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On this week’s episode, we cover our featured story, IFTTT goes pro, and other productivity and technology news from the past week!
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In this Cast | IFTTT goes pro
Headlines & Show Notes | IFTTT goes pro
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/09/09/google-maps-apple-watch-app-now-available/
https://www.enr.com/articles/49935-unengaged-employees-sap-companies-of-productivity-innovation
https://get.todoist.help/hc/en-us/articles/360015960599-Use-Microsoft-Teams-with-Todoist?s=09
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/muse-tool-for-thought/id1501563902
https://staceyoniot.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ifttt-pro/
https://ifttt.com/explore/introducing_ifttt_pro
Apple Event. September 15th. Time Flies
Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 113 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements
Raw Text Transcript | IFTTT goes pro
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:01
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to anything but idle the productivity news podcast. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud 0:06
I’m Augusto Pinaud
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:08
and we’re your hosts for anything but idle. This is Episode 22. And we’re recording this on September 11 2020. Each week, we cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the current tools, Research Services, products and more in the world of personal productivity. This week, we’re going to be covering a story about if going pro. But first, let’s talk about the headlines a gousto. What’s our first headline this week?
Augusto Pinaud 0:34
First headline is Google Maps for Apple Watch is now live. In the latest update, there is a big deal, you know that having the map on the watch, and the Apple Watch is really, really cool. But so far, you have been really limited to Apple Maps. So for those people who leave on the Google ecosystem, it’s really cool to see that the Google Maps is now going to be able to give you that turn by turn into the watch and give you the those directions. So I think that is an incredible good news for everybody.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05
Next up, we have a story out of Slashdot that talks about Windows 10 themes, being able to be abused to grab windows passwords. And so this is just kind of a note to folks to be careful of with the download of theme packs and themes in Windows 10. These are files that have a dot theme extension, the.th, e, me extension, those are inside, usually your themes folder in your Microsoft Windows directory. So just be mindful of the fact that those can actually be used to do what’s called a patch, pass the hash attack. And so those can of course, send credentials to attackers who can then log in as you in your system. So Windows is obviously aware of this, and hopefully we’ll push out a fix to it in one of their next patch Tuesday’s or maybe they’ll push out an emergency passed a patch before then, but it is an issue that we all have to be mindful of. So of course, check your Your themes folder to make sure there isn’t any. There aren’t any, you know, errant themes. You know, don’t files in there that you don’t remember installing yourself.
Augusto Pinaud 2:10
So the next step is an article from the ladders I try the five highest write productivity hacks and here is what happened. The first technique is a pomodoro. And we have discussed the Pomodoro on ProductivityCast. And it is a really great than technique and useful. So the second one was checklists, single tasking, personal Cambon and then early to rise that was really interesting as a person who even wrote a book about it before I am on argument for productivity and how much effect you know getting early produce and especially for the people now which dynamics are changing, people is at the home. You know, if I used to believe that waking early will give you an advantage now that people use at home all day and they’re your coworkers. You know, it Work waking up earlier to be able to get ahead and plan. And all that is even more important and more powerful. So in the case of the article that the writer is talking about waking up at five in the morning, every day, including the weekends and how, yes, it took some practice, but how incredible has been the positive effects that that has had for him.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:22
Next up is an article from engineering news record and they’re actually talking about the title of the article is actually unengaged employees SAP companies of productivity and innovation, and what the author of this article really does dig into some of the research and studies that have been recently done on the historic levels of employee engagement and productivity. And that is the historic highs and the historic lows based on how companies are really working with their employees to both engage them and be both diverse and inclusive, and that it really kind of covers on how important As to to create a work culture that fosters engagement. And it’s a really interesting article, I’m not going to get into the particular details here. But it just basically says the thesis is basically that unengaged employees are of course unhappy, and therefore, they are going to be less productive. And we know that there are some things we can do in order to increase productivity generally. And that is, of course, creating greater psychological safety, you know, allowing people to make mistakes, allowing them to innovate in those spaces, by being able to step outside of comfort zone, and then embracing the failures of innovation so that you can learn from them. And that, of course, requires also making sure that everybody has a seat at the table, and the more diverse and inclusive and the greater you can create this sense of safety, the more innovation that is really harnessed within the culture of the organization.
