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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00

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

Augusto Pinaud 0:13

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:14

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 96. For February 7 2022. Google one VPN is now available with iPhone and for iPhone and iPad and the productivity news this week. And of course, welcome to the folks who are watching live and each and every week we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And so with that, let’s start off with our personal productivity articles and podcasts and then we’ll go into the tech news and whatnot after the break. Okay, so what’s our first article this week,

Augusto Pinaud 0:46

first articles from better marketing pop, and start all the top 50 writing tools to help you become a writer. And they break the line on the third tool, but it’s fine. They start listing Hemingway and Grammarly, and then hotspot idea generator and then they go to combat that I will not consider a writer tool. But regardless, the listicle Porton pro Rite Aid, the Scrivener Scrivener is what I use Google Docs, without any doubt the thing to share Evernote, Freedom draft and the list continue is people can

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:24

check it out the list I you know, I just thought it was useful for folks to see some of the other options. I didn’t grow up. Some of them were new to me. Like I didn’t know. Have you ever heard of draft? As opposed to drafts? I thought drafts was was the iOS application? Is this something different than that? There is different than that? Yes. Yeah. So I like some of them. I didn’t know. And I’ll have to check out when when I have a chance. But I noticed some interesting new app, which I liked. I’ve never seen home writer before. So I’ll check that out. But some of the writers

Augusto Pinaud 1:57

sounds familiar to me, but I could not. I wasn’t completely sure if I was just confusing them with something else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:06

No, but I thought the list was useful for folks who are just I mean, it’s it’s it’s like some of it is for like marketing and entrepreneurial writing type things. But either way, I thought some of the writing applications themselves were useful to look at for folks. Okay, onto our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 2:23

So our next article comes from life hack, the morning routine for intrapreneurs. And how to fill off that to kick off your day fill in Sweden, and I am a big believer of the routine. I am a big believer of morning routine. And I think it’s important. So doesn’t matter how, if you think is for intrapreneur, or for your lifestyle, weaker morning reviews need to match your lifestyle. This just gives you a couple of ideas. You know, they talk about stimulate your mind journaling, self reflection, reading, or solving across work puzzles. So all of you playing Wordle and want to feel useful. Now you can make it in the list, okay, are watching the news, I don’t watch the news. But for some people, it’s a physical action, communicate and use your voice, you know, fear on the clutter and make your schedule and make sure you protect your schedule, you know, in these articles, aiming for intrapreneurs. But I think it’s a matter of lifestyle, I think looking at different morning routines is useful to see what items you can add to your own. And if you are one of those persons who don’t have one, at least in my experience has been incredibly useful to have one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:53

Yeah, so I disagree with this article. And one part, which is that they’re telling you a perform a morning routine. And the reality is, is that everybody has a routine that they follow every morning, that you just perhaps haven’t surfaced it to awareness that you’re doing the same things every day, most people do the same things every day, based on some level of pattern of behaviors, that sequence of behaviors is what we call a routine or at least what I call a routine. And so I think it’s just important for us to bring a level of attention and awareness to the routines we already have in our days. And then this list this morning routine that they’re offering for entrepreneurs because it’s something that you can kind of pick from and say, Okay, this item might be good for me to add before or after my morning routine and make it a part of your routine. It’s like branding, right? If you’re an entrepreneur, you know that you already have a brand. If you don’t have a logo. If you don’t have any of those other visual elements, you still have a brand. You know when you decide to create visual elements and start to control your brand then you are adding to the brand and potentially modifying the brand. But everyone has a brand. So everyone has routines, it’s just a matter of bringing them to the surface of awareness, which then allows you to be able to go ahead and change those routines. So I just want to make sure that everybody, it’s not to find a point to make sure that people recognize that these things exist in your life, you’re just maybe unaware of them. And once you become aware of them, then you can start to manifest some level of control over them. So with that, on to our next article this week, this is this one’s for you.

