Top 10 Female Productivity, Organization & Technology Experts

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This is International Women’s Day and also Women’s History Month, and it is Episode 47. We’re going to be talking about the top 10 female productivity organization and technology experts, Ray and Augusto discussed top 10 female productivity organization and technology experts. Enjoy!

Vote for your favorite female productivity, technology and/or organization experts! We’ll announce the top 10 on this upcoming Monday’s show!

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In this Cast | Top 10 Female Productivity, Organization & Technology Experts

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Julie Bestry 

Julie Bestry, Certified Professional Organizer and Evernote Certified Consultant in Chattanooga, TN.

Headlines & Show Notes | Top 10 Female Productivity, Organization & Technology Experts

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Apple App Store: 9 Awesome Apps Developed by Women

Elevating Women in IT: A celebration of female pioneers and how you can help close the gender gap 

Five #BlackGirlsWhoBlog to follow now 

Product Hunt FemTech

• Canva Acquires Background Removal Tool Maker Kaleido
• This totally upgradable laptop is more eco-friendly and powerful than a Macbook Pro | TechRadar
• Apple now shows iPhone and MacBook repairability scores in France 
• TechCrunch: Hackers release a new jailbreak tool for almost every iPhone
• YouTuber creates ‘world’s first’ Apple Silicon iMac using M1 Mac mini parts [Video] 
• Create a space for yourself in Chrome 
• Microsoft’s new Outlook calendar board view looks a lot like Trello
• Security researcher recommends against LastPass after detailing 7 trackers – The Verge
• Millions of VPN users have personal details stolen | TechRadar
• March Pixel Feature Drop: Underwater photos, Gboard Smart Compose, more – 9to5Google
• Microsoft is building a new web-based Teams desktop app

• Where do your goals come from? | A Life of Productivity
• The problem with work-life balance 
• Why we need a virtual commute (Microsoft 365) — Video

• Transfer a copy of your iCloud Photos collection to another service
• Apple Launches Service for Transferring iCloud Photos and Videos to Google Photos

New Tools of the Week

Augusto and I come across many personal productivity tools and services each week. In this segment, New Tools of the Week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like.

• P10 Assessment (Penny Zenker)

• WYD? — What are you doing now
• Wyd? — An iOS widget to encourage you to do one thing
• Focus Mate – Virtual Co-working for Accountability
• Sound of Colleagues

Announcements

• Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 121 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements 
• Microsoft Ignite 2021
• CloudReady v89.1 now available!

Raw Text Transcript | Top 10 Female Productivity, Organization & Technology Experts

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 0:06
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by productivity voice. And I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:16
And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is International Women’s Day and also Women’s History Month, and it is Episode 47. We’re going to be talking about the top 10. I’m not really top 10. But we’ll get into it but the top 10 female productivity organization and technology experts, and we’re recording this on March 8 2021. Each week, we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And to do that we have invited Julie bestiary to show to join us on the show today. Julie bestiary is a Certified Professional Organizer. She also happens to be a fellow Evernote certified consultant, and she is in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and we talked about this before the show, and we made the promise to tell you all that she is fabulous. So welcome to Anything But Idle. Julie.

Julie Bestry 1:07
s ilieulieThank you, I love it when you guys invite me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:11
Great, grateful and happy to have you. And so Happy International Women’s Day, as as now our women on the panel this evening. We figured it wouldn’t be great to have all male panel, A Woman’s Day,

Julie Bestry 1:27
lthere are a lot of all male panels out there. So I appreciate this. I don’t I don’t feel like the token woman since there are only three of us and you guys are the regulars. So basically, I am 100% of this panel. So we are very well represented for women on the panel, because you guys are the hosts, I think you did a great job.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:46
Wonderful. There you go, check and check. Today’s goal really is to elevate I think what are some well known female voices in productivity organization and technology as well as some lesser known voices. And and so what I always think about when it comes to this, I mean, this is the reason why I do anything in the personal productivity space, whether that be personal productivity club, whether that be productivity summit, Anything But Idle, it really is helping to elevate voices of those of you who are out there doing great work and productivity, coaching and consulting technology, as well as professional organizing in the home and office space. There’s so many of you that I know out there in the world. And it’s so wonderful to see you doing that work. And I want your voices heard by more people. And so you know, I always say I don’t, I don’t need to do this. So I really love being able to do this to be able to elevate those voices. And so this is a really just great day for me to be able to do that. And so I’m looking forward to having this conversation around Women’s History Month. And what I thought we would do is, in essence, talk about some of the folks that we have, in our hopper in our repository have asked folks in the personal productivity club to give me names of people that they know. And so we’re going to maybe go through some of those and talk about that. But then over the next week, we’re going to put those folks into a list and let you pull them and maybe we’ll have a top 10 at the end of next week. And we can present that top 10 no matter what everybody on the list. I hope we’ll get a little bit more exposure by virtue of that. And so that’ll be really wonderful. And we see Dr. Frank Buck has popped into the chat. Hi. Hi, Frank, good to see you, Dr. Buck. And so let’s talk about some of the people that joined on the list. And because do you put together some resources of some productivity, you know, roundups of other folks, but from what I saw in the chat from others, was that there were a couple of people I saw Mel Robbins show up in the list and several people noted Mel Robbins, she is an attorney. But many people know her for her motivational work in and on YouTube and TED talks and so on so forth. Julie, do you know Mel Robbins and her work?

Julie Bestry 3:58
I don’t know. I don’t know her. And when I think it was Alina in your group had had mentioned her. And so I wrote her name down. And I’m sure there’ll be other names that we’re looking at today that I’m gonna go through, I need to add them to my list.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:13
Absolutely. So I’m gonna I’m gonna run through some of these names, because some folks may know them and may not know them. What I’m gonna do though, is anyone who is a, like a New York Times bestselling author, or those folks, they’re actually going to be left off of the list for our voting purposes. But I do want you to know that they exist. But I figure if you’re New York Times bestselling author or, you know, whatever, you probably don’t need as much elevation and voice as some of these others that are on the list here who I really want you to know.

Julie Bestry 4:41
Hey, worked hard to get on the top of that list.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:45
Oh, I I don’t I don’t doubt that I’m not I’m not on a New York Times bestselling list either. And I would love maybe someday, but my point is that there are a lot of folks who go under the radar and they have you know, like Gretchen Rubin. She clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. And she has written extensively and, you know, she’s a wonderful author and great all around podcaster. So, you know, people know her. And I, you know, and I think that’s really good, I want to be able to elevate some maybe lesser known voices. And one of those is I’m gonna hope I’m not butchering your name, but siara conlan she, I believe is in Ireland. And, and so CR had tip she’s in personal productivity club as well. And it’s good to get to meet her in personal productivity club, but also to know that she exists and that she’s written several books, and all kinds of fun stuff there. But she’s a speaker on productivity, a life coach, and and so just really great to see a productivity consultant and coach out there. Of course, I noted Gretchen Rubin. Most of you know her from better than before. And four tendencies as well as the happiness project and her podcast. I think, you know what, Julie? What’s, what’s her?

Julie Bestry 6:06
happier with Gretchen Rubin.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:07
There you go. And she does that with her sister, I believe. Right. Right,

Julie Bestry 6:10
Elizabeth, I wrote it down because Elizabeth craft.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:14
Wonderful. Then we have the inimitable Barbara Hemphill, the paper tiger lady, she came up on the list. And then Laura Vander cam the the best selling author of 168 hours. We’re actually discussing that on Productivity Book Group this March 31. So if you want to join us for the discussion, you can go ahead and do that. And so Laura Vander cam, and who else were some of the bigger names on the list before we go into Lisa Woodruff was on the list as well. I would consider her not in the she’s she’s a she’s a best selling author. Also, I believe, I think she she’s like a Random House author. And I’m trying to think of anyone else who’s like in that top tier, of course, Julie Morgenstern. Most people know Julie Morgenstern. And so she came up on the list as well. Alright, those are kind of our big names on the list that I saw. Now, let’s flip the script and talk about some of the lesser known names. Who were some of the lesser names that that cropped up on the list. Do you who wants to take that go for Julie? Well,

Julie Bestry 7:21
I was going to say I don’t think you know, because you asked about productivity, organizing and technology because it really does all go together. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone in naipo or ICD who wouldn’t immediately think of Judith Kohlberg, Judith Kohlberg really invented the whole concept of chronic disorganization. And she, she was at the start of the national study group on chronic disorganization, which is now the Institute for challenging disorganization, where, alongside naipo you see most of the education and the the rest of the education and training in our field working with people with hoarding disorders, people with chronic disorganization. Anyone with executive function disorders, and Judith has written both in that field, she co wrote a book on Add ways to organize your life conquering chronic disorganization. But she also I actually pulled the books off to the side sorry, forgot to disappear, but organized for disaster. And she wrote this book recently getting organized in the era of endless about everything that we talked about that you guys talk about the emails that keep coming, the text messages and the the the slack channels and how it’s almost like nothing ever gets completed. So Judas has to be considered from both that the idea of of everything with organizing, but also all of the little tendrils that that get into our lives in terms of the psychology of what we have to know about in our field.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:07
Absolutely, I know that you won’t say this, but your name showed up on the list. And you will be on the list. Again, you know, it’s one of those things where you don’t have to worry about the the conflict of interest because I want you on that list. And also, Stacy Harmon who’s one of our fellow Evernote certified consultants and has a has a background in real estate and does the ever done course that helps people understand how to use Evernote and getting things done. And the she’s also one of my fellow Evernote regional leaders from North America. So I’m really just always pleased to help people know more about the work Stacey does.