Augusto Pinaud 4:55
Next, an article from signtech and talking about how the productivity and are going to be sharing on what and what is going to be the biggest move by 2026 a really interesting article see the impact that really COVID-19 have have not only on the productivity of the people, but also in the apps. The article talks about the slack, the Hootsuite, the communication, and how this How did the stories are expecting a big, big change now that we have all this covered on the COVID effect, and how these things are going to change significantly by 2026?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:37
Yeah, it’s remarkable The, the diagram they show in terms of the percentage of which companies own what, it didn’t seem very representative of the study itself when you look at the actual study. So I would I would dig into the study itself and look at the data underpinning it and but I think the Are are actually really interesting to think about as it relates to how the pandemic generally is going to change the productivity app market. And we know that it is going to change. And we should be thinking about that, just as technologists as productivity enthusiasts as developers, and otherwise. And so with that, we’re going to take a break and hear a word from our sponsor this week. WCC web services. Did you know half of small businesses don’t have websites in half don’t make it past one year in business. Are these stats correlated? We’re not sure but we think you should have a website w three see Web Services provides affordable manage WordPress website hosting, along with VPS domain name registration, and other small business focused services. For listeners of this podcast. You can book a free 30 minute Digital Marketing Strategy Session when you purchase a new hosting plan. $150 value You once you purchase your new hosting plan forward the receipt to support at W three c inc.com. With the podcast title in the subject line of the email message and we’ll get you scheduled for your digital marketing strategy session,
Sponsor Voice Over 7:14
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:23
What’s our next headline Augusto,
Augusto Pinaud 7:25
the next one article from a streaming site or we’re talking about a stress burnout and technical issues turning to benefit from working from home according to adapt to this study. There is a study in London, claiming that distress and burnout and technical issues are really going to affect the benefits of working from home and I disagree on a lot of this article. And the reason I disagree in a lot is not because I’m denying that there is technical issues and burnout and under stress but the benefits that people have seen is going to outweigh that. Number one, number two, there are other recent we’re seeing these, one of the things we discover was a pandemic is the difference between what was the professional systems and an internet and speeds on old and older things, versus what we have in home. And that is going to start now much enough because there is going to be more and more people working from home. But things that were even more important in this study was, you know, people is feeling that learning is better, the collaboration has improved, the reduction of the politics has improved the meetings, effectiveness has improved 42% and 46% of the people had agree on that. And that is a big, big, big things. You know, when I coach executives, that’s one of the big things that are eating these executive alive are those meetings so if you can get that massive improvement, that is a good enough reason not to bring people back.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:58
I found it really fascinating. That that a third of all workers are using WhatsApp for work. And just find that fascinating and scary all at the same time. Facebook owns WhatsApp by the way. And while they claim that it is end to end encrypted conversations, I just have this completely conspiratorial view here and I don’t know why. But a skepticism and a mistrust of of transacting business communications over anything that is Facebook owned. But the interesting thing about the digital etiquette report that adaptive is put out is that they identified in essence, five key areas of challenge for remote work. And this is good for us all to kind of think about in the sense that we need to make sure that we are paying attention to these pieces right of course there’s burnout that always on concept. It’s very easy for people to overwork in a in a remote work environment, especially when you have an economic downturn because they’re worried about losing their jobs. They’re going to of course respond by overworking. But of course, there are technical challenges as it relates to getting people up to speed regarding technology, obviously dealing with communications. And then of course, lack of clarity around how to operate in a digital environment, how to make sure that conversations and meetings and hiring and so on and so forth are done in an inclusive and equitable fashion, as well as other kinds of social interactions in a digital space. So these are all things that are our unique challenges to remote work. And we can address them they can all be addressed to actually put a positive other side to all of this and I’m really excited to see how people go ahead and do that. Next up, is a bit of news out of to do list, they have basically added Microsoft Teams integration with to do list that is Microsoft Teams now has the capability of you adding to do list into The Microsoft team’s environment. And now you’ll be able to share tasks with collaborators. And you’ll be able to create your own tasks from messages from within a Microsoft team’s environment. This is going to be really, really powerful for to do with users. And I’m looking forward to seeing how people use to do this inside of Microsoft Teams going forward. Okay, so next up
Augusto Pinaud 11:22
so there is the next two things are two news from OmniFocus on one of them is that on the update of September nine, update OmniFocus for iOS will not longer have trials that out to convert in any way. So now you can go test trial OmniFocus. But as soon as those two weeks and you will not need to be thinking at all I’m going to be charged or I’m going to be adding to the mailing list only focuses make the decision that it is going to be a real trial is two weeks and you walk away and see you later. And I think that’s something really, really powerful and a lot good to say about the Omni group. The second news is only focus has always been an add a Mac application on the iOS and they try are they are developing this only focus on the web. And it’s been step by step. And finally they add custom perspective for the army focus on the web right now it’s on testing, but it is almost ready to go forward. And I think for the people who live on a PC who are finally using OmniFocus in this way, it’s going to be fantastic. That means I can put OmniFocus on my Chromebook, I can put OmniFocus the people who use Windows can use it on the windows and I think is simply an incredible news.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:45
Fantastic and to close out our headlines this week. Okay, so you want to wrap us up with some news out of apple.