Augusto Pinaud 5:34

This wouldn’t just say this for me. So it’s an article from Destiny Harris, how I manage three jobs, three pseudonymous seven dogs, and a high publishing rate. And two brings in a 12 time management sustainability strategies. But what I really enjoy about this article is the first line says my lifestyle isn’t from everyone, and often my schedule, leave little room for them, but he’s the life I have chosen. And I really like that, you know, I, I have a crazy lifestyle. I, I have, you know, all these things that I do on all these projects in a coaching? And yeah, my lifestyle may not be from for everyone and but is it is it lifestyle I built, you know, I it, it has certain prerogative that I loved, I pick the kids to school, I take the kids to school, I, I’m really involved into certain things that, yeah, may have made my calendar crazy, as she described in the article, but at the end of the day, that’s the life for what I’ve been working really hard on for many years to build. So it may not be for everyone, but it works well. So I’ll be doing the 12 things that you mentioned, she mentioned my weekly house cleaning, lunch breaks, but you don’t take lunch breaks, as she described in the article, she used that time for workout, because she said I can eat, you know, anywhere, but I need the time to work out. You know how she make the split between the jobs that you have the gigs after hours? You know why she worked remote? Only? You know why she don’t answer every phone call, how she got an assistant, and use things to your interest and really make things work your way. I know you picked that article for me. So thank you, because it was really nice to read it. And I wasn’t aware necessarily of her.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:38

But good. All right, on to our next article. The next two articles, by the way, raise my blood pressure. So I’m going to try and be metered in my responses.

Augusto Pinaud 7:49

Well, the first one is from becoming a minimalist and is organizing is easier after minimizing. And yes, you can read this, us to raise your blood pressure, you know, to go to the person of one thing, but I think minimizing is not bad when you put the right definition on it. And for me, the definition is get rid of everything you don’t care for. Okay, and have everything that you really enjoy. The problem is that you need to make that clarification. I have screens galore in my office. Okay, so I enjoy the screens I enjoy. I like to work on tablets, and I prefer to have only tablets that computers great. But that’s one thing in which I invest significant amount of money books, I have more electronic books that I if I would probably will and try to start from the beginning I will not be able to finish. Okay, even at the speed of that I read. But again, that fits well. Now when we go to the clothes department that I can care less, I am a completely minimalist. Okay. I will it will be for me, I will I will not buy anything. And I think that’s where the concept goes away in things, and I agree, if you organizing is easier when the stuff that you have is the stuff that you care is the stuff that you want to have around. In. In that sense, the article is correct. What is missing is, in my opinion, that definition of what is a work in minimalism, and in my opinion, minimalism has nothing to do with having three things. Okay. It’s about getting rid of everything that you don’t care for. You know, actually I believe the Maria Kondo concept is a lot more closer to that real minimalism than anything else. I think she said, if it doesn’t bring joy, you should get rid of it. And I think she wasn’t completely Yo,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:00

NASA spark joy spark joy is Marie Kondo says porque. No, I think I think my arguments are here or is that it? The continual conversation about minimalism minimizes the impact of disorganization and chronic disorganization. Specifically those people who have been diagnosed with a psychological disorder that is associated with clutter and not being able to organize their world, and articles like this, you know, they sound fluffy, feel good in some way, shape or form. But they, they don’t actually get to the heart of what they’re really talking about, which is rampant consumerism, or any of those other issues that they feel to be ills of the world, I am fully comfortable with having an an A, a clear and coherent argument about that topic, but they’re wrapping this all into, you know, organizing your home. So it’s pretty and, and the aesthetics of being able to do those things and, you know, live like, argue live within your means, argue that, you know, you are going to have, you know, a greater lifestyle by choosing experiences over things and the ability to live a liberal lifestyle that is a free lifestyle, with greater, you know, impact on the world, all of those things are very appropriate to me. Minimalism, by its nature is an extremist philosophy. And they don’t mean it to sound that way. But it comes off that way to me. And so I will always be up on my soapbox when the topic of minimalism comes up. Whether that be digital minimalism, or otherwise, I just, I immediately have a knee jerk reaction because I know there are people who are suffering from the mental emotional impact of chronic disorganization. And when we when we trivialize it in this way, we end up hurting people more than we actually help them because that drives them further into their, their things, right and makes them be more emotional about being attached to those things. And if you suffer from those issues, I highly recommend that you check out the Institute for chronic disorganizing or chronic disorganization, the ICD there, there is a place for you and a place to be able to help overcome those issues. And there are certified chronic certified organizers who can help you in that way. So I just I want people to know that there is help in that category. But don’t, don’t don’t Don’t think that because they’re talking about minimalism in this very touchy feely way that, that, that that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t address your issues in a very thoughtful, you know, I think proper way and appropriately dealing with it in that sense. So I think that’s why I get a little bit you know, emotional about it, because I think that it’s it’s unfortunate because there are people who have taken this to to a level which is now cause them, you know, dysfunction, and we want to help them solve those dysfunctions and become functional again with their environment and we know how important environment is to productivity and so it’s important to me that people are aware of that all right on from one blood blood pressure raising article to the next

