LastPass is going to become an independent company

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 0:12

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:13

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 92 0924, January 3 2022, when I got the year, right, and today’s shows, is LastPass is going to become an independent company. And so welcome, everybody. Happy New Year. And of course, as you know, each week, Augusto and I read and review and then discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And so with that, let’s get started with our personal productivity blogosphere and audio sphere articles. Agusta what’s our first article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 0:49

So the first article is from Fast Company and he’s title one to be happier. And sine says buying a little time leads to significant greater satisfaction. And the article begin quoting John Maynard Keynes, who was the economist who said in the in the 1930s, that with the evolution of technology, and everything else, he predicted that people was going to be working three hours a week, and that the problem was going to be that people was going to be bored, and they were not going to know what to do with that. I don’t think we I don’t think Tim Ferriss Tim Ferriss even said four hour workweek and I don’t even think he even aim to the three hours. Oh, when we went around Was that was that extra opportunities and extra incomes, we when an open the extra expenses to simple stuff, you know, when when I think as a parent on the opportunities and the things my kids have versus the things that we had growing up. There’s no comparison, you know, even on on the space, I don’t have the information in front of me. But I remember reading a study how much the average startup home has grown and grown and grown over the years. And I think that’s part of the problem. I don’t think Keynes was wrong is just, he did not contemplate that was that number of opportunities and more income, people was going to just try to get more and more and more. And that’s part of where things has gone wrong. But the problem is all those more money more things has not brought any happiness for for many people. And that has bring movements in US minimalism and people existence in this room and people trying to Okay, let’s let’s get ourselves for a moment out of the rat wheel, the rat wheel and amyloid really why we’re doing this and what is what we’re trying to accomplish and see if we can go somewhere. And at the end of the day, are do I think people will ever be able to work three hours a week? No, regardless what technology do you know there is something at least on the American culture about working and the pride we have for work for good or for bad? You know, I? I shared a story when I was writing iPad only with my dear friend Michael Zorinsky. Okay, and he needed to stop in the middle of that writing to take a siesta. Okay. Over the years is still working with now as a coach from people from Spain. Okay. I made sure that those appointments never hit close to that, because I still don’t understand it. Okay, that we are in the middle of a meeting. No, let’s stop the meeting and go for the siesta. No, let’s finish the meeting. So I don’t think some I don’t think every Coulter is wired for for that. But what I think is that we have let consumerism take over many people and take over what people want and try to accomplish. And until that getting somehow control. We are not going to care or reduce anything.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:47

Yeah, my only thought here regarding this article was that it did a really good job of explaining that. If you if you buy time, basically, you know delegating or having tasks done for you that was otherwise take up your time that don’t provide you with real value, then there is some little bump in, in game in I don’t like the word happiness I you know, there are there are about a dozen different words for positive effects, positive emotions. And so you know, whether that being joy or contentment or whatever the various positive effect is, we know that there are things that we can buy to do that. So, you know, I’m, I don’t want to clean my house. So if I have someone clean my house, that time spent doing something I enjoy is fulfilling to me is going to be money well spent to displace me having to take time to do a mundane task, like cleaning, you know, the house. So these are the things that we can spend money on to basically quote unquote, buy time. And I think the article does a pretty good job of explaining that component onto our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 5:53

So our next article is from two minutes rule. And it’s about micro resolutions. And I think it’s incredibly timely. As people is beginning I don’t know if with the gyms I’m going to assume are packed again. And people you know, cannot park I, my daughter compete. She swims competitively. So January is the moment where you try to pick her up or drop her for do her swim practice. And you can park and it’s kind of annoying by February 1 is fine again, but January tend to be a complicated month. But it was interesting as we went to the end of the year, and asking people what is for next year. And this is the first time that I found more people, at least in the people I had surrounding me saying I’m not making any. And I have forward this micro resolution articles to a lot of people say fine, don’t do any. But don’t think on the big one. But look on the small ones. And what the article goes is that don’t necessarily need save the world. But what are going to be the many things and you talk in this article about how three years ago, four years ago, whenever this was written 20 123 years ago, how you had you know, write every day, okay, and you start your year in November, you know, every year just starting November, I tend to do cycles of 13 weeks, okay, what’s going to happen in the next 13 weeks, that is a different way to look at these micro resolutions. But it’s many, it’s easier to make the goal smaller, where you can see how you can influence towards that goal than try to go okay, let’s do 200 pounds. And I tell I have to share my story here. I begin 2010 2010 2010 Okay, was 400 pounds, and I’m now 182. But it wasn’t, if I will have said at that time, let’s lose 200 plus pounds, that may have never happened, the goal was to lose a pound and then I went to five and I went to 10. That is exactly what this article goes make. make resolutions is started when you started, just mark when you are starting them and move forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:31

