AI Comes to Windows

Anything But Idle

AI Comes to Windows

May 31, 2023

https://youtube.com/live/jNcu-Dy0NSE

AI Comes to Windows, and the Productivity and Technology News This Week

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In this Cast | AI Comes to Windows

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Headlines & Show Notes | AI Comes to Windows

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HEADLINES, PART A

Raw Text Transcript | AI Comes to Windows

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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. And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 116. AI comes to Windows, and we’re recording this on May 30 2023. I hope everybody had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday those of you who celebrated Carol states, of course, each week, Augusto. And I cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and it’s related technologies. With that, let’s get into our headline, what’s our first headline this week.

Augusto Pinaud 0:45
So our first headline of the week, it says seven positive effects of taking time off for mental health. And he’s come from psychology today. And I’ll talk to you know, improve mental well being productivity, physical health, work life balance. But more than the seven positive effects, it is important to remember that we are not machines, and that we need to take this breaks, and we need to take this time off, or we need to take these health days. And as a productivity coach and consultant, one of the things that I heard often is I don’t have the time to take a day or two days a weekend. And I understand it. So if you don’t have those times, then you need to figure it out. Maybe look at this less list of seven things and figure out how do you do a smaller increments of this, you know, as somebody teach me, early in my career, I was complaining about no no have enough time to write? And he said, Well, describe me your writing routine? Well, my routine required two or three hours of work out, of course, I never have that window. Personally Well, how about your right in 15 minutes increments? Impossible. And that was my first reaction, I think is the same thing in this cases, you know, we think taking the time of need to be this long day, weekend, longer period of time. But the reality is it not it can be that small fragment of time. But regardless, you can take those 24 hours, or you can only take eight minutes. It is very, very important. And it has very important effects.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:40
I really liked the idea of a mental health day and I will probably start thinking about it. You know, I’ve of course heard it over the years people people saying they were taking them. But from a greater productivity perspective, having that time off. And not being predicated on a federal holiday or being predicated on a weekend would kind of be more useful to me like saying, I’m going to take off a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and take that just like you would for a recovery day from the gym, kind of taking that recovery day for mental health and wellness perspective. So I really liked that concept. All right, on to our next story Augusto.

Augusto Pinaud 3:23
Our productivity hacks holding you back, they sort of praised this or pricing true about effectiveness. That’s the title of the article come from business leader magazine. And it was a very nice article, you know, and come with certain things. You know, that may sound basic, but you do understand what the writer called is sewn of job genius. So what is that time that you work the best? And I know she said something very interesting, say, you know, optimizing your calendar. And so you know, email tells you what other thing you should be working on your to do, tells you what you think you should be working on. And that reality lives in the middle. And that middle is your calendar. And the calendar really is what shows you where are you with that and where are you going to go, you know, and aside of that talks about hey, taking time to reflect and planning and I have said over the years many times the more busier you are, the more time you need for this reflection and planning time because the less time you have to stop to pick the wrong thing to do the wrong activity. It also talks about setting systems and I agree, I disagree. On the way she put it in the you know setting system not a series of hacks and I believe the hacks are very important but setting the system it is important and finally say In this I love, it’s just a set of expectations with others creating a user manual to me. And that’s something that I have never put on those terms, but that have done for many, many years and set the expectations from people very, very clear. This is what you can expect, this is what you can connect me, these are the hours that I will not respond to you, and be upfront with all those things. So people know what to expect, and what are they going to get from you?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:34
Yeah, so I think I also disagree with the terminology of calling anything hacks, you know, I don’t think that really makes much of a difference to what she’s really talking about here. It’s a good, you know, it’s a good title, you know, to kind of get you to click on the article. But the techniques themselves I think, are useful. I think the I think the the ultimate goal here is to be able to create a cohesive personal productivity system, that is one that fits you a design that works for you, right, like, your system is your system, it’s personal. So what works for me is not going to necessarily work for you, it may inform and help you understand what might work for you, but it’s not the one that you should adopt, you know, full sail. So the goal here is to be able to figure out the, the mechanisms that you can use the tools, strategies, techniques, that combined become something useful for you. And I think many times we forget that piece of it. I have a user manual myself. So I really appreciate that concept. And so you know, I have a whole manual and I have a an estate manual, basically, should I not be able to manage my own home, you know, and life, these are the things that need to be managed, you know, without me being able to make those decisions. And I liked the the five page playbook she created. It’s kind of a GTD system that she has informed through her own her own productivity system. And this works for her right, it wouldn’t work for me. So as I was reading through it, I was like, no, no, no, scratch that. No, no, yes, maybe yes, yes, no. And so it was really nice, though, to see somebody else really itemize and, and just kind of, you know, explicate her entire system in in a very succinct, clear way. And I think we should all do that in some way, shape, or form, because it really helps us galvanize what things we actually use and what we don’t use. And I think that’s very, very helpful. Yeah,

