Commentary on the Google IO 2021 Conference

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:02

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 0:14

I am Augusto Pinaud

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 61. We’re recording this on May 24. And we’re calling it Google IO 2021 conference commentary or commentary on the Google IO 2021 conference. So welcome, everybody. And we are going to in lieu of our normal covering all of the stories we cover each week in the productivity and technology news space, we’re gonna actually just do Monday morning quarterbacking of the of the IO conference today. And to do that we have brought Art Gelwicks, to join us to do that show. And so Art Gelwicks is a productivity and collaboration consultant. He’s a blogger at the ideapump.com, so you should check out the ideapump.com . He’s also the host of the being productive podcast, as well as he joins us on ProductivityCast each week. And so welcome to Anything But Idle.

Art Gelwicks 1:06

Hey, guys, how you doing?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:08

Pretty good art pretty good.

Art Gelwicks 1:09

So ready. First, some Google goodness.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:14

This was a pretty, this is a pretty in depth, Google IO, I think 2020 was a little light because of the pandemic and supply chain issues. And just the general chaos around everybody working from home, and so on and so forth. This time around, they chose to do a hybrid event where they had people joining virtually, but they had some people on site for the keynote to be physically there. And so what were your initial reactions to Google i O to the conference, to the keynote, and to the sessions?

Art Gelwicks 1:49

Well, unfortunately, I missed out on watching the actual session. So I’m going back to watch those but based on everything I’ve seen, it’s being at the wrong end of the firehose, in this case, I mean, there’s just a flood of different things. But nothing that I’m seeing is that is singularly Earth shaking. I mean, there’s lots of things that we were hoping for, that have come about some things that may change an environment significantly, some that re cement, Google’s playing in a particular space. But I think across the board, it, I agree with you, it felt like a catch up kind of event. All the things that they were ready to talk about weren’t able to, they’ve got all of it lumped together. So if you boil it down into things like Android 12, and wero s, and Smart Canvas and material, you and all of these different things. unlike some of the other events we’ve talked about, it didn’t seem to have a singular theme to it, which is fairly common with an IO aios. You know, it’s developer stuff in most cases. So it’s, it’s good to see where this stuff’s going. But finding that common thread is the normal challenge. And it has lived up to that normal challenge.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:16

Yeah, I think that with the, with the advent of the, just the breadth of which Google IO is trying to cover, one of the things that I found to be quite useful is to look at what they’re talking to developers about because they know that the press is watching. But this is really the developer conference, as you noted art. And what they were saying to the developers was also a little bit about what they were saying to businesses and consumers really saying to really, there’s enterprise, small business and consumers, they’re talking to those three groups of people in IO, notwithstanding the developers, most of the keynote is for that. And the sessions, of course, are not watched by the general public. You know, they’re for geeks like us. And so they are really not. So so when you get to the sessions. That’s where some of the the meat and potatoes of what’s going on, that I really found quite fascinating to see how they were putting that together. I think some of them could have done a little bit better with the reading off of the teleprompter stuff, you know, some of them are just this reading directly off of a script. And it didn’t like the sessions just weren’t as convincing, as I don’t know, they were just boring. And so I wish they didn’t have as much of that. But, but they were still useful. I mean, the information was conveyed, but they have a lot of really intricate cool stuff coming down the pike. And so let’s let’s kick into where senator Pichai, who’s the CEO of Google really started off, which was for him, he thinks that the future is lambda, and that stands for the language model for dialogue applications. And so then he had a conversation or he demonstrated his team having a conversation with people planet Pluto, and with the paper airplane, also to what I believe to be really boring parts of the keynote. But a remarkable movement though this is the successor to Bert and GPT. Three, in essence, this is bringing more natural language to the idea of having conversation with, in essence, a computer with the with the servers. And so lambda is this ability for you to take open domain, what they mean by open domain is that many different areas of knowledge and being able to slice that together to have a realistic conversation. Humans use all kinds of language, that doesn’t mean what it says. And so like, we could say, Oh, really, that has a different application than the literal words Oh, really. So the the idea here is that it’s capable of understanding that kind of language and continuing conversation. And so I thought the demonstration was not as great as it could have been, it could, they could have chosen much better examples on a paper airplane. I thought Pluto was was kind of interesting. But again, this notion that we’re having dialogue with inanimate objects are also kind of beside the point, you know, like, from my perspective, the way in which they demonstrated duplex last year, and the use of the technology in a, in a small business environment where you call a business, and this AI is talking to you and capable of taking a reservation, or booking an appointment, those kinds of things. This is where lambda is going to take over and be really powerful. And so why didn’t they just show a real life experience of saying, Okay, this is what we experienced in the business space. And now let’s take it to that next level, and have a real rich experience that’s going to really creepily, but accurately convey a human where human will not even know that the computer is helping them with a with a, a workflow, right, which is, you know, you call into these, you know, these call lines, and it asks you questions, you know, your name and account number, and so on, so forth, this is where this technology is going to be its most useful, because, you know, calling into those customer support lines, and, you know, navigating those phone trees, you know, you might as well want to poke your eyeballs out with pins. You know, having a real, real life like conversation, is just a nicer way to be able to facilitate that. So that’s where this technology, I feel like has the most applicability.

Art Gelwicks 7:40

So it’s, it’s definitely an early stage type of demonstration of the concept. But when you start to put it in some practical terms, I can see where they’re going with this. I mean, this is not Google Assistant level two, that’s that’s not this. This is Google Assistant, like level five. But when you start to take, for example, the call center context, most call center structures, especially if they’re starting to leverage AI technologies for non voice based and even voice based in some cases, where they’re doing knowledge interaction with an established system, like a service now, they need the ability to adapt to the conversation, and adapt to the the idiosyncrasies of human questioning. This type of technology makes that much more viable, because it puts the load for finding the right information on the knowledge engine on the front, rather than on the data store in the back where you have to provide so many different permutations. In this case, you could have one right answer, and have the AI system find its way to that right answer. The other thing that I think’s interesting about that, we talked about this interacting with devices and the paper airplane, what intrigued me a little bit, because I can see this going down the path of IoT, I can see smart devices that are on their own smart. So for example, being able to instead of having to go through your your google assistant or web, whatever, you can go through directly to your air conditioner, you can go over to your air conditioner and say set the room temperature to 75 degrees. And that built into the system connected through Wi Fi in the background. And it decentralizes that requirement. It also provides a greater targeted user experience, if you want to think of it that way. Because if I’m talking directly to an air conditioner, there’s a limited number of things I’m going to be wanting to ask it. I mean, I’m not going to want to know what the latest Manchester United Football score was. Doesn’t matter. air conditioner is not supposed to know that. But if I have a home assistant, yeah, that may be part of its purview. So it allows me to target that a little bit. Better, this is definitely down the path, I put this in the same type of bucket as when they demonstrate quantum computing. This is a get the developers fired up on Wow, we’re doing really cool innovative stuff. And now we’re going to talk about the stuff that we’re actually going to do.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:18

