The Myth of Hydration

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 productivity voice. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:10

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:11

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 50, the myth of hydration. And we’re recording this on March 22 2021. Each week, we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And so it’s just a gousto. Nice solo today, not so low, I guess duo today. And what I wanted us to do is to talk about the myth of hydration. First and foremost, today is World Water Day, which is why the topic even came to mind. In essence, World Water Day is an annual United Nations observance day. And it’s really to highlight the importance of potable water that is fresh drinking water. And the fact of the matter is, is that it’s fairly scarce. In many parts of the world today, many people who live on the planet still suffer from not being able to access potable water, this year’s theme is, is going to be I think it’s valuing water. And so this public campaign that the United Nations puts on, invites people to join the global conversation on social media to tell them your stories, thoughts and feelings about water. So feel free to go ahead and do that tweet at un and and, you know, kind of engage in the conversation, I think it’s an important conversation for us all to have. And what it really brought to mind, though, was the fact that here in at least the Western world, the affluent world, we hear this constant banding about of the idea that we should be drinking water and drinking lots of it. And, of course, this is a complete fallacy. It’s a it’s a myth, that you should be drinking some abundant amount of extra water every day. So first and foremost, I am not your doctor, I am not your lawyer, I am not your accountant. So anything you need in terms of real medical advice of any kind, you should talk to your doctor and make sure that you’re getting sound, professional advice from them. But as I understand it, there is no reason for you to be out there drinking copious amounts of water, that is unnecessary. What we know is that 1945, the new national, the US Food and Nutrition board, put out a notice of some kind of saying that humans required eight eight ounce glasses of, of drinking water every day, roughly 2.5 liters of water every day. And for some reason, it’s stuck. This is based on no science, this is based on no research. And all of a sudden, there was a proliferation of information out there. And it’s kind of made its way into the at least the American ethos I don’t know about the rest of the planet and acoustique probably kind of let me know how, you know, it kind of is heard about in like South America and perhaps other places in the world. But the reality is, is that you don’t need extra water, your body is capable of soaking up water from normal drinks that you drink throughout the day. And food sources. And of course, we want to be able to get those, those that fresh water from food sources, because that’s the easiest way for our bodies to absorb it. So drinking extra water just actually makes you urinate more, it doesn’t actually do anything for your body, it’s not particularly good for your kidneys as they say it’s not particularly good for any of those things. It’s just bottled water companies wanting to sell more water to you. So I I give that as a PSA.

Augusto Pinaud 3:34

So that’s it. That may be true in the United States in Latin America, we were convinced that that article it was completely true and is the only truth that we are going to drink. Okay Not only that, in certain countries in Latin America, it’s safer to drink that bottle of water than any other water and that’s a now on a serious note you know when when you travel because what happened is is not that the water is not drinkable, is that you are not used to the bacteria the bacteria on the water change from country to country from area to area. So it is true that when you are in certain places you know better thing to do is to drink a bottle of water. That’s it. It’s a myth and it’s a myth that if you drink more water you’re going to lose more weight and those kind of fallacies but is the same thing of why you buy bottle A versus bottle B and bottle a you prefer because it tastes better. Bro The difference is not in the water. Okay water should be by definition thi tasteless except that we are convinced that certain waters taste better than others you know. So it is interesting and it is interesting as a person who came From outside the states to, to see the difference, you know, I, I was really lucky and blessed I, I had more than enough water growing up. But I but it was a reality to have unknown and see places where water was not a reality when you know that that I that I saw, being able to get water as soon as you get home was not a reality. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:28

yeah, and note that your body tells you when it is thirsty when it needs more water because you are you get thirst. And when you’re thirsty, absolutely, you should be drinking water when you feel thirsty, because that’s your body’s telling you that, of course, if you’re in a hot climate, or if you’re going to be outdoors for an extended period of time, you should obviously bring water with you bottled or otherwise presumably in a glass bottle, not in a plastic bottle. And and of course, if you’re going to do exercise, you should rehydrate your body when you do exercise. Funny enough, your body sweats and oil, when you exercise is very different than when your body actually loses water through insensible loss, which means you are you don’t notice the loss of water that your body gives off your body actually loses about two liters of water every day. And, and of course, your body replenishes that water through the food you eat. So it’s not necessary. But I just hear all the time, especially these, you know, gurus of food and health and wellness, chugging water, and there’s actually a deadly condition if you drink too much water, so your body can actually lose, you know, all kinds of cohesion, cellular cohesion, by virtue of drinking too much water. And and so you need to be careful, low blood, sodium can cause all kinds of issues. If you ever drink too much water and you feel lightheaded or nauseous, you start vomiting, those kinds of things immediately seek medical attention because you have basically overdosed on water. So anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox, but I thought it would be an interesting little deviation from our normal discussion on on the non biological things to just touch on that for a World Water Day, but Happy World Water Day to everybody.

Augusto Pinaud 7:08

Well, and before we move on, I want to say that as a person who struggle fights, whatever was Wait, it is really interesting. Because before you get the awareness that some people naturally have, and I did not, I was not one of those persons, you tend to confuse hungry with thirst. And you tend to eat to get the water from the food, yes, but then that has another set of counter indication. So you know, if you don’t have that awareness, and you feel hungry, go for water before you go for something else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:51

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And there is good science on that, which is that if you may be thirsty, and then you perceive that as hunger. So absolutely, totally, I’m totally fine with that. But this whole idea that you need to be drinking, you know, two and a half liters of water a day is a is a gross overstatement of all things and you know, like Dasani and the artesian water industry. And the rest of them, they’ve made a really great amount of money on that myth. And so if you want to be more productive, just give up the give up that whole notion that you have to be chugging water in order to be healthy. It’s not it’s not doing anything for you in that sense. Okay. Let’s move our way along then to our stories of the week. What is our first story of the week of Cousteau?