Augusto Pinaud 7:43
and for I have discussed in cross platform, I have discussing ProductivityCast, what I call my technology card, and the technology cards at the end of the day, part of that manual is very subcomponent of this of this manual, where I discuss and cover for me, this is for nobody else. What is the technology in my world? And what are the plays? They do? Why do I use them? How do I use them so that way when I need to think or want to upgrade or look for cool things, like every week, because of the show, okay, that may make the list. It’s a very easy now comparison, I can pull that list and say where this is going to fit and move on.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:28
All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 8:30
Well, our next story is from hacks spirit, and it’s 15 routine changes that will make a huge impact on your productivity, you know, wake up earlier, and I love wake up earlier, I have I have two kids, I have a wife of a dog. And I love that time before anybody, it’s up that I can. And I do different things depending on the day, I have learned that not everybody wake up early, and it’s fine. What I discovered for me is I need to wake up every day at the same hour, it doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday, what may change is the activity that I do Sundays, for example, I tend to read more those hours than then get productive, but it is important to understand what works for you create a to do list, you know, prioritize your task. And obviously, the two of you two of us, you know are big into getting things done and that’s the system that we use for that embrace the power of saying no, eliminate distractions and you know, 10 More, Go and read the article, but to remember, as you read the article, some of the things may sound very cool. Some of the things will be like and some of the things will be a no and it’s fine. Okay, doesn’t matter. What all these things are just ideas, ideas that you should or can consider to make your system better. And some of them are going to work incredibly well. And some of them are going to be awful. And it’s fine. What is important is that you are you identify what is what you are looking to do, you know, when I begin working, or waking up early, I wrote about it. And I used to say that I belong to our club, okay, that was the guy people who get the work, you know, have dinner, and then I started reworking again at 11:30pm or midnight and working to three in the morning, and I did that for years, then suddenly, one day discover, well, what if I go to bed at eight or nine or, and then wake up at four. And I discovered that because I was fresh, I was way more effective, but it was trial and error. Okay, at that time, if you will have told me, Well, you will do better in the morning, I will have use colorful words until you’re insane. Okay, now, I wake up every day that earlier and I enjoy that silence.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:15
Yeah, I think it’s a good article. You know, again, it’s, it’s providing you with a bunch of little, you know, interventions that you can utilize some techniques that you can utilize as well. I think all of those things are useful and helpful as you make your way along. Alright, so, with that, we have reached the end of our personal productivity articles. For this episode, we’re going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, then we’ll be back for our productivity technology articles this week.

Sponsor Voice Over 11:43
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:54
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Okay, so let’s move our way on to the technology articles this week. What’s our next headline?