I didn’t expect you to actually put this article in the rundown. But but hopefully it’s useful for folks. I actually only wrote this last week, I didn’t write this three years ago. This is actually a time a timely resolution for me a micro resolution that I’ve created to write daily, and I’m really looking forward to it and then checking back in with myself at the end of January to do this. So if anybody wants to join us in the micro resolutions, kind of space here, check out the article and create a micro solution and kind of let us know what’s going on. You can post in personal productivity club, you can comment on the video wherever you might find it. So next up in our articles this week still.

Augusto Pinaud 9:08

So the next one is from Veritas Ferox and that title the article if you’re not escaping some task, you’re making life harder and how many times have we led a task derail all our productivity?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:25

Never. Never. Never sir never.

Augusto Pinaud 9:32

I was cheering the pre show. You know that that was exactly how my day started. Okay, I went to do something and the system crash and collapse. And oh there West all that I was planned for today. And there was two ways to do it. I could have fight that or I could have said and replan and restructure today. That was actually what happened. So I guess I have learned and more successful than not to recalibrate and to skip the task, hey, there are moments that no, there is not the moment to write that letter or send that email, even though that is the appropriate next action, but there are moments that you know that the brain is not there, don’t do it, skip the task, move to the next one, and then come back.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:25

Yeah, there are times when skipping a task doesn’t mean that you’re not going to do it, it’s just not in the sequence that you had planned for it to be done. You know, I sometimes have this, you know, the spirit moves me so to speak. And I’m like, Okay, I’m just going to do this writing now. And I’m going to do all the writing, I need to for this project. And then I’ll double back. And I’ll do the the intermediary, administrative ministerial tasks, of where those writing pieces need to go. Frequently, I’m writing for webinars, you know, descriptions for webinars, and I’m writing descriptions for presentations and all kinds of other things. And, you know, I’ll just get locked into the idea of, okay, I’ve got to post this item now, and then go back and then do the next one. And it’s like, the breaking the, the creative capacity of output is too much, it’s too much there for me. So I’ll skip the checklist and say, Oh, I’m just going to write all five of these upcoming descriptions at once. And then I’ll go back and I’ll fix the pieces up and then put them in the right places, and so on and so forth. But if you’re not skipping them, you have to you get yourself kind of tossed around. And so you know, sometimes it’s that kind of thing as well, where you’re not skipping it. Totally, you’re just skipping it temporarily, so that you can be more productive in more efficient and not lose a flow state, so to speak. So it’s kind of one of those things. All right. On to our next article. This week,

Augusto Pinaud 11:43

we come back to Fast Company. But it’s the story of Seabra and how Seabra went to rent 43,000 square foot to go fully remote and the stories and what I like about the article is you could read at least a certain level vulnerability from the CEO. And what they did well, why they did wrong, you know, why force fun, didn’t work. But instead how the value of a 15 minute, some call was really good. And as we are into this transition, and we don’t know now which direction we are going on this transition, because as three weeks ago, we thought we were moving forward. As of today, apparently, we are moving backwards again. But but this is the reality, we are going to be dealing with this. And as leaders of the organization, it is important to understand what others are doing well, what others haven’t worked for others, and what we’re going to do with organizations, and I thought this article was a really good thing to show what worked for them and maybe grab one or two ideas.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:01

Absolutely. I think that you know, ultimately, this pandemic will end. It’s not if but when so we are I’m hopeful, and I am I am aware that the experts, the scientists have told us that this will end and so I trust that the the the fact of the matter is that will go from pandemic to endemic and and that’s just purely because SARS cov two is not going away, we’re just going to manage it better. And that fundamentally changes the way in which we work. So this concept of what let’s call it remote work or hybrid work or, or just work in the future, once once we lose the the the the modifications, the modifiers of remote and hybrid. And in person work, it’s just going to become work. And people are going to become very comfortable with the idea that they work in whatever environment they’re, they want to that’s best for them. And that’s not necessarily the case for everybody. And we got to keep, you know, aware that some people will always have to work in person in their, in their place, and in their place of business. So, you know, that’s the reality. But as we do this, we should be looking to all of these various examples of people testing the waters. And you know, the four day workweek companies and these companies that are going fully remote and those that are trying hybrid options. This is really good experimentation for us all to look and see and then take as you said, Cousteau taking from it, what is good using those pieces for your own organizations. So I just really enjoy reading these articles, because it really helps you get some level of perspective. And so as I said, some companies are trying four day work weeks and on to our next story about one such company.