Augusto Pinaud 12:53
Yeah, Forbes is confirming that Apple leaked the iPhone 12 date and he’s showing sizes he’s going to start obviously, for the iPhone 12 Pro max their most expensive on the line and later on in the year, they will add the cheaper, the cheaper products but or the less expensive product, the smaller versions, but what we are looking at is how they’re going to again work in with the megapixels and, and the article and there. This is going to be a really, really interesting device at 6.7 inch is massive. But it’s going to be I think, a really powerhouse. And I’m wondering if this device for the producer will be the equivalent to what the iPad Mini is for. It’s going to be slightly smaller than the iPad Mini but big enough to be that second. Take everywhere device.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:51
Yeah, that is a ginormous screen. And I’m really curious to see whether or not it’s big enough for people to be able to work on As they would say, the iPad Mini. It’s it’s there that’s very large. And so with that, that closes out our headlines for this week. And that takes us on to our segment called new tools of the week. A good when I come across many personal development time tasks, project management, productivity collaboration tools throughout the week. So we use some of them. Some of them are just interesting, and we think that they’d be useful to you. So in this segment, new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and to start us off is our first tool of the week, which is stacks. stacks is really unique in the sense that it is, in essence, a Trello clone. But the way in which they have designed stacks, is that you can actually download this application that actually runs on top of electron electron is a a framework that allows you to be able to create a, you know, Windows, Mac, mobile application Linux app kind of, you know, environment very, very quickly. So the developers are using this framework in order to create it. So the application gives you a pretty much a Trello type environment, except that it is not controlled by any cloud service. So you can synchronize your stacks, the boards, through your own means Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, or otherwise. And you get all of these very interesting features. And it is just a little bit more, I don’t know, it seems a little bit more raw. There are some pieces that are quite not working for me when I’m using it so far, just kind of in testing. But some really interesting things that it does is if you add a location to the cards inside of stacks, it actually gives you a map where you can then start to see those tasks. I don’t know if anyone really But Evernote used to have Atlas and usually be able to take the geo located metadata within the notes and be able to see your notes on top of a map. And in essence, stack stacks does that here with their application, you have the ability to look at things in a calendar view. And you know, some other kinds of what I think are really neat and interesting ways. You can use markdown natively inside of the app. So if you are a common Mark fan, you can go ahead and just start using your markdown directly inside of stacks. And so it’s a powerful tool, I have to admit if you are kind of averse to having your data in the cloud stacks seems like a really great way for you to be able to get most of the Trello Mojo have localized without any of the power ups without the cloud sinking, without any of that those pieces while still getting a really nice, personal Kanban experience. Because what’s your tool of the week.