Augusto Pinaud 8:35

Well, the first study of the week, you know, was happened really last week. But we have a much more important thing to celebrate. And it is the but this week, we want to celebrate the fact that Chromebooks are 10 years old and hard to admit, I don’t know where I was those 10 years, because, hey, I but I understand the iOS also, you know, maybe the 10 year celebration the iPhone already. So we’re going to talk maybe maybe some Chromebook maybe more than often. But it is really interesting to see how this idea of the Chromebook has really come to revolutionize so much in the in the technology world. You know, 10 years ago, they were looking at a powerless machine that you may not use too much. And now they are not only the day to day, but you find some of them are incredibly powerful. And it’s a robust system. And you know, I put on another podcast on ProductivityCast there is an old episode where art and I argue about the the Android and the iOS and it is really interesting because he said the beginning of that podcast is the beginning of episode five episodes and when you listen into that and see the reality today, it is incredibly fascinating how much that has evolved how much Chromebook has evolved. And not only that, what, at least I expected from the next 10 years to be, do I’m expecting to leave iOS? No. But I more and more recommend to people, the use of Chromebooks on for my clients.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:27

So that was episode four. So if you go to ProductivityCast, dotnet, forward slash 004, you’ll be taken to that episode on the future of Android. And I’m sure we had other topics where we where we argued about iOS and Android, but that’s the one that comes to mind. In the history of ProductivityCast. I will say this, I’m one of the Google product experts for Google Chrome. And I spend a lot of time in the forums, reading and helping folks who have issues with Google Chrome. And it’s just phenomenal to see the growth of the platform, it’s really become, while we have Chrome OS, which has its own operating system, Chrome itself being a browser, for most people, it is now it’s got probably more surface than most operating systems, you might run, you know, Mac OS, or Windows OS. But in reality, most of what you do every day is in the browser. And that really creates a larger surface for operating, then the operating system itself. And Chrome, especially being the dominant browser on the planet, is just so much of what and how we consume the web. And so I know that in the productivity community, many of you are going to be using alternative browsers or multiple browsers in your world. That’s totally cool. But I just find it to be fascinating that 10 years, only 10 years in and Google has really swallowed up a big portion of what is the the the operating system world today. And and I’m curious to see how it will develop into the future. Google Chrome has now gone into a two week, a four week cycle. So there’ll be publishing on, you know, new editions every every four weeks now. And and I’m looking forward to seeing what the update cycle the accelerated update cycle really does for us in that sense, as well.

Augusto Pinaud 12:16

Well, I may say that that’s I think, is insane, from from everybody. And that is incredibly exciting. For the geek in me, the guy, the Geek in myth, I can describe how excited I am about this, but from the training and constant and consumer side that then the person who doesn’t digest technology really, really well. Okay, now we are officially put the house on fire fire hose and said enjoy what’s going to happen with that said, let’s move to our next news. With this 10 year birthday. You know, Chrome got some things that were quite interesting. And one of them was phone hub, and the other one is nearby share that. I wish and I’m looking for something that can do nearby share between my iOS and my Chromebook, you know, we we recorded this podcast using a Chromebook. So there is certain things for which I have that Chromebook. I said, I needed to learn and be good. And so I can help some of my clients and what these machines do. But they struggle because everything else in my world is iOS compatible. And sometimes I want to send things to this thing. And there is not that share that works so well on my iOS and my Mac. So hopefully someday, we will see that it’s but in the meantime, let’s talk about phone hub. And I’m sure you can describe it much better. Much better than I asked you are the Chromebook user and phone user 100 phone user.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:54

Yeah, so so phone hub basically is an application that allows you to connect your phone, your Android phone to your Chromebook. And this gives a whole bunch of additional features. Now, if you have the latest version of Chrome OS, and one of the latest additions, I forget what Android version it goes back to. But either way, you know the latest versions of Android, in essence, you’ll see a little phone looking icon that will then appear in your in your dock. And that little icon when you click on it, you’ll be able to now access things from your phone and also connect for messages, for example, your Google messages, things of that nature that are just generally things that you would have only access to on your phone would now be accessible on Chromebook. It’s starting to bundle together some of the things that it started working on in the background originally. And so things like hotspot connectivity when you are out on the road, and your messages and sharing different notifications from your phone To your Chrome OS device, so your Chromebook or otherwise, so it’s a great little new feature, I haven’t quite used it as extensively as I’ve wanted to yet. And that’s only because I’m, I’m transitioning between two phones. And so I haven’t had a chance really, to really get under the hood. But I’m going to probably use more and more of it as time goes on. And there’s a new Samsung tablet that it’s going to be announced very soon. And I’m very excited about it. So if I do end up getting that, I will undoubtedly have those my main phone and that main tablet main laptop paired together and phone hub will be a great addition to connecting those pieces.

Augusto Pinaud 15:40

Alright, awesome. So, um, the next article we have it came from Chrome, unbox it. And we were mentioning outside of the show how good Chromebook unbox it has been, you know, getting the quality of the articles. And I wanted to mention that for our listeners, if you are in a Chrome, it’s a great place to go. And the next article talks about, you know, some of the tab groups and and the window, the web apps, and how that can take your productivity to the next level. And one of the things that Chrome do is what is technically called a PPW, a application. So basically, they can get a weapon, make it look for you like it’s an application and, and I use it a lot. And now I can I add, you know, the little thing to the dog in the Chromebook. And I do the same thing, even on the on the Mac. So. But now we are going to have tabbed windows, we are going to have new windows, there’s a lot of possibilities that are going to come out of this. So you can go read the article and and see how you can turn some of those must use webs into or to look like they are an application so you can access even faster. And I like them a lot more than have them on the top of my browser. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:07

yeah, I will note to everybody, I think I’ve mentioned this a few episodes ago. But I think it’s really important for you to know, when you are operating in application inside of Google Chrome, and up in the top corner of your Omni bar that is the the field in which you can type in URLs, you know, website addresses. And otherwise, you’ll see various icons appear there. Sometimes you’ll see a video camera, if you’re using, say Google meat or a web thing. You’ll see other icons appear there. If you see a little desktop icon with a down arrow, that little icon means that you can quote unquote install a progressive web app. Google is in the process of developing progressive web apps for pretty much all of their application applications that are out there, including Google Chat, and Google duo and otherwise. And this basically creates an app that you then have resident on your machine. So you could just double click on it and open that application. And so just know that that’s available to you. And it’s super easy to do. And it just creates a nice window that you can move around, but it’s all kind of kicked into Chrome. What’s our next story?

Augusto Pinaud 18:11

Our next story is starting around March 16. You can snooze your Google Calendar notifications in Google Chrome and hallelujah.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:24

I’ve always had Google’s notification systems turned off. Because this is a you know, just too many notifications. But really being able to toggle between your desktop and mobile notifications in this way really makes the snoozing of those notifications far more fruitful within Chrome. And so you’re capable of doing some level of that on Android and and on Chrome OS. Now bringing that to Chrome really, really sweetens the deal of making those three operating systems work together.