Augusto Pinaud 13:05
This next article you found that was on Google inbox? I don’t follow that, that you’re the one who follow that. But its title. I wish Google search and assistant accept makes bilingual input from voice queries. And I understand I that article hit close to home I speak English I speak Spanish and trying to read Portuguese and it is painful. It doesn’t matter if it’s Google, or is Milan a? Or is the madam s? Why why they can you cannot dictate the one I’m going to say that do it better is mme a, when you do it, you can go and set up an Spanglish version that kind of understand you on both languages. But then, but why? Why this is not possible. Get it? I understand the articles talking about Japanese and English, maybe that’s additional complexity, I don’t know. But it will be so cool to be able to dictate and tell to these people in the language that is coming to your mind, instead of trying to say on a hold on this thing will not understand that let me translate what I want to say and then lose the momentum.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:17
No, I purposefully found this article for you. Augusto I have nothing else to say about it. I think that it’s just important for I think, you know, the powers that be and anyone who is in that in that space to recognize that that multilingualism while it’s not as a part of the American culture, right, you know, other than some other countries where most people speak multiple languages, the United States, most people speak one language is still a huge problem for us all and it actually limits us in our ability to be you know, you know, great, you know, in some way, shape or form as a country. If we can’t if we can’t speak to people in the culture and language in which we’re trying to operate. So

Augusto Pinaud 15:01
yeah, for my friends in Europe who has big more than one language, you know, English and the local language and maybe another one, it is a massive pain because now you need to define, okay? Should I configure this system in this language or this other language, and I can do this, then most of my day is speaking English. But there is a moment where you’re mentally tired, okay? And the pronunciation, let’s say degrades, okay? To be really kind with myself, it will be very nice to in that moment helped gel to that to the system what you want in the language that you want. Anyways, Google’s rolling out a new side panel for customize Chrome. So you will get now a panel and you will be able to get more prettier customization a little bit better customizations. Hopefully, for the users of Chrome and the customizations, I don’t, I don’t use much of it. I like the color, I use two or three of them. And I like the fact that if I look at them on the top of the bar on the color, I know exactly when which company I am working on. But other than that, I don’t customize it that much.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:16
Yeah, so So for folks who are kind of unaware of what happens when you currently go to customize the new tab of space, you are, you are basically popped into a pop up window, right, so there’s a window that kind of comes up in front of you. And you can edit your background, various shortcuts, you know, the shortcuts that are displayed on that new tab, you can identify which cards you want to show. And then of course, of course, color and theme. That’s also available when you click on the profile image in the Chrome toolbar. And so you click on that and click on the little pencil icon, it will just display another, you know, customization profile customization option. But that new customize this page button, which is the little tiny pencil icon that appears in the new tab window in that bottom right hand corner, you’re able to then go ahead and in the newest version will basically give you a side panel for those customization options. So it’s literally just a change in how the new tab, customization options will display. That’s it. So there’s not anything changing necessarily. It’s just the way in which they’re going to display those items, which I think is probably a little bit cleaner than the way in which the pop up window currently appears. All right, onto our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 17:37
Oh, our next two stories are all about Amazon. The first one is and it would love to hear about this, you know, Amazon Kindle Scribe is getting limited handwriting and text conversion. And I said this when Amazon announced this device, Amazon is one of the few companies who have the patience to lose profit on a line long enough to really introduce features that then others can run and make millions. But they are proven this they are making this device come into the mainstream people getting the idea. And it is interesting because the more this device, you know, it’s getting into the noise, okay, and people is getting into people’s ears. What I have heard is not people getting the scribe, but he’s people wondering about handwriting is people wondering if they will be able to do this or that if they buy a device with handwriting capabilities, and take notes and all this. So that said it is very interesting that you Amazon again, in Amazon fashion, they continue improving. Now you can take notes and pages, you can collect more things. So have you had the chance to play with this? I know you have a scribe so I’m curious,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:08
I have not had a chance I’ve not seen the update come across my scribe yet. But I’m really looking forward to it. The limitation is that you do need to do this outside of the notebook, right. So you have to actually, you know, click on the Share menu, and then and then there’s will be an option to convert to text and quicksand. Or there’s an option to convert your text and email. So it’s not like you’re in the notebook and you’re automatically able to go ahead and do that or all good notes where you can circle the text and automatically turn it into text, right? That’s not going to be necessarily maybe the the Scribe is just not powerful enough to basically do that while it’s still inside of that notebook environment with everything loaded up, I don’t know. But it would be much more fluid. Obviously, if you can select the text that you’ve written and automatically turn that into text. I presume that’s going to be there there for you. Is your iteration on that feature. But so far, I think that’s, that’s a, it’s a great movement forward. And I think I’ve probably said here on Anything But Idle that I don’t want that option in the past. And then in the past couple of weeks, I realized that I do want that option. So I stand corrected from the fact that I think that it actually wouldn’t be really helpful. Because after you do write a lengthy set of notes, in handwriting, you do actually want to sometimes sometimes not always, but sometimes want to turn that into text. And, and I’ve taken that text now and run it through OCR engines, and it just isn’t doing the job well enough, because I’ve had to export it out of it, and you know, all of that machination, that kind of, you know, degrades the the ability for OCR to work, so be really nice to be right there in the tool, and an on the scribe tablet. So looking forward to seeing this develop. All right onto our next item, which is