Augusto Pinaud 14:38

Yeah, and the company is up level and they make software tools to help engineering teams manage and measure how the developers are using their time and well are according to the article at least trying to run dog food so they are going to afford a work week and they’re sharing again, what is working what is not working is not perfect. But it let’s clarify, it wasn’t perfect in 2018. Either. It doesn’t matter what you were, before this pandemic, it wasn’t perfect. But all these adjustments are important and see how your employees are embracing the change and how you as organization are helping them to embracing that change. How can you make your process work better, in a world where the person may not come back to the office to get, you know, their problem solved, you may need to figure it out how you’re going to solve that now in a machine that you cannot access, because your security protocols don’t allow that person to go out and not allow you as an IT team to go in. So those are problems that in a way are new, the solution was grabbed the laptop, go to the office see it? Well, if that solution is not available anymore, what’s happened. And this is going to bring, I think, a lot of innovation process improvement. And it is going to be really, really good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:11

I think the four day work week is a very interesting concept across the board. I wish that I could. I wish that I could see myself doing a four day work week, I think that I want to do it for my staff, I really do. I just don’t see myself being able to do it because I still suffer sometimes on occasion, maybe all the time, from workaholism. And so I know that I like the idea of having this and I’ve actually thought about maybe taking midweek off, right, so taking maybe a Wednesday off in the middle of the week, and then working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and and then maybe a little bit on Saturday, just because that ends up being when I meet with some of my clients because they can’t meet with me during the work week. And so it just ends up working out that way. But the way in which these companies are testing the waters with four day workweeks, I think is is really, you know, in innovation in many different ways. And we know that it can work for some companies, and certainly for some companies have even very large sizes can do this very effectively. Notably, Microsoft, Japan, tried this and had a really big jump in their own productivity when they did this. So again, I just think we need to be testing the waters and seeing how these things work out. And then reporting back what works and what doesn’t work. When we do try out these different types of working, let’s call modalities, right, whether that be reducing hours throughout the workday, reducing the number of workdays altogether. And also providing flexibility for workers in terms of working remotely hybrid are in person when they want to and need to. And again, this is an employee’s market, right? The the article even noted that right, that we are in this position where if you don’t want to work for this company, you have a great chance of leaving them and going someplace else and getting what you want. So companies are having to respond to that by going ahead and appeasing their workers. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think that, you know, there needs to be a balance of partnership between the employee market and the employer market. And right now, it was highly imbalanced toward one side, and employees now have gotten a little bit of power. And they are using that for, I think the betterment of the entire employee market. So hopefully that works out to ultimately bring us back to center, right, it’s good to be in the center in that space, where employees employees are bargaining on equal footing. And I think that’s a that’s a good thing. So with that we have reached the middle of our episode time so to speak, we’re gonna take a break. For a word from our sponsor, co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back. We will then cover our tech headlines of the week, our featured story of the week and our productivity resources. So we will see you after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 18:50

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:00

Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined with Augusto Pinaud. For the second half of the show. We’re going to head into our technology headlines of the week. Agusta? What’s our first technology headline this week.

Augusto Pinaud 20:15

So LastPass has a scare, we have talked about LastPass. Here. LastPass is a password management. But there was a scare, there was an email that saying he we may have or may not have have outright on address login information. And he was not theory was serious. So the good news is LastPass says that no passwords were compromised on the bridge care, you know, and there was nothing breaking nothing good. So as of last week, you know, they’re saying it’s good. It was most a trigger error due to an issue that LastPass has resolved. But there was no compromise password. That is a really good news.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:01

Yes, we are a LastPass house and a LastPass business. So I was very keen to make sure that this was not it turns out that it was just an errant email that went out. There was no there were no passwords that were compromised. No master passwords that were compromised, it was just an error in their email system. So

Augusto Pinaud 21:19

not even one password, but it still was scary. Of course, of course,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:22

it’s always it’s always scary. And still LastPass or any other Password Manager worth its weight is so much better than keeping your passwords in a plain text document or an Excel spreadsheet on your computer. So

Augusto Pinaud 21:35

posted under the laptop is not secure.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:40

No, no, sir. All right. On to our next story. We got some Google News X

Augusto Pinaud 21:43

IG story is excited Google Drive is converting all the messy duplicate files into shortcuts, not that my Google Docs is any mess at all. It’s completely organized. And but this is really, really exciting. The people who some of the companies leave and some of my clients leave in Google Drive, it is awesome to know that now their files are not going to be duplicated all over and what is now the real truth, but they are going to be turning to shortcuts. So you are also going to be able now to put shortcuts in multiple places, you know, and that I think it’s an incredible move from Google. And I’m really, really excited about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:32

