Anything But Idle channel within personal productivity club. And there you can post news comment on the the episodes all that fun stuff. And including you can join us for the live streams which we do live for the audience each week. So if this is your first time watching the live stream, by the way, feel free to click the subscribe button. And that will get you notified when we go live weekly. If you’re watching on one of the other platforms typically following the profile will also give you a notification that we’re going live weekly. If you listen to the podcast and you haven’t already subscribed to the podcast, feel free to go ahead and do that. And if you’ve been listening to the podcast and you want to do us a favor, feel free to leave a rating or review on Apple podcasts or Stitcher or whatever podcast app that allows you to be able to do so your compliments of course help us reach more of the personal productivity listening community. And so thank you for doing that. Thank you to those who have left reviews, they’ve been really helpful for us to be able to get feedback and and to grow the show in all kinds of ways. And so with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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