Augusto Pinaud 18:55

I agree. That’s, that’s, I mean, it is fantastic that you can get that and again, it makes it more powerful, if anything, so Well, our next, our next one is an article on Gizmodo of how to use your Samsung phone as a next step. And Samsung has this thing that I think is brilliant, called it dx, and that we have cover the decks multiple times in here as well as in ProductivityCast. And basically the decks allows you to connect your mobile phone to monitor and then get into a full desktop experience. You can now connect a full keyboard full mouse and it is fantastic. And as I said earlier, I’d recommend to some of my clients this kind of solutions because it now give them the opportunity to instead of carrying or buying three four devices they can buy one you know for their needs and carry everything that way. So it is if you have, if you think right now that you can do more or your most of your needs in your mobile device, I think this is an article that you should check and make sure that you may be able to get read on your next upgrade of everything else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:23

Yeah, so this has been available since I believe the Samsung Galaxy S eight series. And that required a base, you know, Jet to dock the decks into now, in the latest versions of, you know, basically, in the last, I think six or seven versions, you’ve been able to do this without that, that puck. So now you can just in essence, load up dex and it gives you this full desktop experience. I played around with it when I was testing an S 20 Ultra s 20. It was not necessarily s 20. Plus, recently, and it was phenomenal. It was great. You just it gives you a full desktop, there are some minor, you know, holdouts in terms of features and so on and so forth. But really, if you’re used to using your mobile device and you just want to be able to have a full desktop experience on occasion, dex is a fantastic platform for being able to do so. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how it plays out in the the tab series I’m thinking about getting a tab and one of the one of the tabs i think is going to be a beautiful experience when you want to kind of switch between mobile experience and the desktop experience and dex i think is a great platform for that

Augusto Pinaud 21:33

yeah I I’ve been lucky to have a couple of clients who I have convert in into dex their real estate agents and it’s it’s perfect they were leaving anyways on their phone, they can come get home and work everything else instead of the fingers in the full keyword and and because of that I had the opportunity to really play to help them configure and it was a beautiful, beautiful experience. I may say

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:01

antastic any more Google stories are we moving on to some apple?

Augusto Pinaud 22:06

No, we before we move to Apple we are going to talk about peloton so since you told people at the beginning of the show not to drink that much water or they should bike but peloton I think, you know, peloton has been it’s been an interesting story to see during all this pandemic. And now they come with something that is quite interesting, they are allowing you to schedule workout with your friends. And this is really interesting because I have not seen it. But I see it as a really tread for the gyms when things open and get back, you know, people have made the investments already into you know, equipment and things. And if you let them now Come play, interact, you know, without going in there and get that friendship, camaraderie, you know, of doing the gender thing together from the comfort of my home. That can be an interesting game changer, I think.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:08

Yeah, I think that a lot of these remote workout gym features functions, platforms are going to be a real challenge for in person gyms. And I know that you know, like for myself, I’ve had to make do working out at home and in buying all the equipment to be able to do so I’m not just going to let the equipment sit there now. So going back to the gym is really only for specialty equipment, and is it really worth the cost of, you know, paying for that versus, you know, potentially even buying the specialty equipment at home. For those few cases where you want to be able to do things, I don’t know, it’s gonna be a real issue. I like the idea because it produces accountability. And anything that produces greater accountability is good for everybody. And so peloton, having this ability to schedule workouts with friends, I think like many other tools, the greater the amount of accountability you have, the more likely you are to be efficacious with regard to whether that’s a workout regimen or with a any system that you have in your life. So good on that.

Augusto Pinaud 24:13

My wife do it my wife has scheduled with her friends and and it’s been really good you know, except for that little guilt that comes when she missed one but but other than that he’s been it’s been pretty, pretty good for her. So the next thing is let’s talk about Apple wanted you to stop subscribing and instead going to follow and that’s all that I’m going to say about that. There are moments our art may not be listening to that to the show today. I haven’t seen him yet but this is one of those moments that I’m glad Art Gelwicks is not in the show because he will not just stop

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:55

now but there is logic here so this is how it’s gonna happen. Apple is Apple is moving towards monetizing their podcast platform. And so they’re going to have likely some kind of either Apple podcast plus or something like that. And they don’t want people confused between what is a follow and what is a subscription on the platform. And so what I, what I foresee happening here is that follow in essence just gives you notifications that someone has accessed, that someone is follow, quote, unquote, following your podcast, the subscription in the system will be that you are both following and downloading new episodes in the apple podcasts space. And then of course, anywhere it says subscription upfront is going to be something that Apple wants you to pay for. So I think that’s why they’re changing that minor term. My real problem is that this is going to change a whole bunch of ways in which people perceive the term follow and subscribe. Across the podcast ecosystem. There’s already a lot of people who misunderstand the fact that when I say subscribe to the podcast, it’s free, you can just you know, it’s just adding it into your podcast app to be able to download automatically. And that’s pretty much it. So I think this is going to muddy the waters a little bit more, it’s going to be more difficult for people understand, but you know, Apple has long kind of championed the podcast and the primary podcast directory for a long time. They’re no longer going to probably be the leader in podcasts, but they still will, you know, be a very important part of podcasting by virtue of having the strongest directory. Alright, let’s move our way along to the next story.

Augusto Pinaud 26:33

I catch myself before you tell anything I was saying is do use an Amazon smart speaker, you know, the one to start with a and Amazon has make it really it’s pretty much PG or G and but now there are ways to make it make her a little more sassy. And even make a tour a little bit if you’re interested, check the link. I have kids on my kids if I accomplish that, it will only talk to the mme a and that way so we should not that means is WhatsApp is working into you can now do certain voice and video calls from the next stop. And it will be nice to be able to do it everywhere. And you know, I i have i use telegram for for work mostly. And one of my favorite features is the fact that he’s everywhere. Okay, is the same experience if I grab a Mac, if I grab my iPad, if I grab a Chromebook or if I if I grab an iOS device, my phone your WhatsApp, why that cannot be done?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:57

Yeah, I’m I’m always upset with WhatsApp and, you know, on I can only have it on one phone. When I try to open it up on different devices. It’s always a subpar experience. Yes, I can have it on a desktop. And it provides me with some level of functionality. But you know, I think Facebook has been kind of asleep at the wheel on this one. And they have lost market share because of it. And you know, just how Microsoft lost market share with Skype to all of the rest of the platforms, certainly to zoom in the course of the pandemic, because they were just asleep at the wheel and I think Facebook, you know, really, you know put the death knell in WhatsApp with regard to changing their privacy policy. You know, what, what they were going to be sharing for purposes of centralizing Instagram direct messages with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp earlier, I guess late last year. And and now I think, you know, Whatsapp is basically on the decline. It’ll continue to be used by by a lot of people, you know, done by Facebook, it’s going to be used but I’m certainly getting rid of everyone I know. You know, and and transitioning them to either telegram or to signal or to some other platform because WhatsApp is just this legacy tool that I don’t need on my system any longer.

