Skype and Microsoft Teams Get Enhancements

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:06

Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:18

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:20

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 84 08 for Skype, and Microsoft Teams get enhancements. And so welcome everybody to those who are watching live. And to those who are listening or watching after the fact Feel free to engage and comment and we’ll be happy to respond to you as we make our way through the news. And so of course, every week we cover the productivity and related technology news of the week, we start with our blogosphere articles, articles from the blog and news world out there. And then we do our tech articles after the break. And so gousto What’s our first blog article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 1:00

Our first article is from Inc and Steve Jobs three point formula to effective meaning. And they start out in the article saying well, this is star with the base of a Steve Jobs and then we add a bunch of other people. But

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:17

let’s cover let’s cover the three things. So the three things are meeting should have three to five people, they should be 30 minutes or less. And they should cover three topics. And so those are kind of that’s the rule of threes that they’re talking about here.

Augusto Pinaud 1:31

Correct. And, you know, I say this reading this and remember my days of middle management. I was laughing at this. And he says yeah, you know, as many things with Steve Jobs, that was easy for Steve Jobs to say, you know, I say no to Obama, I have to meet him because there was too many people, as they quote in the article. The reality, sadly, is, that is ideal, the idea of meeting should be, I think, meaning we should start shooting move instead of from an hour, half an hour, 30 minutes and 15 minutes, most meetings should be done in 15 minutes. But we are in there yet. So we need to work I have set to set my meetings, the longer meeting I have in general is 30 minutes. And I as we discussed on on many other places, I try to the best of my abilities not to have meetings longer than that, I guess spam of attention for people doesn’t work after that point. And we discovered that we waste time that can be used on a different way. If you want to come and have a glass of wine with me for an hour, I’m open. But if we are going to be working need to do to what we are going to be doing. But this is interesting that three to five people I agree it’s we tend to have these meetings where we don’t think why we are inviting the people you know, and I laugh when when I see people optional, no optional why option or this person is going to bring something to the meeting or it’s not then why we have optional now. And really recording the meeting read transcript, the meeting, send an email after the meeting was what needs to be done. But the more people you bring to the meeting, in general, the more ineffective they are.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:25

Yeah, that sounds like an enterprise problem. For the most part. I mean, in my world, only the people who are needed are invited to the meeting. And those who are not needed never show up. And so but this is an enterprise issue. Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think this is very much an enterprise problem. And I think that it needs to be continually refreshed for people because we fall into the to the habit of it’s a social thing. You know, we want people to be invited, we don’t want to limit people from from accessing the meetings. But in reality, most of us would rather not be introduced or invited to the meeting, if we don’t need to be there. And as you said, the technology is so good today that we can do transcripts, we can do recordings where I can watch the meeting and 1x than 1.5x or 2x speed so that I can save the time and still access the content from the meetings. So I think you know, it’s just a it’s good for us to be thinking about meetings always in ways in which we can optimize them. All right on from meeting efficiency to overcoming procrastination.

Augusto Pinaud 4:23

So there is an article by Justin Reese’s, I was a master procrastinator, and here is his five steps I use to quit on that habit is really

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:34

so the five steps. He goes through me Steve

Augusto Pinaud 4:37

was a great article. These are the five steps acknowledge the need of change. Identify an understanding your feelings about this work on stuff earlier. put stuff in your calendar and use the five minute rule or the two minute rule if you’re a GTD or it was interesting Because the article, I was expecting something completely different than what I got. And I realized, yeah, I understand you need to have your list now is on the points that you are never getting to the list, or to the end of that list, or at least you cannot cycle that list on a timely fashion. You have a problem. understand your feelings, what your fear, you have pride, you have anxiety that you’re never going to make this list. Work on this stuff early. Yeah, it sounds when you are in that whole sense, like, yeah, that sounds great. I’m so behind all the time that it’s, but that’s some thing to work to, or to aim to put it in a calendar, stop making that list longer, start blocking time on the calendar. So that gets done, or block time on the calendar so you can get the list moving forward, and then use the five minute rule, you know, find yourself free time that you need to convince to start on something, you know, you can tell yourself, I’m going to work into this with five minutes. And if I’m not engaged with, I’m jumping to the next one. And that works. You know, usually, that’s enough to break that barrier. 510 minutes enough to make you again, getting into getting that thing moving, moving forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:18