Yeah, so So Google Drive shortcuts have been a thing for quite a long time. So So you’ve, you’ve had the ability to create shortcuts, what happens right now and just so that you’re all aware is that Google is not deleting your primary file, your original file is going to stay there. But if you were to copy that file and place it into a bunch of different places, literally the same exact file in a bunch of different places, Google is going to take those files, and is going to swap them out for a Google Drive shortcut. And you’ll know that it’s a shortcut, because you’ll see the Google Drive icon, whether it’s Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, what have you have a little arrow in the corner of it. And that’s just telling you that it’s pointing to a file that someplace else, okay, and what they’re trying to do is just reduce your overall google drive storage usage. And so this, of course, itself is self serving, right? Because it benefits them because the less they have to store, the more money they’re going to make. Right. So they’re streamlining in some way, shape, or form. And I give the CFO at Google great credit for for thinking this through. Or maybe it was Google Cloud, I’m not quite sure which part of Google or alphabet, you know, thought this up. But it’s it’s a good thing. Overall, I’ve seen a reduction in my own Google Drive storage size, just based on this one change. So so just know that you will have an original file, it’s not going to delete those original files. It’s just going to swap out the the, the duplicates with that little shortcut. Okay, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 23:55

Oh, I think it was appropriate at the beginning of the year to talk about Google plays best for 2021 I don’t have a goal device but you do. Did you use any of these applications? There you go for the user choice the Paramount plus movie for games and games. I know I don’t have a chance but with you, but balance may be something that you play. I don’t see you playing Pokemon. I don’t know. I may be wrong into that. But

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:26

no, I don’t. I don’t but I did. I did play with with some of these applications. Remarkably, I didn’t know about a lot of them. I you know, when I was reviewing the list for 2021 I thought wow, that’s a really interesting group of lists. But what was most interesting is that the best for where which is where iOS the the operating system for the smartwatches. It noted that calm, CA LM calm the app was the best app voted on Wero s, My Fitness Pal and sleep cycle, all three applications of which I use, but none of have them on my warehouse. So very interesting. But I use them all on the Android operating system, but I just don’t use them on the watch. And and then you know, the rest of these the answers, the answer is no. I did just buy a Google stadia set of controllers, because we’re an entire Google household. So I have, you know, the the Android TV now Google TV, which was a shield and Nvidia Shield product, the latest version we had just set up on the television, we have the stadia controllers. And I just wanted to kind of see what stadia was all about. stadia is Google’s streaming gaming platform. And so you don’t have a console, you just basically utilize the technology in your Smart TV or in your laptops, tablets, and phone. And the controller connects to those, I have to say, it’s been a little bit clunky, I don’t think that it’s going to be less clunky on Amazon’s Luna or on Xbox X pass or any of the other platforms that are out there. But I will say that the the overall experience has been fairly positive with regard to what they’ve done considering that they’re Google. And they’re not a big gaming studio producing, you know, amazing games and that kind of thing. So I’m interested to see where the gaming platform goes. Because, you know, I have nieces and nephews, and you know, and when they come over, I want to be able to be the, you know, not cool uncle, but I want to be at least not the you know, stodgy old uncle who doesn’t want to play games with them. So this, this is a good kind of lesson for me and getting geared up for that. But yeah, otherwise, I really, I have to admit, none of the games jumped out at me as being anything that I knew. And only the were iOS applications, were ones that I’ve actually utilized, outside of Canva Canva have used on the tablet, which was one of them. And if anyone doesn’t know, Canva is a design software that’s built into the web. And so you can use the mobile applications as well as the web app. And it’s phenomenal. I just really love Canva and it’s a great, great tool.

Augusto Pinaud 27:01

I’m using Canva as the jump for the next article that obviously is the Apple list Canva also make it for the list on the apple and apple you know, get the game of the year, the App of the Year, the App of the Year I haven’t I have not used and I I’d write it down so I tested it’s called taka live world but I haven’t touch at least the iPhone but Luma fusion I have an is great. And on the games, I wonder if that missed was that same missed that I may may or may have not invest significant amount of hours in another life. I will be afraid, really afraid to download. But what was interesting in this article was what Apple or are they are writers for apple cider. We’re talking about the trend of the year and the trend of the year accordion wisdom was connection. And they bring bumbled they were in Canva they bring among us as the important things to acknowledge on that connection and how to make it right and how to make it better. So that was

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:08

played Have you played among us?