Augusto Pinaud 29:12

Well, I wish I can do that I I have enough clients outside you know, it is interesting because what’s up it’s really the tool of choice for especially Latino America, that’s the tool of choice you can get them you know, even with all their efforts telegram has done it’s been an a much better as it is, it’s still been a challenge to get them out of out of WhatsApp dating WhatsApp is the best invention since sliced bread or that blackberry messenger thing and, and what we need to what I’m going to say for is when I moved to this country and or or even after that when I was traveling to America for work consistently The blackberry messenger and the BlackBerry thing was a savior because the people could not afford Okay, as simple as that 234 $100 bills on their phone. So they could not make the calls as soon as you I used to carry a blackberry just for clients and I work everything on a tree. Oh yes, I get I’m aging myself but I used to my main device was a tree on in my belt, I had a blackberry because that was the device with the walkie talkie theme that I disliked to no extend. Okay, what’s the way my clients in Latin America will prefer to communicate not for any other reason that it was free was possible. And right now, that’s how we see WhatsApp is how is the free way to communicate everywhere. And I hope we can go to telegram

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:01

so I’ll step in and say just one other thing that we didn’t have this on the rundown. But telegram as you are well aware of gousto. And those of you who are listening and watching know, I’m a huge fan of telegram. And telegram has recently added the functionality. If you know the the new social network, it’s a social audio network called clubhouse, it gets a lot of fanfare, I don’t I don’t think it’s going to be all that, you know, remarkable considering the fact that Twitter is building a competitor. There are several other big investors trying to build competitors, Facebook’s building the competitor. And now telegram actually added that functionality for you to be able to have, in essence, what clubhouse provides and a social audio environment where you can broadcast to as many people who are inside of a channel or group. So just so you’re aware, now telegram contains those features. So if you’re already on the platform, that’s a really great place for you to be able to build a community. So good to know,

Augusto Pinaud 31:53

at least as I’m aware of clubhouse, still only iOS, while telegram will do that everywhere there is a podcast that I follow that they did that they do every Friday at 10am. And they go into everybody goes in the group. And the reason was when when that was discussing the chatter of the group, that was the point they wouldn’t did not want it to do it in clubhouse, because they had followers on every other platform, and they wanted everybody to have access. So that was a recent

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:27

invite only. It’s still invite only. And it’s only iOS. And so you know, I have iOS devices. So I am in clubhouse for that reason. But I don’t actually find it to be as valuable to me plus it. So it’s a real time environment. So you actually have to give one to one time in order to be able to access that information. And it’s incredibly difficult to manage that when you don’t actually know what’s going to be in the content of the show. And so it’s really quite difficult or content of the conversation. So anyway, moving right along. What’s our next story?

Augusto Pinaud 32:58

Okay, Microsoft Edge now have vertical tabs, and they claim for faster start startup times. I don’t know about the second one. Okay. But when when I first hear about the vertical tabs. I don’t know. I’m ready for every browser into what’s happening here. What’s happening with and this is a formal complaint to everybody else. Really Microsoft is going to win this race.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:30

Well, no, no, no, Firefox definitely beat everybody to the race. Firefox had it originally. And so there’s I think there’s a I know, I know, but I do. And I like Firefox for some things. And so Firefox allows you to I think it’s through an extension, I have to open up Firefox, but I’ve had it for so long. I’ve just always used it. So you’ve always been able to do that in Firefox, the chromium project, which runs Chrome, edge, opera bitwarden, you know, all the browsers that are out there in that space brave. They’re all running on it. So presumably that Microsoft added vertical, you know, tab browsing in edge means that Chrome should be able to add it pretty quickly and easily on their side. So cross your fingers that will get vertical tabs in Chrome, same. One cannot know anything. I’m just I’m just hoping

Augusto Pinaud 34:21

I, one can only hope because I really like vertical. That way I have on on iOS. You cannot do it. Why? Because it’s iOS. But in Chrome, you can and you can set the bar. So it’s vertical. No, I mean, my max. There are all verticals in the left. So I would love to do that. Also on iOS, I think. If the taps ever make it, it will be. That’s it. Let’s start there. Now we’re going to go into the who knows if this product is going to really ever exist. Okay. And it’s I got a call from Tom’s guide called forget the iPad Pro 2021. Sam is working on the super tablet, the mipad five. And I thought about not even talking about this, because we don’t know if this is coming to me for never never got to the United States. So we don’t even know if this is really going to to make it to the United States. That said, it is really interesting how the iPad Pro is now making people look into the form factor. And I’m not talking about operating system to surface follow the form factor of the iPad, okay. And it runs Windows. So this one will run Android or Chromebook or so what I wanted to to to bring to this and the reason why I picked this is it’s clear now we are going to are we have gone to a two factor or a two form factors. Okay, one is a traditional laptop where the weight is on the bottom. And one is the tablet factor where the weight is on the horizontal thing. And it is really fascinating for me to see the passion of people with one versus the other. Okay, there is people who told you I will not use a tablet for real work. It’s not anymore, as we saying about Chrome having 10 years and we talked about that all episode where we had so much difference between the iOS and the Android, we are getting to the point where really, none of the tablet form factors will really not allowed you to do your work unless you use really specific software, okay. Any of them will allow us to do most people work. Now it’s coming to what is the form factor that I like, I like a desktop. I like I think that is heavy on the bottom, or I like a thing that is heavy on the back. And it really depends on how you work. And what is really interesting. And the reason I wanted to discuss this before we go into the next and next from this article is I don’t think a lot of people have noticed that they’re fighting for the same thing. They just wanted in a different package. And that’s what I wanted to bring to the discussion.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:38

Yeah, I think I think one I’m I’m upset with you. Because Jeremy is not going to bring the mipad five to the United States. I am sure of it.

Augusto Pinaud 37:47

I saw on the preparation of the show on he did not believe me, it’s on record now.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:53

Yeah, so sad, because they’re not gonna they’re gonna Xiaomi is not going to bring this tablet to it. It’s a beautiful, I mean, well produced device it looks like. But you’re absolutely right, I think what we’re what we’re coming toward is this central place where the margins dictate the choices of the computing devices that we’re choosing. And ultimately, what I’d really like is, in essence, something that is a high quality device like the MacBook, or MacBook Pro, with a touchscreen, so that we have the best of all worlds in terms of being able to utilize the tool, I think what the surface provides for me or the iPad Pro is the ability to be able to detach that screen and use it in a tablet style that I think is really powerful. I think most laptops are probably going to go into some some mode where it does that kind of thing in the future. Now a convertible laptop or these tablets that have keyboards that can click into it with Pogo pins. They’re so readily available, that they’re just becoming the norm. I see so many people utilizing them now that I think you’re right, I think that we’re just going to see the convergence of those operating systems. That’s why Google’s working on fuchsia, the operating system that basically is supposed to be the operating system, the command them all, that you could just basically put on any device for that very reason that you’re going to find all of these various form factors. And you need an operating system that can just work across all of them, because people are going to want to work on many different types of form factors.