Augusto Pinaud 21:00
Amazon launches, defier, Max is at $230 tablet. And they are trying to make basically a larger, they are trying to compete now with the iPad size, the note eight, the Samsung Galaxy Tab eight, okay, that 11 inch size, that it is, it is a fantastic size I so it’s very compelling. If it’s not because I should learn from the podcast that I do, and we had this discussion not about this device, but about the device in cross platform with with art Gelwicks. The reality is I should buy this device just to have it in the desk. But I The problem is, is going to be on the power. And I’m going to be very frustrated. And I think that’s where Amazon is making a mistake, in my opinion, they are trying to compare this device with the iPad, they’re trying to compare this device with the galaxy, tab eight. And it is not it is going to be an underpowered device comparing to those. And it is not going to provide you the same experience. And I think they were doing much better on the primary strategy of this or device, even if you are the keyboard and all that. But it’s not going to compare, it’s not going to try to compete with other those machines that are simply faster, they have a better processor, etc. So that’s the only thing on which I think they’re wrong. That said, I think the price point, it’s right. And for many very basic users is going to be a fantastic machine. For many all parents, it is fantastic. Now you give them the Amazon TV, you give them the Kindle books on a size that they can carry. And they can also do email and a couple of basic things. So it has a perfect place. It just, I’m not sure about the marketing, and try to compare it with the iPad, not for any other reason that is on their power.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:13
Yeah, I think I think what they’re trying to do is saying that this is the cost effective version of the iPad, you know, setting people up for understanding that this is a lower powered version. And that’s what makes it more affordable. I mean, even with the keyboard, the keyboard folio, kind of the attached Pogo pin keyboard is still comes out to only 329, something like that $330 USD. That’s a remarkable, you know, good, remarkably good price for a tablet of the 11 inch size with a keyboard and stylus. And a lot of people are going to buy this, right. So you know, there’s going to be a lot of folks who buy this. And that’s what makes it an iPad challenger, I don’t think any of its specs, put it anywhere near an iPad, but it’s going to challenge the iPad in terms of of sales. And, you know, this is coming out just on the heels of the pixel tablet that Google just announced at IO. So we have the pixel tablet, this is nowhere near the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy tabs. You know these are these are not meant to compete with them on on a spec perspective, it’s meant to compete with them on a products sold perspective right there, you’re gonna see a lot of people purchase these biomax elevens purely because they’re inexpensive, and they can put them into the hands the kids or into grandma or grandpa and and they’re gonna get they’re gonna get a decent device, right, it’s going to do everything they need it to do. Maybe it’s not going to do it as well. It’s not going to have as many fancy features, you’re not going to get centerstage like on the iPad or anything else like that. But you’re gonna you’re gonna get a decent tablet, and it’s going to do the job. It’s gonna last a year or two, and then you’ll rinse repeat and buy another one. And that’s kind of what people have been doing with these with these pieces of technology. All right, on to Our next story

