Google is bringing Chrome OS to PCs and Macs

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00

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

Augusto Pinaud 0:13

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:14

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 97. Can’t believe it 97. This is February 21 2022. Google is bringing us two PCs and Macs and the productivity news this week. Of course, each week Augusto and I review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines. And we get that started with some articles we’ve lifted from the blogosphere and the audio sphere of podcasts and otherwise. And so let’s start with those stories this week against a what’s our first story.

Augusto Pinaud 0:42

Our first story is on Matt Mullenweg. He’s the founder and CEO of automatic, the company behind WordPress. And the article came in the Wall Street Journal, and he’s talking, you know, the CEO, lets his employees work whatever they want, from whatever they want. And automatic has almost 2000 employees. And they are spread around 97 countries, and there have been a big proponent of what they call a synchronous work. Meaning everybody work on their time, everybody can pick their schedule, and they work. And they’ve been incredibly successful about it, you know, and as companies struggle to come back and define the hybrid, or whatever is going to be defined. You know, this is an example of a company who has been doing this incredibly successfully for a really long time. And as he said, you know, they are ready leaving on the future, and they have been living in the future for a while. And one of the things we hope is companies look at this example. Look at this example of a company who has employs over 97 countries, and doing successfully because automatic has been growing and growing not only in revenue with people, year after year.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:15

Yeah, so that. So to kind of check some of the hyperbole in this article, understand that automatic entered the space with WordPress, it’s, you know, it’s the it runs about 40 45%, now, probably of the of the largest websites in the world. And so it’s running lots and lots of websites. And so they stepped into into kind of a gold mine. And so there’s not much they could do to go wrong, unless they really, really mismanaged the company and the WordPress websites and web WordPress project, that being the case, they’re doing a really, I think, bang up job. You know, everyone has their criticisms of all kinds of things. I think that Matt Mullenweg is a very smart person, he has thought this through, he’s come up with this just we’ve talked about this on the show before this distributed model of work. And I think that it’s well worth reading the article to get a sense of how he thinks and to look at things like P two, which is another program that automatic has established and created. And P two is their their version of project management software. And just looking at how they’ve decided to utilize project management in their own world, how they’ve implemented project management in their own world is very unique and interesting. I find that to be fascinating. So we go from distributed work to poly work. Explain that for the audience that gets though.

Augusto Pinaud 3:35

So the article came from Business Insider, and they say that side hustle and poorly work, Coulter is really just a desperate reflection of a low paying job market. I don’t know if I agree with that statement, or many things on the rest of the article. I think poorly work without any doubt is a reflection of the reality of the market. But I don’t think has anything to do with low paying job market, you know, because we are seeing this poorly work on side hustles not necessarily on the people who are not getting paid enough. But on the people who want more, or they don’t want to depend into one organization. You know, one, one of the things that we need to remember is the work per se has change, you know, as people used to change one, maybe two companies, they’re now talking about 10 or 15 companies during your life. And I think this is just a reflection of that as you want it to be a specialist. Now there is more people who want to explore things on the side or not necessarily because they want to keep doing that poly work or that side hustle for the rest of their life but because hey, this will be something fun to do for a while and they can do it and shut it down. Even without changing their career.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:03