Augusto Pinaud 39:27

And as we try in this show to avoid speculation, news, and all this, they need to say that I hope that the purchase of Neverwhere, this is me dreaming again means that they’re going to integrate that into all devices from any device and you will be able to put fiction in all that. So that’s my on my dream list may never happen. But your next news, and as we were saying early Chrome, or Google Chrome is going into a four week update and I think I don’t I’m not sure I will reserve my vote on this is a good color a poor call, but Microsoft Edge has announced that they are also going to go into this. And after finally Microsoft decided to embrace chromium, it is interesting because they have been trying to sell this as their brand new chromium brand. And they want to make sure that they are ahead of Chrome in certain things. So it is really, really interesting to see. To see what what’s going to happen.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:40

Yeah, I have some more things to learn about what the update schedule really means. But ultimately, we’re not going to see that much of a change on the front end for us, we’re going to see more updates. But I think that’s pretty normal. And I think it’s good for us to have faster security updates. And so, you know, I think that just generally, it’s not really like security updates that are really the issue. But it’s more that you’re gonna see more holes filled in bugs and that kind of thing on a faster schedule. So I don’t I don’t think the average user is really going to notice anything, I think those of us who pay attention to the to the Chrome, you know, world will see certainly more features coming out in different fashions faster. And we’ll see how it works. But I don’t think much will change. So don’t, don’t fret too much about the idea that chromium as well as chrome and edge are going to be pushing updates faster, because we won’t necessarily see that much change on our end either. So

Augusto Pinaud 41:40

Alright, I hope so. The next one is Windows Central. And tux the title of the article is what’s up accidents shines light on Microsoft, mishandling the Skype and I guess I am open critic of Microsoft and many things. I understand that. And they, they were I wrote about that, and I but only you know, you had the monopoly. Nobody people used to think I’m going to write a winning word. Okay, and they let that disappear, why I will never understand it. And they did the same thing with Skype. You know, as all these privacy things came in. Okay, everybody talked about telegram signal, you know, go back to SMS. But nobody mentioned Skype, there was no mention, you know, that bazillion of articles I read about? How about Skype? Okay. And, and, you know, as I was reading this article, I start thinking, do I even have a Skype in my machines? By the way, the answer was not.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:50

Yeah, I wish that Skype wasn’t installed on any of my machines, I always have problems with Skype. And the reality is, is that the reason why Microsoft really did this is because they made that pivotal turn toward Microsoft Teams. And it just happened right at the cusp of the pandemic beginning. And so they had already started the ball rolling toward really up ending Skype and moving many of the functionalities, including phone service, and that kind of thing into the Microsoft team’s environment. And they couldn’t, they couldn’t turn that that ship fast enough back towards Skype. And so they just unfortunately, lost the the momentum there. But you know, the reality is, is that I’m, I’m glad to see Skype go. It’s a big bloated application. And we needed to get rid of a lot of that technical debt that Skype has, I don’t think Microsoft Teams really solves that either. But I’m hoping that over time, including with the new application, that they’re building the light, lightweight application for desktop that they’re building, hopefully they can clean up some of these pieces that will help to make really Microsoft Teams what Skype should have been, and giving, giving all of those features over to it for the video and telephony, and chat, and so on so forth in a seamless product, because those of those of you who are in the Microsoft 365 realm deserve a tool that allows for great collaboration. And I know Microsoft has the chops, they have the they have the the developer where with all of the developer resources to be able to make that happen

Augusto Pinaud 44:16

that they have. That’s all that I’m going to say about that. So our not our last piece of news is word security text and file transfer now to his features, and I have never used bewegen I when we talk about all this password management and stuff. You know, I said that I was on one password guy, but I was really surprised when I saw that. They don’t say What do you mean? default memory, password management and no, it’s not default. You know? One password allows you to have all these notes secure and all that and I honestly thought that was Even images, files everything. And I honestly thought that was default. And that made me even happier that I pay for one password, you know has come all this LastPass story has made me understood in a much more deep level how good one password is and how much more I need to recommend.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:23

So while I am not one to two companies horns, I will say that I recently had to touch base with one password for a customer support question. And it was just like a basic question. But it was fairly, it was detailed, it was a complex question, but it was one that only they could answer. And I went onto their site clicked on the chat, pod typed in my name. And they answered the question within about two or three minutes of my conversation with them. And so it was just a wonderful experience. And so one password gets a really high mark in my book for their capabilities there. Either way, bit, wardens secure text and File Transfer Tool is useful and helpful for those who are in the bit Warden world. I am not one to be transferring documents and files inside of my password manager. It just doesn’t seem like where I would want to send those things. But the fact that it now has the facility is great, so good on them. And so with that we have reached our halfway point in the show. We’re going to take a break with a word from our sponsor this week, and then we will come back after the break and we will cover the few stories we have left. In today’s episode. We’ll cover our new tools of the week, and then we will cover our story of the week and then we will close out so we will see you after the break on the other side of our sponsor this week.

Sponsor Voice Over 46:42

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:34

Hello, everybody and welcome back to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And I’m here with Augusto Pinaud. For the second half of our show. Today, we are going to continue on with our headlines before we broke, we were discussing the headlines of the week. And now we’re going to head into our second half of the show with some more headlines. What’s our next headline gusto

Augusto Pinaud 47:55

technology has turned back the clock on productivity. And it was a really interesting article talking about how technology gives us this myth and how we need to revisit this myth. Okay, that because of this access of technology, we were going to be more more productive. And it’s interesting, you know, they cover a couple of points in time since 1776 through 370 BC. And how, really, with the incredible advances of technology, okay, we don’t seem to note really, you know, the productivity gains on this end. And the article goes into the point of, really how much can we do in this and, and I always mentioned and pull my phone when when we talk about this because I remember my first cell phone, okay, who barely could make phone calls and require a battery. Again, that was like two or three inches thick on the back of that thing. Okay, so you could last half a day and forget about text messages. Okay, so I remember carrying that monster plus a pager. Okay, so I could be found. And now I have a phone in my pocket that is probably 20 more more times more powerful than my first MacBook. The interesting thing with this is we have everybody or most everybody, okay has this incredible amount of power in their pocket. But most of us are not really more productive. We are more distracted, but no more productive. And what the article goes into reference is well, it’s time to look again into understanding a specialization and we have come to be a lot more generalist was what we do. And we have lost productivity gains. Because of that. And I don’t know. The reality is for most people and the access of a computer, you will have all the tools to be a generalist. And you need to really fight to not be one. Otherwise, yeah, you can do a little bit of this a little bit of that and be a little bit okay, on everything.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:27

Yeah, I don’t I don’t think I have anything else to offer here. I think you’re I think you’re absolutely right. I think, you know, we’re, we’ve gone down a path in society, and I have particular opinions about how we should write the ship. But I think the article is, is correct, even dare I say it that, you know, the, the message about the idea that specialization is really so important for us to be able to understand in order to be able to get out of that hole, and we’ll see what happens. I mean, I, you know, I, I unfortunately, don’t control the ship. So we need, we need, we need people who are in higher tiers to really steer the ship in the right direction. All right. Moving on to our next