Yep, I think this was all interesting fodder. I think that, you know, app, you know, these these mantras, like procrastination is bad. That doesn’t necessarily help anyone. You know, like, the reality is that procrastination is not bad. It is just what it is we procrastinate, sometimes positively, we procrastinate sometimes to our detriment. So that part didn’t quite resonate with me. But I thought, generally, the article had some good tips about it, you know, I don’t know who this person is. And they kind of side noted emotional intelligence. And I’m presuming they have something associated with it, I guess, because he’s the author of EQ applied. So I’m guessing he’s trying to talk about emotional intelligence in the article, it seemed not necessarily pertinent to what he was talking about here, though, you know, he talked about emotions and feelings, but he really didn’t tie them back to how this allows you to be more emotionally intelligent or anything like that. And so that didn’t necessarily rise to great for me. And, to some extent, the whole concept of putting it in your calendar, that also starts to fail itself if you don’t have the right technology and the right calendaring principles in place. So this, this sounded very, like, this is my experience, and I’m sharing it and I can appreciate those articles. But from the highly scientifically validated method perspective, it didn’t, you know, pass muster for me, but, you know, I think it’s still worth it’s worth a read from from the articles that I’ve read. This week.

Augusto Pinaud 7:48

It was a great article. And the last article we have on this section is a big four firm will allow 40,000 employees to work for home Price Waterhouse Coopers asked made the decision that he will allow everybody that is us base service employees to work virtually anywhere from the United States.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:10

Yeah, I think this is great. And the company went to a hybrid model in March, though, they did note here that PwC will opt to change its policy policies, you know, to retain, you know, talent and recruit a diverse workforce. But in that, in that same vein, those who do work virtually in lower cost locations where their colos are just you know, their cost of living adjustments are just not going to happen. They may also face pay cuts, so they’re gonna just like you know, Apple and Facebook and Google and others who have basically said, you know, if you are, you know, if you’re not in in a place where we feel like it justifies the higher salary, we may lower it, and I don’t know how to come down on that issue. You know, if you’ve been working for the company for 10 years and you’ve made a particular salary, and then you go decide to move back to say Montana where you’re where your family is, or that kind of thing. Do you deserve a $20,000 pay cut, you know, like that would be a substantial change for you and potentially negatively impact what you could do for yourself and your family. At that point. I get the cost of living part, but it I don’t know it rubs me the wrong way on one side. And

Augusto Pinaud 9:27

what is going to happen is, as we have bonus, what we are going to see a change, maybe not tomorrow but to but but in the near future is you are now going to have your base salary, your bonus and your adjustment cost of living. So that way you can respond to that mobility, your base, maybe x, then you get X amount of dollar bonus at the end of the year and you have that extra bonus or adjustment based on the city that you leave so that way you are mobile. You can leave where you want, but the company can justify that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:02

Yeah, it was it was what was additionally interesting here is that they said the employees have two weeks from October 1, to basically let management know that they want to go to a virtual, you know, employment arrangement. And and then they can modify that in the future, but they need to let them know, upfront, which is very interesting. And we’re seeing this change across a lot of major financial institutions already the article notes. And so this is, this is good, I think this is a, this is a good step in that direction. And we’re gonna see, yeah, we’re gonna see experimentation happen. This is an experiment. And of course, PwC could always recall their employees back to the office if they needed to. And so you know, that’s not going to be it’s not going to make people happy, but they could do it. And so it’s just a matter of figuring out what works for these companies. And the type of work those people are doing, right. They’re doing consulting and that kind of thing. So it makes sense that they could go ahead and be virtual, they’re probably going to travel more,

Augusto Pinaud 11:02

travel more, and probably they will do it in the same way Joe did years ago on their memories of beers. You know, leadership’s