Augusto Pinaud 28:09

I have played I’m honest.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:13

I have not not but I’ve heard about it, obviously. But I haven’t played i

Augusto Pinaud 28:16

have i It’s really unfair. I don’t have enough time to practice and I play with my two kids. I might tune nephew or niece or nephew, my two nephews. And I had no chance. I mean, they were moving in a speed that I required to stop working and play so I can really challenging them. And I’m not

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:39

Yeah, I well back to the Google stadia controller it has like a bazillion buttons. I just don’t like I don’t I like this, you know, like piano practice for years. I’m very proficient in typing in, you know, QWERTY keyboard and Devorah neck as well as cold Mac keyboard layouts. And yet I sat with that stadia controller, I just thought to myself, who’s anybody productive user using this way? I just like couldn’t quite get all the

Augusto Pinaud 29:08

Yeah, anyway, it’s all about sin gaming.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:12

That’s your next article.

Augusto Pinaud 29:15

On articles, one that I am particularly excited and is Chef, playground 4.0 It’s coming to the iPad, Apple released shift playgrounds three years ago and it was thought or control we thought initially as a platform to teach the basics of coding. And now with four point now, they are finally bringing for you to start creating the apps and getting more serious into this and showing for the first time the possibilities of really using the iPad as a coding machine. You know the iPad has moved from where it wants to originally machine even is more powerful than the Mac thing. My iPad Pro is the most powerful machine in my desk. And now finally, Apple is bringing the tools, again, eating their own dog food, and giving those developers the ability to make that iPad, their main programming platform. And that is really exciting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:21

Yeah, so So just for clarity for everyone. Swift itself is a programming language for the iOS, iPad, iOS, Mac OS, TV, OS and watch OS platforms. So this is Apple’s kind of solution for writing in that coding in that in that space. And so the concept of Swift Playgrounds, 4.0 is giving you the capability of building in, in this kind of rich environment, kind of giving power to the people, in essence, to be able to build for it. It’s kind of what flutter is for everybody else. And so flutter, of course, also has the ability to push out Mac code, Mac, iOS code, Linux code, Chrome, OS, COVID, and that kind of thing. But flutter is an open source framework that was developed by Google for being able to code multi-platform. And I’ve been playing with flutter on my Raspberry Pi 400. For those of you who recall, I bought a Raspberry Pi 400. Last year, and I’ve been I’ve been learning to code and playing well, learning to code again, because, you know, I’ve tried a couple times and failed, you know, faltered and kind of going back and forth. But you know, I think it’s good for me in my being in the technology, space and teaching technology, it’s always good for me to know, kind of, you know, what’s going on under the hood. And flutter has been a really great program for that I do a lot more in the Java, you know, in the in the JavaScript space and HTML and CSS, but, but the coding coding part has always been a challenge. For me, I’m really interested and excited about Swift playground, I think this is the Swift Playgrounds, I think this is a really interesting concept of being able to push an app into the App Store in a way that is kind of fluid for people, you know, being able to use the Swift UI and, and kind of getting yourself started there. So yeah, going from being like a kids playground app to being something that’s really this full fledged is pretty amazing. So I’m, I’m excited. I’m pretty excited to play around with it. Okay, onward to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 32:18

Oh, our next, you know, we have talked many times about eating and something interesting happen in the end of last year, and I have seen two people. That may not sound a lot, but two people that are not exactly my tech friends, okay, are my friends who are non tech, okay, getting ink and getting, you know, one got a bug, the other one got this super name escaping me that is basically a whole tablet with eating nandroid bass. The name is escaping me right now. But eating people is starting to see in this article was really cool to see I remember when I got the pebble, who was the smart, which was Inc, it was a beautiful device, but they are bringing here five, you know, implementations or beer, Thurman tater 32 inch newspaper. That sounds really fantastic. The open source dashboard. And we have seen Amazon doing this and others, bringing now the center in the kitchen, you know, and were put all this information and the calendars and events and the weather. And the other one, it’s a do it yourself and do an E paper that you can send messages, you know, basically an Internet of Things ink mess in your board. So he ink me a lot of people have using, you know, Kindles and nukes and many other devices who have the ink. But I think finally, it’s getting ahead of the game to more the common user. Even last year, we talked about a money tour that was eating a big size monitor for the computer. So this may be an incredible change for what is coming. We know it’s already even in color and we cover a device. I remember when we talked about it and say well, why comics? You know, I will be I mean it is already amazing to be able to read comics in the Kindle. So bring those comics into color. It will be simply incredible. So that’s what we have today.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:43