Yeah, so I’ll give the devil’s advocacy position here, which is to say that I think that holding multiple jobs or side hustles, when you don’t need to, is, I think, very different. From a perspective of the average person, I’ll just say in the United States not to go beyond that. And, and so if someone feels like they need to have more than one job, or they need to have a job, plus a side hustle in order to make ends meet, that is very different. That’s very different. And I think that’s what this particular author of this opinion piece is talking about. And I think that while yes, poly work, this idea that you will be working multiple jobs or side hustles can feel freeing in a way, I do push back on the sense that the people who are feeling like they need to do you know, they get to work for Uber, and Lyft, and Uber Eats and DoorDash. And whatever the other ones are, you know, fresh fresh desk, for know the fresh desk is a is a CRM, what’s the what is the Instacart Instacart they have to work for all of these, you know, simultaneously just so that they can have enough work to make ends meet. That’s, I think, the concern here, I think that if there is an environment where we have have chosen to kind of be the Wild Wild West, it’s the United States, the United States is in that perspective, in terms of capitalism, you can make it or you can, you know, be broken. And we don’t really have as much a safety net for the working population, as we do see in other Western civilization, you know, countries. So I think that’s the part of what the author is talking about, I would say this from my perspective, which is focusing on productivity, if you have multiple jobs, and those can include side hustles, your systems need to be so much more robust. And so if you’re in that position, and you are finding yourself doing poly work, and inside that poly work culture, really think through how you’re going to make work work for you, so that you can minimize the administration, and the meetings, and the time suck of things that are not necessarily important, but they just kind of crop up so that you can get back to your life and your family. You know, I know that I frequently talk about liberalism, that is living a free life, that the concept of, of living with freedom. And we’re consistently in a place where we are trying to reject the notion of being enslaved by the, you know, the powers that be, which are, you know, whether that be government large, you know, corporations or otherwise, where we just, we feel this necessity to have to give every moment of our lives to someone else, or something else. So that we can just be so that we can be present and enjoy today. I’m not an epicurean. I’m not a hedonist. But I also recognize that I want to be able to do things that feed me that are rejuvenating to me. And if we spend so much of our time working, and not applying very much meaning to that work, I think that ends up being more detrimental to our, to our selves in some way, shape, or form. Not that I can necessarily put my finger on it. So just interesting article, and I think well worth, you know, giving yourself some thought

Augusto Pinaud 8:33

there. Next article come from productive flourishing. And Angela Willard talks about or write about belonging, not burn out and talks about workshop or the results of a workshop that they did, and how to reduce that burnout, you know, on how to exactly and when you scale back, and how do you perceive the burn out, you know, on yours burnout, as well as your teammates, and, you know, they talk about a concept, a heart based leadership, and, and they talk about having been open to the communication and being able to say, Hey, I think I’m getting burnout, right, and have that open communication. And as I was reading the article, and agreeing, it will be great to have that open communication to be able to go to your boss and say, Hey, I am burnout. I’m have more on my plate that I what I can do, and the just, and I think that’s awesome. That said, I don’t know many organizations where that conversation can happen openly. And maybe what we need is more of this heart based leadership to to train people to have that kind of leadership. Because I say, look into clients, and especially corporate clients, they don’t have that luxury. If you go to your boss and say, Hey, I’m burnout, or I’m getting close to burnout, the response will be well, if you think I’m delegating to you is because I’m burnout or raise. And that’s a problem. And as much as the reading of the article, it is great. I’m not sure that concept of belonging to not burn out a jet there are applicable in most of the organizations that I see.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:37

I see in large corporate environments, this is very difficult to implement, just out of pocket, I think it’s a good thought experiment, to see how you can embrace in smaller teams within a large corporate environment, this, this type of, of embracing people, and giving them a safe space to be able to explore and express themselves, I think that it’s very difficult to tell people not to work too much in a culture that values, overworking. And so I think it really behooves individuals to take up arms, so to speak, not to be violent, but to to protect themselves from overwork. And when we have the right systems in place, and we also gain the confidence in knowing that we’re getting the right work done, that requires applying meaning to the work we need to, then we can actually step up and say, No, I’ve hit my metrics, I’ve done the qualitatively, you know, important work that’s in front of me. And now I’m going to create boundaries to that. And if your employer doesn’t like that, or if your supervisor doesn’t like that, then perhaps there’s just a misalignment, you need to move someplace else in the company, or you need to move to another company, if you feel like the entity itself, the organization and the team itself. And certainly the leadership is imposing on you burnout, like I just feel like that would be incredibly irresponsible, especially in the current climate where employers are very well aware of staff shortages, sort of shortages, and the labor market really gives people a greater opportunity and flexibility to move. So I thought, again, the article was was well written, it was interesting, also felt to me like this is for a very small organization where the organizational leader already knows this, and wants to create a space a culture for this kind of work. And so if you are in that space, and you’re starting a company, or you know, someone who’s starting a company, and they want to build a company with this kind of culture, this is a good kind of like quick checklist to to run through. All right, well, those are quick, a quick shortlist of stories for this week, and in the productivity article section. And so we’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsor this week, co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back we’re gonna do our technology headlines for the week, and so we will see you in about a minute. Well, working