Julie Bestry 9:46
It says it’s fabulous. And I have to say although I am an Evernote consultant, if I have anything that’s a sticky wicket, you and Stacy are the people to whom I turn for for my questions. Because you are both so on the ball and Stacy’s faces, webinars and videos, I will sometimes watch them more than once. And she did that, because it’s so carefully crafted that, that there’s there’s no confusion about how to implement something and, and that’s so important so hope Stacy’s watching Yay.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:25
I also noted Deb Lee. And Debbie is a Certified Professional Organizer, but she’s just an all around technology and productivity expert. And so it’s always great to have deadly among any list of Best of and who are some of the other names that I saw, I saw Claire Evans, she wrote a book called broadband. The Untold Story of women who made the internet is what I understand the title is, and I have never heard of her before, which is both remarkable and sad, but also amazing because I just bought the book. I always love having new books to read. And so Claire Evans, she’ll be on the list and again, one of those cases where I think that a lot of women in tech have not been elevated as much as obviously the the male, you know, gender and so that’s really great to see. I noted earlier, Lisa Woodruff Diana in personal productivity club noted Lisa Woodruff what Lisa would have organized 365. She wrote a book called the paper solution. And and she has a system called sundae basket and sundae basket. Yeah. All right. Wonderful. Okay. And so Lisa Woodruff will be on that list. And what else who else Michelle Gunn is a friend and colleague. She runs the GTD virtual study group every other week on Thursdays at 4pm. Eastern. And so wonderful to see Michelle on the list. And I’m she just celebrated a birthday. So happy belated birthday to Michelle as well. And who else? Well,

Julie Bestry 11:59
I didn’t see it or add it to the list. But I think we should consider Tara mcgillicuddy who runs add classes, Tara both for herself and for all of the guests. She has everyone from Ari Tuckman to all sorts of people in the ADHD and productivity field. And she runs these specific classes, she run runs, groups and study groups and and does training as well. And so much of the productivity field that’s not around business success, but about personal success tends to touch on on ADHD. So I think Tara mcgillicuddy gets a thumbs up and it hurt her site is add classes.com, I think,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:47
fantastic, fantastic. And then I also wanted to just give a nod to st a block who will show up on the list, soon as well known for working with ADHD, high performers. And so helping people who are suffering from ADHD and being able to manage their lives well, using her technique and her assessment, really, really fun stuff there. And oh, my gosh, there’s so many other people on the list that will be on the list. But just note that we will be putting this list together, I’ll put it out tomorrow on social and in personal productivity club and the Anything But Idle show notes, there will be a link to it with all of the folks so you can check them out. And I’m really looking forward to maybe some of them being on the show in the future. So that’ll be kind of fun to have more folks represented here on Anything But Idle as well.

Augusto Pinaud 13:37
Yeah, so when it comes in the rent of the night and because as much as I’m incredibly happy that we’re celebrating, you know, females in productivity and, and all that, it is kind of challenging for me that we do that once a year on for only a day. And that should be done every day. And I needed to put that out is still I’m happy in your show notes you will find, you know, Google came and celebrate people, you know, apples for celebrates nine apps were designed by woman’s to woman’s But still, I wish that we see this not as a one day celebration, but as an everyday celebration.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:20
Yeah. And so I’m not going to I’m not going to lament over spilled milk. I’m going to be focused on the positive and productive aspects of this. And so let’s talk about those nine awesome women led apps. Okay, so we have shine. I have no idea what shine is. But I know that we’ll get to this in a moment. Julie pointed out that product on how to how to femtech section and we’ll get to that shortly. But let’s just go through them. Shine is an application that is run by Morrow. whitey Liddy, I’m sorry, Mark, if I’m butchering your name, and Naomi hirabayashi. And so they are

Julie Bestry 15:00
You had no trouble with that name.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:03
Yeah, the the Chinese and Japanese names I don’t have a problem with it is it is the it is the British background names or like, you know those kinds of indo European names where I’m like I said, sure about that,

Julie Bestry 15:14
I can actually tell you a little bit about my Chinese. Kind of like having your BFF checking in on you. You know, you have a friend who knows that you were going to be having a rough week, you know, we talked last week knows that you’re having a rough week and checks in on you. And it’s sort of act as though it were your friend who knows how to how to prompt and and sort of cheerlead you to get beyond the difficult points.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:45
Fantastic. Fantastic. We have her which is a dating app, and part of the queer community. And so if you’re lesbian, bisexual, or queer woman, there’s a dating app for you wonderful, then clue there. It’s a it’s about cycles regarding your menstrual cycles. So there’s a menstrual cycle application, it looks like clue helps you make sense of symptoms and understand what’s normal for your body, which is really great. hopscotch, I’m not going to go through all of these, but just, you know, they’re they’re out here. We’ll put a link to this in the show notes. But it’s really great to see like, this is what it looks like hopscotch is programming for kids. And so it like helps kids learn how to code really fun. And so, again, women led or predominantly for women, in terms of that kitchen stories, recipes, is all about engaging home cooks to broaden their culinary horizons. That’s fun. I might try that app out. Ground news is a news application built by a female entrepreneur. It seems like where is it? harleen cower. Maybe, maybe that’s how you pronounce that name. marigold Lake, which is a coloring books app. Very cool. And then house. Many people maybe don’t know house, but it’s kind of a design and house, home decor kind of application that that talks about all kinds of that’s in that residential and commercial design space. You’re gonna say, Julie,

Julie Bestry 17:09
I was just going to say the residential organizers in naipo are very big on on house. Oh, yeah,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:15
I would imagine so. And then there is an article, Augusta did you pull this article in here from Neverwhere?

Augusto Pinaud 17:23
I did. I did

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:24
a little bit about it. So

Augusto Pinaud 17:30
it talks to the article bring, you know, people who are specific to it, and it talks about the people who I’m trying to touch my computer. Sorry, I’m having technology issues today. I want the laptop who has noticed screen to work. I changed my office over the weekend. And now I’m dealing with the nuances of certain computers not having touchscreen. But anyways, it talks about the woman who revolutionized it. And it was an pleasure to read, you know, I didn’t know a lot of them. You know, and it was awesome to read, you know, people really on the 1930s and the 1940s. And, and how, if we look at some of these challenges today, as difficult for for a woman in the IT world. You know, it is really interesting to see, you know, these people and to at the bottom of the article, he talks about the hard truth and what is happening and where where is happening with that. So it was interesting to read I again, I a lot of this, we don’t know, and we don’t but it’s really interesting for me to read what the challenges were for these people to really make it there and discover who they are and being able to learn more about.

Julie Bestry 18:56
Yeah, I have to agree. You know, we’ve heard a lot more about Ada Lovelace recently and Katherine Johnson. And she showed up in the movie, which I can’t, I want to say invisible, but that’s not about about NASA. But I love that it talks about Hetty Lamarr because not only did she and a male collaborator who was a composer, I believe, come up with what is the precursor to Wi Fi, but she also came up with ways of improving aeronautics for Howard Hughes. And people know that she was in movies she was she was partner with Charles boy a Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Paul Henry. William Powell, I mean, all sorts of famous male actors in the 40s and the early 50s. And she was considered at one time the most beautiful woman in the world. And that’s how they talked about her. They talked about her in turn. of her value being her beauty. And she was brilliant. I mean, I mean aeronautics with Howard Hughes and the precursor to Wi Fi. And I think it’s, it’s really important that we have, that we have these women to look to look on in terms of, of historical reference, so that when kids get to hear stories, they don’t just hear about 21st century women doing things now. But they get to see for boys and girls to hear that there’s a depth of experience and talent in women, that goes back centuries.

Augusto Pinaud 20:45
Yeah, that’s, that’s an A, I agree with you. That is to me, reading going on. having kids. For me, that part is so important that they understand. Not only that, but they understand that the fact that other people may see certain things as limitation, as you said, you know, we don’t hear about the brilliant mind of this person, we hear Oh, she was considered one of the most pretty person in the world. Why? But also, I love to show those examples to my kids and say, Look, even when nobody, you don’t recognize that or see that, that doesn’t mean that you don’t continue pushing forward to what you believe or what you’re good at.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:28
Yeah, so I wanted to just note, a couple things. Frank is noting here in the chat that hopscotch, which we were noting about the nine apps that Apple highlighted in their, in their roundup was just on Shark Tank. And so that’s really cool to hear, I didn’t know that. And in the article that that we’ll put a link to this in the show notes, it talks about what you can do. And I mean, from my perspective, you know, the thing that I have greatest impact on is my family and the people who are close to me. And so I have a I have young women in my family, and I just can’t be happier about the fact that my baby sister, who also just celebrated a birthday recently, happy birthday, Rebecca, belated. And she’s in science. And so it’s just like, the idea of pushing, you know, girls and young women into STEM and giving them the opportunities to do that. Not just saying like, oh, will stem this for boys, and you know, whatnot, and you know, all that kind of kind of misogynistic nonsense, we can, we can force the conversation. And that will then help them make that decision. Now, obviously, you don’t want to force people into things, but you want to give them the opportunity to be able to say, you know what this could be for me, I could be a scientist, I could be, you know, in technology and do these kinds of things. And I’m seeing more and more of that break away, and more young people on, you know, especially young women capable of saying, you know what, yeah, I could go lead this tech company, I could go do this, this project. So

