Anything But Idle
Progressive Web Apps Are Taking Over
Progressive Web Apps Are Taking Over and the Productivity News This Week
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In this Cast | Progressive Web Apps Are Taking Over
Headlines & Show Notes | Progressive Web Apps Are Taking Over
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Secret of highly productive people
Google Maps Apple Maps and smartphones are at the forefront of modern war
Five Signs That Youre Ready for a Coach
How to get work done when you’re not feeling it
Nomad Base One review: The most premium MagSafe charger around
Embed linked Google Forms charts into Google Docs Google Slides and Google Drawings
Huawei MatePad Paper with 10.3 inch screen and HarmonyOS is out soon
Introducing New Tools and Features in the Happier App.
Business & Finance Segment
- Zero Systems gets $12M Series A to bring automation to professional services
- Apple dominated the tablet market in 2021, despite iPad shortages amid supply constraints
Productivity Resource of the Week
Featured Story of the Week
Desktop users have installed Progressive Web Apps 270% more over the past year
Announcements
Apple announces Peek Performance event on March 8
We’re posting our poll again to vote on the Top Female Productivity-Organization-Technology Experts for Women’s History Month
Other News
How to use the Accessibility features on iPhone and iPad
Apple issues fifth macOS Monterey 12.3 developer beta
How to make the most of iCloud’s collaboration and sharing tools
Heres how iOS 15.4s new LGBTQ Siri voice will sound on your iPhone
LinkedIn debuts its own podcast network
Apple patents Magic Keyboard with integrated Mac inside to bring macOS to any display
Exercise trains your fat to help you age well
Google Spaces will now let you set descriptions and guidelines and assign manager roles
Define and manage Chat Spaces space descriptions and guidelines with a new manager role
Google Workspace Migrate is now generally available
Google Search on desktop tests adding widgets for weather and other Discover-like cards
Life Is Up To You: 8 Choices That Will Make Your Life Better
7 Books That Make You A Better Human
Podcast #782: Anxiety Is a Habit Heres How to Break It
Raw Text Transcript | Progressive Web Apps Are Taking Over
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts 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 0:12
And I’m Augusto Pinaud.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 99 099. Can’t believe that just on the precipice of 100, and this is for March 7 2022, progressive web apps are taking over. And of course, the productivity news this week. Each week, we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And so with that, let’s get into our articles for the personal productivity blogosphere and audio sphere before we go into the technology news after the break. And so Augusto, what is our first article this week?
Augusto Pinaud 0:48
So the first article this week. Technology is failing here. That’s not the article. It’s how to spot a review helped me cut dozens of meetings on made my team very happy.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:06
Yeah, so this is very rushed. So no, no worries, this is a really interesting concept. So in essence, what the author was talking about was like, do everything possible to kind of reduce the number of meetings. But then once you get to that point, he uses this other method that he calls the stoplight review. And the method is basically this when the meeting is over, for the participants of the meeting, who attended to, for them to rank, basically rate the meeting as red, yellow, or green, and most stoplights are red, amber, and then green, but whatever. And so the idea then is that if it was green, the translation as he notes here, and I’m reading from the article, it says this meeting was very valuable. Please include me in meetings like this in the future, and quote, for the yellow or amber light, it says, quote, parts of the meeting were helpful, but you can communicate core messages via chat, email, or other async means and quote, or, quote, again, I’m just not sure if this was valuable, and quote, and then the read translates to quote, this wasn’t worth my time cut these meetings in the future and quote, and there is there’s no debate or explanation as he notes here, people just vote using those colors. And it like it undercuts the the problem that many people have about meetings, which is that they don’t have an ability to give feedback. And there aren’t really that many tools out there to provide that level of feedback, wait for my productivity resource of the week. But uh, but the but I thought this is a really interesting concept. And I know that Francis Wade, you know, he frequently talks about this topic of meetings not having not being most effective, because people aren’t being given the ability to give feedback on whether or not the people hosting and the people attending the meetings are really giving their all. All right, on to our next story this week, the next
Augusto Pinaud 3:07
story sorry, comes from Fast Company is the counter intuitive secret factor that highly productive people rely on? I love this articles, there is something about these articles that I love. There is something about this articles. And really, let’s see
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:26
what well, so So the articles main premise is that lack of human connection is the root of all problems in in productive organizations and teams today. And I’m not sure that I necessarily agree or disagree with that premise that hypothesis, I didn’t really see a strong argument in terms of empirical data for that. But I, I get that the author feels a sense that that’s the case and provides some important interesting. Now, there were interesting thoughts, all relating to this, I think the thing that jumped out for me the most was his talking about virtual co working programs. And of course, those of you who know us and what we do here is that one of the things we have within personal productivity Club is a virtual co working space. And he promotes a few others that are out there. But if you’re in personal productivity club, obviously, we have a co working space to do some of the things that things that he’s talking about, which is to be able to have this level of accountability, but also it’s about camaraderie and being able to connect with people. So I appreciated the article on that level. And I’ve, I’ve read through and seen a lot of what commit action does as as a company, and it is a very interesting concept of being able to coach people through their weekly productivity rituals, as they call it. But you know, the, the idea here is, is is in essence, a set of of weekly practices where you’re working with a coach that is helping you do that kind of work. And I tend to stay away from the word ritual. Since you know, in in a, it has a religious connotation, and I don’t want to take away from the religious connotations, so I tend to use the term routine, you can say practice instead. So I would say it’s a coached weekly practice, as opposed to a ritual. But that semantics aside, I think it’s really interesting to have that level of support, when you are working in a world that is distributed and potentially hybrid, right, where some people are working in your office, some people aren’t, you’re not seeing everybody that you are working with. And even then, the people you’re working with are not necessarily people you want to be working around, you know, whether that be physically or virtually. It’s a very interesting concept. So any other thoughts? Alright, let’s move on. Let’s move on to our next story, then.