Fantastic. All right, we’re moving right along to our business and finance segment. Just to make quick mention of any of our news stories that relate to the kind of the business and finance space in the productivity space. I think this is an interesting area for us to follow and to report to you all on and what we find Just a quick note that Asana, which is Asana Inc, the company behind that the task and project management software, they reported a q3 loss, which is not that big of a deal, you know, in the grand scheme of things, and airtable got an $11 billion valuation in their last funding, which is pretty amazing. And good on good on air table. I know that who was it that it’s escaping me now. But there was somebody who came in at like a $40 billion valuation. This year as Oh, it was Canva Canva, which is a Australian based company, in their last funding round, they came up $40 billion company in their last valuation, which is just phenomenal in that sense. But it’s good for us to kind of pay attention to the fact that these productivity software are also big companies, you know, Trello, owned by Atlassian. And they’re a large, you know, stock market traded corporation, right. And they there is something important to be understood about the money behind these software products that we’re using, and that are embedded inside of our personal productivity systems. So we’ll continue to keep reporting on this as we come across new business and finance news. Alright, on to our productivity resources of the week. As you all know, Augusto and I come across many personal productivity tools, apps and services in our everyday productivity journeys. And so we’d like to share those with you when we come across them. And so each week, we choose one, and we show them to you this week, we have one each, as usual. And the first one is a tool that I recently came across, I had no idea it existed. And I’m so glad that I found it. It is basically an overlay application for Google Tasks. And so I’m going to bring it up here. So you can see it is called tasks board. And tasks board is a desktop app for Google Tasks. Now, I would say the desktop app is probably a little bit of a misnomer, because because it basically is a PWA. So it’s not truly a desktop application, but it gives you a desktop app feel. But it is pretty amazing. I’m very impressed with what I have seen with regard to it. So in just the free version, it gives you the ability to go ahead and log into your Google account, it accesses your Google Tasks, and then gives you a Kanban board to be able to to kind of materialize things kind of like what Kanban note does for Evernote, this tasks board does for Google Tasks. And so you’re capable of organizing things, sharing those Google Tasks lists in real time with your team via a link. And as many of you may know who use Google Tasks, you’re kind of stuck in that sidebar and either Google Calendar or inside of Gmail or otherwise, you’re kind of locked into that space. Now there is a link you can use to go ahead and make it a full screen list. But this is basically a static list task board tasks board takes that to another step and brings you this fluid interface in order to be able to do it. I’ve been pretty impressed with it and synchronizes across all your devices, of course, because it’s using Google Tasks. So it’s just basically synchronizing your account, if you go to the premium version, then you get even more power. Now I have not done this yet, I just haven’t had the time to play around with it. But the premium version gives you unlimited list sharing. So you can share as many lists as you want. So uncapping, the free versions lists, you can create rules, and then label those particular items in the board. So you can actually color and label them, you can put your own custom background behind your board, kind of like Trello. Or you can put an image behind the board. So you can kind of customize it in that sense. You can set focus colors to specific lists. So this left hand sidebar becomes a colored space that you can create. And you know how I love coloring things. And you can have multiple boards. So you can have multiple projects and that kind of thing. And then share those boards with your team. So very, very cool tool, if you are kind of inculcated in the Google Tasks space, if you use Google workspace for business, and you want to be able to utilize Google Tasks in a more fluid work environment, both for personal system as well as for organizational systems. I think tasks board is a pretty easy transition. It’s it looks like it’s if you want to go to the premium it’s only $3.30 per month. So altogether, you’re talking about $36 us about that amount per year. So it’s a pretty easy fee to be able to then go ahead and utilize it. So I was I was unaware of it and really, really impressed by it once I did kind of poke under the hood. Agusta What’s your productivity resource this week?