Julie Bestry 22:59
and how they say your representation matters. If you see someone who looks like you, then you believe that you can do that, too. But what’s also really important is not just that girls see that they can do that. But the boys see that girls can do that. Because all of the issues with the glass ceiling, all of the issues with the boys club that have kept women out of the C suite, out of the programming rooms, we can counter man that not just by bringing the girls up to believe they can do it. But bringing the guys up, to not even think twice and assume that girls can can be on par with them.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:42
Right? If there’s a limiting belief in women and their abilities, it’s easy to then not elevate them into roles that allow them or even to say, at a startup event, hey, there goes you know, a woman, maybe she could be my co founder or she could be my senior technology lead or CTO of my of my startup, those things happen, because there’s this cultural misunderstanding about capabilities. So you’re absolutely right, we need to make sure that everybody is brought up in a culture that shows equality. And so I just want to note these things. For those of you who are listening to the podcast afterward, the article notes, some things that you can do. One, being mindful of recruiting, and so opening up, you know, the recruiting to have gender neutral terminology. And this is really important for not just women, but also for those who are trans or, you know, who are non gender conforming, and then creating an environment that actively supports women. That’s obviously a given I’m not quite sure we need to why we need to put that there but I’m, I’m sad that we need to it’s like every time there’s a stop sign. It’s because some you know person has, you know, unfortunately, ran through the intersection. It’s somebody it’s like, unfortunately, we need to say it say it explicitly offering female groups and events at you know, in environments within companies but also within organizations and communities. And then, of course, support it. programs so that we can bring more stem, you know, exposure to, to folks out there in the communities. So good, good thoughts there. But I really just I want everybody who can impact the people who are closest to them in the ways in which they feel most comfortable. And, and pushing a little bit beyond that, because I think it’s a little bit about becoming uncomfortable, right, it’s tough to have these conversations about inequality, it’s tough to have conversations about whether that be economic, whether that be gender based, whether that be race, whether that be about gender, sexuality, all these things are tough, right? They’re difficult things. You know, we haven’t even gotten over, you know, international types of of issues, better yet these very ingrained parts of ourselves. So I really do want us to be able to be mindful of the fact that you’re, it’s okay, if you’re uncomfortable with the conversation, right? It’s, it’s not meant to be a comfortable situation, but that everybody needs to be welcoming, even in that conversation. And I think that’s really important, also, that I hear a lot of, you know, anger from, from, from a lot of voices, and I and I understand the anger. At the same time, we need to bring people closer to each other with kindness, and with acceptance and empathy. Because, you know, men who have been raised in an environment where they don’t know how to deal with this need to be brought in, gently, right? If anything, we have to bring them show more kindness in that mindset, then then less because you know, they’re fragile. So Augusto, you also put brought this out Google Web creators article that Google is, is promoting the the hashtag black girls who blog. And so we have some blogs from female bloggers and female black bloggers, you want to talk a little bit about that

Augusto Pinaud 26:49
this article was what we refer to as a rabbit hole. Okay, I found this article I’m going to say I wasn’t familiar with, with them. Okay, so I click open a new tab, and then I open a new tab, and then I open a new tab. And I don’t know how long happen, okay, but I’m going to say I had a really good time reading, reading those blogs and, and learning a little bit more about them. So I figured it out that if I didn’t know, you know, some people will, will, will care for that. And so I wanted to bring him you know, and he was interesting, because, you know, some of them were about topics that I don’t necessarily it’s on my realm okay. I mean, he talks about the model but talks about the business Danielle talks about fashion and beauty that but there were so well written that it would really you know, absorb in Europe some point that it’s okay copy that link and move and move with what I was doing. But if you one a really well written set of articles please go there. You know, read what what it is read what what they are, what they are about, because really, it was for a person again, I am not a fashion person, I have serious intentions no state to blame in that area. Okay. I when fashion was, you know, in the creation of me when they say hello fashion, I say to that guy, no, nothing. Okay. Fashion jeans know, that I could see of them. But, but it was really interesting to, to read about them and to see a completely different approach on many of the things. And so I even though I’m not a fashion person, I spend, again, more than what I’m going to admit in this show or anywhere else, reading them because they were really well written and really interesting and engaging articles.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:55
I want to just give a quick hat tip. I’m the Google Small Business advisor for productivity. So I obviously promote all of the things that Google has for small business, specifically Google workspace and so on, so forth. And one of the programs Google has is called the Google digital coaches program, and they are for urban and predominantly black. And, you know, and people of color focused programs. And the one in Pittsburgh, Google, Pittsburgh, the digital coach in Pittsburgh is Shira Moffitt. And so just hat tip to cashier and her work, and she has a wonderful, you know, she has a wonderful black female owned business and does digital marketing for business owners in the area. And it’s just all around, I think a great representation of of the community. And so just wanted to give her a shout out. And then last but not least, I think Julie, did you have Did you have a little I,

Julie Bestry 29:52
I did and it’s sort of dovetails with what Augusto was saying about going through a rabbit hole down a rabbit hole. We talked about women led apps and women bloggers. And you know, when we’re looking at the blogging space, we should really be looking at the newsletter space, something like substack, where, where you have all of these newsletter writers and I subscribed to one. And now, as if I didn’t have enough email, I have maybe half a dozen newsletters that I read every week, from from all when they’re all by women and some women of color. And so I want to sort of give a shout out to not just blogs, but to newsletters, because when you were talking about the top 10, I was gonna say, what you see in these women, women written newsletters is that their collaborative, I have seen them do trades and write guest articles for one another as each each week I have seen the same young one is writing an article and you see it promoted in all of these others that I really have to recommend. Also podcast call your girlfriend podcast. It’s a I’m an I always get her name wrong. And not to sound as SJW and and Friedman. And they they have the call your Friedman, call your girlfriend podcast, they each have their own newsletters. And then the podcast has its own its own newsletter, and then they just published a book. And so there’s also in visibility via on and through NPR, a podcast with Alexis Spiegel and Hannah Rossen, about psychology and scientific theories related to behavior, which really tends to pull in a lot of what we talked about in the productivity field, call your girlfriend has a lot of life balance, as well as political and social and personal issues. You already talked about happier with Gretchen Rubin. And I’d like to mention Roxane Gay and she she blogs both at at medium and Dropbox blog. And, and these are really compelling women who have a lot to say, in these areas that we talk about, particularly that sort of attempt. You know, why are we trying to be productive? How are we going to be productive when the world is falling apart? So yeah, I, I figured bringing to you what I read, and what I’m listening to, might be helpful because a lot of the guys listening probably aren’t familiar with, with most of those names.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:36
Now and Roxane Gay, I mean, her book, hunger is riveting and raw and sad and amazing. So if you have not read Roxanne’s work, you must it is it is really, it’s eye opening. And it’s also, again, it’s uncomfortable. And I think we all need discomfort in order to have growth. And it is really, I mean, like, yeah, this is such an amazing book. And of course, you know, she’s she’s written the bad feminist, and she’s read, written, read the other work. But I mean, that book by itself, is was haunting in so many ways. But in the best possible way. You also brought to our attention, the the product, hunt, femtech section. And while we won’t go through all of the apps, because there’s like, it just keeps going and going, I did want to bring it to everyone’s attention, that you brought it to my attention, which are all of these applications that are focused on women and women’s issues, like fertility, period, tracking your menstrual cycle tracking, pregnancy, and nursing care, women’s sexual wellness, reproductive system, health care, and so many other things. But there’s some really great applications in here.

Julie Bestry 33:44
And, you know, we look at when, when Apple first came out with its health app, that was one of the things that really starkly showed that men were working on these things because things that women needed weren’t included, a lot of what we saw in terms of not just with Apple, but across the board, tend to be things that the guys who are who are in these positions where they’re doing the coding, they’re thinking in terms of tracking performance, okay. But it’s not that women don’t care about tracking health with regard to performance. But we have an entire extra layer of, of health care issues that guys don’t have to consider. And so more and more of these apps are not only created for women, but by women everywhere from the coding up to the C suite C suite level, Say that three times fast.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:43
So if you just go to product hunt.com, and type in femme tech, you’ll find this page and so I just wanted to let everybody know that that’s how you can get to it. And thank you, Julie, for bringing that to our attention really, really great. And so with that, I think we’ve talked a lot about all of these things. Just note that I will be tracking All of these with a gousto, we will get this into the show notes. So you can see the list of all of these folks. And then as I said, I’m going to have a poll that I’m going to put together, and we will share it out via all the socials, and folks can vote on it for Julie. And we’re not coloring the vote. But But yeah, let please share it far and wide so that folks can can vote on it. And we can have some fun around this, I really would like just more people to see it just so we can elevate voices more than who’s winning, I don’t really care about the winning part, I really care about the ability for more people to see the names of female entrepreneurs, but also female coaches, consultants, professional organizers, technologists who are doing these things. So again, as Julie noted, there’s more of a sense that there are people out there who just happened to be female who are doing this stuff also. And the more we can get into that mindset, the less there is this division between the genders and more there is just an understanding that we’re all capable of doing things and and let’s just let’s just truly build toward we can never have a true meritocracy in my mind. But we can work more toward meritocratic society. And I look forward to that. And so thank you all for this conversation. And that really then turns us over to our news portion of the show. As you all know, Augusto and I track all of the productivity and technology news each week. And so let’s get into our news this week. Augusto, what’s our first story this week? You are muted, sir.

Augusto Pinaud 36:34
I made it for almost 35 minutes. acquires the fact round renew. removal, especially. And I’m going to purchase Calais. You are?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:46
Is it simple, right? Oh, kaleido. It’s kind of like kaleidoscope.

Augusto Pinaud 36:51
That’s I told you I was going to butcher but it is interesting, because Canva Canva has come into the market as a really serious competitor to in this market. You know, it has grown and grown and grown really quiet. It’s it’s not. It’s still not making the noise that it should. But it’s really, really powerful. And it’s good to see that they acquired this being background reknown removal. One of those things that so many people struggle with? Yes, there are many apps that do it, including keynote will do it if you know where to find it, but most people don’t. So adding that to their toolset, I think it’s going to be really interesting,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:43
sort of clarify the functionalities in Canva pro already exists. So you do have a background removal effect, what they did with the purchase of Kaleidoscope, our kaleido I’m sorry, kaleido. They’re hoping to actually advance that technology to be able to do more in that space. So the tool currently has it. If you have Canva Pro, you can just click on the image, you’ll see effects, and then click on background background remover. But now they’re trying to up the ante on this. And so I think actually Canva is also a woman led tech company out of Australia. Not sure. But if it’s not sorry, but I think I think there is a female tech lead at Canva. But either way, so very, very exciting to see them adding that technology further, you know, building on that technology with kaleido.