Augusto Pinaud 51:16

story. Well, this week, we have been seen a lot of noise and articles on a website called Johnny decimal, and it’s a way to organize files and maybe emails, and that basically tells you to divide your 10 categories, and then inside of them and 10 categories, and inside of them and 10 categories, and go that way. It was an interesting page, if it is a good place to maybe start maybe way to organize your things, if you cannot, but I it the website as well as a concept, okay, made me think back 20 years, okay, where we were talking about the paper in a tickler file and how you organize these things, when I can my lady a, you know, the Amazon smart thing can do searches, okay, much faster than what I can do in any other device. Plus, I have one of those on every corner of my house. So I can shout her name and one of them with me. And if she understand me, she will get me the answer I was looking for. So do we really are back to needed this on? Or really what we need is to learn how to use the search capability of anything, because doesn’t matter. If you’re talking about Android, Chromebook, PC, Mac, or iOS, the search capability of any of those platforms has come so powerful. That Do we need that?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:56

argument is no, I don’t I don’t think we I don’t think we need a Dewey Decimal System for computers any longer. You know, I, I appreciate what this person is doing. I believe that some people want complexity in their system. And this is a way to make their system feel more valuable to them. There’s a values statement in saying that I’ve created a highly complex system that I want to maintain. But I don’t have time for that. So from my perspective, I want to make the system as simple as possible. And I think I’ve told you this and in conversations, you know, I’ve steered all of my clients away from these number based systems, unless the system itself will only will only sort based on numbers. And therefore the numbers actually create a benefit for you by virtue of that numbering system. Outside of that, you are really just creating more complexity, whereby words themselves that represent the things you are trying to find, are capable of being found by filter and search. And if you file things correctly, and filter and search correctly, learn the tools, right? If you learn how your system does these things, then you’re highly capable of finding what you need. I don’t see a need to have to also then create an ontology between numbers and words. We’re already creating one level of abstraction between the thing we’re trying to find and the words that we’re naming them. And then we’re having to create another abstraction above that, which is some two tiered number system to be able to find it. I don’t I don’t see the the use case here. For this. Particularly, I think that there are probably people that this speaks to and I’m okay with that, you know, like it’s your productivity system, go for it. But it’s not something that I will advocate for the average user.

Augusto Pinaud 54:45

I don’t know I agree with you. I don’t think this applies to me or or I have any interest on it. But I thought it was important to bring it to the listeners who can make their decision of Yes, this will make this additional complexity will help me fill in the blank. Yeah, and

Raymond Sidney-Smith 55:03

for anybody who this speaks to, I would love to hear, like, where and how you use it. Shoot us a message through the website or, you know, tweet at us or otherwise, because I am curious how people would utilize this in their own way. Because if it does make sense, then I’m, I’m open to changing my mind if the use case makes sense. But I just see, I see a very marginal number of people, I see the margins being very slim, and the number of people that this would really benefit. So just curious, but if you if you do plan on using it, let me know, or let us know, I would be curious to know. Okay, moving right along.

Augusto Pinaud 55:41

The next article talks about what they call this short email rule. And what they really refer to is this idea of trying to get email to a more SMS style, where you try to make them short, or you try to make them five sentence or more or less sorry. And, yes, email needs to be a reform. And to that extent, I agree to Professor Newport. What people need to do is to try to understand and if clear instructions, what they’re trying to accomplish, I cannot state how many emails I have seen that, you look at that, and the next action is not clear. And it doesn’t matter, you can make it shorter. Okay. But if you don’t state what is what you need from the other person, the other person don’t have in general, the bandwidth, or the time to imagine. So what we really need to do is not short your emails, what we need to do is to learn to state what is what we need. And from one side and from the other side, as a receiving when you receive an email that is a blob blob of undue ability, you need to reply and saying exactly what is what you need to do. Thank you. Because what I see in my email box in the clients box is a bunch of things that came in that you now need a PhD again, on 27 hours to discover, okay, what is the next action? And nobody that I know has that kind of time? So what happened is that didn’t stay on the inbox forever, or get deleted onto the SEC, the person, right? You again and say, Did you get my email? Just understand that? We don’t reply to that. So I don’t know that you think a shorter email is the solution?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:50

No, I send lots lots of long emails. But what I do is I structure my emails so that people are actually capable of understanding the actionability associated with them. And this is where this particular methodology, so it’s known as five sentences. But there is actually a two sentences, a three sentences and four sentences variant of this, I thought there was a seven sentences variant of this also, but I couldn’t find it either way, you know, you can find the link in the show notes. And the idea behind it is that it’s just basically saying that your email responses are going to be shorter. In essence, I would like them to actually just be more explanatory. As Augusto noted, really, what I want to be able to see is the bottom line up front, right? The bluff method, the military email method, right? You want the bottom line up front, what do you want from me? What do you want to be done? What’s the decision that was made, put that up, right up, smack dab at the beginning of the email, then give me background, if you want to provide three pages of context great, and then a summary at the end and restate the action that you want me to take. And that’s the format that I use in writing all of my email. And those messages are just so much easier to digest, because I understand the format of them being written. And that’s if it’s two sentences, or whether it’s, you know, 3000 sentences, I want a format that I can structure and understand what it is that you’re looking for from me, what’s the background associated with it? What’s a summary of those details that are not, you know, me having to read all of that. And then, of course, restating the action that you want me to take based on that background? And so that’s the way in which I do it. And I don’t really care about the length of the email, I care about the actionability of the email, but what is it that you want me to do? And how do you want me to understand why I should do it.

Augusto Pinaud 59:37

And then our last article of the week is the source title will work from home outlast the virus and for suggest, Jess, and as you read the article, you discover target, agree and more and more people integrate and actually there was a really interesting number in that article, and it’s The number that paralegals inside of law firms has changed. You know, they were saying that by 2019 was less than 5%. And now it’s 16%. And 16% may not seem a lot, but when you look into the industry, that is a role that traditionally is in house, and this is people who live in house, okay. Basically, stay there in house forever. So I think that is really, really important to see until, you know, especially we, I, at the beginning of the pandemic, January last year 2020, I was saying that the issue is going to be the people like me, who they move for working from home, we are getting the most benefit, because we already made that decision. Okay. The people who this who discovered they, they enjoy working from home, and they were going to now have the pool back and forward with the corporations or not return. And the biggest issue was the people who will mean that working in the office, those words, the ones who were going to be hit it the hardest, because I was thinking on 2020. And I’m more and more convinced of this, that most corporations are not returning to what do we have December 2019, we will return to a hybrid, some something, but it’s never going to be everybody on board as it used to be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:41