And they have to prepare themselves for a post to advertising income world, right there. They know advertising revenue is going to eventually not be their primary source of income. And it pays them billions and billions of dollars a year right now, they need to supplant that somehow. And this technology, they’re hoping they’re going to they’re going to hit, you know, jackpot, on some new form factor for consuming the web consuming technology generally interacting with technology, the core, the underpinning for that technology, quantum computing, and the way in which we input output in some other way, that leads to a greater monetization of that content on the web, because quite honestly, they’re doing a lot to circumvent or to be an intermediary to web publishers today. And so if I’m, if I’m a blogger, or if I’m a creator, in some way, shape, or form, and Google indexes me and is basically providing no hit search results, they’re just voicing to me that the answer and not really giving me the traffic. Well, why should I? Why should I contribute content to the index, this really creates a challenge for the entire ecosystem that was once founded on being supported by bringing people to your website.

Art Gelwicks 11:31

But it does flip the equation a bit. And that’s when you do a voice based search, you only want one answer, and that’s the right one, you don’t want pages of responses to go through. So controlling and defining what that right answer is that comes out of that voice based search is a huge monetary opportunity for places like Google, because now, can you buy that right answer? Can you buy and you know, paid to be the right answer? Well, how is that determined? And what’s what’s the engine that goes behind that? And how can you demonstrate that that applies? Through clicks, it’s easy enough to show that kind of ad revenue through voice searches, it’s a little bit different. There’s the advertisers aren’t that savvy yet. So you’re going back to a situation almost where it’s like radio on steroids. People are asking questions and listening to specific things, or it’s actually more like podcasting of all things. How do you, you know, advertise within the podcast itself around a keyword? Could you tie these together so that during a podcast playback, a lambda based engine is then monitoring the playback and, and providing you advertising that is tied to the audio track of the podcast on the fly? Those are the types of things that I can see this technology being woven into by Google, to your right, maintain their revenue models, because advertising is going to change. I mean, it will always change. Some of this stuff’s going to be around a long time, but it has to evolve if it’s going to survive.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:06

Yeah, and this the notion of sponsored content on a Google scale, scares the bejesus out of me. You know, think of think of the political upheavals the the ability to buy elections, if people are just listening to answers that they’re asking to a trusted source like Google, and it’s being purchased by, you know, you know, a dictator, or even just a dictator in training, which, you know, we here in the United States have already unfortunately had to experience. So, you know, like, there’s just a, there’s just all of those potential political ramifications there. I’m curious how they’ll navigate that. I know, they’re aware. I know, they understand that there’s a clear bias when it comes to race and, and those kinds of issues in the machine learning algorithms. So it’s all very interesting, I think, yes, we’re nascent very early on, but you definitely see the glimmers, these are these are these little glimmers in their eye of what Google thinks it can build for the future. And that’s really,

Art Gelwicks 14:05

and as I said, it makes sense at that point in the presentation. Because as a developer, I want to know where this is gonna track 357 years. So I’m headed down the right path. I’m not going down a dead end route from my development work, or my strategic work.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:23

Absolutely. Alright, let’s let’s move on to I think what was probably the next biggest item that Google announced, which was Smart Canvas, so so that people have a little bit of background here. Smart Canvas is those of you who are old enough to remember Google Voice, sorry, Google Wave. And so Google Wave was the ability to have a kind of a navigational conversational document creation slash, you know, project collaboration tool, those like all mesh together. And so the way in which they’ve decided to use Smart Canvas is in essence to be able to do Things like doc Sheets and Slides, and flip that. So the primary thing you’re engaging with is the content and the conversation then get seamlessly integrated into that particular ecosystem. So you can think about, like, I’m editing a Google Docs document. And, and I want to have a conversation with my team around that I can now pull in Augusto, and Art into the docs document. And now their video feed or audio feed is now in the document as we’re having that conversation. So it really starts to blend together, you start to see this change, and what is what’s, what’s the platform you’re using for the creation of the content. And it becomes It doesn’t matter. Because if I’m in Google meat, I can bring you into the document, if I’m in the document, I can bring the Google meat into the document. So it doesn’t really make any difference. And that’s kind of the point.

Art Gelwicks 15:53

Yeah, this is the logical path that we’ve been headed on for the longest time. But as we started moving most of our applications to the cloud, we’ve been able to eliminate the walls and the silos created by desktop level applications. We you see that with Microsoft fluid framework, you’re seeing that here with Smart Canvas, you have this ability, it’s been around a long time, Windows used to have it with object linking and embedding the same idea of turning content in any form into a modular type of structure and being able to integrate those pieces together, the lines are being blurred. And it, it just makes sense that Google has brought this as part of their offering, because they have the tools. And the best part, they don’t have a desktop legacy to deal with. Everything being browser based puts them that much further down the path, they’re not fighting that battle. So to me, it makes perfect sense. If you are, if you’re bought into the Google ecosystem, and you’re using the Google suite tools, this will provide you a huge number of capabilities. The only thing I found that I’m taking this from the Microsoft side of the fence is that this type of attack usually has a fairly steep learning curve for effective adoption, not so much doing it. It’s not hard to drop the pieces in. But once you know how to drop the pieces in, what are you going to do with it, then? And that’s where most organizations either struggle, or as I’ve seen fall flat on their face with trying to do this.

Augusto Pinaud 17:24

Yeah, thank you. Sir, I think you made a great point in there on the adoption, it is how steep is going to be that learning curve, because when you take things like Microsoft Teams going, going to the Microsoft fence, a Microsoft team has an incredible amount of features, when you can work with the files create the team’s creative folders. But the average Microsoft Teams user, that they don’t even they don’t even are aware that those kind of exists. So how Google is going to Google, it’s not exactly known for this job. So how they’re going to really get the people to see that. That said, I believe it’s really powerful. Dropbox had a thing called paper, I think what it’s called, where you can basically do something similar to this one, use the link, attach the files. That was what came to my mind more than Google Wave, when this came and make it to a place where you can now start getting more into the real task collaboration process, that there really not that many tools in the market, there is more and more organizations moving into this, leaving a personal productivity aside getting more into these collaboration, these most task management and how Google is going to respond to this, this is a great place, if it survived the time for Google to come and really make that task based collaboration and productivity happen.