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:10

Absolutely. Alright, so with that, we have reached the end of our blogosphere topics, our productivity articles, and so we’re going to take a break and when we get back, we’ll cover the technology news this week, we’ll see you on the other side. Well,

Sponsor Voice Over 11:22

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:32

Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle on Ray Sidney-Smith joined with Augusto Pinaud. For the second half of the show. We’re going to go into our productivity technology articles this week. Okay, so what is our first article this week? The first

Augusto Pinaud 12:46

article is talking about crossover 21 crossover is is a software it allows you to run Windows applications in the Chromebook in the case of this article, but they also do it on Mac OS. And you know now that Chrome OS has a solid Linux behind the dukane installed to this link crostini. It is really interesting, you can now get those Chromebooks and really run real windows on it. It’s even the article mentioned that is cheaper than parallels that also have that option. But you don’t need the corporate office, you can go and install it. It is on my list of things to play and test. No, I don’t have any use for Windows applications that I can think right now, on that Chromebook except one that I just thought it will be something to test and play. Just because I can

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:41

I have I have the exactly the Windows software, I’ve watched your test on your Chromebook. What I what I found really to be interesting here was the speed at which you could spin this up. And so you know, the article author here on Chrome unboxed talked about the fact that you could really have this up in just a few minutes. And if you want the product, you can pay for it. And I forget what the what the cost is. There’s a 14 day free trial, though, that you can start with, but if you sign up as a beta tester, it’s free. So, you know, I think that there’s of course, you know, that’s the catch, right? You’re you’re in that space where you have to provide feedback. And you may, you know, come across an occasional bug here or there. But the, but you know, it’s free, why not try it. And I think about all of the software that I utilize on the Windows platform that I would like to use when I’m using the Chromebook just occasionally. It’s not all the time. It’s just those few moments when I want to know Okay, could I take my Chromebook and go away for a week and still do everything I need to do that I would do on my Windows desktop, just having that little bit of security prior now to Windows 365. And whenever that eventually comes down to a reasonable professional level cost or pricing, this is a really great step in that direction. I’m really Really, really excited and it makes me actually want to go buy another Chromebook.

Augusto Pinaud 15:05

You know, I see no problem with this, that part of the thing is the Chromebook. I have. It’s great, but I don’t know if we will have enough power to run this most likely now. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:16

no, I wouldn’t try this on the on the on the lower end Chromebooks. You know, I would I would probably put this on a much more high powered Chromebooks, which, you know, I have several of them around here. So I’m going to definitely try this but I think that it’s it’s Well, I mean, I would imagine at a pinch, it would work on on a more affordable Chromebook, you know, one of the one of those but I think it’s I think it’s probably something that needs a little bit more high power. Alright, on to our next story this week

Augusto Pinaud 15:42

what Amazon announced last week was a couple of things they announced a cute Robert, you can now have a robot that can work your Alexa they announced a new thermostat, thermo standard that work with Alexa, pretty affordable 59 bucks, built by Honeywell, so it’s a traditional brand. But then let’s go to the more exciting things and the echo show 15 Let’s put out screen on your wall where you can turn into the center of the household The reality is that they if your house run, madam a Jew will have these devices running around and having that graphic, okay, here is the calendars here is the notes here is it was really interesting, here is what we need for the groceries. So I’m going to admit that I don’t know how will work and integrate with the other devices or the cable hanging around for my wife that don’t like me hanging cables on the walls. But it is really something really interesting to have this device in there to have this device showing in there where you can make a call where you can get a video. So get the calendar as a shopping list. You can even Of course my kids sent over we can even watch TV that’s out of me for for for the thing, but again, interesting and finally the last product was called a video phone for kids you know the reality is not every kid live close to the grandparents now uncle’s and this new device basically allow the grandparents to connect with a Kindle or an iPad and share with the kids books into an interactive projector on the surface. So little kids can be more interactive on the video calls that will make the calls much better you know when my kids were really really tiny. You know, my mother in law was really good at buying the same toys for her house and send it to the kids so they could play and have that interaction and that really made a completely difference in how they interact was with my mother in law and against you know, instead of my my parents would never were able to do something like that or running a restaurant or whatever it was.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:10

Yeah, so this is the Amazon glow Do you know what the price was on the Amazon glow?