Sponsor Voice Over 13:08

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:17

Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined with the inimitable Agusta pinout. And we are going to head into our productivity technology headlines this week. Gousto what is our first technology story this week? Oh, our first

Augusto Pinaud 14:30

article is from the good notes blog. And good notes is an app that I use on the app to add right take notes to images and now for a while now you have been able to share those notes or those notebooks. But now you can do a synchronous communication in them. What that means is I can leave a comment and somebody who has shared will be able to read the comment and respond and you will be able to see who make the comment and all that. So it makes it really, really incredible. And that’s an application. The examples are given the blog or for education, and stuff. But even for work, it’s been really nice to be able to draw a graph and share the node with some some people and then get the comments right there. That’s really awesome. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:19

you’ve introduced me to good notes, and I use it internally, I’ve not used it in combination or in connection with anyone else. But I can see very well how this could be just a game changer in so many ways to be able to do it, I saw the feature pop up in my system, and it looks like you can click on really any spot on the page and start a comment. And it looks like a textual comment. And then you can go back and forth. And you know, to just so that everybody’s clear, it’s asynchronous. So it is it’s asynchronous commenting. So you’re not doing it in real time, say, like Google Docs, or Microsoft Word Online, or anything like that. But, but it’s really that’s very, very nice to be able to have that level of commenting back and forth. Yeah, I think it’s awesome. All right. Onward to some Google News. I got quite a bit of Google News here.

Augusto Pinaud 16:05

Yeah, Google surrender its update authority to Samsung, and Samsung is doing really well. So they begin already before the lounge of the Galaxy S 22. They were already given three years of updates and security patches, now, they are going to do five, but not only they’re going to do five, they even went back up to the Galaxy S 21. series on the foldables default, the flip three under tabs, the SA taps, tablets, to get now those five years of updates and security. And it is really interesting that Google is giving this authority to Samsung, because really, this make right now a really big distinction between a Samsung device or not.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:01

Yeah, I think that the article is is a little bit, you know, it becomes a little bit hyperbolic in some sense of it. And I’m not being an apologist for Google here, I think that Google should absolutely increase their support cycle for both the operating system updates, as well as the security updates, they should absolutely increase the length of security updates, no matter what, you know, I’ve I’ve an older pixel device that I just have around, and I and I now do not use it. Because while it’s fully functioning and capable, I have to, you know, be concerned about it being on the internet. So I basically shut off its card, its Wi Fi card, it had doesn’t have a SIM in it. And now I can use it for little things that I want to use it for. But it would be so much more useful if I could actually get the security updates on it and connect to the broader internet. It just limits its capabilities there. I think that all of these companies are trying to find edges in place where that is they’re trying to find competitive advantages in places where there is a slimming gap. And so you’re gonna see Samsung, Apple, Google and Microsoft, all I would say I would include in that Lenovo, and, and, and others of those large OEMs starting to make some really fine edge case arguments for why their software, their tool, their technology platform is better than the other. And I think that’s all good. So Oh, yes, happy to see the competition is great. All right, on to my next story.