Augusto Pinaud 5:55
Good technology is doing more than to me that I can today. But the next story. The next story is about the Google Maps and Apple Maps and smartphones in general and how they have been an influence on a factor and a tool in what we have seen in Ukraine and Russia, you know, how really a tool as simple as Google map is showing men intentional Australian traffic, and then traffic is translated by the volume of army tanks from Russia enter into Ukraine, but also how people is using this really, as a military tool, instead of what it was intentionally. And the article then goes into how much power this big technology companies in this particular case, Apple and Google have, and and how much influence they have into this mother warm concepts that we’re seeing. And they do. They know, sorry, that communication happened, you know, we knew what was happening there, you know, so fast via WhatsApp and telegram and other text messages, systems like that, and then what you took to turn on the TV, so same with Facebook, and those kinds of things. So yes, big tech has now a big, big influence, or a big participation into these wars,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:25
is, I would say further than that, they have a responsibility in Modern Warfare now to, you know, basically understand what they’re doing. And, you know, the people of Ukraine, and really, the people of Russia as well are suffering now, because of a particular autocrat, who is choosing to wage this war. And, you know, while we’re not here to commentate on, you know, Putin and his his regime, I’m much more interested in how what we recognize is that no longer are our personal productivity tools, the ones that are within our own borders, they’re on the World Wide Web. And that means that our tools extend to having Geopolitical Problems when those teams are having to evacuate Ukraine, evacuate other countries, and therefore affects our productivity. So something to just consider, as you choose the productivity tools, you need to be effective, understand how these things really bleed across geographic lines. And I think it’s good that we have these tools available to us and built by, you know, people all over the world. But you know, when it comes to having them built in countries that are in conflict, that’s going to affect you, so maybe having a backup. So you know, okay, if this happens, then we can failover to this particular system so that we can stay and have continuity with regard to our systems. And I think that’s the, that’s the message I got from this article was, Oh, that’s right, I need to make sure that, you know, if something happens in Australia, where Canva is, is hosted, I need to make sure that I can still access my designs and my design software. And that’s about backups, and making sure that you have some kind of backup tool to be able to get that work done. That’s, you know, as productive as you can hope to be when these kinds of things that you have no control over happen in the world. All right, on to our next story this week.
Augusto Pinaud 9:23
The five signs that you are ready for a coach, and this is a podcast from
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:30
Michael Hyatt and company, my client
Augusto Pinaud 9:31
company. And so more
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:37
sorry, it’s now known as full focus, I apologize. They are now known as full focus, not just Michael Hyatt and company and the podcast is lead to win. And this was a really interesting article and I’ll just I’ll preface this with the fact that the title of the article is not really what the topic of the podcast is all about. And so not that it wasn’t good. I really actually enjoy The podcast episode, which is why I added it to the show for today, which was that it talked about what the title was five signs that you’re ready for a business coach. But what they really talked about was five reasons to have a business coach, and the the thought I, and I’ll live them for all of you so that you don’t have to, you know, listen to the podcast episode, although I recommend it if you want to. But they in essence outlined it in five different aspects. And I’m going to read them in terms of the five signs as opposed to the five reasons for because I think they’re helpful. And then I have a question for you, Augusto, which is that so the five signs were that you you feel some dissatisfied dissatisfaction with the status quo, right, you’re feeling some sense that where you are right now you’re uncomfortable with where you are, with the business with your own self, that kind of thing, too, is that you have some need, and or are lacking a safe and or collaborative space, if you don’t have someone to talk to bounce ideas off of that kind of thing. If you’re feeling reactive, if you feel you’re constantly dealing with the latest and loudest as David Allen would say, if you’re in that mode of thinking, maybe it’s time for a business coach, if you’re looking for different perspectives, then your own. That is perhaps you have a team of people who are yessing you to death and or yessing the business to death, that may be a sign that you’re ready for a business coach. And then fifth, they talk about, you have a need to develop strong growth mindset. And that you finally recognize that you are either in need of a growth mindset, or you have a growth mindset, and you want to strengthen that growth mindset. And that would be the fifth component of being ready for a business coach. I thought they were all salient arguments for you know, being ready for a business coach. And that leads me to my question to you, Augusta, which is, what do you find are the maybe two or three items that you that your clients recognize when they’re ready for coaching for productivity coaching? In your case, even though some of them may be small business owners and executives or otherwise? What do you feel like are those few things that they recognize in themselves that say, you know, what, I think I need someone to help me professionally.