Yeah, I think, for my own company, I’ve just decided we’re not going back to the office ever. I mean, I was very rarely there anyway, you know. And the reality is, is that now there’s just really no reason for it, we’ve proven that we can run in a distributed model. Again, I would look to Matt Mullenweg, his work at automatic and his concept of the distributed work model, and or the distributed model and work, I think he has a pretty good perspective on this and runs a fairly large organization that has a distributed model, we need to stop thinking about this from specifically just remote work or working from home. And that kind of thing. This is about having a distributed company. And this is going to give you greater, you know, efficiencies and greater effectiveness categories that I think are really going to be important for us going forward. That being the case, I think there going to be some companies that decide to go back into the office, that will be very much dictated by management’s lack of creativity, lack of, you know, real foresight, and then there are going to be other organizations that are required to do so I mean, there’s just some organizations that require people to be in person for any number of reasons. And then the rest of us are going to have some level of hybrid. And I think you’re absolutely right, we’re going to kind of shake it out and figure out what’s the best, I think those people who are going to be kind of, you know, innovative in their approach are the ones who are going to get the benefits, they’re going to be the ones who are capable of seeing their employees stick around for retention, they’re going to be the employees that work out how to work in a distributed model, and therefore they can be productive no matter where they are, I think that’s really important that we’re flexible, and dynamic in the way in which we get things done. You know, you’ve got to be productive in the face of chaos. And the best way to do that is to is to work in a distributed model where you don’t know where anybody is going to be. So you’re going to work in a manner where you can be that flexible and dynamic person. And in that environment. I like it. I think it’s funny, because obviously Ford is, you know, kind of mythically known as you know, helping to have enforced the eight hour work day and the five hour off the five day work week. And all of that kind of thing and giving us the weekend weekend, although it was much more many more things at play that created that for us, in the United States, at least, and around the world. But the fact that you know, we are going to more hybrid is a testament to technology, I really think that it’s a testament technology. The real important part now is that folks out there who are teaching productivity, the folks out there who are teaching technology, they need to start understanding both of them so that people who are working in these environments are capable of fully utilizing the tools that they have available to them. And so with that, let’s head on over to our new tools of the week. And so yeah, so each week, August when I come across many production, personal productivity tools and services. And in this segment in tools of the week, we’d like to bring you tools that we think you might like some of them may be new, somebody that may be old, but hopefully some of them are new to you. And so this week, we have two tools. And our first tool is a tool that I’ve been using for years and years and years. And so while it is not a quote unquote new tool, hopefully like I said, it’s perhaps new to you. And the tool is My Fitness Pal. And so I’ve only ever used this in the mobile version. And so I don’t really know anything about The desktop web version or anything like that, but in essence, My Fitness Pal, which is actually owned by Under Armour right now, it allows you to be able to track your food. And since it’s World Water Day, you can also track how much water you drink inside the app, although you don’t need to. So seriously, you don’t need to. But the app itself is actually quite nice. You can I actually pay for the premium version, so that I’m able to have a few more features. But in essence, what you’re capable of doing is inside the application, you can scan food products, and in essence, that those food products will then get added to your system. So you have a food diary. And you could just in essence, you know, go through your food province, say I had a bagel this morning, with with peanut butter, you scan the bagel package, and you put in one bagel, you scan the peanut butter package, you say I’ve had two three servings of peanut butter, and then it tracks it for you. And I don’t do this all the time. I don’t want anyone to think like, Oh my gosh, you have to track every ounce of you know, a food or every calorie you eat, I try to do this on on a regular basis, though. So usually for a month or two at a time, I will track food especially during times when I have the likelihood of having the the normal meals out of out of order out of sync, you know, very busy times, because it’s helping to guide me if I’m having a normal normative period of time, you know, regular workdays, regular evening hours, those kinds of things, cares, you know, we’re going to, we’re going to eat the same meals, we’re gonna have the same calorie intake, everything’s gonna be fine. But say during the pandemic, where things are all shaken up, and where I would normally have a few meals out a night a week, with colleagues and friends and everything else like that, all of a sudden, I’m not getting those calories. And so I need to make up those calories somehow. And they shouldn’t be garbage food. So My Fitness Pal is the perfect tool for those moments where I can say now, okay, I need to pick the things that I’m eating and making sure that I’m getting enough calories and the right mix of calories. That is the macronutrients right, I want to get the right amount of carbs, the right amount of proteins, the right amount of fats, and, and that way, I can make sure that I’m getting all of these pieces of the pie filled in. And My Fitness Pal just gives me that capability. And I just really like it for that purpose so that I can I can see the macronutrient you know, pieces. And you can you can very quickly understand, okay, have I been eating too many carbs today? Am I having too much fat? Am I having too much protein and going in and saying, Okay, let me let me balance this out in the course of the day or, for me, especially it ends up being I haven’t had enough of enough calories. Generally in the day, I’ve I have a high metabolic rate, you know, so my, my metabolic rate is very high. And so I have to eat more calories than the average person in order to be able to maintain my weight. And so this is something that really helps me track and maintain that stuff. But in addition to that, it also allows you to be able to track exercise, it gives you coaching and the platform for being able to set up meal plans and all kinds of other fun things in the application. So if you want to, you can actually also set up your own foods in the system. So say if the food doesn’t, that there’s a food in the system that doesn’t actually exist, you can actually add your own food in the system. And you can create bundles. So like if you have the same salad that you like to make, like I do, I have a salad in here named and it has all of the ingredients. And then it just basically adds that all as one meal for me automatically. So there’s a community, you can post in the diary and blog and journal. And it connects with all of the other My Fitness Pal application. So map, my run, map, my fitness, and those kinds of applications all connect in because they’re all owned by Under Armour. So it’s a good application, generally, and I like using it for those purposes. Augusto, what is your new tool this

Augusto Pinaud 1:08:53

week, my new tool, the week’s call streaks, and they I love their definition, they define their app as the to do list that help you form good habits, tracked up to 12 tasks that you want to complete each day. And, you know, there there is arguments about putting your habits to routine into your system for Jessen for now, but this is a great solution for those things. You know, you want to know the progress of accountability. You know, check how much how many times I have walked the dog or brush my teeth or walk and you can get all that in strikes. You can customize it. You can even tell them I’m only going to do this three times a week or these days and all that you can track everything on your watch. And you know, I want to know how many times I read every night great you can do all that it is it has been for me an incredible solution when I want to map some of these audits and for my clients when They want to really focus into increasing orange, orange or making a habit part of their day to day.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:14

Fantastic. Thank you very much. And so those are our new tools this week. And so now on to our story of the week, what is our story of the week of gusto, the

Augusto Pinaud 1:10:27

story of the week is chrome profiles. And I’m going to let you explain them much better than what I will do. And then I will come and chop it in pieces.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:37