Art Gelwicks 19:00

I think where we’ll see the win on this right away, or earliest days will be in the education space. Because the natural inclination of students as content creators, on other platforms will logically translate into this. I mean, they are much more multimedia focused, they are much more content derivative and consumption focused. So the classic Google Doc is very boring to them. The classic Google Slides is very boring to them. But to be able to integrate those together, lends itself more to the way they’re used to consuming content and also creating it. So I think the educational space will probably make this jump much faster than the corporate space because again, corporate requires creativity. Unfortunately, 95% of corporations are not creative. So they go in and they they do the same thing that they’ve always done time and time again. They may try it once or twice. You may see HR departments and training depart Pick it up a little earlier. But I think it’s going to have an extended curve to it to be able to get to that level of adoption. That said, like I said, this is, to me, this is the price of admission, right? Now you need to have these kinds of things, if you’re going to consider yourself having a complete suite of I don’t want to say productivity tools, but office tools.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:25

Yeah, I like the way in which they, they have decided to implement this in some way, shape or form. They’re using what are called Smart chips, which allow you to go in and tag people throughout the ecosystem. And that gives you greater function. So so you probably already have seen some of this, if you use the commenting function in Google Docs, or in Google Sheets, or Google Slides, you can add and then put someone’s name, and it’ll show their name or email address if you have it in your contacts. And then if you add them, you’ll get a little checkbox below that, and it’ll say assign this to so and so they’re basically adding to that functionality directly inside of the documents and inside many of the other files within the system. So Doc’s tasks and otherwise. And so this, I think is going to be really nice. I mean, it would be nice that if you have a bunch of documents, and people tag you with assignments, they now all get collated and put into your Google tasks. So now you can see all of them, which is just really, really seamless and convenient.

Art Gelwicks 21:22

You’re hitting the thing that I was hoping you were going to hit on, which is there is an inherent problem with this. And I say that specifically, because I’ve seen it happen on the Microsoft side, being able to do the at mentions is really great. I mean, you can flag people to do it. The problem is it becomes overwhelming quickly. And there’s no centralized management of it. So if you are trying to project manage something or even Task Manager at a basic level, these things can spiral out of control rapidly. Everybody gets assigned to this or that and there’s no tracking of it. There’s no follow up the mentions come through Where was that? I don’t know where that is now. And you wind up with this just complete cluster of activities and interactions that will drive you bonkers. So developing an operational strategy around how do you use this? What’s most effective? When Don’t you want to use it? You know, what’s the follow up process and procedure? It really is money well spent to sit down with somebody who has worked with this kind of tech, maybe not necessarily just the Google one, but this type of technology? and talk to them about well, how should a team most effectively collaborate within these kinds of tools? And what are the do’s and the don’ts. And without doing that, you’re going to bring this stuff on the line, you’re going to use it and maybe a couple months of moderate success. And then it’s going to fall by the wayside. And there’ll be another last implementation.

Augusto Pinaud 22:51

I don’t know I I think more and more, this is something that resonate more with younger generations. And this kind of collaboration, if they do it well, and they integrated well, to to Google task that could really make a difference where they are, you can click and come back when everything online in the browser in the browser that will allow you to jump from one place to the other and could make it really interesting. Um, I think that with the addition of the checklist that you can create, and then integrate all that, I think that can make something really interesting. I don’t

Art Gelwicks 23:33

disagree with you at all, I think there’s a natural aptitude because it is familiar with, you know, direct mentions in Twitter and an ad mentioning someone that bar to adoption is much lower at at the user level. The problem is most decision makers are not that younger group. They’re the older group within organizations. And unfortunately, they don’t quite get it. So they don’t lead the way they should to encourage this kind of adoption. it winds up having to be grassroot, which is very difficult to get centralized adherence. So I, I would love to see more organizations say, hey, there’s new tools here. You guys get this show us how to use it. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t want to relinquish that level of control internally.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:18

Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. So so let’s let’s move on to a little bit more in terms of Chrome OS. So I O launched a whole bunch of new features in the Chromebook and the Chrome OS space. And so what were some of the things that stood out for you in the Chromebook space?

Art Gelwicks 24:39

Well, with me, the Chromebook space is always one of those intriguing ones, because I hate to say it always feels like it’s getting left behind. But not so much. In this case. They have that natural extension, they’re really pushing in the tablet space. Again, they’re looking to start to leverage the higher end Chromebook devices and recognize Is that they have that functionality built into the, to the system itself. Being able to have a tighter integration of the phone hub, to your Chromebook and tying your photos indirectly, your web app menu applications, those being more tightly integrated and the notification badges, you know, it’s about time they start to clean up those notification badges. There’s just basic things, one of the things you can tell right away that they’ve learned from this whole pandemic situation is the need for multi monitor support. And sure enough, Chrome OS is going to be picking up multi monitor support for web apps, that type of thing is really critical, improved USB, serial device support, and even stuff in the back end, they’re compiling with what’s called spark plug right now, which is a faster JavaScript compiler, which, unless you’re a true geek, you’re going to have no idea what that does, except you’re going to notice that things go faster, because all your JavaScript has to be compiled before it can be executed. So that type of a change within the operating system is going to make that perpetual commitment to the Chrome OS platform, that much more integrated, I think we’re going to continue to see this to be a viable, you know, viable computing platform. It is truly coming into its own that in their take, and we’ll talk about this later on. But they’re taking the material you concept. And they’re bringing that to Chrome OS as well to give you more control over that canned environment and make it more personal. So I think there’s a lot of nice potential. And I also love the fact that you get the updates so fast. I mean, you’ll have to wait until a carrier decides to release it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:47

Yeah, Android. Oh, my goodness, that is such a problem. No, I wanted to underscore just two pieces here that you talked about that I think are going to underpin the future of Chrome OS. One is that web app link handling, now you’re you’re able to actually have this high, highly rich experience when it comes to clicking on what is a pw a progressive web application. And so now you can open up an application in its own window. I use this quite often on my desktop on the on the Windows and Mac OS desktop, in terms of utilizing applications. I don’t want to install WhatsApp on anything ever. And so being able to get it in this progressive web app, experience gives me a separate window, I get to utilize it on the desktop when I want to. And then I close it and it blips off the work off the radar. Same thing with many, many other applications, you will see a little install icon, it looks like a little down arrow kind of inside of a square in the browser. When you’re in Chrome and any other chromium based browser, you’ll see that little icon, that means that you can actually pop that application you’re in into its own window, and it becomes its own app, which is just incredibly helpful because you don’t have to have a bunch of applications installed. So I’m really pleased with that. And then of course, giving greater file system access. They’re they’re basically integrating the file system API, so that now when you’re in the browser, you can actually access file system applications securely. And in this fluid way, those two pieces, there were really huge announcements, because I think they’re really trying to force through into more enterprise, and more just like everyday consumers who saw the power of the Chrome OS platform during the pandemic, because it was inexpensive. And it just gave them an opportunity to utilize it for students and for families that needed to work remotely. But now they want to be able to say, Yeah, but it can actually do so much more. And I think that’s, that’s the next phase