Augusto Pinaud 12:15
You know, there are three things that I see consistent on those case, the one is, there is no work life balance, and work life balance is not about, you know, Oh, I did three things at home. Three things at work has nothing to do with that. But it’s about defining what that balance means to you. The second thing that they see, and sometimes it’s because of this is they’re exhausted. And they are two different cases for exhaustion, when you are exhausted, so you have work all but you’re still excited about the work that you did, you’re tired, but you’re excited and exhausted, when you are kind of defeated. That is the kind that I tend to work with. Because what that happened is normally you are on a line with what you want to accomplish. And the last one is when you cannot concentrate on the task you are doing, you are completely disconnected from that perspective, you are right now in fire and you feel their fire to fire to fire fire, and you’re not really turning any one of them really off. So those tend to be the three main things when go to a productivity coach will make a massive difference.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:30
Fantastic, great. It’s always good to like, just have people think through when they do and when they don’t need help. And I think that it’s just a good, always a good time to just kind of kick the tires on that. On that thought. All right. With that, that brings us to our next and final productivity article for this week. What’s that one?
Augusto Pinaud 13:51
How do you get work when you are not feeling it? And the article comes from Rescue Time and, you know, they talk about zoom out, reinvigorate, break it take a break, you know, make things comfortable and get ready to go. Normally, when people come to me his coach say, okay, you know, I have all this to do, and I really don’t want to do well. The question is where are you going where this task that you are not feeling connects to your goals to what you’re trying to accomplish the direction you’re trying to get? Because that is the first thing and maybe sometimes the answer is great. He doesn’t I mean, you know, I was talking to somebody today and say it doesn’t okay, I’m doing taxes, there is no connection with that. And he was really frustrated. But believe it or not even acknowledging that and laugh about it and relaxed about it was enough for this person to say okay, I’m going back to what I need to do so I can finish the other cities correcting a small batch, said, You know what, I’m going to work with this task for 10 minutes, and in 10 minutes, I’m going to change. But that’s going to allow you to continue making progress.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:12
Yeah, I thought the article was basic, I mean, really didn’t say anything, you know, life changing. But it was a good refresher for me on a couple of things, which is that setting up your environment for success doesn’t just happen when you are like when the wind is at your back. It’s also when you feel that resistance to doing those gnarly things. And I was just talking about this recently, that to another group that I find myself moving to my other desk. And because I’ve two desks and one is a fixed desk, and the other one is a sit stand desk. And I realized that just shifting gears and going over to the other desk to do certain types of focus work or flow work is this a change of location and space is enough for me to be able to do that. But I also need to set up the environment for like, making sure I have all of the things I need and making it comfortable. And just, you know, I need to make it operable for me. And so when you’re in those states make it i It says comfortable. And I actually disagree with that. So sometimes you have to be a little bit uncomfortable in order to be be productive. For example, my standing position for my desk requires me to do work, right, I’m standing for a good portion of my day working nowadays. And that includes I’m presenting, you know, some workshops and trainings and whatever, I’m on my feet as well. But I’m standing because that little bit of of work is actually contributing to be me, me being more productive. And it’s like the Ed Sullivan Theater and Stephen Colbert, he has kept what’s his name? David? What’s the name of the former host of The Late Show? David, David, David, well, somebody, Letterman, thank you, David Letterman, he would keep the theater at a at a crisp, like 50 something degrees. And so people were basically freezing in their seats. But it actually he felt like it made them laugh more that it made them more expressive in the audience. And so that’s a place where you’re actually making people less comfortable, but they’re actually getting to the right effectiveness that you want them to be. And I think there are there are some cases for us where that’s the case, like if we make ourselves too comfy, like if you take your laptop to bed, and you like tuck yourself under the covers, and you try to start working, I don’t think you’re going to be as productive as if you are dressed properly and sitting at your desk and prepared to work. Right. So there’s context matters. And it’s not all about comfort, as it is about making sure that you’re in an in the most operable mode for getting yourself into the work modality you need to be. So it’s kind of balancing those pieces out in that sense that I thought the article was maybe a little bit off on, but they were they have the right sentiment, I think in that sense. So just like make sure that when you show up to work, you’re showing up to the right type of work. And, and I think you know, that’s the best you can hope for, especially when you have that level of resistance to the work at hand. And so with that we have very quickly gotten ourselves through the productivity articles. This week, we’re going to take a break for word from our sponsor, and then we are going to come back for our technology headlines, we’re going to do our productivity resources of the week, we’ll touch on our featured story this week about progressive web apps. And then we will do a little bit closing the loop on closing on business and finance and any announcements that we have. And we’ve got a couple of announcements for you this week. And so off to our sponsor, and we’ll see it in a minute. Well,
Sponsor Voice Over 18:53
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:03
All the back everybody to Anything But Idle and Ray Sidney-Smith joined with of course, it goes to pinout for the second half of the show. And with that, let’s get into our technology headlines. This week Agusta? What’s our first headline this week?