Augusto Pinaud 18:33

Our next news is Google outdoor unable to, you know, to form authentications around 100 and 50 million people and according to their data, that leads to a 50% decrease in compromised accounts. And I’m good to know that they are doing this and I’m good to know that suddenly see security like this cannot be lived on the average hence we need to force them and we need to do them because it’s not working. And before you comment, I want to you know write a saying the Google’s should support the pixel for longer as you were saying I have to upgrade to the six even through there was nothing wrong with the three XL and I got something I hear. Yeah. Samsung is doing well. I think following again, as I said before, that Apple playbook you know where their devices really last? Even I will say a little bit longer issue but but it’s at least they’re good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:40

Yeah. So back to Reggie’s point, you know, I’ve got a two XL that’s completely fine. It’s it’s in great working order. We’ve got a four a Excel I believe hanging around here is just the foray, whatever. You know, I currently am driving with Google Pixel five, and I’m very happy with it and we’ve got another six pro in the house and I will probably get the seven. The only reason I’ve held on to the five is that it still has the unlimited photo upload storage, you know, feature associated with they’re tied to the phones not to the account. So I really don’t want to give that up. And the two XL also has that unlimited upload feature attached to it. So until it dies, I’m probably not going to let it go. So but you know, there are reasons why we keep these devices, you know, there are benefits for buying these pixel devices. And Google and Samsung, and the rest need to really understand that and work with us. And, you know, I’m a Google one subscriber, I pay for plenty of storage. So it’s not like I’m somehow you know, trying to get around, you know, whatever, it’s just, you gave me a benefit, let me use the benefit for as long as I want to. And that may be a few years, it may be many years. But I think that they need to give us a little bit more say in the matter. Regarding the auto enabled two step verification, I am, like, hearing everybody talk so poorly of Google enforcing this, when it first was announced to now seeing that this has a appreciable impact on people’s privacy and security, I think is just is profound. And I think it’s important for us all to take heart to the fact that we sometimes don’t like cybersecurity, we don’t like talking about it, it feels, you know, it feels invasive in some way, shape, or form. But when you’re compromised account begets my compromised account, because you’re an entryway into me somehow, I can’t trust you to only be in charge of your cybersecurity, we need to take Microsoft and Apple and Google and the rest to task on making sure that we stay safe and secure. And so I I don’t always applaud Google. But you know, I do use all of the Google products and I am in this particular case, glad that they have chosen to do this. And I hope that they can do more of this kind of non invasive security updates to really make us more secure across the board. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 22:01

The big filter, there is an article in good reader where they showing the pixel renders and pixel. XL tablets 1000. Correct. And they’re asking us to ambitious or realistic, it looks hot. I don’t disagree that the renderer seems to not to have a backup camera. I don’t know why you need a backup camera in the tablet. I often use the front camera again, give me a better frame camera and remove the the back one. I’m good with that. And

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:31

I’ve said that for years, I wish I really wish they would just get rid of the back camera on like the Lenovo duets. And otherwise, why do you need the back camera give me a really good front facing camera camera and get rid of that rear facing camera altogether. I don’t need it. I want I want to look good on camera, I don’t want I don’t care about taking pictures. You know, like I’m not taking it to Niagara Falls and taking photographs. So I take the

Augusto Pinaud 22:55

phone for that. And I think that’s the right movement. So that seems exciting. Hopefully the camera on the front is that powerful. I recently upgraded to the Lenovo duet five, and they put a better camera on the front. It’s way better device.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:16

Yeah, and honestly, you know, I’ve got the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro recently on the camera is not great. It’s not, you know, it’s nothing, it’s nothing special. And you know, like that’s on a device that’s, you know, many multiples, the price of seydel, Novo duet five or any of these others, if if they can put a better camera in these mobile devices, laptops and tablets, it really does make portable productivity, mobile productivity that much better for all of us. So I really wish that they would, they would get that. But get that going. The tablet looks beautiful. I think the pixel tablet looks beautiful. And I think that’ll be the the successor to the pixel slate. In this case, they’re going to go with Android 12 l over the Chrome OS makes sense in a lot of ways, because it’s gonna be challenging the Samsung tab series, you know, the Tab S series and I think they’re going to need to go, you know, they’re going to put a lot of really good features into this. And so we’ll see, I think the renders are are stunning now. So we’ll see what happens. Okay.