Augusto Pinaud 13:16

raise my

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:18

article and I just I watched the video as well and I just got frustrated listening to this person make this half hearted argument go ahead and open it up and we’ll we’ll get it

Augusto Pinaud 13:25

why you should stop gamifying your health and wellness and let me stop there and saying I just was that line I started disagreeing. Why? Because that sounds great. When things you know when you don’t know what to what to do with your health when that is great when you are naturally health and fitness. I have sharing the show, okay 10 years ago, I was 400 pounds. Okay, if gammy fine will have helped me it will have been a great thing it didn’t but I didn’t know I didn’t thought about gamifying this thing 10 years ago that it will have been maybe great at that time to help me into that and we come to this court of what you should not do this. You know the reality is if gamifying your health and fitness, it is going to help you take care of that and look more and pay attention to that. By all means regardless what other people he said I get it this is something that hit me close. It has been 10 years of effort for me to go from 400 pounds to 182. Okay, and I still have you know, plus Pantene okay, but I still there is more weight than I want to lose. So In a world, articles like this, in my opinion, are so myopic, they look from an idea and they trying to get the readers and the realities on some of these topics is still serious. Now it can be find your health and fitness will allows you to do more, go for it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:24

So my problem with this argument is that there are people for which gamification helps to create a illusory attitude, which then reduces their threat response as it relates to that thing, especially when it comes to health and fitness. If you’re overweight, if you have body issues, you know, certainly if you’ve been body shamed in the past, the last thing you want is to make something more serious than it needs to be. When it comes to these things, you want to create a sense of psychological safety is a safe space for you to be able to do that. And the concept of illusory attitude in gaming is that you’re setting aside the necessities of it and embracing the game component of it, the fun components of it. And for some people that works for others, it doesn’t and so disregard it and move on. My my core argument, though, with the article is that she does not give an argument against gamification. She basically says, swap these gamified approaches for these other gamified approaches, she doesn’t actually make an argument against it, if anything, she makes a stronger argument for gamification within health and fitness. So there’s just let it was kind of silly. I thought all of our arguments were salient in the sense of, of making arguments for gamifying. In these other ways. If for example, you don’t find fake tournament’s or fake quests to be useful to you, then sign up for a real race, sign up for a real, you know, tournament, those kinds of things, great, go for it, do whatever works for you, but don’t tell me don’t do something that might be helpful to people that sounds you know, kind of disingenuous. And so the argument itself just didn’t pass muster for me. And so I found I found myself kind of like, you know, laughing in my head to the idea that somehow this was an argument against it, when in reality, she was arguing for it in in, I hope was a tongue in cheek way, I don’t know. But either way, we have covered kind of the the productivity and, you know, podcast and blogosphere articles for this week, we’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsor this week, co working space by personal productivity club, and then we’ll get back we’ll cover the tech articles for this week, we’ll do business and finance segment our productivity resources of the week, and then we’ll cover our featured story of the week before closing out so we’ll see you after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 17:40

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:50

Welcome back everybody to part two, Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined with a Cousteau pinout. And we are now in the second half of our show, where we head into our tech articles of the week. Agusta what is our first tech article this week? The first

Augusto Pinaud 19:04

article is Android figured out how to turn iMessage reactions into emojis. And yes, I’m glad that Google fix what Apple did not want to fix. And we have talked about this in the previous weeks about Google saying Google not saying finally they went and decided to fix it. And now if you are an apple, an Apple user, make one of those reactions you are going to get you’re going to start getting as soon as it rolls to everybody you’re going to get a mulligan was that reaction. And in my honest opinion, Google show a better game than Apple in this one apple could have fixed this issue for years five years ago, and instead of trying to make it, what is what it is? So I am really excited about this for my Android friends.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:11

Yes, I’m delighted to see that cleaned up. Now I just want alphabet Google Android, Google messages team, Google Voice team, one of you out there needs to do this for Google Voice. So that I don’t have to continue to deal with this in the Google Voice. I mean, I use Google messages. But I primarily use Google Voice. And so in the Google Voice world, we still have to put up with this bit of nonsense. And so I’m hoping that we’ll see this make its way this code make its way forward to the Google Voice space so that we don’t have to see that, you know, cluttered paragraph of nonsense every time someone likes or loves or whatever they do to react to messages. Okay, onward to our next item.