Art Gelwicks 28:45

between last year and this year. I think that I can’t remember the exact number but is chromo or Chromebook sales were like, up over like 200%, or some some insane number. It’s, it’s that type of thing that has, I think, has re invigorated. Google’s thinking about where this thing can actually go, I would not be surprised I’ll throw this out there. I would not be surprised if within the next year or two, we start to see progressive web apps be able to be installed on Android devices as if they were a regular application. I’m willing to put that out there that they’re going to start going that there’s always been this talk of making Android based Chromebooks and merging the two I don’t know that they’ll merge. But I think we’re gonna see this start creeping the other direction, because I think they’re starting to really recognize that this is the alternative. I mean, this is the third player, Windows, Mac or iOS, and Chrome OS can all be for all intents and purpose purposes be spoken of in the same conversation now, and up until this point, I don’t think they could be

Augusto Pinaud 29:59

but I feel They’re doing something really they’re playing the game really well, because they look into Okay, what people who are in this corporate environment thing that their computer should do. And this is this is taken from, from Apple to Apple, give access to the mouse for the iPad, how long? why there was no reason, okay, other than corporate stubbornness, if they will have give access to the mouse as they did now, people will have understood long time ago that they could work on this thing. Instead, they decide not to, instead, I think Chromebook is doing this really well. Okay, I’m going to give you access to the file system. So you don’t need to understand what is on the back, I’m going to give you your multiple screen, your access to multiple monitors support, so you understand that this machine can work the same as your windows, most users don’t know, their back end, that’s good. But they know I need a mouse or they know I need multiple support. Giving that it’s given. Now corporate two things, okay, I’m giving you a machine that is as capable, but much cheaper. And he will do Your will your users will not complain that they cannot do the multiple support or multiple monitors, they will not complain that they cannot access their, their file systems. And these things, I think, are doing that really, really wisely.

Art Gelwicks 31:30

But something is played right into their hands with this too. And that was that Microsoft last week, officially killed windows 10x. So they’re lightweight Windows has gone by the wayside. Now they may go down some other path, you know, it’s Microsoft, they always change, depending on the wind blowing. But this is this is one of those situations where I think, looking into devices, they’re the only Chrome OS is the only thing that plays in this price area. I mean, you’re talking a massive machine for sub $600. Nothing, you’re looking at tablets for anything else, or a bottom of the line notebook. So here, you’ve got full powerful capability, I think that they’re recognizing their player. And I think you’re right about the corporate space too. Looking at the number of businesses that had to use VPN technology, use VDI technology, use, you know virtual machines and that sort. Well, you can do all that through a Chromebook connection. And that means that when I ship out, laptops or Chromebooks to people, I’m shipping out 200 $300 Chromebooks or $400. Chromebooks, I can do that at the end, we proved that could be done in the education space, because you look at the massive number of them that were bought by schools, corporations are going yeah, we could do that too. And that’s a heck of a lot cheaper, and a lot easier to maintain.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:53

Yeah, and project crostini, which is the Linux implementation on Chrome OS is coming out of beta, they’re coming out of there, it’s coming becoming a stable part of the of the platform now, which means that for people who want to have that greater geekier side and install Linux based applications, it’s opening up that entire world, and that entire ecosystem you got to be you’re going to need a beefier Chromebook than those lower end versions. But for kids learning, coding, you know, all of those things, being able to turn on Linux and be able to have access to that operating system inside of the Chromebook, I think is just a stellar, you know, angle for Google to play here. And, and really smart for the corporate space that wants access to those things on different form factors. It’s not just about a Chromebook and a laptop experience. This is Chrome OS, in many different devices, being able to be utilized in many different form factors. And for many different uses.

Art Gelwicks 33:52

Well, and didn’t Google buy. Is it cloud ready? I can’t think of the name right now. I’m

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:58

probably never aware is the name of that company. Cloud Red Cloud red. Okay.

Art Gelwicks 34:01

So that’s and I think that’s one of the things that people forget a lot is that Chrome OS is the only thing that works on old machines as well as new. It allows you to to maintain a hardware technology investment by a factor of five longer than any other operating system. I got an iPad sitting back here that I can’t use because I can’t get anything past I iOS 12 loaded on it. So now I got a bunch of apps that won’t even install well chromis that’s not an issue. I don’t have that problem because their stuff supports forever now, although I am going to have to upgrade my notebook but that’s all different.

Augusto Pinaud 34:39

That’s what he’s interesting. If you convince the corporate I don’t need you don’t even need to buy the hardware, you can now get the Neverwhere put everybody in Chrome, everybody in that model and make everybody run. That is a winning proposition for corporate to make that change. Yeah, you Keep your cycle of machines, you know, you don’t need to change anything, all that you’re going to do is come to these machines with that USB drive install, never wear that now will give exactly the same chrome experience. And any new machine you buy new Chrome’s that is for corporate a massive proposition.

Art Gelwicks 35:22

If I’ve got 10,000 workstations, and I can go through and I can install Chrome OS, and get rid of 10,000, Windows licenses, I kind of think that’s paid for it. And I don’t care if you’re going to use Google’s platform or Windows three, or Microsoft 365, or whatever you’re going to use. You might as I know, the machines are going to work. Yeah, the machines will run so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:47

and something that people don’t realize is that cloud ready, or Neverwhere that is has a bunch of other technologies behind the cloud ready concept. So Cloud ready is not just for computing devices, we’re talking about displays, like large billboard banner displays point of sale, there are all kinds of use cases where you want to have digital displays, and interactive displays, kiosks, and otherwise, and cloud ready was ready made for that they also have the the healthcare and, and the HIPAA compliance and all the other electronic health records compliance technologies built into their system so that they can actually get that stuff up to speed and up to scale in enterprise very quickly. That was why Google bought them. It wasn’t so that you could turn your whole old home laptop into a into a ready made machine. That was a byproduct that was a benefit of it. And we’ll see, you know, hopefully, Google Playstore come to the cloud ready platform on the Home Edition, that interim Enterprise Edition is really where the actions at for Google. Okay, we have reached our halfway point or a little bit beyond it, I want to I want to take a break, and then we’ll come back to talk about material you. We’re going to talk about Android 12. And oh my god, the resurrection of wearos. So we will meet you after the break. Well, working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core, we provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do to, again, head over to Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show. Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle on Ray Sidney-Smith joined with Augusto Pinaud, and our guest Art Gelwicks to talk about the Google i o conference, the developer conference 2021, our Redux, our commentary on that. And so let’s kick into the material you the announcement was was that Google has redesigned a new design language, and they are calling it material you and it seems to be so much more than just a simple refresh of their material design concept, their material design language that they that they developed, what do you think about material you?