Augusto Pinaud 24:19

So the last Google article for the day Google Calendar,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:22

actually not, because we’re gonna come back to it. It’s a featured story. That’s true. The feature

Augusto Pinaud 24:27

stories today sponsored by Google. Google put a feature and you will talk better about it, you know, where you can now get reminders to move to the next day instead of forgotten in the past. And that’s an interesting game changers. I will let you talk more about it. I know you have used it, because we have talk I’ll show about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:48

Yeah. So there are certain tasks that I do put in Google Tasks, and they appear in the Google Calendar. And so I’ve been I’ve been testing using Google goals, which for those of you who don’t know in Google Calendar, or you can create what are called goals and goals are machine learning based time blocks for doing things, the best example would be in the health space where you want to do yoga three times a week, you can tell it a goal, and then it will repeat across those timeframes. And so I’ve been using some of those to try. Because I’ve been talking I earlier this year, I wrote an article about micro resolutions. And I’ve wanted to be able to track those micro resolutions, independent of Politico, which is what I also use for kind of routine based items, those things that I want to manage from a routine perspective. And so I’ve been putting those into the calendar, one of the failures is that you put put a Google task item in the calendar. And then if the day passes by, it doesn’t flow to the next. So you could have a task that floats off into the past. And you’ll never see it again, unless you open up the Google Tasks pane and review it. But if you don’t have it open, you don’t see it. Now, Google Calendar is basically pushing those forward, so that they show up at the top of your page. And you can see that you have these other tasks that are undo and remaining from prior days. Wonderful, wonderful feature. And I’m looking forward to seeing them, give us a few more features there, I’d love to be able to conditionally show it. And or not, there’s some things that I’d like to see that I’d love to be able to change the color on them in in a little bit different fashion than they currently force you to do it. Like I’d like to, I’d like to have conditional formatting with the colors. That’s it, I just wanted Conditional Formatting. But I think otherwise, the the investment in this is, is actually really powerful. Because this is flowing through all of your personal and work environments, where you may have many, many tasks being given to you or that you’re identifying as a commitment yourself. And now those aren’t going to get lost in back matter where they pass chronologically. And then you lose sight of them, they’re going to now flow with you. As I said, I’ve been actually really, really pleased with this implementation. And I look forward to seeing it grow in the future. All right, on our last

Augusto Pinaud 27:03

article for for tonight, is Microsoft OneDrive. Now available on the remarkable, and I’m going to try to stay myself out of this soapbox as quick as and make it as short as possible. That’s great. Why do I need to pay for connect, or remarkable connect in order to add services that my tablet should have? And that most likely I will need to pay aside as OneDrive as Dropbox and all this this has been there is nothing against the remarkable it’s just these kind of things are like, feel petty to me,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:44