Augusto Pinaud 20:52

Well, this is we praise Google and now we’re not we’re going to use the sandwich methodology where we give them a praise. And now we told them where they did not performs really well, because according to Ars Technica, Google says, Android tablets are the future and even start stuffing a new division. And when I look at an article was like, why we have Chromebook? Not only that Lenovo, for example, Kid their Chromebooks. And when you put them in a different position without a keyboard, it turned them into an Android machine. Why do you want now to make tablets that are only Android, that is something that is not understandable to my brain?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:37

I think that this obviously makes sense for Google in in this way. And we’ve talked about this offline, which is that, you know, if Google had their druthers, they would have never created Android, they would have never utilized Android, in essence, they would have just built Chrome OS, or fuchsia for that matter. And fuchsia would have been the primary OS for all of the devices within both nest and in their, in their kind of device, pixel world, right. So Pixel phones, pixel laptops, pixel slates, all of those things would have just been basically fuchsia operating system based devices. But they, they picked up Android first. And that was appropriate for them, you know, in their business decisions to get Android in that way. And they spent a lot of money just like they did for YouTube. So you know, they they’re stuck with it. Plus, Android is the dominant operating system on the planet. If you think about all of the devices in the world that run Android, and to make this work for certainly, lesser developed nations, that an Android running device and arm ARM chip based device is just going to be more cost effective for them to develop. And so building out Android 12 l to be on a tablet form factor just makes total sense in their world. Now, do I wish them to put more resources into this than they need to know but at the same time, I absolutely understand where alphabet and Google are going with this. And I think it’s the right choice for them. At this moment. I think at some point, they’re going to want to bring more and more of Android together into Chrome operating system into the Chrome OS environment. And slowly but surely bleed together Chrome OS and Android into what ultimately, hopefully is fuchsia. And then and then it becomes all one all encompassing. And we don’t have three operating systems being run by such a large technology company, but one operating system with different flavors that automatically identifies the device. It’s on and appropriately displays. That’s, that’s kind of my thought there. All right, on from Android tablets, to some more Google News from

Augusto Pinaud 23:56

so the next the next Google News is Google, the scrap their new tracking system, and they are now going to try to use something that they’re going to call topics. And they’re saying, Well, this better because topics will be deleted automatically. It’s not as bad as their previous system, the fluc FL. O C. And the article say well, okay, now you we all kind of stay on Google. I don’t know. Since the guy who use Google for for browser. I don’t know I we will need to see what happened. I am noticed still completely so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:45

yeah, I think that this is basically a better version of flock. I don’t necessarily, you know, have a feeling about it. I just, you know, Google has a bit you know, tripped up here in this whole process. Clearly floc was not something that was embraced by the larger technology community. This was still and had a weird sense of, of lacking in privacy. And I think that what most people don’t understand is that the the research really bears out that this level of hyper focused targeted targeting doesn’t produce better results. So topics I think will be better. I’m not sure it’s the ideal choice here. And so, you know, I don’t want to get into the, into the digital marketing component here. And we can have that conversation on another podcast in another life. But the, the reality is, is that the the, the privacy concerns I think, have been met here. In terms of Google topics that weren’t met with flock, whether or not topics will actually be useful is a whole nother matter. And we have to determine legislatively, this is country by country, how first party data is managed, and kept both private and secure. But also shared with the ultimate user, I continue to make this argument, I don’t care what Google collects about me, as long as I can see everything they collect about me, I want to know what they can collect about me, and then opt out of those things that are being collected about me, by default, short collected, as long as I can see it, and then give me the opportunity to say, Okay, I don’t want to be able to do that, for the most part, Google has done those things. I still, I’m looking at you, Apple, I’m looking at you, Verizon, I’m looking at you at&t, you know, those companies are not giving us those capabilities. And, and to, you know, feign privacy focus, as Apple does, yet, they’re collecting all of this data about me, you know, everything I touch Apple wise, is tracked and maintained as first party data in their systems. And that level of or that lack of privacy means, you know, maybe nothing to the average person. But to me, I feel like it’s a bit of an obtuse and imbalanced relationship I want I want to have access to that data so that I can go ahead and choose whether or not I want to share that with Apple or not. Okay, on to