Augusto Pinaud 20:17
So our first one is the Nomad base. And it’s a review from the most premium MagSafe charger around, but Max save, really? It’s awesome. I mean, I hope they continue added in into every device, because I don’t understand why Apple discontinued for some device. Yes, this is a formal complaint. And yes, I bought the adapter so I can have Mac safe in all of them. Because it was fantastic kicking the cable and double rainbow device flying. It’s been something fantastic. So every Mac or Apple device has the adapter in my house. But the the nomads first is certified charger, base. So you can have it in there, it’s metal it has, its really fancy, you can see it on the image it will charge it has is trying to keep to that high end look that the apple or some of the Apple products have to It’s so that’s, that’s what it that’s what it is. And that is where, where the where the first thing is,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:31
yeah, it looks beautiful. I mean, they they did a really great job with it, the base one is a it requires a 30 watt power outlet. But it gives 15 watts of power out of it. And so that’s just, you know, phenomenal. And so you’re saving, you know, all kinds of stuff there in terms of power on necessity. And it just seems like a really premium, you know, pad. So it’s really nice. It’s it’s, you know, it goes up against some of the other wireless charging pads, they’re out there with MagSafe. But this is definitely the premium look and feel like it’s a heavy, heavy bass. Yeah, it’s $130. So obviously, it’s a luxury item. But I think that you know, if you’re looking for a really nice base to have displayed on the desk, and it’s going to look very happily, this is going to be the base for you.
Augusto Pinaud 22:29
So our next one is how to embed link Google Form charts into Google Docs, Google Slides. And as part of the Google work, kind of speak today, workspace update. And, you know, I have not been a big fan of Google Sheets and Slides and docs in general. But they it is interesting for me to see much more slower rate than what I will like how good they are getting. It will be great Google if you decide to treat the iPad as a real device and not as you treat it. So you give me full power. That will make me use that a little bit more, and of the rant. But, but it’s been really interesting how, you know, they are getting more and more powerful. And now being able to do the things is going to make it even better.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:27
Yeah, so I just see lots of applicability here. Like if you’re in a meeting, and you want to be able to have a Google form, you know, you have a survey or a poll of some kind in a Google form, you can now have the chart for that form. In your google slides presentation. And or in your Google Doc, if you’re working with multiple people. And as votes are coming in, you could just click update on that form. And it’s going to give you real time data, then charted for you, graphically for you. And that’s just incredibly powerful when you are in those kinds of environments. You know, say if you have 300 people in a room, and you’re trying to understand where they are with regard to a particular thing, like for example, I’m thinking about on I sit on several nonprofit boards. And now we can actually vote on particular agenda items. And those agenda items can be literally embedded in the document so we can all see the votes come in as people are voting on particular motions. So it can be a really, really useful perspective there for people to just quickly get data, quickly visualize it, and come to consensus on things. By virtue of doing that. I think, you know, if you’re in a webinar, you want to be able to pull some data in with folks. And you don’t want to use the the Zoom polling or meeting Microsoft Teams polling or whatever is built in you if you’re using Google workspace now you can stay inside of that shell plus you’re collecting that data into a Google Sheets, workbook. And so it all kind of stays within your shield of the Google workspace environment, which I think is actually pretty powerful and important. So from a data security data, data sovereignty perspective. And so I’m really pleased to see this added to the system. And I also like it for producing reports now, because now I can have a series of reports created for me. And as people are filling out forms, I can then have someone, you know, click update on the form, PDF it and send it along to me. And now I have a snapshot report of all kinds of data coming from these particular areas. So I just really liked the idea of people being able to fill out forms, and then have that data visualized, because of the power of Google Forms connected to Google Sheets. But then even further than that, now have it just readily updated. You know, each week, all I have to do is just click an update, update, update, and then PDF and send or just even just sending me the link. And now I can look at the report in live view directly on in my browser for that particular report. So I see a lot of really great value there. All right, on to my next story.