I think that the remarkable two and the remarkable company with the tablet are doing a are a remarkable job with regard to to to the product, I think they’re they’re moving at a at a a clear cadence, and they’re putting out new connect features, that is connections to these other integration partners. I think this is good, what I what I use it No. And I think that the walled garden nature of remarkable in the past has always kept me away from it. Of course, I want to see more integrations, I want to see it support, not just the few, but the many. And so you know we have, we just have a lot more people out there. Now we have, of course Evernote is is is what I would want it to connect to. But you know, we have notion, and we have many other large platforms, you know, from fibery, to Kota and other platforms. And this is where the remarkable two for me starts to break down because you have a really lovely ability to utilize the major partners, Google Microsoft, and otherwise, I think Dropbox is also one of the integration partners and connect. But you’re, as you said, you’re paying for access to your own data on another system. And so I’m not really sure what they’re doing other than just passing that data along. And I know that Amazon Kindle charges you for that same component to save data through their system, and you know, other kinds of things. So there’s, there’s ways in which you can do this, that, that doesn’t have to be a subscription, it can be pay per use, as opposed to paper per month. And so I’m I’m pushed them to kind of consider that and I hope that they do over time start to consider that. But the present moment, you know, it’s probably death by 1000 cuts to subscribe to a bazillion services. But I really wouldn’t be bothered by this as much if it integrated with all of the various integration partners that I would want it to not need wanted to because you’re paying the premium, right? Like if I’m paying, if I’m paying Apple prices for things, I want everything, even if I don’t use it, and I think I think they are going to have to overcome that little bit of peace there. And so, you know, just a little bit of marketing advice to them. They should probably think about you know how to have the broadest set of core features I don’t think And he just spell out more than just the core items within the API to be able to connect. But But I think that it’s one of those things that it’s going to hold them back. But they’re a premium product, very, very nice, you know, apparel associated with it, the stylus, the portfolios, all of those things are really well crafted. I like I like the remarkable to, I’m not gonna lie, and I have a lot of clients who have now bought them. And I’ve been very happy with them. And they’re connected to the major platforms, so they’re fine with utilizing them in that way. So we’ll see. We’ll see where that goes. All right. So we’ve covered the tech stories of the week, that moves us on to productivity resources of the week of Gousto. And I come across many personal productivity tools, apps and services in our productivity journeys to bring you the news and whatnot that we bring you each week. And so in productivity resources of the week, we bring you each a tool we think you might like. And so I thought I would share this week, something that I don’t normally do, which is an Apple product. But many years ago, I worked with a colleague of mine who implemented this in the law firm, and absolutely loved it. And so I’ve just been a fan all these years of this, this is daylight, and daylight is a CRM, it basically gives you the capability, I’m gonna turn this down, so I don’t hear this. But But daylight itself is a CRM, if you want to consider that a customer relationship management tool, there is a desktop version and a mobile version. This is apple centric, so Apple, iOS and Mac OS. And it’s just really fluid if you think about what entourage was at one point. And now, you know, daylight really takes over all of those pieces, but you’re capable of tracking against time and just doing a bunch of stuff that you would normally do. And there’s these very nice integrations and connection pieces between all of your native Mac iOS clients. So you know, whether it’d be Safari and Apple calendar, and otherwise, all of it just works better together, because it’s built into the Apple ecosystem. And so yeah, so if you if you have clear workflows, by which you’re carrying client cases forward, or projects forward, and you’re in the Apple ecosystem, I would highly recommend looking at daylight for Mac and seeing if this is something that you wouldn’t want to utilize. There is a server version. So you’re capable of synchronizing across many different devices, and having multiple many users that is, and managing all of that in that one space. So something to consider if you’re thinking about investing in project management, in the Apple ecosystem, with your company, because so what is your tool this week.

Augusto Pinaud 32:44

So my tool is a mind mapping tool called Mind 42. And it’s a basic mind mapping tool where you can collaborate with others, you can invite others, and everything happened in a browser. Again, it’s not fancy, it doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles that the local application has, but at the end of the day, is free. And to do a quick collaboration, it is an incredible tool for everybody can go into their own browser and get it done.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:18

Yeah, so they have a bunch of free mind maps that they have published on the site, I think these are some people’s mind maps as well. So you can kind of see what other people are doing. You can pay for mine 42 To remove, they have like an ad banner that shows in the application. And you can pay, I think it’s a monthly or a lifetime fee to get rid of that one singular banner ad. And so I’ve done that, they have a guide in here that walks you through how to use the interface, it’s very simple and easy. One of the things that I love the most about the application, I’m not showing it on screen, of course. So one of the things that I love the most about mind 42 Is what Augusto was talking about, which is the ability to collaborate in real time. But the the other piece that is really powerful is its ability to export, and specifically to export in all of these different formats. Most specifically, it allows you to export to free mind. So you can use the desktop, open source mind mapping software free mind, and then re import it after the fact it also exports it into an RTF format. So you can just export it as a hierarchical outline into you know, Microsoft Word or libre office or whatever other tool you want to even Google Docs or otherwise, and then you know you can kind of manifest it and then re import it back in from that hierarchical list by exporting it to an OPML file basically a an XML based format. So lots of really good stuff here kicked into a very simple tool. It also has a I know I’m going on and on about this but I just love this tool and you brought it to everybody’s attention. And and so it’s got also That’s really great task manager that’s built into the mind map. So if you click on any one thought, you can actually open it up. And you can you can put notes in there, you can add track actions, you can create a fairly sophisticated system, all inside of mind 42. And so thank you for bringing to folks attention, Augusta, because it’s a really