Augusto Pinaud 18:15

No right now it is as invite only I think it’s 259 bucks, but I could

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:21

be wrong. Okay, yeah, so so we have the echo show 15 the Amazon glow and the Amazon Astro which is $1,000 and you have to sign up for an invite as well so it’s not a cheap little robot although it may look cute and and I know that in beta testing some people were having issues with you know, falling downstairs, which $4,000 robot should be able to detect edges and not fall downstairs. So but but I think this is one of those things where there’s a lot of opportunity here for Amazon to get into the market also just recently released his was their drone their their drone cameras that they announced I forget when they announced it, it was earlier this year that they announced these drone cameras. And those are now out in the marketplace. So we’re gonna see the Amazon Astro and more products that are basically becoming little surveillance devices in your home that hopefully you control most of the surveillance that’s going on as opposed to Amazon or some near do well. But the idea here is that you now have greater capability right so like Astro for example has a cupholder in it you can you can have someone in the kitchen, put you know a pop whatever soda can in the in the little holder and it can bring it to you things of that nature that now make it easier there’s a dog attachment for treats so it can actually shoot treats out of its rear end so to speak. and treat the dog for doing tricks and that kind of thing. And so I think you know this is this is the way that the world’s going you know, this is not you know Rosie the robot but it is certainly getting to that point where we’re gonna see more and more form factors come into the home in this kind of smart device perspective. And we’re, we’re gonna then see probably artificial intelligence come as its next step. But the point right now we need is in the home, we need to be comfortable with smart technology, that is your refrigerator talking to you, and these small moving appliances that are capable of interacting and helping you in small ways. For example, the one thing that this Astro fails to do is ambulate stairs. And so because it can’t go up and down stairs, and I live in a house with five sets of five flights of stairs, maybe six, you know, there’s no way it can live in my house, I don’t have an elevator for him, or it. And so you know, I would not be able to utilize the Astro in its full way. And so these things need to be solved. And I think that we need to see companies like Amazon, innovate in this market and fail and iterate on those failures. And I’m glad to see Amazon doing this, although, you know, is Amazon necessarily the best steward of personal data? I’m not sure. But you know, some people would would say Apple is better. Some people would say Google, some people would say Microsoft or otherwise. I think it’s a crapshoot either way. Okay, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 21:21

Our next story is about Nokia and Nokia is coming with their second Android tablet ever, it’s going to be released in two days, October 6. And it’s good. Why?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:42

No, I think that I think that the United States fails to have really solid tablets, in the Android space through the iPad really dominates in the United States in terms of tablets. And I just want to see more really good Android tablets. I’m hoping that this comes with the same kind of ruggedness that you’ve come to know and trust with regard to Nokia.

Augusto Pinaud 22:05

And it will be an interesting concept. They were thinking who I know who used Nokia, and I really only thought of my father in law who can get you cannot get his Nokia out of his hand and James Bond.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:18

Exactly. So those are the people they’re going after, right? So think about that demographic. And so, you know, my now departed grandfather, you know, he is the kind of person who would have a phone like that, who would also want a tablet that was like that. And so I’m curious to see what we’ll see when it comes out on October 6, and what the specs are on this. And whether or not it’s something good for those folks like the it’s almost like the jitterbug crowd, where you’re looking for folks who are looking for something that is simplified, easy to use, and a little bit more rugged than the average tablet. Alright, onward to our next.

Augusto Pinaud 22:56

So our last story is Apple unveils new features for I work. So that’s pages, sheets, and Keynote. And you know, they did their take Apple take on people table, it works incredibly well. Pivot Table has been one of the complaints that everybody have on the iPad, why cannot do what Microsoft cannot allow me to use pivot tables. And now with numbers, you will start being able to do pivot tables, and it works incredibly, incredibly well.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:34

I just have to I just have to do the pot shot. I had to look this up, Excel brought pivot tables to Microsoft brought pivot tables to Microsoft excel in 1994. But he snapped to the iPad to this day. I know, I know, but I still don’t

Augusto Pinaud 23:48

know do it on the iPad that is so frustrating. It’s so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:52

weird. Isn’t it like that, that we have these very, you know, what we would consider we consider you know, legacy features features that should just be caked in, just not present in software, you know, after you know, as long as we’ve had these features out, anyway, continue sorry.