Julie Bestry 38:30
And a lot of people, a lot of people either didn’t know about background removal or are coming to this, you know, cannabis seems to be a very a female centric, woman centric, want a community but the people who are using it are very visually creative. And so what you see is a lot of people will say, Oh, I love what you did on your blog there. I love that infographic that you created. And people go Canva and, and the removal tool, since you guys are gonna be talking about hardware soon. And I just, I’m gonna step back from, from that whole discussion. I do have one thing I wish that they had had removal tools like remove BG and on all of these things. In the 50s My mom had gotten married, she got divorced, and my grandmother took a scissors and cut my my mother’s first husband literally out of every single photo. And so there are all of these photos with like a random hand on a shoulder disembody. And I think that a lot of photographs out there could could have been dramatically improved, but by something like Collider, or or remove or what Canva can can do in the premium space. Had we had that back when we had print photos.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:52
And so just as clarification, the CEO and co founder there are three co founders of Canva one one of those co founders is the CEO and that is Melanie Perkins. So very good to see a female lead company out of Australia doing something as amazing as Canva is doing. I mean, it’s basically replacing Adobe, you know, Photoshop and InDesign for so many small businesses. And as Frank is noting in the chat that he loves Canva and so to Sabrina, good, good good. Both of you don’t use really amazing tool,

Augusto Pinaud 40:23
not only is replacing is giving really the access to many more business to this kind of tools, because Adobe InDesign, it’s complex, it’s really pretty incredibly powerful, but it’s really complex. And now Canva allows them to give to give that but in in, in addition to what Julie said, my grandmother used to say the in laws to decide please so we can fix the picture. She’s here.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:48
Oh, goodness, next up in news is, is a story that I’m really excited about.

Augusto Pinaud 40:55
So there is an article from tick radar talking about a totally gradable laptop, that will be as powerful as your MacBook Pro. And the geek in me is really excited about this, about the idea of being able to buy the pieces and upgrade this and make it and make the laptop go into the parks and make it even more powerful. I wish that instead of a 13.5. It’s an 11 inch screen. But that’s because my beloved MacBook 11 inch is going to die soon. And I don’t want anything bigger. That said, the ability to be able to add an upgrade every piece of the laptop. It’s really really, really exciting. For a lot of for a lot of people main thing.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:49
I think this is revolutionary. And in a way, what we’re what we’re really talking about is a more sustainable, eco friendly way of dealing with computing today. I think the first step to this was probably the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the building of low cost technology that can be put into the hands of of people that can’t afford it. And even geekier people like me that, you know, I’m still in love with my Raspberry Pi 400. And so, you know, there are those of us, but it really puts technology into the people’s hands that can do that, which of course reduces overall waste when we are trying to ship technologies that are very expensive, and have too many parts and can’t be afforded can’t be affordable. This is now bringing that to the next tier, which is taking all of us who buy lots of technology, and are constantly replacing that technology and throwing that stuff into landfills, we are now capable of having hardware that we can upgrade, there was a program for a phone that was supposed to be like this, we covered a few months ago, kind of a modular phone that could consistently be updated, that may be coming on the market, I can’t remember but either way, this is just amazing. I’m very, very bullish on this idea that we can we can stop throwing away laptops, we can actually upgrade them truly, they talk about the idea that you’re going to have a screwdriver in the box when you get the laptop so that you’ll be able to immediately change out parts upgrade, and customize it to your needs. This is the kind of technology that I think really has longevity, and I’m hoping that OEMs embrace the technology and go from there.

Augusto Pinaud 43:28
So yeah, there is a couple of things and a shout out that I you know, Dale, Dale specifically has done things like this giving their laptops you know, easily to upgrade to a certain extent replace thrive. So you can keep their great and and hardware lasting a little bit more. And on the first part, we talked about Neverwhere with the Oracle and females. But that is another company that now part of Google, you know, it’s allowing for these old laptops to be turned into almost a Chromebook and make the life of this one much, much longer. And they need to replace also last longer. So I think this is this will be really, really exciting. If if when it comes to the market.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:15
Fantastic. Next up

Augusto Pinaud 44:18
well, in the UK, in the keeping, you know with all these things, Apple now is starting to show the iPhone and MacBook repair ability score. So France is asking manufacturers that they show what you can repair or not repair on your devices. And Apple has introduced this. And you know, I have mixed feelings with this on the sense that I understand what they’re going to try to do and I agree. I don’t know if I want to try to repair my iPhone, even if they give me a six out of 10 they can give me a 10 out of 10 and I will still consider Frankly, but but I think it’s important that I don’t know if he’s really about giving the information to the people that this device is not as friendly to repair and when you make the decision. And the problem with this is what people believe is their skills to fix devices may not match with that six out of 10. And I think we are going to see a lot of people disappointed with that devices.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:32
I think it’s important to have this, I think this is great, I want I want this six out of 10 to be a scarlet letter on any devices that cannot be repaired so much trash so much electronics, trash goes into the landfills, because people cannot repair them. And the fact that the iPhone 12 is a six out of 1012 generations later, that’s unconscionable to me that we are we are in essence, you know, cracking screens and breaking things, and not capable of having longevity of our technology. This is, again, apple, and really all the other OEMs. I’m not picking on just Apple here, but they are they are basically setting up the meantime before failures to be very short. So what we’re constantly buying new electronics. And while that’s great for a lot of industries, I don’t mind the idea of is having new technologies and talking about them, people should not be forced to upgrade because they break up a phone jack or something like that they should be able to repair these devices, what the factors that they put into this support document, I thought was really interesting. They just highlighted some of them. And it talks about the availability of documentation for how to repair, use and maintain the products, novel idea that you should be able to know how to maintain your electronics, for example, batteries are very different in the way in which you should charge and discharge batteries. Most of the time. OEMs don’t tell you how to actually do that the manufacturers just let you guess. And when you break your battery or you overcharge it, you run it too many cycles, then you have to buy a new one, which is of course only good for them. Not good for the planet not good for the consumer disassembly, spare parts, the price of spare parts and the availability of software updates. You know, Augusto, I have a Lenovo duet, a Chromebook. And I recently accidentally dunked the keyboard in some water, and the the the laptop itself is perfectly fine. It’s just the keyboard, well, I learn from going to Lenovo and talking to their support team and so on so forth. I can’t buy or repair that keyboard. Here, hear me out, I cannot repair the keyboard. And I also cannot buy a new one that’s just like, they don’t have that as a part. It’s only purchasable with the device itself. And I just, it drives me mad that that would be the case that a perfectly great operating laptop is now dysfunctional, because they don’t have the spare part for me to be able to do and I can’t repair it at all. So it’s that kind of stuff that I think we really need to be mindful of going forward in, in how we purchase making conscious decisions about how we purchase things, both for our pocketbooks, but also for the environment.

Augusto Pinaud 48:20
No, and I agree, and I didn’t thought that this was going to come with that pain of your keyword. So so we have discussed it this, this keyboard many, many, many, many hours. And yeah, and it’s been painful. It is it is painful. And so there are many good things about this, especially that but also, these will only be good as people also understand what are the really needs that they have. Because as I agree with you there, the part of the problem is we get to the Apple store or to any manufacturer Apple because it’s who we’re picking today, and you go to repair and most people choose the new device. Well now that I’m going to anyways pay 100 bucks, let me upgrade to the new device. So I say think this is really, really important. Also, we all of us need to also think on that and reconsider, you know, our upgrade cycles and reconsider, you know, when we fixed on when we upgrade because I think at least on the US, our default is upgrade not fixed.

Julie Bestry 49:36
I think you’re right. I think I’m really atypical in that. So my car which I consider my new car I got a little over three years ago, my last car I kept for 21 years and the car before that I kept for 11 I’m using an iPhone six because it works fine. I don’t need an eight or 10 words well, and I’m sure now that I’ve said that it’ll die tomorrow, because we’ve had this conversation. But I would much rather repair something with the notion that I’m going to use it until it’s no longer functional for me. And that does seem to be a fairly atypical view. in the, in the people to whom new products are marketed. And you know, it’s one of those things where it’s really easy for a company to to try and get a new customer, they don’t worry, think about your cable company giving all sorts of, of bonuses for you to get your cable, your internet, whatever to become a new customer. But they don’t do a lot to satisfy existing customers, which is why you get that churn why people go from cell phone company to cell phone company, if companies that made products or offered services in this, in this arena, cared as much about, about the environment and about their clientele being loyal, it would be better, as you said, right for the environment, be better for the companies, because they wouldn’t have to try so hard to get all new customers because people would gravitate toward them and stay with them. So I think you’re right, this is a very aggressive, this is a very Western is a very American approach to say, hey, this thing doesn’t work as well as it did before. So I’m going to buy a new one, rather than spend a tiny bit of money to fix it, and give myself another year or two before I have to think about replacing.

Augusto Pinaud 51:47
That’s correct. And because of that we at least again, in the United States, we do not have the infrastructure to repair many of the things, you know, and the repairs. Even if you find somebody who can do it, then it turns to be so expensive. that in many cases, you know, we we have a couch that we wanted, or we haven’t but we wanted to do the upholstery and it is so expensive to do it. Instead of you know, it’s almost cheaper to go and buy to buy a new one. And but it’s not because it’s because there is no there is only demand offering. So that and that happened with electronics that happened with so many things.