Augusto Pinaud 35:18

great, that is an amazing, an amazing tool.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:22

Alright, with that, onward to our feature story this week, what is our featured story this week in Houston. So

Augusto Pinaud 35:28

Google is bringing chromo s to PCs and Mac and we discussed in the past when Google, we have mentioned here many times. Already, go for it. Thank you very much. We have mentioned many times already. And we were really happy when Google acquired Clarke cloud ready. And now they are going to come out with something called Cromo s flex. And basically, they’re taking what never was doing, polish them and release it. And I’m really, really happy. And for a first version, I’m actually impressed on how much they’re going to get. So you’re going to get the official chrome browser before they used to get a chromium version of that, you’re going to get into the update cycle. Google Assistant geolocation, family link, connected devices nearby sharing remote next step, in the case of corporate admin console, serial numbers is going to read the reading for the serial number for the machine. And even that as same as cloud where you don’t have jet access to the store, it seems to be something that is on the works. They are going to allow to integrate for enterprise and education. This machines as if they were Chromebooks. So they will be managed as Chromebooks. I think I only I’m really, really excited about this one, because I think Chrome or x Flex is really going to bring, you know a full legit, Chrome OS, you know, my daughter was asking for computers. So that’s what you need. Chromebook will do. Great. Now I can go and choose between get her a new Chromebook or get an old machine that I have laying around. But crumb, flash and Jupiter.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:26

Yeah, no, I think this is great for a number of different circumstances. One is like grandma’s old, you know, Mac or PC. You know, there’s some point where it becomes a liability having grandma or grandpa utilizing an older machine that hasn’t been updated since probably the late 90s. And so now you can just basically put Chrome OS on it, and flex here will basically bring it into a new era. Now there’s some other cyber security issues there certainly on the lower levels, that is kernel, and firmware levels of the machines. So this is not solving all of the problems. But but a lot of them with the Chrome browser, you’re blocking, you know, probably 90 95% of the attack surface by which someone who is not technically savvy is going to be, you know, poking around and getting infected. The other part is, of course, in enterprise, I see a lot of opportunities here in enterprise as well as in education for these older devices that are that are becoming, you know, obsolete, we’re bringing those out of the landfill, in essence, by virtue of extending their life. And I think there’s none better for the environment than for us to extend the life of these of these devices.

Augusto Pinaud 38:38

There is a certain Microsoft Surface that has been broken and used everywhere. It’s going to test the older power of Chrome.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:49