Art Gelwicks 39:02

I’m have mixed emotions with material you. And here’s why. I love the idea that they are opening up the ability to create a user environment that’s much more of what I want. Because that’s what you’ve always had on Android is the ability to go through you load a different launcher, you load a different application and you can tune that. They’re putting that into the operating system. That beings and if you have an opportunity go look up the design imagery, you know, it looks very nice, I gotta give him credit looks solid. I liked the feel of it. I like the flow of it. Based on some of the improvements, it’s supposed to reduce core system utilization by up to 22%. It’s supposed to reduce the system server on our system server use on the big cores by up to 15% notifications are going to get cleaned up But this isn’t all that new. It’s just new for Google. I mean, Motorola has done this in the past. Samsung has one UI, I mean, you’ve got all these different user interfaces. They’re going to be pushing this on the pixel phones first. But I don’t know how much of a difference this will make across the other user interfaces. And I’ll go from Samsung being my bailiwick as of late. One UI, some of this may transfer and some may not. But a lot of this functionality is already in there. So while I think it’s really nice, and I know they’re going to make some, some nice improvements in like, the motions and the animations and things like that, it’s not a game changer type of thing. That said, it’s also being carried down into Chrome. So it’s a positive no question about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:51

I think that we’re where I fall on this is it is a challenge, a direct challenge to the design aesthetic of apple. Android has to date been really working. And I think that Android 11, even Android nine made leaps and bounds toward having a cleaner, modern, slick interface. But the reality is, is that it still took a lot to customize the experience of the Android operating system, especially with the modern architecture. And my ongoing gripe with Apple is that they don’t, they didn’t like, and they don’t like giving up control over the experience. So they want it to look like apple, and they want everything to look, if they could stop all customization to all Apple products, and only have one user interface on the ecosystem, they would do it right. And, and that makes a lot of sense for the Apple users. And it’s not to say that Apple users are stupid, or that they’re incapable of doing complex things. It’s not anything about that. It’s the aesthetic, right? They, they want an empty room, and a singular iPhone sitting in that room with white furniture. And all for you, all you see is that one device, right? Like that minimalist design aesthetic is absolutely an apple thing. So I get it. But for the rest of us, right, that’s a very luxury market, and very small number of people on the planet. And for the rest of us, we want our products to become ours, right. Most people have a phone case, most people want to be able to immediately customize like, honestly, I don’t know what most phones people have when they’re walking around the streets, because they have cases on them. And they look completely the same. They just look like you know, rectangle, flat rectangles. Holding a device. You don’t necessarily know what devices people have today. And people like customizing, they’d like it to be unique and material you especially with some of the features they showed in Android 12. And we’ll talk about some of those now, which is, you know, the ability to do color extraction. In essence, the person who did that part of the keynote, I forget his name, but you know, you in essence can take a photograph. And that photograph will identify a color palette from the from the photograph, and then pull that into the design. I just think that’s so smart and so competent of Google to start looking at different ways in which to quickly customize an experience for people in a way that personalizes and I think just that fact is, is I think the the reason material EU is going to go far.

Art Gelwicks 43:24

It’s it’s a nice idea. Again, many of the launchers have done that. But I don’t think this is targeted to an audience who loads a different launcher. I mean, if you’re if you’re a nova launcher, or a Microsoft launcher or whatever user, this isn’t shot at your direction, this is at the application level. Because I don’t care what launcher you have, it doesn’t change what your applications look like. And this is a design standard that digs itself all the way down into those. But secondarily, it gives you that ability to have that customization without having to go and load a launcher. And I you could dig out the stats, but it’s not everybody who goes and loads them. And it’s something that you have to maintain you, you give up something to get something now I again, I will be very curious to see the major major manufacturers, how they integrate this into their core systems. So like a Samsung, how do they incorporate material you into one UI? Do they make that a transparent connection so that if you make material UI changes, you can see that reflected in your one UI interface. I think they’re going to have to do that to be for those platforms to not run parallel to this. But I think this is a deeper piece. And I think you’re hitting on some of the key things we’re talking about, you know, the colors and the things like that. But I think there’s more to that user experience. It’s a deeper thing that Google saying look, we want more polish on this. We’ve always had good engineering tools. Now Want to want that user feel to be a little bit more premium. And again, targeting pixel is a good place to do it. Because pixels pixels one of those things that it just kind of works, a lot of tinkering. It’s just it’s about as close to an apple type of devices you’re going to get. So I’m very anxious to see how this plays forward. And how far out it plays. And as we talk about things like wearos, later on, I think we’ll see that this is going to keep popping its head up.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:33

Yeah, so so just on the heels of what you’re talking about in terms of launchers being installed, you’re absolutely right. Most people are not launcher installers. And this brings a lot of those capabilities to the average user without having to muck with a separate launcher. And that also means that those features that people would typically say, Oh, you need a launcher for are going to go away. So that’s I think that’s going to increase the speed and efficiency of the operating system, if it doesn’t have to have more code to be able to do the same thing. So that’s where I think a lot of those cost savings in compute power are going to come down. And just a note that widgets will be different. So while the software the applications won’t be changed, the way in which your widgets appear, will I mean, the rounding edges around the widgets, all those kinds of things are happening. And to your point about how quickly you can get access to it, if you have a pixel, you can go in at now into the Android 12 beta, and actually start to see it. Just know that, you know, it might have a few glitches here and there, but it should be fairly stable for most people to use. And, you know, just be mindful of anything that you have running that, you know, you’re gonna have to, if you leave the program, you’re going to end up having to wipe the machine and go go back to the prior version. So it’s going to wipe out some of those preferences and other details. But some some key points. This Android 12 is bringing material up to pixel in the fall. But as Google noted, material EU is coming to Chrome OS, to Google Chrome, to where OS and to I mean, I think I heard them say it right to basically all our other Google products that are out there. This is remarkable to me. I mean, I think about the chrome profile, which just came out, you know, recently, now we have different profiles where we can have different user instances logged in. And sometimes, right before you’re about to present a webinar, it freezes up on you, like it did this morning on me. But for the most part, I think chrome profiles are an amazing addition to the Google Chrome ecosystem. And, but the ways in which I, I’m one of the Google Chrome product experts, and I spend time in the Google help community helping folks out with Google Chrome issues. And in volunteering in that space, you see a lot of conversations about people wanting to customize their chrome experience. And the issues that come into play doing that material, you I think it’s just an amazing potentiality here for us to be able to quickly and seamlessly turn go from Google Photos and say, Hey, you know what, I want to take this photograph. And now make this my theme. Right? Think about, you know, a parent takes a photograph of their children clicks on it, it now becomes the profile theme for that particular chrome instance, that’s an amazing power that didn’t require a lot of heavy lifting. So you go from zero to 100, and just seconds, and hopefully now we can synchronize that. So now it just basically picks up on my pixel five, and then it picks up on my Chromebook. I mean, I would really like to have that kind of synchronization happened across the ecosystem if I want it. And we already see that with so many other Google services, why not with its interface? So I’m looking forward to this in that sense.