Augusto Pinaud 26:08
So our next story said you way, make Huawei Huawei. That’s what I meant. I told you, I cannot speak to this. So you’re pushing me here. I’m really excited. It’s a product, you know, to a surprise, it doesn’t will not run Google Android is going to run Harmonia house that we expect has less application all that but what is interesting is this is the third or fourth device that we talk in recent weeks in Anything But Idle. So there has been a significant push for this ink annotation devices to come out into the market. And I am particularly really excited about it, I’ve been looking one in particular, I get it. But I want to be able to do that and to connect to my books and to connect with other things. And I haven’t found it yet. And what I do is I use the accessibility issues or accessibility features in the iPad, to turn the screen to black and white. And there is an article in the notes in the past notes or what we didn’t cover this week about how you can get better use for those. But that’s how I use it. But I’m really looking for an eating device where I can take notes that synchronize with all my environment, but then that the battery will last me like it last on the Kindle. And I get it on Friday afternoon. Oh, I forgot to charge it. But at least until Friday afternoon, I will be really happy.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:43
Yeah, I think I think this is a great device, unfortunately won’t be available in North America, we currently still have sanctions against Huawei in order to be able to get this these types of devices from them. And so but it will be initially launched in Europe. So if you’re in the EU, you should be able to get this device very soon. Not sure what its price is going to be. But at a 10.3 inch, you know screen it’s a really nice pen and paper feel type product and it helps you it’s basically competitors to say the remarkable two and others that are out there that are trying to give you that pen on paper feel
Augusto Pinaud 28:15
that it’s going to be around that according to the article was going to be around the 550 bucks. Yeah, so it’s going to be on this
Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:21
market is going to the street bicycle. But yeah, we’ll see what the street market price is going to be. But I just I’m I’m really impressed by the number of E Ink This one’s coming with the E Encarta HD display. So you’ve got a beautiful display, and you’ve got that anti glare. So you can have this outdoors and be writing on it and just have a fluid experience that you won’t have, if you have a very glary screen like an iPad or otherwise, without having a like a paper like screen protector on top of it to be able to stop that glare, this is not going to have that experience, you’re gonna be able to take natural light in and because of harmony ls it kind of decouples it from the Android protection, I think the Android whole that kind of shields you from it, but at the same time, it also gives you a bunch of apps that are purpose built for harmony iOS for this particular tablet. So it’s kind of a six of one half dozen, the other I would go with this just because it’s outside of the Google ecosystem and, and that generally makes me uncomfortable. So but at the same time, you know, if you if you don’t want to be inculcated in the remarkable, you know, ecosystem, then know that there are other options. I think that’s the biggest point here is that you now have all of these other options that are coming onto the market in the eating space. And you know, it’s coming very well appointed, you know, fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth, 5.1, Wi Fi six plus all really good stuff coming in at only 360 grams. That’s a it’s a pretty nice, you know, a kind of good feel in your hand type of device. And so the matepad paper is, is going to be interesting to see what businesses are adopt it and what individuals do with that kind of, you know, eating device for their productivity systems. So if you end up getting one and you’re in Europe or otherwise, let us know. I’m very curious. On to our next
Augusto Pinaud 30:15
bring us to the next section, the business section. The
Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:21
business the Gretchen Rubin story.
Augusto Pinaud 30:24
Oh, I must keep it under. Yes. Um, 99 is a lot of numbers. And apparently you get old 99. I said, the only explanation I can’t give tonight. But the other article we have is some features or some new tools and features on Gretchen Rubin, happier app. And she launched their app around November, if I remember correctly in the article, and well, it’s been continue improving. So now you have you can track the total. So measure the numbers of things that are overtime, miles, minutes words, you know, I access your camera roll, setup reminders, edit your aims, and what you define as your aims, you know, things that you want to, to accomplish, set a date of the lot complete time to complete your aim, share tips, quotes, self knowledge, questions with yourself as well as with others. So check it out, you can go download it and just play with it a little bit.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:28
Yeah, she’s giving me all kinds of ideas for a personal productivity club app. So I’m really, I’m really pleased that she’s doing this work inside of the happier app. And I thought that she was, I don’t, I don’t know, what her, you know, her decision making processes, but it’s just really interesting to see her go down this road of building out an app ecos, you know, an app that is doing functional stuff, and not just stuff around her. Like, there are things that are related to her book that but are not on point to her book. So like she has don’t break the chain and the photo log and the one sentence journal, and, and so on and so forth. It’s a very interesting movement for her. And at least the Android app isn’t getting that great of billing right now. I think, you know, it’s, it’s a hefty cost. I’m not sure what the price is for it right now. But there is some kind of price and cost to it. So just folks keep that in mind when you go to it that there is a cost. I’m not sure what the what the cost is for it. But enough people have complained in the, in the in the reviews about the cost of the application. So who knows, you know, what is cheap for one person or inexpensive for one person is expensive for another. So I know, I’m not particularly happy to get into that space. And it still doesn’t have that many downloads, you know, at least on the Google side of things. I’m not I didn’t check out the the apple side of things. But I’m really, I’m really happy to see these kinds of experts coming out and trying to do more than just talk. Right? So you know, being able to put a tool out there that people can touch and interact with their methodologies and their principles is a really nice feature to have when it comes to authors who are, you know, they’re asking you to buy their book and invest in doing the things that are going to hopefully make you more productive. And you don’t always know whether or not it’s going to work. And so then giving you the tools, I think of Jane McGonigal, Dr. McGonigal has the super better app. And while it hasn’t really I don’t know, honestly, I’m speaking out of school here, because I haven’t looked at it in a long time. I love super better, I love the methodology. And she built an application to kind of match it. And that’s the kind of stuff that I feel like today in our technologically connected world, it makes a lot of sense for you to have those things put together. Like if you’re going to offer a methodology that requires implementation, give me the tools, a workbook, you know, the downloads from your website, so I can actually manifest the stuff that you’re talking about. And this is a really nice piece of it that I think Gretchen Rubin is doing. So I applaud her for the at least the attempt, right? You can’t you can’t win everybody, but at least making making the attempt is worthwhile. And keeping an app maintained is a lot of work. So I know that myself with personal productivity clubs, so you know, like, just that level of it, you know, is is a lot of work. So kudos, kudos. Okay, on to the business and finance segment.