Julie Bestry 52:30
I mean, there’s there’s no I mean, I live in a city, but there’s no Apple store here, I have to drive either to Atlanta or Knoxville, if I want to go to an apple store. Well, I have virtual clients around the country who live in rural areas where they would have to drive six, eight hours to get to an apple store to replace something. That’s a fairly insignificant issue. So again, people buy and rebuy from companies that they feel value them. And I think eventually, tech companies are going to have to take notice of this AI, whether we need to codify it in in law, we have to look at at what they’re doing in France, but whatever we have to do, we need to do something because down the road, what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:21
Right? Yep. And so, Sabrina is noting in the chat that we live in an era of consumerism. And I think it is very true that we are kind of constantly pendulum swinging between these, you know, these poles. And I hope that we can come to some center space here where we can balance out the consumeristic perspectives, which is that Yeah, we all like new and novel things, I’m not against us having new novel things, by no means I buy a lot of new gadgets. So don’t don’t count me as some Angel. But I am very, very cautious about how I I support and nurture those things. So that they’re not going back into the landfill after all is said and done. And you know, buying carbon offset credits for shipping, and all those things that just kind of help buffer the other side of that. And the other thing is, you know, I by day, I coached Digital Marketing for Small businesses. And I’m constantly educating them about the fact that the the new buyers, basically millennials, who are, you know, in their 30s, some of them are going to be turning 40. They are the dominant purchasers today, everyone younger than them, including some of the baby boomers, most of the Gen Z, all of them care about the environment as a mechanism of their purchase process. So they’re taking that into account when they’re buying, right, and the smallest minority of baby boomers even it’s like a 20 something percent or 30 something percent of them are considering that in their purchase process. And then the numbers just get dramatically higher as we go along. So if businesses want to stay in business, especially technology businesses, they’re going to have to start Thinking about how they’re taking that into account. So I just really hope that that’s that message is being pushed home. Alright, good. So what’s our next story? A little bit of Chrome? Goodness.

Augusto Pinaud 55:13
Chrome goodness, oh, yeah,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 55:15
the chrome profiles

Augusto Pinaud 55:17
have them in a different order than me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 55:21
Maybe them in a different order. But yes,

Augusto Pinaud 55:22
that’s fine. Um, so the next one comes from the chrome world. And he’s created space for yourself in Chrome. And, you know, I recently begin because of work testing the Chromebook in a more serious waste because of clients. And I have now the Chromebook and spaces, you know, it is really cool to be able to get into the Chromebook and then have these things, you know, especially what I do demo spaces that are just for that demo, that I can come back to my work, and then I can come back to do something else. So it’s been really, really cool to see, to see those things. And the article shows you how to create this, how to create these spaces. But it’s awesome to be able to see those profiles where you can come and now if you have, you know, work and you have family, and even if you have kids, you know that you let them play with the devices, you know, create a profile for them. So that way, they have their space when they come and do things without messing up with yours. So if you don’t know how to create a space on Chrome, please look at the article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:37
Fantastic, I’m really looking forward to this the way currently, Chrome, Google manages profiles in Chrome is, let’s say, not desirable for me. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how chrome profiles helps to manage those pieces. For example, you know, I have clients where I do enough work for them that I want to have a completely different profile for them. And now I can do that. And I’m really, really excited to be able to just segment those pieces away so that when I’m not working on it, I don’t want to see it. And that about that amount of productive focus, by being able to just default, that stuff, you know, via filter out of the way is going to be really, really powerful. So I’m looking forward to seeing that, let’s move on to the YouTube story. And then we can we can double back back to the actual order.

Augusto Pinaud 57:28
So the YouTube story is there is a video The link is in there is a YouTuber who took our Mac Mini and turn it into the first official or unofficial silicon, you know, with a new Apple silicon and one into an actual Mac, and not a Mac Mini, but an iMac. And it was really interesting to see, I wish I have that courage to do something like that. But it still it was really interesting to see, you know, we all know that Apple was affected us all of us by COVID, that that, you know, make the release of them one, you know, in the different conditions that are normal release will have been. But it’s really interesting to see people not waiting for them and really modifying the so it was I understand that’s an article from a geek to a geek, but it was really, really beautiful. To see that video.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 58:27
Yeah, I I’m not going to do this. I’ll never do this. So the building Google Assistant on your Windows machine that I got through and I was really excited. So so everybody knows I’ve been able to patch work together, you do have to have a Google Cloud account. As we noted in a couple episodes ago, when we talked about it. It is not for the faint of heart, right? It takes some work. This on the other hand, even with a brother who has a degree in electronics engineering, there is no way I’m tearing apart. Mmm one and putting and baking that into an iMac. But it was really actually interesting to watch. So

Augusto Pinaud 58:59
I wish to tell you that I learned that I’m that I’m intelligent like you and I learned that way. That’s not how it worked for me. Well, how it worked for me was my wife MacBook, pro many, many, many, many years ago, probably 10 or 15 years ago had the connector was loose. And I said sure I can fix that. tell that story. And though was my wife really mad on the other side of the table saying and now I look at her and say now honey, we drive to the Apple store and you pick a new MacBook and smile.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 59:35
Yeah, yeah. So Alright, a little bit of unfortunate news about Apple iPhones that are pre 14 point 14.1 right.

Augusto Pinaud 59:46
Yeah, but but we know there is right now and preferred so so the news is that the iPhone, the uncover release, a tool now that can hack jailbreak almost every iPhone that is on 14.3. Apple has a stop certifying 14.3 I believe right now in 14.4, I’m coming to release there is better versions of 14.5. So yes, it’s, it’s, that’s one of the reasons why not only Apple, Apple as well as Google, they have been really making big, big efforts into getting those upgrades happen. Even Microsoft now, it’s tracking your years ago was Apple tracking who upgrade to the latest version. And now, almost every software manufacturer is trying to get everybody to really be on the latest. And this is the reason as you computers are more and more in our hands, there is hackers who are trying to get in and you don’t have the latest, you are at risk.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:55
Yeah, so I’ll give the I’ll give the flip side argument here, which is that Apple should not have a proprietary system in which they are not allowing us to see the code to be able to then fix issues ourselves. And that is why I’m a proponent of the Android operating system, because I can see the code and if there’s something wrong, I can fix it. You know, the the, you know, it’s just an ongoing, you know, battle, I think, between hackers and the rest of us. And unfortunately, the hackers are always going to have a leg up on security researchers at Apple when we don’t use the global market to be able to combat in that sense. And Apple does a bang up job. I’m not I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t do a great job with their security. But unfortunately, in this particular case, where everything I know I said 14 point 14, but I meant 14.4. Everything, you know, prior to 14.4 now is susceptible to this, and there are going to be a group of people who do not update to 14.4 on older devices. And just so you know, if you’re running anything prior to 14.4, and a hacker gets a hold physically ahold of your device, that is a scary proposition. So that being said, let’s move on in the show. What’s next? Um, a lot of a lot of order now. So you have to, you have to tell me where we are.

Augusto Pinaud 1:02:13
Well, now, now that that happened, you create the order, but but that’s fine. So the next news we have, let’s go about outlook. And let’s talk about the new, okay, how Microsoft Outlook calendar is a logo is going to look a lot more like travel. And there are two things that were interesting about this. One, obviously, is the fact that they are changing the calendar to make it more, you know, like columns in Trello. But second, that they there is how much people is getting comfortable in the Kanban boards and how people is getting comfortable in things like Trello to the point that Microsoft is noticing, and trying to give you a familiar interface. And and that is important because it’s important to remember it Microsoft for many, many years. Okay, was the the leader on the interface. Okay, actually, when you move, you know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, when Apple calendar came out, people said Oh, but it’s not outlook. Okay. And now we’re looking Microsoft looking into the other developers into what they’re doing, and that it’s a fresh air for some people and for some eyes of designers.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:42
So there are a couple of really important productivity pieces here. One is that outlook has always been an all in one productivity system. And they are recognizing that people are having to utilize tools outside of outlook in order to be productive, especially in the enterprise world. And so they have decided to start going down this path of trying to bake in some productivity pieces into the tool. This first step was Microsoft to do I think purchasing Wunderlist and baking in the parts of of Wunderlist into the Microsoft to do app. Now they’re bringing that into they synchronize those at those tasks between Microsoft to do and outlook, you’re going to see more integration with teams, and Microsoft Project into teams as well. So planner, all of those pieces are kind of coming together the idea of the Trello board in there, I have a tendency to be a little bit skeptical here that this is going to really pan out to be as wonderful as Microsoft wants it to be, especially since this will not look good on mobile devices. And they are really terrible about synchronizing their applications across web, Windows, Mac and mobile. And so if they can figure that part out, and really bake a Kanban board based system into this into their interface, across the ecos system, this can be really powerful. Until that happens, I’m gonna, I’m gonna just earmark that as to be determined, because I just don’t I don’t trust Microsoft to be able to pull that off. If this was Apple, baking a Kanban board into, into into Apple notes or into calendar or into reminders, I would be paying attention to that. And Atlassian would be should be shaking in their boots. But in this particular environment, you know, as as well as Microsoft has done in the last few years with their cloud services. And otherwise, I just really don’t think that this is going to be useful to them.

Augusto Pinaud 1:05:36
And my mother told me if you have nothing nice to say, move to the next news. So the next news is about millions of VPN users.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:46
And this is just our general note in every show that you need to be very mindful of your security, if you want to be if you want to be unproductive, get hacked, you know, we need to really be conscious of the fact that everything we do now has some digital footprint. And, and yes, VPNs are great, but only if they are not taking your data and tracking your data. And so you need to pick your VPNs wisely. I’m a big fan of private tunnel, they may not be the fastest VPN in the world, but they are run by the open open VPN project. It’s a very nominal fee, you can have up to I think three or six different devices in an open tunnel account. And am I getting the name right open tunnel? Let me make sure I think I said private tunnel. Did I not think private tunnel? I’m gonna have my coffee this afternoon, clearly. But private tunnel is the application there run by the open VPN product project. Yeah, private tunnel. And again, it’s just about having the right VPN, if you want to be able to watch, you know, like my sister in law loves watching Korean shows. She’s She’s from South Korea. And so she likes watching Korean shows like she’s back home, and they’re in Portland. So it’s nice to be able to use a VPN to be able to watch those shows. Like you’re in another country. That’s all well and great. But you just have to make sure you have the right VPN is that are not tracking you. And clearly these VPN we’re tracking these people’s data. And now all of that data has been exfiltrated. To some hackers. That is not great. not great at all. So all right, on with the show, because Joe, let’s move on from my PSA about security.