Art Gelwicks 48:46

Yeah, I think I think you brought up an excellent point about taking over functionality that’s having to be done by third parties, this type of functionality like this automatic approach. For example, Samsung has apps that will do that. And you can do that. But if you can, if I’m a developer, and I can pull out of the operating system to do that, that means I don’t have to have more RAM chewed up to be able to provide the same functionality. So I can free that up and use it for something else, taking advantage of the power of my device. So there’s no downside I can see to this. I’m very curious to see how it comes out and evolves. But your point about it spreading across devices, I think is probably the most important thing. And the less the less it gets in silos, the better off it is. Sorry, go ahead.

Augusto Pinaud 49:33

No, no, i i agree with you that one of the things I appreciate about living on an iOS ecosystem is that is that it doesn’t matter which device I grab, I can drop the iPad, I can run the phone, I can run anything. And it is exactly that same experience. And I think this is one step towards that direction. And that is incredibly powerful. to being able to grab any device and in my case, and have that exact same powerful experience, though, I don’t need to choose, okay, what I’m going to do, should I grab the big iPad or grab the little iPad, it doesn’t matter I both will be as capable of, and I think this will really make the Chromebook platform and the Android more powerful. Okay, what I want to grab you, I want to grab my big Chromebook, or I want to do it on the front, or I want to do it on the tablet.

Art Gelwicks 50:32

But the difference there is, Apple has chosen for you what that experience should be. What Chrome’s allowing, or Google’s allowing you to do is to choose what that experience should be across the devices. And that that’s literally the two sides of the coin that we’ve always seen with these two. And I think that’s a good thing. I, I know a lot of people who have their Android devices configured so they look like iOS devices. same shape icons, color scheme, the whole nine yards. I’m like, okay, go buy an apple. But in

Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:05

30 30%, less cost?

Art Gelwicks 51:06

Because they got four devices for the price of one. Now, did I say that? So it’s, it’ll be very interesting to see where they go with this. I like the fact that we did mention it briefly, that one of the things this is crossing into the warehouse space, too. Right. So it’ll be interesting.

Augusto Pinaud 51:23

I agree with you on that. There is I think there is an important distinction to make that that you said is true for certain level of tech level user going up. But that non techie user who get the Android, okay, will not experience to man will not experience any of this and now out of the box, they will get that consistent experience. And I think that’s a change and you’re not the average user. So yes, you will be able to you will think and to install, break, you know, hack, all these things in good terms on your own devices, the average non tech user who is buying this cheap Android, okay, and a cheap Chromebook, don’t have an idea how to do that now, out of the box, they will get the consistent experience. And I think that is critical.

Art Gelwicks 52:23

And it really raises. See, you’re raising an interesting point. Because when you think about for example, Motorola, Motorola was always touted as being as close to pure Android as you could get without being on a pixel. So when you look at that type of player in this space, for example, if I’m going to bring out a Chrome OS tablet, or an Android tablet, now do I bring it out with Android 12, knowing that it’s going to have this customizable UI, that I don’t have to layer a skin on top of that I don’t have to take care of does this open up opportunities for me as a hardware manufacturer, or as a software developer? You know, can I leverage this, this material you interface designed to say, okay, whatever they want it to look like, I know, it’s going to be fine, because I’m following the spec. And I don’t have to worry about designing this part of it, I can put it into the functionality and the reliability of the app. So it I will be very curious to hear what people think as they start to put this thing into use.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:29

Yeah, so So Google brought out project trouble to be able to get more people to update the Android operating system in faster speed. And now they say that roughly about 30% of Android devices are on the latest version. So that’s pretty good. It could be better. You know, Apple is way higher than that in their in their ability to get their older devices, legacy devices upgraded to the latest versions, before they sunset them from support. And so we want to see more of that purely from my perspective that if you have a later version of the operating system, more security holes are filled, and a more secure environment makes us all more secure. But you also get the features with it. So I think that we have to move in that direction as well, which is understanding that getting Ed getting users and getting OEMs. to both understand the importance and power of getting to the latest version is going to be important. I know we’re running a little bit slim on time. And so I want to talk a little bit about where else before we close out. But I did want to mention that Google did give a nod. It’s not just lip service to privacy here. Obviously, Apple is currently being billed as the most, you know, kind of secure of the two operating systems. And the reality is, is that Google is out there working very hard to get Android into a position to push that message that they’ve created a new privacy dashboard. They also have the new private compute core. This is not a separate chip. This is actually a segregated space on the chip that gives you this very, very powerful layer of security, it’s open source. So there’s no, there’s nothing being pulled over anybody’s eyes in terms of being able to see the transparency is there to be able to see what private compute core does. And that means you have this segregated space as a developer, to be able to put really secure stuff into that space, and know that you’re going to be able to utilize that information that you might be collecting about users, and not make them feel totally creeped out that you’re taking this information from them, because it is going into this secure space on the chip. Just a couple of other really quick items. The the new TV remote feature that is coming to Android 12 is just wonderful. I love it, I want it and I wanted yesterday, digital key, the digital car key, which is the name of the ability for you now to seamlessly unlock lock and start a vehicle right now BMW is the only supported vehicle make, but they are hopefully going to bring this out to more car manufacturers very soon. And so I thought they announced, as you said earlier, art was kind of like a, you know, firehose of features coming out of Android 12. We will undoubtedly report about this once Android 12 actually comes into GA, general availability, and we’re all using it. But just know that these things are on the horizon, aren’t you, we’re gonna say,