Augusto Pinaud 27:10

Google clothes is back. I’m sorry, that’s I’m reading the wrong article. What is Google current?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:16

Yeah, so I brought this to the table. Because I think a lot of people don’t know this, if you are in the Google workspace world. That is you’re paying for a business starter or above plan, you have access to currents currents is a slimmed down version of Google Plus, basically, and it puts a social network inside of the corporate intranet, that is for your employees. And so I think that, you know, if you are interested in having a social space for your employees, you don’t have to, you know, square peg, round hole, shove it into this other space, that might be Google Chat, or Google Spaces. And otherwise, you have this whole surface, that is Google Currents. If you have a Google workspace business account, just go to current google.com. Log in, and you can start creating those spaces for people to be able to have that kind of social space, especially in this remote work world. Now, you know, a lot of remote first working environments and hybrid environments, people still need to socialize, they still need to, like, you know, like, pictures of your dog, and, you know, or cat, if your cat person, you know, like that kind of stuff, put that incurrence don’t clutter up the work environment in chat. And I think that we can, we can have that space in Google current. So if you don’t know Google current exists, now you do. And if you’re in the Google workspace business world, you can go ahead and utilize that in your own business, or let your admin know to activate it. So folks can go ahead and start socializing in those spaces, because there’s nothing wrong with socializing, right? It’s very, very powerful and good for productivity. It just needs to be done in the right place at the right time. And I think occurrence is the right place. And there’s lots of uses for currents. I just think that you know, my use case here is, is with the social components, since it is a social network.

Augusto Pinaud 28:56

So prior week, we talked about Apple releasing a no the watch, iOS 8.4 and breaking things with the Bluetooth. So Apple already has released 8.4 point one to fix some of those issues, or accordion at least to the notes it fix some of those issues. So if you are, we’re basically following up with that news. Our next news in Apple is developers can now offer iOS apps that are hidden from the Apple Store search. So Apple is trying to compel with those laws that are asking them to put different payment methods into the store and given the apps in the store access to this and the way they have done it is to try to create these unlisted applications that you will need to share the link and you will need to do other things to give to your users access to the things

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:54

Yeah, I think this is a little bit you know, like it’s a little bit kludgy, right you have to apply to Apple to Get the private unlisted app, that kind of thing. But I think this is a really, really great thing. Because as we move into this, like no code world or low code world, you can spin up your own application. And you don’t need to necessarily know code in order to do that. I mean, it’s actually it’s become, it’s not trivial, it’s still a process to get a mobile phone application into an iOS device. But and and into Android, Android is a little bit easier, because it’s an open operating system, you can just install an APK, you can email that to someone and install it, right. It’s not as difficult. Not as secure, though. So you know, there’s that process, there’s that that risk. But on the on the Apple side, I see all kinds of opportunities here for productivity. That is, say, for example, I want to be able to have all of my mobile optimized productivity applications in one app. So you could go to something like Appy Pie, register, all of those things is like different tabs inside of an app, put them all together, and then publish an application. But now you have to publish it for the world, because you really don’t want the world to get it, you can just publish it into the App Store, you have the link, and now it’s unlisted, nobody’s gonna have access to it, but you to be able to install and use for your own needs. I think that’s a really, really good option. You know, I’m able to do that on Android without a problem. Now, we can do that on iOS. And I think that’s a really good piece.

Augusto Pinaud 31:23

Well, there’s two things I like, good things. Additionally, I like about that one, as you said, it’s going to open the door for corporate America to put their apps hidden for their employees, or nobody will have them. But to what I hope is, it will allow to keep the Apple Store safe, in the sense that they are going to check that there is no weird code, cry there. I am excited about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:48