Okay, so Google has decided that Chrome needs to have a new identity management system. And in essence, what you’re going to have now are what are called profiles. So you may sometimes get confused by the fact that you, you will have two different images that will appear when you’re in Chrome, as well as inside of a Google product like Gmail or Google Calendar, or otherwise, you’ll see an image above and then an image below, the image above is your profile for Chrome to date, you’ve had one in essence, and you could switch between multiple different accounts, Google accounts in order to be able to access your various account logins. Now, identity management is handled on the browser level. And so now you’re going to have for each of those logins, potentially their own profile. Now, that means that when you open up that other profile, everything about your Chrome instance, is separate. So for example, all of your extensions, your theme, everything that you have identity wise in terms of logins, they are all segmented completely from the others in terms of how they operate, you can think about them as almost being completely independent versions of Chrome running side by side by side. Right now I have three and the, the, the change has been rough, because I have lots of extensions. And I have lots of user accounts, Google accounts that I have set up for various things. And so it’s been really difficult making that transition between them, because I’m just used to, you know, Chrome extensions, doing things that I normally want them to do. And so yeah, so this is the change over I think, ultimately, this is going to be brilliant, because, for example, I have a test mode. So I have a test chrome instance, where that profile is just supposed to be a clean instance, nothing’s running in it. And I want to just be able to see, is this a bug? Is this expected behavior is this unexpected behavior, and why? And those kinds of things, so I can install an individual extension, have it run that kind of thing. Now, I can do that in Chrome, without having to jump through hoops, and install a bunch of different versions of Chrome and all that nonsense. Now, this gives me that capability. That’s an edge case, because I’m one of the Google Chrome product experts, I happen to do a lot of testing in Chrome. But that’s the point is that now you will have these independent kind of islands unto themselves known as chrome profiles. And so that upper level icon of yourself is really important, because that determines how everything will sync across various devices. And otherwise, this is not yet available on Android and iOS, and certainly on Mac OS and otherwise, but this will come to all of the chrome eventually. But right now, you should be seeing this certainly on Chrome windows. Are you seeing that on Chrome in the Mac? Yeah. So it’s coming to the Chrome and

Augusto Pinaud 1:13:28

the windows on the Mac?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:29

Yeah. So now it’s on the Mac OS, I wasn’t aware of when they were pushing that out. But now now it’s out there. And you can manage these profiles, including guest profiles. So before you had this kind of concern about anyone can access my Chrome instance. But now you can actually hand over to someone, your computer, your laptop, or whatnot, or just click on guests. And now they’ll be able to utilize that system. And all of that is kind of segmented away from your profile. You don’t want their Google searches, and they’re logging into Gmail, or those kinds of things embedded inside of your Chrome instance, now these things will be separate for you. So questions, thoughts, a gousto.

Augusto Pinaud 1:14:07

And I think that’s, that’s awesome. That is exactly the case. I think when sometimes the kids come and say, Can I use your, your computer mindset? And the answer is always No, but my wife does. And it is a good thing to try to teach them, you know, create your own. So that way you don’t need to.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:14:28

Well, this is something that I actually learned from you many years ago. I mean, when when, when you wrote 25 tips for productivity, you talked about this notion of separating your browsers into into multiple browsers, you no longer need to do that. In essence with Google Chrome, that’s because it is now with profiles acting as you so I have multiple google google workspace accounts, for example. Now, they’re not only colored, but I can have a different image. So I have an image with my company logo behind me, you know, so it’s like my headshot, but this is the company logo behind me and then it’s just me And now I’m capable of just quickly clicking on my headshot, I see which one I’m logged into. And I can click on now the one that’s the business logo, click on that it opens up a new window, new instance. And now I know because of the coloring that I’m inside of my Google workspace account, and I can just go to town accessing those things there.

Augusto Pinaud 1:15:20

And that is exactly the update to that is to if you’re going to do that. So you’re now going to only leave in that make sure that the instances the profiles look different enough that your brain knows in which profile you are, because otherwise you lose that skill.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:15:37

Yes. And also note that this actually manages a number of different things. If you’re managing passwords, please don’t be managing passwords, but be if you’re managing passwords inside of your Google Chrome browser, those passwords are now fixed to the profile. So if you have passwords for work, those need to be parsed out and put into your, your Chrome profile for work. And the personal ones need to be put there. So there’s some there’s some decoupling that will be painful for some people because of this profile concept, your Android Pay, that is now Google pay or G pay that that web based payment facility where you might be able to put a credit card or debit card into the system that is also kicked into the profile now, so which is great for me, because now I could put my business credit card in my business profile, and my personal credit card in my personal profile. And now the two are not connected to each other for so for some godforsaken reason, I hope never happens. But if for some reason my personal account was compromised, they wouldn’t have access to the business profile. Because they are segmented they’re kind of my as I said, they’re like islands unto themselves. And so there’s not a connection between the two instances. And, and so you have that capability of having those pieces kind of separate in those different profiles. So I think it’s a really good decision for Chrome to have made this choice, it is going to be a little bit of work kind of separating apart the pieces and figuring out what goes where and all that stuff. For me. It’s really the extension. So I’ve got to install all of those extensions. Again,

Augusto Pinaud 1:17:07

it is going to take a little bit of time to figure that out. I 100% agree with you. But I think it’s going to be wonderful when when you get it done. And it’s going to really help the people who can make that distinction now. And you know, as you said, I wrote about many, many years ago, and this is still true.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:17:26

Yeah. And it also tells me, it gives me an opportunity right now to think through, do I really need all these extensions in my work chrome account? Or do I need all of these extensions in my my personal one, because I have a lot of business oriented extensions in Chrome. So now when I’m using Chrome for personal purposes, Chrome will probably move faster, because it doesn’t have all that stuff gunking up the works. And so I’m looking forward to actually parsing those pieces apart and really having a separate business from personal. And what I use Firefox right now is really for my personal browsing. And so now I’m actually capable of fully decoupling those pieces using the chrome profiles.

Augusto Pinaud 1:18:07

Well, and with this, we get to to the end, we have a couple of announcements. One is the GTD podcast release Episode 96 sharing GTD with kids. So if you have kids, that was an interesting discussion, the rocket book there there haven’t they have been making noise that there is a lounge that a product revolutionary product called axis on March 30 2021. I know nothing about it. So neither do I.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:39

I’ll be we’ll be we’ll be surprised along with you. But we’ll let you know

Augusto Pinaud 1:18:42

price are disappointed on that day.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:45

I’ve been happy with everything rocket book is put out. So I’m excited to you know, they just put out this teaser that the access is coming on March 30. So we’ll let you know. On an April when we meet again. What What the heck, you know, accesses but I’m looking forward to it. Why not?

Augusto Pinaud 1:19:03

I’m finally you know, last week, Samson did her event they announced three phones. And we covered here in a special episode 49. So Anything But idle.com slash 40. Zero 49. And that’s it for this show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:19:21

Fantastic. Wonderful. So thank you gousto was always for getting us ready for Anything But Idle.

Augusto Pinaud 1:19:29

My pleasure.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:19:30

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