Augusto Pinaud 1:07:23
No, I think I think your PSA about security. It’s, it’s really important. So our next news is I’m going to let you talk about this. Because, you know, it’s all about Google phones and, and the pixel so and the underwater photo. So I’m going to let you talk more about that I am the iOS guy. And my knowledge of Google is really, really limited. And I’m planning to keep it that way.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:07:53
Yeah, so so Android 11 is the current, you know, most mostly current operating system for Android. and so on 11, Google has basically brought out a couple of new features in between now, and when Android 12 scales out fully to everyone. So you know, once they launch it out of beta, and it goes into GA, into general release for folks, general availability, as we call it, GA, until then, they still release features. And one of the features was they, the few features are in the recorder application. So if you if you’re running a pixel device, you can use something called a recorder and recorder is an application. That is if you know what otter is the otter.ai. It’s basically an application that does that directly on your phone. So using some machine learning, it’s capable of recording and transcribing the audio directly on your device. So it’s secure. It’s not pushing anything to the cloud. But now they’re giving us a web app, and the ability to backup those recordings to the cloud. So I can have a recorded audio and the text that it has transcribed, backed up to my Google Drive account. So that’s a really great additional feature. I’m a big fan of Google recorder because I’m capable of recording myself. Just thinking out loud journal entries I do in recorder now so that I can just talk it out, and then copy and paste the text into my journaling app, and all kinds of great. So now if you go to recorder google.com you can go ahead and play search and share the audio files that you choose to upload via the backup functionality from recorder then in Google Fit using the cameras on the on the pixel devices you’re capable of now measuring your your heart rate. And I’m sorry, respiratory rate. And just oh no heart rate. Yeah, so you’re capable of measuring heart rate and respiratory rate using the the cameras on your pixel device. That’s pretty cool. I don’t see many people taking great advantage of that. If you have one of the crackin sports unit. smartphone housings, you’re now capable of connecting to the features in the Google camera app on pixel phones in order to be able to take underwater photographs. And it’s just giving more features to your Pixel phone inside of the Google camera app that otherwise wouldn’t be available to you before. And then the one that I’m really excited about, I’m gonna skip the pixel stand. Who cares about that, but the most important piece here is that within g board, you now have smart compose in select applications. So you might see smart compose inside of Gmail, when you’re typing something and it gives you some like light grayed out text. But if you hit tab, and then enters it, this is both in the mobile application as well as in desktop. And if you don’t see it, you can turn that on from the from the gear icon, click on Gear icon, cook all settings, and then you’ll you’ll find the smart compose feature there in the Compose sections. Well, now they are bringing smart compose to many other applications. So in essence, it can guess what you’re going to type. And then all you have to do is go ahead and either swipe the spacebar in order to, you know, accept it, and, and go on with your day. Really, really great to see this machine learning technology come into the system. And Yep, so those are the updates to the pixel. I’m really excited to see this, how this web and this web interface and the backup kind of works. I have two pixel phones. I did note to everybody that I am not. I’m not against having gadgets. And so I’m interested in seeing how the two different pixel phones actually work with the recorder like, will the microphones be better or worse? That kind of thing? I’m really looking forward to playing with them.

Julie Bestry 1:11:42
Is that so you have two phones so that you can talk to yourself?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:11:45
Yes, absolutely. I pick up one and I go Hi. And then I pick up the other and I go, Hey, no, it’s just it’s work, separation, work separation, I’m trying to create better, better separation between between work and so two different sides of my work. And so having the two phones helps me has been helping me do that so far.

Julie Bestry 1:12:04
Wouldn’t it be great if cell phones work more like the the ring master lines that we had in the 80s, where it rang one kind of ring? If it was for the work version of you, like the mom and dad and a different ring, you know, it used to be a different ring for the kids, you could have a different ringtone for for the people who know you, you personally somebody should work on that. Some somebody listening who’s who’s in in the wireless industry get on that for us

Augusto Pinaud 1:12:35
would actually actually Julie in if you work there, on the iPhone, again, I’m not Android guy. So I cannot say but on the iPhone, you can change the ringtone for people. So in my case, the ringtone is nothing. Okay? Do not make noise because I’m a believer that you need to earn the right to be loud on my phone. So that makes it really easy for me to get those noises,

Julie Bestry 1:12:59
right, you can get rid of your ringtone or you can do you have Do Not Disturb and have priority callers. But what I’m thinking is, if you had two different phone numbers that came in to the same phone, so that you had your business line, and your personal line, all coming in to the same piece of hardware. But you would know immediately, you know, so it’s like, if you’re getting if you’re in a business meeting, and you get another business call, well, you’re not going to answer it because you are prioritizing the client who’s right in front of you. However, if you’re in a business meeting, and the personal rings, and you and you can see that it’s your child’s school and there’s an emergency, you’d be able to address that. Or if you see it’s your mother in law, you can mute your phone and push it away.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:45
Yeah, so there are applications actually out there like line two, and some others that allow you to be able to have a soft phone, it’s not an actual, you know, hard a sim based line on the phone. And that’s really the problem that I’m having because I have multiple sim related to my one phone. This gets very complicated, but I have multiple Sims related to this phone. And I want to leave that personal. And I want the work stuff to be on the other. But because Google binds, I use Google Voice. And so Google binds to the to the sim number, you have to have that but you know bound to the sim number. I can’t overcome that physical limitation that Google’s providing. So the additional phone is giving me the workaround, in essence. But yeah, I would suggest anyone to check out line two, I know that GoDaddy also has a I forget what they call it, but it’s like they’re they have they also have a phone number you install an application and when someone calls, you then have a dedicated number for your business. And then then you’re controlling for separating the two of them. But I would I would love greater telecommunications companies to have that control built into the devices that would be a little bit you know I think see more secure than then otherwise. Alright, moving along with gousto. What’s our next story?

Augusto Pinaud 1:15:10
I’m sorry, I’m laughing at the other chat as Dr. Berg is saying, I know many people that they think they have earned the right to be loud, but haven’t. They’re just loud. I’m trying to hold it. But so true. Our next news is on Microsoft building a new web based desktop application. And

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:15:37
yes, so this is for Microsoft Teams. And and so Microsoft Teams currently runs on electron akin to Evernote and many other applications Trello. You name the applications, many of them run on the electron JS framework. And they are weighty applications are actually pretty, pretty large installs on most Mac and Windows devices that not withstanding Microsoft Teams gives me so many problems when I have Microsoft Teams meetings, I think I think I’ve had the the number of Microsoft Teams can count it on one hand, because every experience with it has been traumatic. And so I’ve just decided that no, I like this idea of a web app, it’s of course going to be more limited. And it’s for devices that are resource limited. And that’s great. And we’ll see what happens. But

Augusto Pinaud 1:16:29
we need to see what happened because this has just said I, my experience with teams is especially on the web. Yeah, technically, you can go on the web. And every time I go into web, something happened with the apps tend to work better. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:16:48
Alright, and with that we have reached the the more than halfway point, but this is the halfway point of our show. We’re going to come back and have more Julie Bestry, we’re going to have more stories, just a few more stories left in our stories of the week. And then we’ll get into new tools and our story of the week and our featured story of the week. So let’s hear from our sponsor this week, which is Productivity Voice see after the break?

Sponsor Voice Over 1:16:56
ceAre you feeling that you need help implementing a personal productivity system a goal or a habit like the weekly review? Do you need help making your current system more robust? Do you want a quick checkup of your current systems to ensure they are the best solutions for you? With more than 20 years of experience in technology, personal productivity and GTD productivity voice can help you review, renew, create or fine tune your system and your personal productivity. Visit productivity voice comm forward slash Anything But Idle for a free 30 minute consultation. Let’s achieve more enjoy more and feel more wins in the game of being productive. Head over to productivity voice comm forward slash Anything But Idle today. And now back to the show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:04
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m here with Augusto Pinaud, and our guest today, Julie bestiary from best results organizing. How’s it going, Julie?

Augusto Pinaud 1:18:14
Good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:16
Good, good. Good. All right, we’ve got a few more stories this week. These are the more heavy topics. So we’ll be we’ll be having a little bit of discussion here. And so Augusto, what is our next story this week?

Augusto Pinaud 1:18:28
Our next story come from a life of productivity and its title, where do goals come from? And it was a it was it’s a short article to read. But it was really interesting because I do a lot of work with with this. You know, and I and I have said many times that one of the most common problems I found is that when you ask people people tend to on overestimate what they are going to accomplish in the next 12 months, but underestimate what they’re going to accomplish in the next three years. You know, and it’s typical for me to ask a client, what are you going to do in the next 12 months and get this long list? How about the next three years under you see one of the two things on the bottom of that. And the other problem with that is what are their values what I call when I do coaching the where what are the things that don’t change in your life or that change in a really slowly with with the years because when you have those things clear. Now you can understand from where those goals and how those goals match those things. And suddenly, I see a lot of all over the place. You know what that produce is that one gold you evaluate one way one gold you evaluate with separate separate set of criterias and that will never help you to really have consistency as you move forward and give you that feeling of success and accomplishment.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:20:09
Yeah, so the article itself really talks about, in essence, what why you make goals in the first place. And many times there are these defaults that are running. But I consider values, right. So I consider a number of value as much as belief systems having values. And so I use it in a much broader perspective. And I try to keep it in that broad perspective. Because sometimes when people say values, they they mean different things. And so I tried to think about this from everything can be a value. And in essence, he’s saying, what are those default values that you have in your life, and sometimes they make our goals based on those defaults without challenging them. And if you can challenge those goals, those values and still feel like your goal is appropriate, then you’re, then you’re probably making a good choice in terms of having that goal. I feel like I feel like that’s the message that I got from the article. Is that what you’ve got, Julie?