I’ve got I’ve got an old HP laptop that I call Bertha. And Bertha is I don’t know, she’s got to be about eight or nine pounds. And, and I’m going to I’m going to put flex on it just for the fun of it just to see why why not. But one thing for folks to know is that your your existing Chromebooks when they ELL when they get to end of life, this is not for that. So this is not about end of end of life in Chromebooks. And then you can just put in cloud and Chrome OS flex onto those devices, it can be done. And I’ve already seen articles for the ability to put Chrome OS flex onto old Chromebooks. But what they’re doing right now, with regard to the cloud ready port over to Chrome OS flex, is really for old Macs and PCs. So it’s really taking those and moving them out of out of end of life into an active status. So so just be mindful that it can be done, but it’s gonna be a little bit more complicated. It’s really not what this is for. And I know that Google is working toward the ability to basically bifurcate Chrome OS from Chrome. And at that point, we’re gonna have probably more capabilities from Google to be able to deal with the And of lifing of Chromebooks and seeing where we go from there, but I just want to warn everyone that, you know, don’t think of this as like, Oh, great. When I get to the end of my god, long, you know, timeframe for Chromebooks. I mean, they they give, they give you plenty of time before the end of lives. But, but once it does get to that point, this is not for that. And so we’ll probably see some other solution from Google, or from other third parties, just like never were did with cloud ready, we’ll see other partners go out there and create better options for us for end of life devices. And, again, this goes goes back to like, there are only so many resources we have on the planet until, you know, 100 years from now, when we start mining asteroids for for, you know, elements that we need, we need to be able to use the technology and the electronics that we have in existence. And this gets used in not just, you know, our country, but and the various countries of you folks watching, but other countries that may need this as secondhand and thirdhand technology. So looking forward to seeing that come into play. But I’m actually really pleased. I’ll say that I’m happy to see this put into place and glad to see were making progress in not just putting a bunch of electronics into the landfill unnecessarily. Alright, got a couple of announcements, and then we’re going to wrap up.

Augusto Pinaud 41:19

Yes. So we have next week, March 3, and fourth, and fifth, the time management and time blocking Summit is coming. And our friend, Francis Wade is putting this summit this is a third year, four year, third year, third year, he put this event and it’s a free event. So if you are interested in see what is happening this there is a bunch of speaker is going to be a really, really interesting time.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:56

So we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. But this is the task management time blocking summit 2022. And, yeah, it’s in its third year. And Francis is one of our regular contributors on the ProductivityCast podcast. So many of you know his his voice, at least from hearing him on the podcast. And so yeah, and Gousto. And I will both be speaking, and actually, I’ll be leading a debate, a GTD debate. The motion will be our GTD contexts still relevant. And we have someone from one of the GTD franchises overseas, he’ll be on one of the teams, of course, the proposition team Gousto was going to be the first speaker on the opposition team voting against the motion or arguing against the motion. So I’m really looking forward to this debate. It’s going to be an Oxford style debate. So we’ve got a lot of really interesting fun, you know, stuff going on at the summit in that in that regard. So I’m really looking forward to it. And I hope you all can join us. Again, that’s That’s March 3 through the fifth if I’m not mistaken. Gousto sorry. So not next week, but the week after that. And, and so yeah, we’ll hopefully see you there. And with that, that brings us to the end of our show today. And so thank you Augusto as always for putting together the show notes and everything else so that we can go live for Anything But Idle. It’s my pleasure as always. And with that we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news this week, on anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes. So if you’re watching us live, that’s not of course, available yet. But tomorrow morning, when the show goes live in the podcast feed our it’ll include our show notes, those will have links to all of the stories that we discussed our productivity resources of the weeks, any extra stories that we don’t cover during this short time we have with you each week and text transcripts, both for reading and for downloading on the page there. So if you want to download it offline, and be able to read along while you’re listening, you can do that. And then of course, after you’re done serving the shownotes if for some reason we have missed something, there are a bunch of ways in which you can let us know that we have done so first and foremost, you can you can go to the contact page and you can put a message into the contact form. You can comment directly on the episode page right at the bottom of every episode is comments section. You can tweet or DMS at Anything But Idle or Anything But Idle on Twitter. And you can also join us inside of personal productivity club personal productivity club is the digital community that we run for personal productivity enthusiasts. And we have a channel basically a group inside of Anything But Idle. And if you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community, you’ll then be invited to join that channel and you can discuss stories we talked about. You can have conversation with folks about different stories you’re finding you can alert us to those things and so and so forth, so anything but idle.com forward slash community. If this is your first time watching the live stream feel free to subscribe and click the thumbs up that helps us grow our personal productivity listening community and viewing community when we go live each week, you can follow us or subscribe to us in your favorite podcast app and you can rate and review us there as well. And so feel free to do that. And thank you that also helps us grow our productivity podcast listening community as well. And so with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to your productive life.