Augusto Pinaud 34:28
So sewer systems get a $12 million series A to bring our automation to professional service. I’m not familiar with zero systems, or I wasn’t ready to employ read out of them, but I don’t know if you all there.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:44
Yeah. So there are workflow automation tool. And they have been, you know, basically attempting to automate all of these other pieces of the puzzle and for professional services firms. And so think lawyers, accountants, whatever And now what they’re really trying to do is to level up that game. So that you’re, you’re taking over more and more of the kind of mundane facilities. So for example, in a law firm environment, you know, you have to do a whole bunch of things in order to get a client on boarded, including making sure that you’re doing a conflict check across all the attorneys in the cases that those attorneys for representation purposes, you’ve got to get a bunch of information from clients have them sign, you know, some kind of retainer agreement, or whatever the the arrangement is going to be with regard to representation, you need to be able to get a release potentially, for them to get documents from opposing counsel or from organizations or, you know, say if you represent them in some medical capacity, you’ve got to get doctors to give up that information. So you need to release from them, like all of that stuff needs to be done before they can even start representing you. And so think about that in terms of financial services, or consultants and otherwise, who need to do all of those things, get a contract signed, get the first you know, downpayment or deposit made, set up your billing, zero was trying to do that for businesses. And if it can reduce all of those pieces, one, you get a greater consistency with clients in terms of your professionalism, but also, it’s just less work. So if you can do those things in that way, like that’s just a huge, huge thing. So this $12 million, series A is a really big deal, because I think we’re going to start to see more and more of this come down the pike. And we’ve seen this a little bit in the in the not to belabor the subject. But we’ve seen a little bit of this in the kind of consultant and design creative professional space, with certain tools. But we haven’t really seen this in the traditional professional services space, because we’ve depended upon practice management software, and case management software that’s been very specific to industries. So you’ll have a real estate focused tool, or you’ll have a lawyer, a law firm, focused tool or accountant, accounting practice tool like QuickBooks, you know, accounting version, those kinds of things. And Xero is trying to generalize that and be able to do this across many different fields. And I think that there’s a place for a QuickBooks Premier accountant version. And there’s a there’s a reason for tools like time matters, and billing matters, that focuses on law firm practice management. But for everybody in between, it’s really nice to have this level of automation to be able to get get your business infrastructure in place, especially when you’re a one person 10 person shop, and you don’t have all the resources to get all these things done. Zero, hopefully, you know, this is a this is a pipe dream. But hopefully they can do that for us and really lower the the threshold for automation.
Augusto Pinaud 37:41
Alright, our next history. Next story sorry, is how Apple dominated the tablet market in 2021. Despite the shortage for supply constrained the market for tablets, I will embrace decline 31% for shipments. Okay, that is big. And but even with that, you know, Apple still had 40% of the market. So they did pretty well. They conquer the market, not as good on the PC market, HP, still have 30% of that market share. But Apple was able to be in the top five of the players.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:25
Yeah, I think that’s really powerful. I, I yeah, it speaks for itself. Alright, so with that, that brings us along to our next segment, which is our productivity resources of the week. And so of course, each week goes to and I scour the interwebs, for all the various stories and articles and whatnot that we bring to you for Anything But Idle. And of course, we come across a lot of tools and things that we think you might like. And so we each try to bring you one of those that we think you might be interested in. And as I talked about, when we first started with our, I think it was our first or second story of the week, we were talking about the idea of meeting feedback. And so I recently came across this tool, and so I don’t have a lot of experience with it. But what I have seen of it, I’m really interested in this and the tool is called Meet back. And in essence, what meet back does is it gives you the ability to, in essence, get feedback from from meeting participants. So in essence, I’m trying to get this screen here to actually play. Now it’s just trying to make me register. Let me scroll down here. So you can kind of see what we’re talking about here. So the idea is, is that beat back happens by connecting Why is it keep trying to take me to sign in anyway. So what it tries to do is to, in essence, give you a bunch of survey templates and post meeting. You can then push these these meeting, trying to get that thing to go away with it. It keeps doing this cookie thing and then when I go When I click on the cookie thing, it’s pushing it to login. That’s a glitch. So the idea here is that you get a notification after the meeting from the meeting host. And you’re able to then score the meeting so that people can kind of see it again, going back to that kind of red Amber, green perspective of a stoplight, you can give this kind of quick feedback, but also get bespoke questions for that particular meeting. And I just think this is really interesting. It’s, it’s fascinating to me to think about getting the feedback quickly and promptly to the meeting, while it’s still fresh in people’s mind of, Oh, I really didn’t like that meeting, or, Oh, that meeting was really, really good. I wish more of my meetings were like that. And then that way you as a meeting host can know, what are the things to make meetings more effective. And so me back is currently in some kind of beta stage. So it’s free to use. And so I just recommend people check it out, see, see if it works for you. And also let us know, because I’m really curious. So feel free to comment on the episode or tweet at us and let us know what your experience is, with the meet back tool, if you go ahead and use it, because so what is your productivity resource this week,
Augusto Pinaud 41:14
my toy is called the lumen. And basically, the lumen is the world’s first handheld, that measure your metabolism. And I like to figure out ways to get more energy and better if we can do it in a natural way. So I acquired this little toy, it’s new in my arsenal of toys. But it is quite interesting, you know, you, you blow on basically what to do with metabolic analysis and tell you, you know, in one to five, what are you doing, you’re burning more carbs, or burning more fat. What has been interesting from a non scientific point of view, is that I am being able to breathe into the thing. And guess where I am, at depending how I feel when I when I’m burning fat, I feel a lot more energetic than when I’m burning carbs. So it’s allowing me to identify, you know where I am. And hopefully, he’s going to teach me how to get more of that and less of the others.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:30
This is really interesting. And when I first saw the website, I thought it was a much larger device that kind of sat on your desk. And then when you lifted it up, it’s this little tiny, really tiny, it makes a lot more sense. It makes a lot more sense. So but that’s, that’s really interesting. I’m very curious to see how that works out for you. So we’ll have to come back to this. Once you’ve been using it for a while. And you can, you can report back to us on how it’s working out for
Augusto Pinaud 42:57
you. Yeah, and on the theory of lift is that it helps you and depending on how those readings and that your metabolism is they are going to help you tailor you know what’s better, what’s worse for your nutrition. So you can get to that ideal stage where you’re burning energy from fat and not from carbs.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:17
Fantastic. So that’s the lumen. And you can find it by going to our show notes and clicking on the link but it’s also lumen.me. So l u me, l u m e n.me. Alright, onward a Gousto to our featured story this week.