Augusto Pinaud 25:01
to do is is adding start time and duration. They announce in Reddit that they are starting to work in these two features that, according to them is one of the two features that people have asked and ask and ask for them. I didn’t know about Duration field, I was only focused user for many, many years and duration was never, I feel that I care for start time, I get it. But duration, I don’t know. But anyways, it apparently according to do is, is the two or two of the most requested features. So they’re coming if you’re asked to do is user, they are coming soon to you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:46
Yeah, I find it remarkable only because my task manager of choice has always had it. So the fact that it never had it, and they refuse to kind of add the features after the fact. You know, it was purposeful. I mean, they chose not to put those those items in. And now that they are, that’s good good on them. But I’ve always had an actually always completed the Duration field. Remarkably, I don’t always use the start field for things unless they are of a project nature. And that’s only because my saved searches don’t really apply most of the time for a start date. But I think that it’s good to have I mean, like, you know, there are certain circumstances where you want to be able to understand that a task is not going to last just, you know, I’m gonna sit down and do the task and check it off, it may last over the course of several days, that you might be doing little bits of that thing until it’s done. And this gives you that ability to kind of to not only track that over days, but also to understand that I’m going to spend six days, five minutes each, so that’s going to be 30 minutes, and it tells me the duration of the time over those over that course of days. Or, for me I like to time budget. So during my weekly review, I’m actually going through and that Duration field is being utilized. Because I can see in the course of a week, how much time I’ve allotted for the coming week. And if I look at my calendar, and it shows me that I have five free hours in a week, you know, to work week, but I have 16 hours of work? Well, I need to reconcile that before the week begins. Right. And and sometimes I do sometimes I don’t because I presume that you know, there’s going to be a meeting that that falls off here, there’s going to be an event that I’m not going to go to here, and then I’ll ultimately have that time. But that’s that’s, that’s a that’s finessing the system. And you need to know your own system really well over the course of time in order to be able to make those kinds of judgment calls. It’s it’s kind of a very advanced kind of GTD thing to say, oh, yeah, well, I’m gonna I’m going to leave this overbooked knowing that there’s going to be some attrition in my calendar, which I know that I only budgeted my calendar 60%. So I know this 40% left, but I always still try to make sure that in that timeframe, I have enough time to do the tasks that I have listed. So you sometimes will know there’s a little bit of wiggle room, and you might have a stretch goal of getting a little bit more done than you decided to do. But knowing that duration really does help me in a lot of ways. So I, I particularly find it useful that to do this is adding that, and it’s another, you know, just adding it to the list of things that create parity with other Task Managers, that makes me think, well, if I needed to go to Todoist, now I could write and that’s a really nice feeling.

Augusto Pinaud 28:27
So our next one, or unless new from the side is a new company called a space stop. And basically they create a laptop, who use AR VR glasses, and can give you until 100 inches of virtual display. I understand this should be maybe more on the Announcements, remorse area, okay, because all the announcements coming or rumors that are for next week on Apple launching something like that, but I put it in here because this will be an interesting change. And if we start seeing this, this will be very interesting, you know, as I look at my office, I would love to you know, remove everything out of that just put the glasses that anyways I’m wearing all the time I now see you know 100 inches of screen and that will be beautiful. So, if the company is already selling some of them is use their own operating system. You can use Word and some of the classic things but taken mine right now at least is their own operating system. But as we see these things, if they really catch up in the market, we may see more and more you know, the the VR glasses companies are trying to get with video games and all that to this concept of you know, put your glasses and play the video game this way. So this is just a company who has taken to work For