Julie Bestry 1:21:06
I would agree. One of the things I took away, though, was that it reminded me of a blog post I’ve written a long time ago, you know, we look at SMART goals. And everybody talks about specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely time based. I started calling them smarty goals, you know, like smarty pants, it’s like, you need the Y at the end, they need to be your goals because society’s goals, your parents goals for you, your your values that, you know, that we look at, there are these defaults. I think one of the biggest defaults is money, that is attaining things. And a lot of people who have spent their entire lives attaining tangible things, or attaining status, aren’t necessarily happy. And it’s it’s that they were chasing, you know, they achieved exactly what they set out to get. But they didn’t stop to think, did they want what they were getting?I think a lot of us, you know where you’ve heard me talk about I’ve been very I had been reading last last month, the ADA Calhoun book, why we can’t sleep. And it’s primarily it’s sort of positioned as about the midlife crisis of Gen X women. But it’s really applicable to all Gen Xers and really all people that we were kind of sold a bill of goods that if we worked hard if we kept our nose to the grindstone and did these things that were set out, you know, you you go to college, you get a job, you get a better job, you do all the things, these things that you’ll be happy. But what if you don’t want the big house in the suburbs, or what have you want the house in the suburbs and you don’t want the job that makes you work 60 hours a week, or maybe you want the job that puts you on TV and podcasts and don’t want kids or you want kids and you don’t want all the rest? And we really don’t tend to stop and look at that I have a conversation with friends All the time. This is dating back to when we got out of college and I wrote it down after reading the article what I said is being smart doesn’t obligate you to being aspirational. What you want should only be what you want you don’t have to chase that and i’m sorry i i thought that was turned off he’s things happen

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:23:44
of course

Augusto Pinaud 1:23:44
Yeah. Yes, I read phone and that was Batman people we apologize but Batman needed to read.

Julie Bestry 1:23:54
My last word it was very well timed. That was very it was it was good time management as far as that goes.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:24:01
Alright going from goals to a little bit of life work balance, although the article talks about the problem of work life balance. What did you think about the article about work life balance and the problem what was the argument given by the author Augusto

Augusto Pinaud 1:24:19
said you were going to ask Julie to start when you throw me under the bus.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:24:24
So I

Augusto Pinaud 1:24:27
work life balance is like minimalism. Okay, you and I never throw you first on there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:24:33
So I’ll cover I’ll cover the big ticket items. And so this is this is by an lor lecan. And what she’s talking about here is as she says the problem with work life balance is that work just summarizing her bullet points here I’m breeding her bullet points that is she says work and life are not strictly separated. Your work is not necessarily just a job, your work, maybe just a job. You may not want to achieve work life balance, work life balance. assumes a narrow definition of work. And work life balance is a myth. And she basically covers all of the big ticket points of why when we talk about life, work balance, we are frequently talking about mythology. And that frequently brings up all kinds of triggers for people that make them feel like somehow they are wrong. And as I am want to always say, it’s that, let’s stop talking about how much people are wrong. And let’s talk about systems that help people actually grow. And if we stop talking about systems like this concept of work life balance, then we actually can start dealing with the issues of Yes, you may feel a pain point. And that will make you want to change as much as you can want to grow. And do this from a joyful perspective. Julie, what were your thoughts there regarding the article,

Julie Bestry 1:25:50
I thought the way it was broken down was was really important. Sometimes you have a job, that’s just a job. And, you know, another expression, my friends and I, when we, when we worked on in television used to have to remind one another, when things got rough, it’s just a job, it’s not your life. Because especially in your 20s, and 30s, when you are still, you know, taking all of your building blocks to create a life, your job is the biggest part. And it can feel like it is your entire life. This is why historically, when you didn’t have a work life balance when men got to retirement age, their identity, and once they stepped over that, that dividing line, they turned 65, they got the gold watch, and they retired, their identities were gone, women had previously experienced this, with the empty nest syndrome, you know, men don’t usually worry about the emptiness. When you have a job that is all consuming in your life. It’s it’s often Okay, it’s alright that I don’t have, you know, friends or health or a night out or anything. Because look how successful I am that I’m doing XYZ in my career, until what happens and, and the, you know, the business world tanks, and then your, your, your company downsizes everybody, and there is no job, what happens to your identity. So whatever you’re doing, it’s like what Ray said, whatever you embrace, is going to be what’s important to you, okay? Whether it’s what you want to be important to you is, is another thing, so you’re going to have to you’re going to have to take the skill, you know, learn the skills, we’re all going to have to, to look at our lives to have that self knowledge and say, okay, for this week, or for this portion of my life, I’m going to focus on my career, but it’s not going to be the only thing I do, I’m still going to have elements of working on my health working on my friendships. As guys, you know, that it’s, it’s, it’s hard to make friendships after school once you get into your 30s and beyond. But because men and women make friendships differently, which is a huge part of that work life balance. Women tend to build these rich, robust relationships according to research based on discussion and experience. And men’s relationships tend to be more based on activities. So women build these, these rich, robust relationships. And men tend to be friends with their wives, their wives, friends, husbands and their kids, friends, parents, and do activities with them. But there’s that lack of depth so that if you moved to another city, you don’t have that relationship anymore. Guys, guys don’t tend to call and chat with each other on the phone for an hour. Women at least Gen X women still talk on the telephone and have a little bit more of that work life balance. And again, it’s a terrible term because it makes you think you’re you’re looking at a scale or a seesaw. And we need to come up with a better metaphor.

Augusto Pinaud 1:29:19
And that’s where my problem comes into term because people tend to think they need it need to balance and it doesn’t I mean it’s okay to be on a period of your life where you are Oh work and or your own life and you are all whatever, what, what is important is that you are clear on the why on the why you are doing that work, why? And you are conscious of that balanced or unbalanced or, or whatever you wanted to call it, you know, it’s okay. To that your life and your work is is the same and it’s okay that you’re work, it’s and you’re extremely passionate about it all that is, okay. What is important in this case is what worked to your Why? What gets to that? Why what resonates with that? Why? You know? And, and I see it in people who, well, I need to get the new job. Why? Well, because I’ve been three years in this. And so what is what you want, you know, you want, you need a new job, why do you need to have you consider and I tell these two people a lot what’s working before you go and look for the new, shiny object, figuring out what’s working in the current because I see so many people changing from A to B, and discover or now I miss all this. And some of the things are silly. I was working with somebody pretty senior and one of his criterias was as a Microsoft Surface. We may laugh about and he said, Oh, no, no, no, if I’m, if I need to move to this, this thing need to come with me. And if the other Corporation cannot offer me this same technology, I’m not interested is one of the was one of his criterias. But I mean, it sounds silly. But that level of clarity. And that level of know the why and what you want, it is really, really important. And sadly, most people don’t have it. And what they’re looking at is a way in which I will put two aces on one side and to be from the other one on somehow their balance, the balance is relevant only in regards to your why and nothing else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:31:50
Fantastic. And so we have one final story, before we go to our tools of the week. And this story actually ends up being a video that I will embed or Augusto will embed one of us will embed in the show notes itself. So it’s a YouTube video, it was by the Microsoft work labs team, they were having a discussion around basically research that they’ve been doing at the at the work labs program around virtual work. And of course, one of those things that that’s why they did videos called you know, you should you should have a virtual commute was this idea of helping to establish routines, helping to establish productivity, behavioral interventions that can really help make people more productive. And of course, so talking about that from a Microsoft player, but I really found the conversation, very thought provoking in the sense that it really made you think about how you set up your virtual environment and how you actually work throughout your day. Again, from my perspective, routines are far more important than habits. And so in that sense, when they talk about the virtual commute, it’s about establishing a routine, and helping you be more productive by virtue of that scaffolding, the things that are anchored to your day, that will happen, and therefore you can actually take advantage of them. And so I just thought the conversation was really quite interesting. And yeah, I really recommend that you go ahead and watch it, you know, after the show. So that being the case, Augusto, did you have any comments? And then yeah,

Augusto Pinaud 1:33:20
and actually, I will keep it short. But I think it’s important that people review these behaviors, often, especially with all the changes that we are having, because the routines has changed. And we have established emergency routines. And those emergency routines now have been turning into more permanent routines, evaluate them and see what is working and what is not working for you and what needs to be changed or added because it is really important. And yes, we all need them.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:33:54
Absolutely. And so with that we have reached the end of our normal headlines for the week, we still have new tools of the week, and then our feature story before we wrap. And so new tools of the week, of course is our time to talk to you about personal productivity tools and services that we think you might like a gusto and I come across many personal productivity tools and services each week. And so in this segment, we get to share a couple of them with you. And so in honor of International Women’s Day, and actually one of the women who is in the running for the top 10 female productivity experts is I wanted to just give a hat tip to Penny’s anchor, she has a an assessment called the P 10. Productivity accelerator, you can take the assessment and really understand where you are with regard to your own productivity. And so you should definitely check it out. It is it is at p 10. dot app I believe it is and I’m trying to get over to the screen. There we go. And so if you go to that P 10 dot app, you can go ahead and learn more about the assessment. But in essence, you go ahead and evaluate yourself and then it gives you really great ability For you to be able to track then your success toward these particular areas that that Penny has identified. And so a technologist as CEO, and really great person all around has been on the show here. Actually, she was on the show, the last time Julie was here on the show with us. And so you might not have recognized because she was in a Halloween costume, but but she is a serious technologist and a serious productivity expert. And so just really, I wanted to let everybody know that the P 10. app is out there, the productivity accelerator app is available to you. And so check it out. Augusto, what is your new tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 1:35:38
So the new tool it’s an application for it’s a widget for iOS called What are you doing now. And you know, with all the distractions with this pandemic has been increasing. So it is important sometimes to write down what is what you’re doing. And this application allows you to write one thing and say, a widget, and you can write one thing. So it is really cool for when you get that interruption. And you can come in a widget really quick and write a writing proposal. Okay, so when people leave, okay, now you can come back to do that, you can come back to that to that thing, a piece of paperwork, but the reality is most of us are glued to the device. So it is really, really useful to have that short reminder for when you get stuck, or when you get distracted or when you and instead of coming back to Okay, what is what I was doing when I got interrupted and waste, you know, significant amount of time.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:36:36
Fantastic. Wonderful. And now, Julie, what’s your tool this week?