Augusto Pinaud 43:33
That stops users have installed Progressive Web Apps 270% More than the past year and progressive web apps for they’re great. They’re, you know, they allows you to install in PCs do you can install any Mac’s you can install in Chromebooks. They don’t work yet on the iPad, but they weren’t great. And I have seen more and more people installing them because as it is basically, as the name says a web app allows you to break or to go on top of some of the securities. You know a lot of people that I work in coach too. They cannot install stuff in their machines, okay, their machines are locked down, they cannot but they can go find that progressive web app and now put the app into that machine and that match the security themes, give them an application and give them something that will work very well. So I am not surprised that they are doing this not only that what we have seen is these applications are getting better and better. And it used to be a couple of years ago, the there were some very good PW A’s but most of them were not that great. They are getting better. I’m better day by day. So I am really excited about this.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:03
I think this is this is less of a conversation about productivity on one hand and more conversation about productivity on the other hand, which is, if I if I forgive me to explain the confusing nature of saying that, but on one hand, it’s just the the, the movement of software development, it’s easier to publish a progressive web app, because there is zero, minimal to zero maintenance, once they push out that initial PWA. Because it is literally the web app that is being shelled. It’s just basically a responsive web app being shelled for you within the chrome or browser experience, whichever browser you’re using that supports it. And I don’t believe Firefox currently supports PWA, edge and Chrome, but all chromium based browsers, so that includes brave and is opera, chromium based, I’m not sure. But either way, the Vivaldi are one of those. I’m not sure they’re also Chrome. But any Chrome chromium project based browser is going to support PWA. And it’s just the the future is going to be PWA ways for a large swath of software, not all of them, you’re never going to get OmniFocus as a PWA.
Augusto Pinaud 46:21
But only focus is a great example. You know, there, I know a lot of people who love OmniFocus, but now they cannot install it on their PC, they have a web app, they even created a web app, the web, I don’t know how powerful is these days, but they did it, they could really go now that the web app exists and turn it into a PWA and make it more usable for the people in the PCs.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:44
That is a great example. So I stand corrected because even OmniFocus could be couldn’t be a PWA. And it’s it’s actually not about the the usefulness of PWA is as much as it is the ability to be able to quickly push out an application in that its own its own environment, its own taskbar item, right. So seeing that app represented in the doc gives you a context switch. And that’s actually extremely popular and powerful when it comes to productivity, right. Like if you think about it, when when you’re like spending 80 to 90% of your time in the browser, just changing tabs for some people, not for everybody. But for some people, it’s just not enough to keep them focused on that particular work. And the context switches maybe not enough, we always talk about context switching, or switch tasking as being negative. But there is actually a power to having the appropriate context when you’re looking at things. And being able to switch from one thing, your browser where you feel like you’re consuming things to say your email application where you were exclusively communicating with people. And so having this ability to publish PWA is is a very, very powerful feature of the web today, and I think will just proliferate. And they will get better. That’s the thing is that as we make our way forward, some PWA ‘s are, you know, mildly competent, just because they’re, in essence, a mini browser, right? That’s really all they’re representing. But I believe that over time, we’re going to get more and more powerful PWA S, which is why we’ve seen this exponential growth of PWA is being installed. I mean, one of the things that Chrome OneBox talk about talked about in this article was the fact that really the primary, you know, leading discussion has been that Android has seen this huge uptick in installations on Chromebooks, which just means that there are more Chromebooks on the market. And Chrome OS supports Android app installations. And so people are going to those app installations to be able to get work done, that they can’t get done in the browser. And then people saw the ability to install PWA now directly in the Chrome browser, and pop those apps out and now have, quote, unquote, a full application on their screen. And now they’re choosing those as opposed to Android especially, it’s going to be lighter, they’re just going to be easier to keep updated, and all kinds of other things across the board. And many of these applications allow you to use them offline. So even though the application is a quote, unquote, PWA, they are still a full fledged application installed on your device that you can use offline in some level. So think about like, you know, say if you had a PWA for Gmail, you’d be able to read and respond to email. And as long as you didn’t close the application, when you reconnected to the web, you’d then be able to go ahead and have those emails go out and new emails come in, so you can use it offline, and then reconnect to the internet, and then all the stuff will basically happen that you needed to happen connected to the internet. So I just think that this is a really good stopgap measure for a lot of applications that don’t want to build for all the applications out the gate. You know for so lots of productivity technology startups can utilize this to In that sense, but then I think it’s also a really good long term strategy for a lot of tools that it would just take too much time and energy and money to ever produce a full fledged native desktop experience for everyone. And even mobile experience for some, some people are building