Yeah. And then from a small business perspective, I also like the idea that now I can have you say I want to sell an app to a Gousto I can produce an application, put it into the App Store, it’s free. But now I can have all of that payment part outside of Apple’s purview. And, you know, I don’t have to have that discussion with Apple, I don’t have to have any of that, you know, going on there. And now I can potentially circumvent the the 30% fee to Apple, I don’t know if that’s true. You know, they may still have some legal requirement that says, hey, if you if you remunerate someone for an application, that developer owes them the apple fee, which is totally legit. I’m not, I’m not against it. But you know, they may still be there. But this gives a potential opportunity there. I know that there is talk about Apple providing payment options outside of the apple payment processing system. But But Apple will still be charging a fee for those transactions. So even if you’re not processing through the system, you still owe the money to them, which is, you know, again, it depends on the legitimacy of what Apple thinks their ecosystem is worth for developer to bring people to them, for people to be brought to the App Store and to purchase apps within that space. So I get So all right, onward to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 33:05

So our next article knows me teams is the new version of Nesby. And last week, Nurse B announced that their personal plan and nostre teams are going to now be one application there or you will be able to use one application.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:20

Well, they just turned 15. Right. So they’re there. They’re 15 they also turn 15. Yes, which is amazing. Congratulations to NOSB. You know, we’ve had Michael Slowinski on the show for when we talk about Apple products, and so on and so forth. And so just a wonderful hat nod to Michael sowinski. And to the NOSB. Team. This is doable. Yeah. So a remarkable anniversary. So and a big thing. They’re really changing the name of their product. So they’ve had two products, and now they’re blending them into one. And they’re there that knows B teams is now knows B, right?

Augusto Pinaud 33:54

That’s correct. That’s a big deal, I think.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:57

Yeah. So good to see the good to see the development on that side. And here’s to another 15 years for Nesby.

Augusto Pinaud 34:05

Yes. So this brings us to our business and finance segment. On our first article is the iPhone, the Mac, the services and more just hit the all time revenue records in q1 2022. Last week, we share more of the numbers with this continue making the numbers because now Apple’s doing really well. Got no really Yeah,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:36

absolutely. Yeah, they’re they’re rocking it. I give them full credit. They’re doing some amazing, you know, work in that in that services space to expand the business in that way and so good on them, you know, they’re they’re making money. And with that, Google’s also making

Augusto Pinaud 34:54

that we are going to Google, who also did really well on the record Probably sales record for Pixel phone after the six and six Pro. So they also did really, really well with that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:09

Fantastic, wonderful. So with the business finance segment out of the way that brings us to our productivity resources of the week, of course, every week Augusto and I scour the interwebs, for all of the various productivity and technology related articles, and podcasts and blog posts and whatnot that we bring to you. And of course, in our travels, we pick up a couple of tools, tools that we use, books, other apps, other things that we find to be useful. And so we’d like to share one of those or two of those each week with you. And so this week, we have tools again, and I’ll I’ll step up first with the tool that I’m bringing this week, this one’s called black box, and its name doesn’t seem to match what it really is. But here’s here’s the thing, say that you go to a page on a website, and you want to be able to you see an image and that image has text in it. So you want to be able to take that image with text in it, and pull the text out of that image. Well, that’s what lightbox does. Black box allows you to highlight. And you can also use a command here, but it’s a Chrome extension that allows you to highlight any text on an on a page that literally it could be in an image, it can be in a PDF that’s displayed on screen, and you just basically select the text it OCR and pulls the text out of that image. And so then you can just take that that text and do whatever you want with it. So it just grabs it to the clipboard, and you’re good to go. It’s a very useful plugin and has saved me on many occasions where I’m watching a presentation or doing something else. And I need to be able to grab the text out of it to be able to annotate the live text and put stuff in there. So you can find it by going to blackbox.ai without the A and the Oh, so be LC K, B x.ai will take you to the website where you can then go ahead and and learn more about it and install the plugin. So okay, so what is your productivity resource this week.

Augusto Pinaud 37:19

So the next one is an app for the iPad, and it is called podcastle. As far as I know, the good kind of editing podcast on the iPad was limited to anchor who really offer a good platform to read. And you can connect microphones and all that. But still, everything has been way more complicated that need to be to be able to use the iPad as your application and podcastle change that they really came you can edit, you can do the equation, you can even record record on different channels. So if you have a guest, instead of recording everything into one audio file, you will get your audio file or your channel and the other person channel that for editing. That is such a blessing. So this is the first really powerful application I see to create podcasts and to be able to edit and do more. So if you are into podcast as I am, and you are looking to use your iPad or more of the iPad, this may be the first option to do this really, really well.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:36

So clarify for me is this. This is iOS only.