Art Gelwicks 56:19

I’m just wanted to say that the thing about the privacy thing to me this is again, another case of this being table stakes, now, they have to do this, everyone who is in this space has to have this kind of offering, I’ll go back to Samsung, Samsung has their for their Fort Knox solution on their devices, for file storage and for secure access. Microsoft has their personal vault. Privacy has got to be the core consideration of these things. And it’s it if they didn’t do this, this would be one of the big things I would be going guys, what are you doing?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:56

Yeah, so Google has just recently we talked about this last week or the week before that, about the fact that they put two step verification into, you know, into people’s accounts, that could utilize the technology, they’re really pushing the, the envelope here in terms of making sure that people are taking privacy and security seriously, and whether or not they’re trying to level those up for them in and hopefully a as frictionless environment or friction free experience as possible. And I just really like it, I love the fact that now Android 12 is gonna allow you to unlock your Chromebook from your phone, you know, and so they’re, they’re extending Smart Lock, you know, I currently have Smart Lock attached to my wearos watch. And that allows me to unlock all kinds of things, just by virtue of proximity to those devices. If I step away from it, it relax, and therefore I don’t have to worry about it. But the amount of time I spend around my Chrome devices is remarkable. And just to be able to be in its vicinity, and never have to unlock these things, because they’re just open because they know I’m here based. If my watch is not on me, my arm is severed. So somebody call somebody called law enforcement, you know, like, so it’s great that I have that capability of being able to connect my devices in such a way. And I just I’m looking forward to seeing more and more of a phone hub, as well as other parts of Chrome OS really tightly integrated in that security function. But talking about where OS, they announced, I think brilliantly, that they are working with Samsung to bring wero os back to life. I could I would have about a year and a half ago said, you know, warehouse was dead on arrival, there are lots of rumors about a pixel watch, I really, really still hope this fall, we will see the launch of the pixel watch. But that’s to be determined. And yeah, so they’ve decided to take ties in and sunset ties in for wearables. And Samsung is still gonna keep ties in running for, you know, Samsung TVs and for all of their other, you know, display products. But for wearos, they’re going to sunset ties in, and Samsung and Google are going to work together to make where else better. And well, here’s all

Art Gelwicks 59:10

the things here’s where it gets neat. They they will kill off ties in as the operating system on Samsung watches. However, they’re going to use one UI as the user interface. Which to me makes sense because the tie the ties and based one UI interface is a better interface than the wear Oh s interface. And they’re going to drop the O s part and they’re just going to call it where what I think is more interesting to this is the sub story, which is the integration of Fitbit fitness technologies into this combination. And what we’re going to see first is we’re going to see Samsung watches come out running a five nanometre chipset in it that is going to be more energy efficient, and it’s going to be faster. It’s going to run aware iOS based operating system. That’s easy. To develop for, it’s going to run the one UI interface which makes the watch easier to use. Matter of fact, the new one, they’re even talking about still going to bring out the rotating bezel, thank you. Because I don’t like sliding bezels. I like my old school rotating bezel. But that combination, then as once that gets established, we’re going to start to see and I’m going to call it now we’re going to see Fitbit devices start to come out in this combination. And this trio, I think is going to reset this, this entire idea of the wearable space. If I were in Apple Watch land, I would be looking for a whiskey bottle at this point because they are going to make a play.

Augusto Pinaud 1:00:41

But that except that he’s really excited actually. Okay, as a person who is on that on that place. Again, one of the problem is, and this is a problem of Apple is they can continue developing. But if they Apple is the kid that will only study for the test when he knows there is somebody who can get better grades. Okay, that was a typical killing on the classroom that didn’t prepare for the test because he knew he can get an A, and nobody else will. That’s that’s Apple, Mo they are way ahead. They the last two releases has been okay. Why? Because the distance was just doing okay is so abysmal with the competition, that there is no. So what I hope now was this, and this is a recent I was really excited about it is this is going now to tell Apple Okay, now here is we are going to race it and race it again and what you’re going to do about that, and I think that’s going to be really amazing.

Art Gelwicks 1:01:44

I cannot mention enough how how important I think this is because it’s difficult for Samsung to write applications for Tyson. There was a really interesting story that I found talking about this. And one of the reasons why some people are speculating that Samsung was willing to make this play is within the Korean market, there’s an application called cow chat. And cow chat is very much like WeChat and WhatsApp and things like that. But in a country of 15 million people, it has 46 million users. cacau chat has said flat out they will not write a Tyson based application. Well, that’s a problem. If you want that wearable messaging capability on your device, and the incredibly loyal Samsung users that are in that market space, you got to find a way to play it. And I think the timing couldn’t have been better on this. I think Google and Samsung, when you look at all the other things they’ve been tying together, have really pulled these pieces together, I will be very interested interested to see if the linchpin of this whole thing doesn’t become Samsung. And the reason why I say that is, is when you start to look at applications such as the outlook application on Google or on Android that is supported on your smartwatch to be able to see email notifications, you can do that now and respond to notifications. You just wait till you can take a team’s call off of your watch, or respond to a chat for a team’s session. And that pass through capability. I think we’re going to get closer to that because of this underlying commonality that we’re starting to see. But I think the fitness one, the fit the Fit Bit. factor in this is the X Factor. I really think that’s the X Factor. Because when you look at the high end Fitbit and their capabilities, yeah, they do a lot but not they’re not in the same space as a smartwatch. Now they can be now they can be plus net, for example, the new Samsung smartwatch that’s gonna come out the four, they’ve already taken out the OS or the oxygen sensor. They’ve, for some reason, they and there’s a couple of reasons why they do it, but they back that tech out. But they’re gonna be able to bring that tech immediately right back to the fore when they’re ready. And whether they want to do that on a Samsung device, or all these other ones that we haven’t really talked about. And I haven’t I don’t know if you guys have seen anything or not. I haven’t really seen anything about how does this work with legacy devices. So if you’re like a fossil fossil makes a ton of wearos watches there’s a ton of like Michael Kors watches and that certain tick and all those other ones. Are they going to be able to pick this up? will this go back and retroactively upgrade? I’m keeping my fingers crossed too, right? Because this is an old wear frontier that just keep if this were made by Timex, I could use the old saying because it just keeps ticking. This is where Yeah, the legacy on these devices and The lifespan on these devices should be long, the hardware should fail before the operating system gives up. And up until this point, Samsung has been able to support that with Tyson. I’ve got to Google or I’ve got to wear a Wes fossil in the drawer that I tried when this announcement came out, and I survived it for half a day. And then I put it back in the drawer.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:21

Because I So a couple things before we close out one, yeah, I’ve got I’ve had this warehouse watch for many years now. And really the only thing lagging on it lacking on it is the lack of updates. And, and so if it had the latest version of were on it, I think that it would be phenomenal for me, I am able to take and make phone calls directly from the watch and have a seamless conversation with it, it is tied to the phone. So it’s not like I’m not without the phone. But you know, I’ve locked myself out of the house a few times now. And, and I’ve been able to unlock it because I can just voice into Google to unlock the front door. And since we have a connected watch, it then will unlock the front door for me or I can open up the garage by voice. So my watch is capable of giving me that capability that you know, I walk around without my phone sometimes, you know, and then you locked yourself out. Now I need to do that for the roof deck, we’ve got to get out, we’ve got to get one for the roof deck because I have locked myself on the roof now. And that is not a fun experience. So I thought to myself, well, I’ll just ask neighbors to like come in the garage, and then or from the front door and come up and let me in.