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:01
Yeah, I see the evolution as as interesting. It’s novel, I think the the approach that they took, which is to create their own laptop, as opposed to focusing explicitly on the headset is, is definitely an interesting kind of step in a direction. I don’t know if that’s going to be market viable. But I will say that, I think that the next phase for us is some kind of augmented reality where our screens do become versatile, right, we won’t just have a screen that’s attached to our laptops, maybe we do have a pair of glasses that we can put on Allah, Google Glass or something like that, where it’s not fully obstructing our vision, but just augmenting it by by placing the screen in front of us. Google already has a bunch of work going into their health technology that are, you know, basically little lenses, you know, contact lenses that you put in and some glucose monitor. But I can see that technology really fast forwarding into applying and adding augmented reality, you know, technology into it. So it’s just a matter of time. You know, for those folks who don’t wear glasses, it would be it will be a weird change, to have to put glasses on in order to be able to work and that kind of thing. But we’re gonna see a lot of different versions of this coming forward. I mean, we’re going to have to see whether is it a projector that they’re going to put in your laptop and project onto the onto a wall? Is it going to be augmented reality from through a pair of glasses? Or is it going to be something else? And I think we will start to see many different form factors kind of playing here. And I think ultimately having the choice is good. Because we’ll we’ll we’ll be able to see what people use, what works for people, what doesn’t work for people, and kind of go from there. All right, moving right along from our technology stories this week into new tools of the week, a good one, I come across plenty of personal development, time tasks, project management, and productivity, collaboration tools, and services every week. So in new tools of the week, we bring you each one that we think you might like. And so for the first item is a tool called mind stream. And mine stream is interesting because it runs on the Mac. And I’ve been playing around with it, because the the idea behind the mind stream app is that is a native MacOS Gmail client. And as most of you know, I run my entire company and my personal life inside of Google workspace. And so all of those things are in there. And so the idea of having a Gmail client that’s separate from the browser that can work as fast as Gmail is very difficult. So what the folks that live stream did is that they are using the Gmail API. So you basically get everything that Gmail provides. That includes search, you have no idea how difficult it is to do Gmail search correctly, but they are doing it because they’re using the Gmail API, you can use everything that you normally do in Gmail search, including advanced operators, you can do all you can see all your inbox categories. So if you’re using primary inbox, or if you’re using priority inbox, and the social promotions, updates and forums, categories, you’ll see all of those labels, you can you can basically use everything that you use in Gmail, and it provides us like overlay, which gives you the ability to have multiple accounts and profiles. So you can say I want to have a personal profile or work profile. And these three email accounts are associated with personal these two accounts are associated with work. And they’re all organized inside of that space. And you can also then do a unified inbox. So you can see all of those email inboxes interlaced into one screen. So you can process your inbox to zero very, very quickly and easily if you’re a GTD or like I am and Cousteau. So that’s really nice. I also like the email feature, click Compose feature. So they have all of those email composing features built right into it. It’s really nice, it’s seamless. Again, it’s fast. And, you know, I just I found it to be really nice. I you know, it’s not something that I will probably use all the time, just because I’m predominately on my Windows machines and my Chromebooks these days, but when I open up the Mac, it’s nice to have a Gmail client specifically dedicated to the computer so that you can open it up and just get started. Right, it’s just really nice to do all of that. Plus it’s, it’s Mac OS specific, right? So everything that you do on the Mac, you know, from focus mode to system notification management and being able to dock it and just keep it there and your dock all of those things are there and just very, very seamless. There is a 14 day free trial and then after that, I think it’s 50 bucks a year. So it’s pretty nominal. I think they give you like a first year discount. So you got you know, like $30 for the first year $50 each year after, but you know you can try it with That 14 day free trial and see if it’s something that you like, and if it’s something that would work for you. But like I said, I’ve been very impressed with it. And I’m not usually impressed with Gmail clients. But this one has been pretty phenomenal. And they’re doing a great job. I hope they bring a Gmail client to Windows. But I know that I know that Rakesh and their Mac focus, so I won’t I won’t push on them like, like we do with what’s the name of the other? What’s the Mac? Focus? Yes, like we do with the Omni focus folks who eventually bent and did put out a Windows version I think

Augusto Pinaud 35:36
they finally for

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:39
Yeah, what’s your tool this week.