Augusto Pinaud 38:42

Nope, it has a web. So you can bring anybody in there. You can edit. But what it has a really, really strong iOS application. That is the first time I see it. You can do it on the web, to an E even had a feature that will get the text of the podcast similar to what we do here in Anything But Idle and will transcribe it in text automatically.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:05

Wonderful. Yeah. So there’s there’s one other application that I that I know allows you to edit on the iPad, but not one that’s a full fledged. In this case, it looks like a recording studio, and editor all built into one that’s really interesting. I will definitely check that is correct. And so thank you for sharing. And with that. That brings us onward to our featured story this week. What is our featured story this week good stuff.

Augusto Pinaud 39:30

Google one VPN is now compatible with iPhone and iPad. So Google has this Google one program would have storage and many other things. And now the VPN component is finally available for iPhone and iPad. The launcher under store and it is it is there for you. But I think this is a big deal that Google is open this do I think you need to have a tutorial I plan or higher to get it. But it still, that’s a matter of time for Google to offer this program, at least to all the business levels that they have.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:12

Yeah, so So the reality is, is that if you are, if you’re using Google one, the base plan is the is the premium two terabyte plan. So, so if you have a Google one storage plan, unless you’re using some kind of legacy plan that is not within Google ones, you know, listed storage plans, the the base plan, which is $99 per year, so think $10 a month for, you know, $100 a year. That plan then gives you two terabytes of storage across all of your Google applications. So it’s one Google account, but all of your Google applications within that account. And it gives you a whole bunch of things like you get access to, like discounts for hotels that’s built in there. I don’t know how I’m not even sure why they thought that but it’s it’s there. If you go to Google Maps, and you search for hotels, you can actually see the various hotels that are Google one, if you have a Google one account, you can go into Google one app and actually see those benefits as well. You get 10% 10% back for everything that you purchase in the Google Store as a credit. So like, if I, you know, I bought my Google Pixel five, that they took the money from that. And 30 Days Later, it became a credit in my account. So anything I purchased, also from the Google Store, then I can use that money for the for that purchase in the Google Store. It’s pretty nice, because you know, Nest products and pixel products and cases and whatever else, I got a free case, because you know, I just bought it, you know, and then I waited the 30 days, and then I purchased the case and thought we had an extra case. So get all those kinds of things, you get access to Google experts, you get all kinds of fun things. But one of the things you also get is that VPN four, through Google, so that Google one VPN then becomes available on your devices. And it has not been available on, on on iOS and iPad. And I thought that was really weird. Now, it’s really great, because I do have an iPad, and I want to I’ve been using 1.1 dot 1.1. So the the, the the Cloudflare. Tool, and which is fine, it works. It’s It’s whatever. And Apple’s built in VPN is also pretty good. And it’s not, it’s not bad. But if you don’t want to be, again, going back to that first party data and Apple knowing everything you do, I thought, you know, why not have something to mitigate that risk? Right, that privacy risk. And so I installed the cloud, you know, 1.1 dot 1.1, the Cloudflare tool, and now, I seemingly can use now Google one VPN, which I’m glad to do. So it’s a it’s a nice kind of interesting thing. And, again, I understand the hypocrisy here, right? Like, I’m moving data to Google. So it is it is one thing, but you, you know, you choose your evils, right. And, and so I’ve just I’ve chosen to do that with Google purely because I can delete anything I want from Google, you know, I can wipe out the account at any time. And that makes me helpful, even with Google topics. Now, you know, Google ads, topics. It’s, it’s ephemeral, right? It only stays around, I think for like, three months or something like that. And then it’s fully deleted, it may even be shorter period of time than that I’m maybe misstating that but you know, that amount of data that Google is collecting for advertising purposes, is actually is very limited in terms of timeframe, which just goes to show how powerful their algorithms are, that they can do that level of understanding of their audience with such a limited timeframe of data. So I think that’s really important for us to take into into account here. But if you if you’re interested in being more secure, a VPN is one tool in that toolkit, all it is doing is creating an encrypted chain, that tunnel, so to speak, where your data is passing through that VPN. So you have to trust the VPN you’re using, because you’re you’re sending them all of your data. But in this case, the internet service provider, whether that be your mobile data, or your Wi Fi, or otherwise, they’re not seeing the data. And and so that that’s really I think, good. You know, I don’t I don’t want my, my ISP to know everything that I’m doing online. And it’s not that I’m doing anything nefarious, I’m really actually doing most things that are boring. But you know, it’s all about, you know, how are they going to start selling my data to third parties to send advertising mailers to my house? And are they going to raise my rates? Based on my shopping criteria online, they can do all those things, because they’re collecting that data that seems benign, benign, but it’s actually not. And so that’s why I’ve chosen to do this kind of VPN. And I don’t know Have you have you tried out Google one VPN on on any of your devices? Because I