Augusto Pinaud 24:10

But I agree with you, it is ridiculous that Microsoft has decided not to it’s not a it’s not a capability or power issue on any of these devices, not an Android. Not on come on in 1994. Any iPad game is more powerful than the most powerful machine of 1994. Still, they don’t do it. Well, that’s a different discussion. The other thing they did that is really, really cool is now you can have a group of presenters link there so you can change who is presenting and they can go into their device and show that do the presentation, pass the presenter to the other person and everybody will be connected. I think that’s really really cool. I haven’t tested yet but it is the idea is really cool. And finally they change how you interact. With pages in the phone, and Apple is saying that in their data, you know, people read Pages document on the iPhone more than any other device. So what they did is even they collapse it. So you can see that the width of the phone, even if you have multiple columns, it will work out the width of the phone. So you can see the whole text, you can read it, and you can interact with it much effectively.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:26

Fantastic, wonderful, great updates for I work. And this is for all of the latest versions of iOS, iPad OS and Mac OS, right? Yep. All right, on to our next Oh, I guess we’ve reached the top of our stories cover stories well, so we are on to our productivity resources of the week. And so as usual, Augusto and I come across many personal productivity tools, apps and services in our productivity research each week for the show. And of course, in productivity resources of the week, we each bring you one new or old, we think you might like And so with that, let’s bring up our first item, which is Oh, so I want to just let everybody know, it’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. And so among many other months, I think it’s mental health awareness month as well. And it’s el Jacko. It’s national taco day. It’s LGBTQ History Month. It’s a it’s a busy October. And but either way in. In the spirit of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, what I wanted to do was to show everybody a tool that I use and love and hopefully maybe it’ll be useful to you. And so this is private tunnel, private tunnel is a VPN is the VPN produced by the folks who produce the open VPN project. And so this is their commercial product. And it’s just very easy. Like you, you are able to connect your VPN and connect your devices to your VPN, the pricing plans are incredibly affordable, I’ve never had an issue with speed, per se, with any of them. So it’s $6 per month, and that gives you three devices. And so that’s really good. And then for $36 per year, you can connect, if you if you pay annually, you get those three devices for $36 per year. So it’s really worth it to pay the 36 bucks and get, you know, three devices onto your system. VPN wise, you can even attach, I believe, correct me if I’m wrong, somebody in the chat, but I believe you can actually put this on your router, and therefore just VPN, everything. Those of you who are unaware, what I mean by VPN, or virtual private network means that it actually encrypts the content that you’re sending between your device and connecting to whatever content you’re connecting to, whether that be an app or to a website, or whatever. And it’s basically encrypting that. So it’s, that’s why it’s private tunnel. It’s tunneling, in essence, shielding from view the, the data that you’re sending from, say, your ISP, or from potentially people who are sniffing to see kind of what what you’re up to and what you’re doing. So it’s a great security enhancement. It’s not the it’s not a panacea for anything, but I think it’s a good security enhancement. And I feel like everybody should have it and it’s available. So unfortunately, you can’t put it on the VPN, I have another I have a VPN built into my router, so I don’t use it for that. But you can install it on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Amazon. So on any of the Amazon Fire iOS devices, so pretty good. You know, technology just can’t it doesn’t seem like you can install it on a router, which is unfortunate but but if you’re looking for a VPN, I check it out. Augusto What is your