Art Gelwicks 1:06:31

Take Take this whole thing full circle, though to when we started talking, run lamda through your through your watch, have that conversation with that device on your wrist to get not only the information, but to make those dinner reservations or to you know, arrange for that pickup or whatever, you know, get medical advice, that all these pieces start to tie together, then they start to make logical sense. Now, I don’t want to get too hyped on this because it’s still Google and it’s still a watch. And they still suck at that until they do better. But I’m hoping that the influence of Samsung success in this will help them focus on the part that they could do well, which is the underlying operating system. So we’ll say I’m

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:07:19

I’m bullish. Yeah, I’m bullish and hopeful on this. Because Fitbit, Fitbit is serious, they have been serious about this for a long time. And Samsung is a player who’s serious in this market. And Samsung is about making money here. And you notice something very important, which is the cacau. You know, talk application ecosystem is very important to this to Samsung, and they want to be able to appease to those folks, I do want to note before we close out just a couple things here. I think that there is a huge developer opportunity here. Because the new experience on where is going to be that the apps can be installed from your phone, as opposed to plunking around on the screen on your watch. And I think that’s going to be just great, you know, you see now apps inside of the Play Store. And now you can choose your watch to be that install device option just like you now in the Play Store on the desktop, you can select the device, you want to install Chromebook Android, otherwise, you can now push the application to the device without having to go on the phone and find it, I think there’s going to be a great app discovery opportunity here. And that’s going to give developers more interest. And, you know, in developing for the wear platform, I’m really excited their continuous heart rate monitoring will hopefully come to the health and fitness experience because of Fitbit. And the latest technologies that are underpinning where and how they’re developing. And here plus Samsung has had it for a while. And those are things that weren’t available on were because of the load on the system. You can install separate applications for that. But I think more and more of these kinds of things for being able to do blood pressure monitoring, you know, that currently the end the lace Android version on on pixel has is able to you know, do respiration and all those kinds of you know, blood, I would have said heart rate monitoring from the from the camera, you know, just touching your finger to the the lens with the with the with the light, what do you call the light, the flash Lord was escaping me there. You know, though all of those pieces I think are going to be really great. And tiles tiles are coming back in a better format. So you’re gonna get more tiles, and swipeable. Just it’s so

Art Gelwicks 1:09:26

there’s they’re also including a tiles API, which means Yeah, workers will be able to develop their own Yay, it’s about time. Plus, we start to pull in the technologies such as the EKG capability and being able to have that functionality. There is a huge opportunity for this to finally get going in the right direction. I just I hope that Google gets out of their own way. And they say, look, we’ll we’ll write the underpinnings. You guys all figure out the hardware and you figure out all the other pieces And we’ll just drive it and make make the apps work. That would be a win win win across the board in my book. I hope it happens. I really do. need to upgrade my watch, and I want a really good excuse.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:15

I am definitely ready. I’ve been ready for a good year or more. All right, we have reached the top of our time. We have an announcement before we close out Augusto, what’s going on? Tomorrow? I think tomorrow.

Augusto Pinaud 1:10:28

It is tomorrow Actually, yes. And the personal productivity club we have. The second event of the comparison we’re doing with to do is and remember the milk Dr. Frank, Buck and myself are going to come and talk about how collaboration work and how that task collaboration happen. In remember the milk as well is in us introduced.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:54

So for those of you who are listening to the podcast this morning, that is this evening, may 25. So at least eastern time at 6pm, Eastern Daylight Saving Time. So make sure you know that if you’re listening to the podcast right now, you should be getting it on your calendar. Because it’ll be it’ll be just in a few hours from the time in which you listened to it. With that. I just wanted to thank Art Gelwicks for joining us here on the show art, where can people keep up to date with the work you’re doing out there in the world of productivity,

Art Gelwicks 1:11:24

Best place, as always come over and visit me at the idea pump. I’ve actually started a new section called 62nd productivity, which you’re the littlest tips I can find to get you a little bit more productive within 60 seconds. So come on, visit, give me ideas, things you want to know about. Just come talk to me. I’m lonely. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:11:45

Alright, thanks so much for joining us as always. My pleasure. Alright, gousto, we are wrapping up. Thank you very much Augusto Pinaud, from productivity voice for joining me here always for Anything But Idle.

Augusto Pinaud 1:11:58

It was always fun. Always fun.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:12:01

Wonderful. And with that, we have covered the Google i o conference for 2021. We will be back next week Monday. And we will catch up on the news we didn’t cover in this past week. And then we will cover the rest of the news that we normally cover for the current week. And so if we, if you are on Anything But idle.com for this episode, and there’s something we missed about Google IO that you really want to let us know about or the world at large, feel free in the page, Episode 61. So it’s Anything But idle.com forward slash 061. That will take you over to this episode page there in the show notes. There’s a comment section below that you can go ahead and leave comments. But also in the show notes, you’ll find links to all the various Google IO round up links that we found and embedded there. And so you can find all of those, there’s also a text transcript. And so you’re able to click on that Read More link. it’ll expand it and you’ll be able to read along while you watch or listen. And then of course there’s a PDF link, you can click on that and download it while you’re there on Anything But Idle comm you are able to follow or subscribe depending upon which application or ecosystem you’re you’re listening to us on. But you can go ahead and follow us in that way, you’ll get the new podcast episode, and it’ll just show up for free when we release them each week. And yeah, and if you’re watching the live stream, feel free to click the subscribe button. And that means that you’ll get notified hopefully when we go live each week and you can watch us live and comment along and enjoy the conversation with us as well. If you enjoy spending the time with us, feel free to click the thumbs up icon that does help us you know find new productivity friends, and so thank you for doing that. With that. We will see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to productive life.