Augusto Pinaud 44:44

haven’t, I have not, I don’t have I have the middle one on the Google one, but not the premium. So I live in Dropbox. There’s Dropbox, my big account not not Google.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:58

Got it. So either way Just know that it exists, it’s there. And I think everybody should be Be aware that if you have a Google one account, and the quickest way to know whether you have a Google one account is you’ll see a colored ring around your profile image. So your google image, whenever you’re browsing any application, you’ll see the the Google colored ring, the Google logos colored ring circling your profile image. And that’s what will tell you that you have a Google one plan. And if you go to o n, e one.google.com. So only google.com, you will be taken to your Google one page. And there’s actually a wonderful I think we covered this a few weeks ago, of wonderful little storage tool that helps you free up account storage, and walks you through how to clear up, you know duplicates, and other kinds of things and photos and whatever else. So it’s a very, very useful application by itself. But it also helps you see what storage you have across all of your Google applications, which again, you know, you can see, wow, I have a whole bunch of stuff here in this, and you can share it with up to five family members. So I have one shared on that two terabyte plan with multiple family members. And they use very, very limited amount of the space, but I just give it to them. So they have that capability. Plus, then I can share my Google Play library and I want

Augusto Pinaud 46:15

to share it with my kids, they will be more than happy to get that space.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:21

They love filling it up. Don’t they love filling it up? All right, in Cousteau, that brings us to

Augusto Pinaud 46:27

oh, we have a couple of announcements. So the first announcement we have obviously was, you know, the 15 years of Nesby. You know, we wanted to reinforce that. The second is the 2022. Only roadmap. This is for the only apps only focus how many have LIDAR on the plan. And the show that came was still here great coming every year with what they’re going to try to build and try to do. And it’s a great thing to have. And the last one is our friend, Francis Wade, just Lounge on your podcast, the task management and time blocking podcast. So if you so far has three episodes out. I know the fourth episode comes this week. Second episode is with Ray. fourth episode is with me. But if you want to do trying to do a different podcast, and it was really interesting to record, at least for me, it was completely a different format. And it’s part of his task management and time blocking Summit. So if you want to look for that the link is here on the show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:4 Absolutely, yeah, so the time blocking the Task Manager and time blocking summit 2022 is coming up in March. So if anybody’s interested go go check out time blocking summit dot info and, and go check that out. And with that, that brings us to the end of the show. And so as always, we’ve covered the productivity and technology related news for the week, thanks to Augusto Pinaud for putting together the show this and every week. Thank you Augusto. Okay, on anything but idle.com, you will find our show notes with links to all the stories our productivity resources of the week are text transcripts, which are both readable on the page. You can also then download them as a PDF and read them offline. And after looking at our show notes, if there is still a story we didn’t cover, we have extra stories in the show notes as well. So you’ll see a section that’s our extra stories, things we couldn’t cover during the show today. You look at those stories. If there’s something we missed, go ahead and leave a comment you can tweet or DM us at Anything But Idle on Twitter, you can use our contact form on our websites, we have multimodal ways of communicating with us. If you have a comment or a question about anything we discussed on the show, you can of course use those same methods for reaching out to us as well. We have a dedicated community inside of personal productivity club for Ford Anything But Idle. So if you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community and go ahead and join that, that group for us that channel and you can go ahead and post and comment and you know, ask questions, and so and so forth inside of that space for Anything But Idle. So just want to let you know that that is there. This is your first time watching the live stream. Feel free to subscribe, so you get notified when we go live weekly. And if you’re listening to the podcast, you can also of course, follow or subscribe to the podcast for free inside of your favorite podcast app. So just look for Anything But Idle you’ll be able to find us look for the logo and you’ll be able to subscribe or follow as I said, and of course feel free to click the thumbs up icon go ahead and rate and review us on Apple podcasts or Stitcher or your podcast app of choice. Of course your compliments help us reach more of the personal productivity community and the listening community specifically So thank you for doing that and with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to productive life