Augusto Pinaud 28:52

choices? Yeah, bro smart health cars. It’s a company who, among other things, allows you to scan your COVID vaccine, for example, or other medical records, create a secure code that can be scannable. But more importantly, you can add it to your Apple wallet was your digital court. And you can scan in his check. So they come with a verify sign. So united announced that they are going to start accepting smart cards as part of your, you know, checking that you have the COVID vaccine to get into their plane New York, New Jersey are going to start using a smart health cars and as a side of other app. New York is having their app New Jersey’s having their app too. So we are finally getting more to the digitizing of this information where you can find it and use it this way. So starting to get really interesting, good too. If you don’t want to carry your actual cord, this is a good option.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:54

antastic I wish there were more of a universal system for this but here we are you New York has their own with Excelsior. Now we have smart health cards. And I know that Pennsylvania has their own system and some of the local county health departments have their own systems, we really need to have a centralized universal system so that we can, you know, comfortably go from location to location where if there is a vaccine mandate for entering a location, I can just show my my app and be able to access or come in without me having to have my physical card. But also just verifying that it is me, you know, that I that I am the person who’s vaccinated and those kinds of things because you know, it’s not really that secure nowadays, anybody can get a vaccine card and, you know, fake it. So, alright, productivity resources of the week done, which takes us along to our featured story this week, which is kind of a doubleheader.

Augusto Pinaud 30:52

It’s a doubleheader. So it’s a Microsoft thing. So the first one is Microsoft Teams is going to get phone features and operator Connect service. And the second one, it’s Microsoft promises, big changes for Skype. So after months back, they kind of imply that Skype was going to be dying and facing off, and you’re going to have the access to teams, for your personal use. Now Microsoft has thought about it a little bit better, or maybe thought about it for the first time and decided to, let’s backtrack, that, let’s make a Skype, their personal tool, and let’s go and make teams stronger. So on the team side, they now add phone numbers, so you can call to the call you can do, there’s a feature that they have that I really enjoy, and is that they transitions between devices on Microsoft Teams is the best in the market. If I am on a zoom call, and I want to change devices, everybody knows that I changed devices because or they need to readmit me or I’m going to be double on the screen. Same thing with me. Microsoft Teams allow me to change devices, and nobody needs to know it asked me Do you want to add this device when you want to switch the call. And really, it’s seamless. So now they add this feature to the phone call. So I can start a call in my phone. And when I get to my desktop or whatever, say, Okay, now change this call to the next step and continue the call in there. And if that work as well as it works today, with just changing devices, that is going to be incredible, because allows you to really keep the productivity There is nothing more annoying than said, Okay, sorry. I’m going to change devices. So let me stop your conversation here on polite, do this process, there is no need for that. The technology’s there should be able to do that simply so that I’m excited about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:49

Yeah, that is a really interesting feature. I’m not quite sure how often I would use it. Except, yeah, I. So I have Google Voice. And I’ve been using Google Voice for many years. And it has a feature that if I receive a call, only one gets on the receiving side, because this is sip, it will allow me to, you know, click star and then move the call to any other device that I want. And I do use that. But that’s just because I’m going from handset to the desktop and or back and forth. And but that’s because I’ve received a phone call not because I’ve started a Microsoft Teams meeting or I’m in a Microsoft Teams meeting. But I’m curious to see if this is something that people will use more and more as they’re navigating from home to work and that kind of thing and kind of juggle and

Augusto Pinaud 33:35

that is exactly where these things shine. You know, I’m have a client who there is a call that happened daily, and you’d see the people transition and, and I’ve been one of those who transition and is great because there is no interruption, they change. And you really don’t know that they change. And that works incredibly

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:56

well. That’s fantastic. That’s great. All right, what else do we have up in terms of updates.

Augusto Pinaud 34:00

And then the last thing we have is Skype. And they’re trying now to make a Skype hip and cool as it was before they acquired. I don’t know that you will be able to hire the people who is not going to be in the conference make it more friendly. Yeah, so so late for

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:22

this? No, not at all. Not at all. So So this is all shocking to me. Going back to Microsoft Teams, though, and the phone’s features. You know, you have the ability to transfer transfer calls between people. They do also have supposedly better spam call identification. And, you know, Congress continues to keep trying to end spam calls. And I know that I get rampant amounts of spam calls, notwithstanding all of the spam detecting technology that I have on my phone, and my carrier and I make sure that I report every spam call that kind of thing. I still get tons of it.