Augusto Pinaud 39:48

So my toy of the week I’m sorry, my productivity thing other week is called the meals and I got the muse to Santa Barbara. To me, and basically the Muse has sensors as a heart measure sensor as I can do an EKG can do some breathing, but basically, is designed so you measure measure your your brain as you are meditating. And I tend to consider that my meditations are not that great. And apparently to this application, they’re much better than what I thought. But the feedback is great, you know, you can put the thing, put your headphones, and the feedback is life. So as you get more calm, the music will come and be calmer. You can even hear some birds when you get to certain levels. And, buddy, as you get agitated, the feedback will get agitated the brain, the, the Windows CE or whatever you pick, you can also on the premium version, use your own meditation if you want and they just still measure what has given to me one one is a way to measure that I that I like I think what you measure you can improve. So it basically measure four things measure your mind there, eg your body. That one is the one I fail, but terribly. But and the other one is your breath. If you are looking into improving meditation, and I believe meditation is one of those tools that can be interesting. This is a fantastic way to do it. It will keep you the statistics on what you have done, how well you have done and all that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:47

Fantastic, fantastic. I know that I’ve been I’ve been looking at the option of getting something like the muse to for some time, and I think you’ve just pushed me over the edge to to hit go. No,

Augusto Pinaud 41:58

I honestly, this has been on my list for a while too. And I wasn’t sure it was worth it. Okay, I didn’t want to invest. Whatever amount of money was almost $200.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:12

So I wasn’t 50 USD. So it’s 250. US Yeah,

Augusto Pinaud 42:15

250 was some promotion. So, but I’m going to say that I should have gotten much, much early. It is really, really good. And at least right now as the hot toy. I been even meditating maybe more than what I normally do, because I want to see the numbers on the graph.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:37

Yeah, so I’ve been a 20 plus year meditator, so I don’t particularly need this. I just want it. So because because like you I’m a data hound right. So I’m, I think I’m probably more than you I am actually, much more than Yeah, I’m a quantified self or so I love tracking data about myself. And so the ability to be able to track this information, I think is very, very powerful. And, you know, like, even with my my watch, it’s not, it’s not capturing that level of detail coming from my own brainwaves. And so if I can track that, that’d be really, really amazing. Plus, it also gives me the ability to test against bring.fm. And other tools. Bring that FM doesn’t do this. But there are tools that do buy normal binaural beats, and it helps you to basically change your brain wave frequencies. And so the the brain.fm technology and utilizing something like binaural beats generator in confluence with the muse to be able to track that data, I think is just really brilliant. And I’d love to see it. It’s

Augusto Pinaud 43:38

really, really geeky. Be careful.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:41

All right, on to our featured story of the week. What are we talking about this week as

Augusto Pinaud 43:46

well LastPass is going to become an independent company. So LastPass was acquired by LogMeIn logged me in that’s what it was. And now LogMeIn is was 125,002,015 and now they are looking to spin them off, make them their own company LastPass has more than 30 million users is that’s where they claim and I think is right, I think is that will make the company much move much faster, and develop more specific and better for their platform. So I think that’s good news.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:28

Yeah, I mean, what I think about this, I think it’s going to make LastPass more nimble. That’s going to be a good thing all across the board. I think that being inside of LogMeIn has given them potentially a bit of I don’t know, I don’t want to say it’s not negative press that they’ve gotten for it, but it certainly hasn’t been positive for them when they were purchased because people were very concerned about the future of LastPass when they were consumed by the larger entity. Ultimately, I think LogMeIn did a great job Have stewarding LastPass as an independent company within the larger umbrella, and now they’re spinning them off again. And I think it’s because LogMeIn just really has its own its own ethos, right. And and so that that ethos is important to the people like me who use the program every day and want to make sure that it stays on that path. And I think there’s probably some conflict inside of LogMeIn because LogMeIn probably wants to understand data about its users and wants to do those kinds of things that log me in inherently, I’m sorry, LastPass inherently is not going to do because my data is encrypted, it’s a blob inside of their database. And so I think that part is probably a little bit of the reason for you know, LogMeIn saying, Oh, we can just, you know, spit LastPass out, it’s, it’s, it’s viable and sustainable on its own. And it’s not giving us any greater value by being a part of the family of LogMeIn products. So, I think that’s really interesting. Now, I would love to see LastPass innovate in their UI and UX, I have to say, when I am I do a lot of work with clients who use one password. And every time I help a client through a one password implementation, I’m like, wow, one password is just so nice. It’s seamless. And the experience is so much nicer. And LastPass works. I mean, I don’t have any problems with LastPass. I know how to use it. I know, it’s, I know, it’s deficits, so I use it quite well. But to say that it’s a perfect experience, the way in which one password is, is is just not it, right? It’s just not there yet. And I would love to see LastPass fix those pieces so that when you are doing just basic things, the fluidity of the experience, and the way in which you implement LastPass is just more seamless. So that’s the part that I’d love to see LastPass do as they come out of their, you know, kind of larger conglomerate into their own company. And we’ll see, we’ll see what happens. From there. I’m curious, what you think will impact people’s personal productivity systems, with LastPass kind of being birthed out of LogMeIn. Now, do you think that there’s any impact that we need to think about in terms of them being an independent company?