Augusto Pinaud 16:57
My tool of the week is call me Use it as a tool for thought on the iPad so you can add notes more it’s pictures and make notes. It’s, it is really fun, almost a vision board place or to organize thinking and planning a you can get I think it’s the first 50 you get for free 50 or 100. And so you can play with it for free enough. And this service costs hundred dollars a year if you want to go above that point. But even on the free version on the I on the 12.9 iPad, it is so much fun to be able to put the stuff on and connect them and think about it and make notes and make other things. It’s been a really, really fun thing for me to play and have fun.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:43
And so with that that takes us on to our featured story this week. And as I said at the top ifft goes pro and so if you guys don’t know what it is It stands for If This Then That and it is a workflow automation tool. So as a cloud service that allows you to be able to connect different tools to each other, and they call those things applets. So for example, if you want it to be able to tell if every time I post a Twitter tweet, and it has a photo in it, I want you to take that image photo, you know, image file, and place that into Google Drive inside of a folder in Google Drive for me, it can do those kinds of things, right? So if this happens, then do that. And it’s been free for all these years. And now if it has moved over to a paid service, and they are basically giving people the ability to have up to three ifft applets for free, and then above that people are going to have to upgrade to ifft. Pro. What were your thoughts about this gousto and what are the details that I miss?
Augusto Pinaud 18:54
One of the tools is that the price it can be set up their goal is to eventually Get to the 99 but they’re even allowing people to according to Tibbets to go to the lowest price of 199. So that is an interesting approach to learning people define what is going to be that price. I thought that was really, really interesting for me to see that they allow that. And that I think is a really, really interesting and hopefully with that what they’re going to be able to do is to get more people to adopt the left. I think it’s an incredible service but I know in for some people is it it is seen in some places as more technical or more geeky than what really is.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:47
Yeah, I find that is really the the simple version of Zapier. And now if the Pro is giving you the ability to have reduced latency, meaning that You’re going to have a speedier step to actions, but also that you’re actually going to be able to create multiple actions for a one particular trigger, right. So you can say, if I post this Twitter image, then I want you to put the image inside of this Google Drive folder and put this image in an email and email it to myself, and x and y, and Zed, right? So really interesting to see how they are kind of leveling up in this way. Plus, you know, from my perspective, as I was telling you before the recording, you know, I immediately upgraded to f2 Pro as soon as I saw the notice in my system, I use it for so many things in my personal life related to IoT, and in and I use Zapier, you know, in my business world, so both of those tools represent my personal and professional automations. And so I have no problem with supporting the companies that are really doing so much for me in terms of being productive. So those who have existed branded applets, I’m quoting here from Stacey on IoT blog post on this. And she says that those who have existing branded applets that are already created and will continue to keep going. And then you will, you can have up to three custom applets. And so therefore, once you want to go above that, or change any branded applet into a custom applet, then you will need to upgrade to Pro. So it seems as though some people are going to be grandfathered in until they make any changes to their applets. So that’s kind of nice. But otherwise people are going to be enforced or you know, forced into the upgrade, if they want to go ahead and do that. So that’s a pretty good deal. I have to say I’m pretty happy about it. It also means that if it is going to be sustainable into the future, I don’t have to worry about whether or not they’re going to be able to handle my IoT automations going forward because they’re going to have a sustainable business model to be able to do that. So I’m good and happy all around. Anything else.
Augusto Pinaud 21:59
Yes. The next The last thing we have is the announcement that Apple will have a new event Time flies on September 15. Today after it is bought, and the day after this gets published, and we will cover that event. And hopefully we will make an a special event for this and announced what was announced and what is coming
Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:20
out tomorrow or the following day for another special episode from us this week on the apple event that’s going to be happening on September 15. And so with that we are coming to a close, please let us know if there’s a story we missed. We place any extra stories that we come across, but don’t discuss in the episodes in our extra section in the show notes. So if you visit podcast website, go to the episode for today, and you’ll find the extras in the show notes. But if we did miss a story, use our contact page on anything but idle calm and let us know you can also tweet or dm us on Twitter at anything but idle you can go ahead and tweet or dm They’re Feel free to follow us on social media including on Twitter. You can find all those links to us on anything but idle calm. And if you can, please leave a rating or review on Apple podcasts or Stitcher. If your favorite podcast app for some reason allows giving feedback, feel free to leave the rating review there as well. And thank you for helping us grow the anything but idle audience. Funnily thanks for listening to anything but idle, the productivity news podcast. Until next time, here’s your productive life.
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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.