for the desktop web, and they want to be able to have a mobile option, well, PWA consult for that as well. So I just think that people tend to think of this in a very limited capacity, when in reality PWA is actually have a very expansive capability for us in our productivity worlds. And think about the the only final thought here and then I’ll then I’ll stop. But the the idea that if you have a resource limited device, so you have a very underpowered Android device, and you want to be able to have a bunch of apps on it, but don’t want to take up all the space PWA is are the solution, uninstall the full fledged app, and then install the PWA. And you get, you get the the ability to have this app sitting on your home screen. And when you open it up, it kind of feels just like the real application. But it’s also not holding all of that data all of the time. So that when you close the app, it’s basically shutting down and giving up those resources. And you get to have your cake and eat it too. So I think there are a lot of benefits for PWA s. And I hope that more technology companies go out there and give people access to the PWA format, so they can utilize that in their in their productive lives. All right. If someone announcements,
Augusto Pinaud 51:33
yes, we have two announcements. So first is next week, March, next week, tomorrow, march 8.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:41
So for those of you who are listening to the podcast, that is today,
Augusto Pinaud 51:44
that is correct, Apple announced a big performance event. And there seems to be some remorse from announces we will cover it for sure. On the 100 episodes. That is going to be next Monday. Then we are again posting our poll. Last year, we did the boat on the top female productivity organization technology expert for Women’s History Month. And the post the poll will be available on the website, Anything But Idle. Net comm I tell this directory called anything but idle.com you will see it there. Please go and vote. It was really fun. Last year, it was really fun to meet new people and to acknowledge some of the ones that we know. So please make sure to go and vote.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:40
Yes. And also, if so we’ll tweet this out, we will post this in personal productivity club, we will put this on anything but idle.com. And so everywhere we can post it, we will will do so if there are other female technology, organization, productivity experts that you know of, please comment on the the post itself. So we know tag them and post it. And as soon as we can, we will go ahead and add them to the poll so that they can also be included. Because you know, we only know the people we know. But really the hope is that we broaden the exposure of the people that we don’t know, there are so many hidden gems in the world. And just because of the way the world works, they have not gotten the billing that they should. And so I hope that by doing this, we’re exposing more people and also being introduced to new experts that are that are in the world that we just don’t know of, because we don’t know know them. And so hopefully you can help educate us bring those people into the fold. Just so looking forward to seeing who wins this year. Last year, Grace Marshall won and so she she won the the top female productivity organization and technology expert for 2021. And so I’m looking forward to seeing who wins this year. And so yeah, let’s just exciting. Alright Gousto with that, we have done it again, we have closed episode 99 of Anything But Idle. So look at that. Thank you, again, Augusto Pinaud for putting together the show this every week. It just is a great help. Okay, on anything but idle.com you’ll find our show notes with links to all the stories, the productivity resources of the week, any extra stories we didn’t cover in the show itself, as well as text transcripts both to read and there’s a download link so you can download it as well. And after serving our show notes, let us know if there’s any stories that we did miss when it happens. You can feel free to comment on the episode page on Anything But Idle comm forward slash 099 That’s the episode page for this episode. You can tweet or DM us at Anything But Idle. We also have Twitter profiles, but if you tweet at Anything But Idle, we’ll know what it’s all about. And you can also use our contact form on the website. So you can just fill out the contact form and submit it there. If you have a question or comment about anything we discussed. agree disagree all the fun stuff in between you can also comment and tweet and use the contact form as you are want. Also note that we have a channel, which is basically a group inside of personal productivity club dedicated to Anything But Idle. So if you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community, you will find the signup form for joining this group. And so in there, you can discuss the news, you can ask questions and interact and engage. And that’s also where we post the links to watch live each week. So if you want to be able to watch us record these live live, instead of listening to the podcast afterward, you’re more than welcome to join us then, and engage in the conversation and you know, ask questions, and we can answer those. Hopefully in real time. This is your first time watching the live stream, feel free to click the subscribe button. So you get notified when we do go live weekly. And if you’re listening in the podcast, you go ahead and follow us or subscribe in your favorite podcast app and their instructions there on anything but idle.com to go ahead and do that. Please feel free to rate and review us in Apple podcasts or Stitcher or whatever other pod chaser all the various podcast apps and platforms and social networks that allow for rating and review. Of course, we just enjoy the compliments. But the real reason is that it helps to introduce us to a larger personal productivity listening community. And so if we want to reach the widest swath of folks who are interested in personal productivity news, that’s the best way to do it. And so thank you for those who have raided us. And thank you to those who are willing to do so in the future. 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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