Augusto Pinaud 47:20

No, actually, I think one of the great things that they want to login to log me in sorry, is now the experience what a larger company do and how, and I’m sure they pick some better practices. And I’m not saying they were they were bad in any way, shape, or form. But it is a different game when you code as they were. And now you go to LogMeIn. Now going out, I think they’re going with a much powerful tool shed than what they have, when they were acquired. And I think that’s going to be great and more productive for everybody.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:59

Yeah, I know that they’ve gotten, you know, some flack for, you know, reducing their free tier and increasing their pricing, and so on and so forth. I think that’s really the only impact on users that are of a negative sort, other than the fact that they need to be a viable company. So I don’t, I don’t mind paying them for me to have solid service. I mean, look at what one password is doing, or Dashlane, or those others, they’ve, they’ve charged up front for the longest time. And they produce really great, beautiful operating software. And when it comes to your security, you really want that you want your you want your password security to be of a high level. And it’s unfortunate that we even have to worry about this in our world. But our personal productivity systems need to be founded on having a strong password manager related to it. It’s fundamental to the way in which I operate. And it makes it so much easier once you do get yourself into one password, or into LastPass or otherwise. I will note here that one of the things that I find LastPass has done really well is the ability to change passwords. So it has these facilitated processes built into the software that if you want to change your Facebook, password, or those kinds of things, you can actually go into the software and say I want to change these five passwords, and it just helps you through that whole process very, very quickly and easily. And so I like some of the things they’re doing there where they’re innovating. And I hope they do more of that as they spin out into their own company, and, and really push the envelope of what you can do with a password manager, not just with two factor authentication or or the two, what does Google call it two step verification, you know, like, you know, like, we need to see more innovation in that space. So the so it becomes less onerous for me as a password user to have to manage my passwords, right password management should make my life easier. And I really hope that they do that process. They really help us make managing our passwords easier and more fluid over time, especially in that initial stage, right. You go from maybe you manage your passwords in your Google Chrome or in your Apple Safari in your apple keychain. And you want to get beyond that into a better path. management system, then they should help you through that process, they should really create a better facilitation for that process, and I hope that they do. Alright, Gousto I think that brings us to the end of the show unless we have any announcements.

Augusto Pinaud 50:14

We do not have an answer this week. But we have because we did some break during the month of December, we have a lot of articles on our notes. So when these get posted, you can go to Anything But Idle, and you will find there is a significant amount of articles in there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:32

Awesome. And so with that, we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news for this week, thanks to Augusto Pinaud, for putting together the show this and every week. Thank you Gousto. My pleasure. And we will see you next week. That being the case, on anything but idle.com. As Augusto noted, you’ll find our show notes, the show notes contain links to all the stories, our productivity resources of the week, the extra stories that he discussed, that we didn’t get to cover during this episode, as well as text transcripts both in a reading format, one that you can click read more on the page, and it will expand there. So you can read it right along while you’re listening. And there’s also a PDF download, click on the PDF download link below the Read More link. And that’ll download a PDF to your local system for taking offline for listening offline, and so on and so forth. After reviewing the shownotes please let us know if there’s a story we missed, you can leave a comment, you can tweet or DMS at Anything But Idle on Twitter. And you can also use our contact form on the website. So if you go to anything, but idle.com, click on contact, and you’ll be able to fill out the form and send us a message. If you have a question or comment about anything we’ve discussed during the show, you can do the same. And as well. We do have a community a group inside of personal productivity club called Anything But Idle. It’s completely dedicated to the podcast and to you all who are listening to the podcast. So feel free to head over to anything but idle.com forward slash community and you will be able to go ahead and join the Anything But Idle group there. So that’s on your screen as well anything but idle.com forward slash community. And so join us in you know post news stories, whatever you want, as well. If this is your first time watching the live stream, feel free to click the subscribe button so you get notified when we go live weekly, and we go live weekly, typically Mondays at 6pm. Eastern US. But if you’re listening to the podcast, feel free to also add us to your favorite podcast app, whether that’s subscribing or following or otherwise, there are instructions on Anything But Idle comm for following or subscribing to the podcast. It’s free, you can go out there and figure out how to do that on the instructions there. If you have enjoyed spending time watching or listening to us today, feel free to leave a rating review in Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Pandora wherever you listen to your podcast that allows you to leave ratings and reviews. Your compliments really help us reach more personal productivity listeners. And thank you to those who have rated us and reviewed us and thank you to those who will in the future. And so with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle years to productive life.

Unknown 53:00

Thank you