Augusto Pinaud 35:00

I’m this close to renew the warranty on my car to see if they stop calling me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:06

And so we’ll see what happens. There they are, they’re also adding to Microsoft Teams, the ability to do the Apple CarPlay. So that you’re able to, you know, basically join calls and meetings using the vehicles built in controls, or hands for using Siri. And then they are also adding one to one call transcription and recording. So it’s very helpful for what we were talking about earlier, where you just have the call transcribed or recorded, and then people who didn’t need to actually attend the meeting can still have a record of it and access it later for that kind of information. On the Skype side, my opinion is that when they noted that teams was taking over for Skype for Business, I was like that is it death knell of Skype. And then they started putting out more features. And we saw even in Windows 10, there was an update that pushed out more features in Skype, bringing Skype to the to the, to the toolbar, and all kinds of other things, I thought it was a bit weird for to have like task tray. prominence, in essence, you know, considering that I thought, you know, Skype is is basically a dying product. And now they’re basically standing behind Skype, they’re putting in this call stage to compete with Discord. So you’re getting a stage to be able to bring people up onto the stage. In that sense, you’re capable of using this new technology called Twin Cam. And Twin Cam allows you to be able to use another device or another camera added to the call. So you can not just be in the call, but now have an additional view, you know, for the same color, I’m really interested to see this because now with Skype, having recording capabilities, I can very much see myself wanting to do multiple views for recordings, and having, you know, front facing camera for me, and then having a side camera so I can turn to it and have a nice side view and kind of do those transitions. And I don’t know, it seems like a really interesting thing to play with. And so yeah, so it’ll be Microsoft Teams for work, and then Skype for personal and, you know, friends and family type conversations. And I like that split between the two. I’ve been a longtime Skype premium, you know, subscriber, and I’ve always always enjoyed having Skype, having the capability of making phone calls from the Wi Fi and that kind of thing, you know, less of a need now today. But you know, I think that it’s so good that Skype is out there. I think, again, it’s good for the competition, you know, it keeps those folks on their toes in that sense.

Augusto Pinaud 37:44

And with this, we have one announcement this week, Apple Watch seven, it’s going on preorder this Friday, October the eighth and on sale on October the 10th. So if you have been waiting for the Apple Watch, since Android decided not to release their Google decided not to release their phone. And this is a personal job, Dre. You can do it on Friday for the Apple Watch.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:13

Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know what Google is gonna do. But they’re there. I’m guessing they’re gonna have to announce it in the next two weeks. I mean, they really do need to announce it soon. They’ve got another event, don’t they? I think they have another event. Soon that they’re announcing other things completely independent of phones. So they have to kind of have to get the phone announced soon. They’ve basically announced it. I mean, they’ve done almost everything other than to say, you can buy the phone now. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. But either way. With that we’ve covered the productivity and technology news this week. Thank you, Cousteau as always for helping me to put together the show. My pleasure. Alright everybody. And with that, let us know if you have any thoughts regarding the show. If you go to the recording once we’ve put out the recording if you go to Anything But idle.com forward slash 084. That will take you to the episode page with our show notes. That includes the ability to play watch or listen to the show right there on the page. And then we have the show notes, which includes links to all the shows tools of the week, or the productivity resources of the week, our extra stories if we couldn’t cover them here during the show, and then of course our text transcripts to read and or download on the page. So please let us know if there’s any thing that we missed by using either the comment section on the show notes page you can also use our contact page, go to Anything But idle.com click on contact. You can also tweet or dm us you can direct message us on Twitter at Anything But Idle and of course if you have a question or comment, anything that you’d like to discuss with us about the show Feel free to go ahead and use that contact page at Anything But Idle comm this is your first time watching the live stream Feel free to subscribe to the channel that helps get you notified when we go live weekly. If you’re listening to the podcast, of course Feel free to subscribe to the podcast so you get notified of new episodes when they come out. tweak. If you enjoyed spending time or listening with us today, feel free to click the thumbs up icon on YouTube. Feel free to rate and review us on Apple podcasts or Stitcher and of course those go a long way to helping us reach more personal productivity community members. So thank you for doing that. And with that, see you all next time on Anything But Idle history, productive life