Augusto Pinaud 35:41
So I have two tools. They come both from a company called muffed M O Ft. Told us. And the two I have is one is a wall Stan. And basically, it’s a kind of an origami thing that you can put on the wall and then put your iPad on your phone in there, I have one here in the office, I have one in the side of my bed. So I can put things in there. It’s a very, very nice device. And the other one is called the flip laptop. And basically is a stick with a magnet on the bottom where you can put then a sticker on the back of your case, the iPad or the laptop, and then you can put the phone or if you have the MagSafe in my case, on the top, you know or in the side so that way you can put the phone next to the iPad, I use both things i It’s they are very, very useful. The links are going to be in the show notes. And but if you like to have a place to put your phone, a place to put your tablet when you want to do work against your desk if you’re working in so well. Those two are incredible, incredible tools.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:02
Fantastic and with that, that takes us along to our featured story of the week, which is that AI is coming to Windows, specifically windows 11, I believe. But what did you learn about Microsoft, and the launch of copilot?

Augusto Pinaud 37:18
So it’s been interesting because I with all these AI personal assistant or the owl assistants as my dad, my dad calls me can you explain to me all this owl assistants on to what? They all assistants, I have no clue what you’re talking about? Well, I’m reading the copilot, OWL the Google what is it? How do you mean the AI personal skill, that thing that took me a while to figure out the translation anyways. We are trying right now to make our own flavor of each one of those and you have charged up T and you have Microsoft coming to them Google there is a rumor that Apple will come to theirs. And I don’t think jet. A lot of people understand how beneficial these things are. And eventually they will get there. And we will see it’s going to be in a certain way similar to the browser’s war. Okay, where you start seeing these browsers coming in and you’re going to find what is the AI that fits really your needs your style, because the AI is only as good as the questions you are asking. And the reality is, as you will Microsoft and Google and Apple and others will do their only way or their own way to make these questions, gives you a result give you something coming back. So it is going to take time. But I am very curious. I’m not a big Microsoft product. I get it. I think I will trust more AI from Google than from Microsoft. But that’s me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:15
Yeah, so I think this is probably very exciting for Microsoft to be able to put this out. So this this basically is two things in one one is that if you have seen Cortana lately, please put it in the last and bound. She’s been missing for some time. And that’s been on purpose. Right? Microsoft has been slowly but surely deprecating parts of Cortana. And what is now called copilot in this particular iteration. There are many different co pilots in the Microsoft world. And this copilot is baked into Windows 11. It’ll start to preview in June. And the idea is is that you’ll have basically a kick out side panel. That is a chat focused on A you know, AI assistant, and similar to Cortana, it will, it will be conversational, it will be able to do things for you. And it will also probably be generative, meaning that it will be based somewhat on the open AI chat, GPT model, whatever the latest model is that at that time right now, we’re GPT, four. So it’ll probably be at that, at that level, when it launches in June, a less opening, it puts out a later model that. So the concept is, is that instead of interacting and engaging with the Start menu, or the windows, you know, button, or using keyboard shortcuts to navigate to certain things, you are now going to basically open the side panel or have the side panel open on a consistent basis, and start asking it to do things. And this is a little bit different than saying, I want to open up a Word, Microsoft Word and write a document, what you’re going to do is you’re going to ask open AI, that is you’re going to ask a co pilot, which is running on top of chat GPT, you want to ask the the co pilot to basically come up with a work product, right? And you’re going to give it the parameters, and then it’s going to decide on potentially what applications you need in order to be able to do that. So is it going to open up a search? Is it going to open up teams? Is it going to open up Word, Excel, PowerPoint, you name it and bring those things to the surface, you’re now interacting via conversation with regard to the assistant versus opening up applications. And we’re using the assistant necessarily, inside of that tool, one by one, this is going to be a huge kind of brain change for a lot of us, right? Because we’re used to going into a software, doing a thing going into the next software and doing a thing. And this copilot should, over time be able to do many things simultaneously or in very close succession to be able to facilitate workflow automation in a way that we haven’t seen before. I’m really looking forward to this being available on all operating systems. And always, especially for newer generations where this will become the primary vehicle by which they operate. Will I always operate via AI, being that I grew up with a keyboard and mouse and then kind of graduated to a touchscreen, maybe not. But for younger people who will have only known the ability to have a conversation with a computer, and it being the thing that taps the buttons and makes the the ones and zeros, the bits flip, you know, then it just becomes a new way for it to be able to organize and be more productive, I think it’s going to be very powerful. I think it’s gonna be very interesting. Of course, getting us to this far is a parlor trick, right? You know, this is not something that we haven’t already had. This is just putting a clean interface, a new interface on top of technology that I believe we’ve already had the capability of doing that is Microsoft, Apple, Google and the other major technology companies, what will be very interesting to me is in the next four to five years, whether or not they can go, you know, this is say this is maybe 70 to 80% of the way toward, you know, I hate using the term artificial intelligence. But in this particular case, some forms of machine learning, natural language processing. And otherwise, we bundle those things together. Now we need to see whether or not we are getting to a point where we can get across that threshold to some true intellect, right? Something that can actually go beyond where we are with regard to these these tools ability to communicate with each other. And to create something that is truly artificially intelligent. Right now, it’s just really artificial feature. It’s like a flip phone. That’s really, really fast, right? We’re dealing with with flip phone technology right now in the AI space. And what we would really like to get to is the smartphone level of all of this. And I think even then, it’s not a replacement for a human. You know, it’s potentially a replacement for particular roles in companies. So there are going to be jobs that are lost in this process. But there potentially will also be jobs that are created. And I think that the important part is that we figure out how to utilize this for our own productivity purposes. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how copilot works. But it works just as well as as the pom and the embedded AI within Google workspace and seeing how those things kind of facilitate one in the cloud and one here on the desktop operating system. All right, do we have any other items Gousto that we want to let our audience know about?

Augusto Pinaud 44:45
Number one announcements. We have a couple you know Microsoft bill 2023 Is there there is a link if you want to see a short you know under 10 minutes Kenan resigned of the of the keynote also on the also announcement Microsoft and released a Windows Backup app. And to my knowledge, this is the first time that they do something like that, you know, they are seem to be trying to make their windows integrate closer to what Mike has been doing for for a long time. And, and for what I understood is, you know, in Microsoft way I’d similar to what it was or what it is time machine, where the will do the backups and you will be able to restore. Finally, next week, next Monday, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference returns, we may not talk next show, because we’ll be on Monday unless we decide to move it to Tuesday. But we will otherwise we’d cover in the week after all the things about the show. So this, this humble fan will be very ready to see. And, you know, in the rumors, this is the first time you know, there has been tons of rumors about Apple announcing some possibility of VR or AR glasses. And they seem to have invented or invited sorry, XR media outlets to the conference and to the keynote. So that just put more fuel to that room or that that device is coming. And that makes for all the news of this week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:29
Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you Augusto, as always for being here on Anything But Idle and helping out to make the show happen. With that we’ve covered the productivity and technology news this week. If there is something that we missed, feel free to head over to anything but idle.com forward slash community that will take you to personal productivity club to join our private or whatever community dedicated to the Anything But Idle listeners can go ahead and let us know there, of course in the show notes that’s on the website, so anything but idle.com. Forward slash 116 will be this episode’s notes. Each episode number is related to the forward slash for the domain. So anything but idle.com. Forward slash 116 is for this episode 115 is for the last episode, that kind of thing. There you’ll find the show notes, those have links to all the stories or tools of the week, extra stories, rumors, and as well. It also has on that page, a text transcript that you can read and download in PDF. And of course, if you have any questions, feel free to just come on over to anything but idle.com forward slash community and post a question there in the feed. We’ll be happy to go ahead and let you know. You can always join us here, typically Mondays at 6pm. Eastern US Eastern for the live stream where you can interact with us live. Of course we’re coming to you the day after because of the Federal holiday. But typically we’re recording these on Mondays at 6pm. Eastern with that. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week. Have a productive week and we’ll see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to your productive life.

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