Julie Bestry 1:36:41
Yeah, I, I sort of I cheated. Since I was a woman on the call. I cheated. I have to but they’re related. So when I find out about a lot of posts, when I decide what a lot of apps, when I decide what I’m going to write a blog post about last week, I was talking about accountability, I wrote this blog post count on accountability, five productivity, sport support solutions, and I was speaking generally about, you know, getting accountability partners, groups, working with professionals using apps and events. And the thing about accountability partners is you don’t always want to count on a friend or a colleague, sometimes you want somebody who is disinterested in your life. So you’re getting that feedback, you’re getting the the the accountability of working with some with someone, this notion is that productivity is boosted anywhere from 200 to 300%. When you do co working and I know Ray, you are all about co working. So I know you appreciate that. So focus mate was my my first. So what I love is that you can go in you sign up, you have an idea of what you’re going to work on. And for 15 minutes, you get assigned a partner. And basically you’re seeing one another just like on a zoom or a FaceTime or something, you have somebody to set you know, it’s sort of like that, that virtual go desk partner in in college where you had somebody sitting across the desk, and it’s body doubling what we call in professional organizing that notion of body doubling, you’re both doing the work simultaneously, you’re not necessarily having to interact with one another. But there’s this external accountability regarding you’re externalizing your own goals, because you do better when you are doing something for someone else. We’re terrible at accomplishing things for ourselves. But when we have somebody else, somebody else has a vested interest in us even in a very theoretical way. This is great. So I liked I liked focus mates approach. It was very straightforward. It was very simple. And then related to that, because we were at this this task management conference, I ended up writing a blog post that went live this morning, about FFO accountability. I called it flow and flow accountability. And one of the things that we’ve seen is that people have zoom fatigue having to deal especially now where we can’t be together. And we’re staring at the computers all the time. Our eyeballs are just tired of this. So I looked at instead of our eyes, what if we had an auditory way of feeling like we were around other people without actually having to talk to them. And so there were a number of options in today’s blog post. But this what you’ve got up on the screen sounds of colleagues is just wonderful. You can use the sliders to as you can see adjust everything from the coffee machine which is much fancier coffee machine sound than any of you probably had in your offices before you went remote. The sounds of people the printer the rain on the window, I will warn you however, you probably are going to want to keep the office dog it’s a very barky winter Office dog. And yet sometimes you get to hear somebody whispering Good, good boy. But the office dog gets a little tiresome after a while. And I would also just like in real life, turn the slider for the telephone down, because it’s it’s kind of an annoying phone. This was put together by a Swedish ad agency, in combination with a sort of recording studio that works with the ad agency to come up with these sounds. It’s very simple, there’s nothing fancy, you can also click on the Spotify. And instead of having this playing all day, in your background, you can get almost like an album. Remember, record albums, you get what’s called a playlist of different types of office sounds. So you can get what there’s one called cocktails, cocktails, and typewriters. And those are things are about anywhere from two to five minutes of very specific office sounds so that you can get a sense of the atmosphere that you like. So you can either get accountability, actual accountability, working with other people, or you can create an environment that gives you some foe accountability so that you can get into flow.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:41:13
Fantasy, fantastic. Thank you, Julie, for the two tools of the week. And so those are our new tools of the week. And that leads us to our discussion today on the featured story this week. And this is all about really a functionality is quite plain. So Apple has created a facility for being able to automatically transfer iCloud photos to Google Photos. And what I wanted us to talk about was, Why the heck is Apple doing this? Why did they decide to build this functionality into it? And what productive uses Do we have around this tool? And so who wants to kick off the conversation of Why? Why does Why did Apple do this?

Julie Bestry 1:41:59
Well, for my I don’t know why they did it. I know why I might want it. You know, you either get you know, some some free iCloud space or 99 cents a month, or then you jump to this big expensive thing. Well, if you’ve ever been on vacation, I was on vacation in, in in Europe. And I ran out of space because the photos that I was taking, or were taking up so much of my iCloud space. And so I had to offload some apps and sort of do that on the fly. I think because and somebody who’s who’s who’s got more experience in in AI, cloud photos could could tell me otherwise. But if we can have our photos in iCloud, but maybe iCloud photos, but not necessarily have them on the phone and taking up space, we could use our phone a little better. I think sometimes being able to sort of have yet another backup have another space to move it to for functionality. I don’t know why Apple’s doing it other than people wanted it. But it makes it a lot easier. Because if you ever had to take your photos from your phone, and if you wanted, it’s like, Okay, I need to get them from my phone. But back them up. It’s like, okay, there’s Amazon photos, there’s iCloud photos, it can be really overwhelming to have a switch that you can flip is going to make people happier, and Apple likes to do things that make people think they’re going to be happier because of apple. It doesn’t seem like a fine, financially advantageous decision for them. But

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:43:47
yeah, I’m right with you. I think this is a backup utility solely and purely there’s there’s no other note, there’s no other cost justification for Apple to try and reduce its cloud services. And this is not a way for you to offload data in some way, shape or form. This was that it gives you a bit of safety in numbers. That is if you can place your photos in Google easily. Apple is not going to lose business to Google Photos. In essence, you know, people, people are either Apple fans or Google fans, they’re living in one of those ecosystems and they’re going to stay there. But if I can back up my data outside of the system, just in case, you know, literally all of the photos I own today are digital. And so every memory I own, that is outside of my own brain is in a digital format. And for me that’s in a Google environment. But I’ve made the decision to back those up to another service. So that should you know I can somehow lose access to my Google account. There’s any number of things that can go wrong and in the digital ID world that I could lose access. I want to have a backup. And today, Apple really didn’t give you a really great way to do that. I think you’re absolutely right truly that Apple just decided, you know what, just for convenience for customers to be able to do a backup, this is available only in a few countries. So just so that everybody is aware this is available in Australia, Canada, the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. And, and it can take several days for that to take place, you also must have two factor authentication turned on your Apple ID account. And of course, have a Google account, you have to have a Google Photos account in order for that to do that. And so your iCloud account may have, you know, 20 3040 100 gigabytes of data, you also have to have a Google Photos account with a Google one plan that can fit that data. So it’s not like this is free. You know, I guess, if you had under 15 gigabytes worth of photos that will transfer and the free plan to Google Photos. But if it’s over that, then you need to have a paid plan in order for that to that transfer to take place.

Julie Bestry 1:46:02
And photos are the one thing that people cannot bear to lose no matter even if you’re running a business in your computer. You know, if you’re using the belt and suspenders approach, if you’ve got your computer, your local backup and your cloud backup, you’re happy. I don’t know anybody who’s happy with just the belt and suspenders approach. Everybody I know who really cares about their photos? Has like five or six complete backups everywhere? Because your photos or your memory when No, it is it is proof that you lived your existence?

Augusto Pinaud 1:46:38
Yeah. And I think there are a couple of interesting things. And one, you know, that Craig mentioned is there is this mindset, that the apple everything Apple is expensive, and I’m not saying they’re cheap, but but but show that, you know, hey, fine, we’ll let you move your pictures, you know, to Google and discover that it’s not as cheap as you thought it was. And that is a good thing. You know, you could do that similar things like that with Dropbox for for a while, you can install Dropbox and tell Dropbox to backup all your pictures on your iOS was the Mac. So I think it gives the users the ability to feel, okay, my photos are so important, as Dr. Buck is sharing, let me give you many options that you can back them up outside, so that way if something happened to them, it’s not my responsibility. Now, it is also yours that decided to take advantage of these things. And, you know, we have heard horror stories of people losing, you know, their pictures for not having backup. So being this is the kind of news that will make a lot of noise for regular people. So we’ll give them an option to maybe learn about backups, make backups of their pictures, so that at least that’s what I hope.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:48:01
Yes. And so continuing on that vein, just note that even if you do use the service, the smart albums, live photos, your photo stream content, some of the metadata, and some raw photos will not be transferred, it covers a whole wide variety of formats. So most photos will easily move over most videos will move over. But there are some raw photos that says I couldn’t see a specific, you know, reasoning why one photo wouldn’t or otherwise there may be size limits associated because raw photos can be fairly large. But some photos will will not be available, some will so so we’ll transfer so just know this is not going to transfer. It’s not like it’s not just copying and pasting everything. It’s selective in that in that regard. So just be be mindful of that. All right, that brings us Oh, Julie, there you are, Julie.

Augusto Pinaud 1:48:58
I wonder what happened was, you

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:49:00
know, no, I you know, sometimes people leave the stage to sneeze or whatever I got.

Julie Bestry 1:49:06
I got kicked out.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:49:11
You got you got the proverbial digital hook. But we have reached the end of the show. I can’t believe it. It’s flown right by Julie, I really want to thank you for joining us. And, you know, the throughout the entire show and your contributions and I’m looking forward to next episode when we are talking about the quote unquote winners of the top 10 female productivity organization and technology experts. Well,

Julie Bestry 1:49:38
I was thrilled to be here. I love hanging out with you guys. It’s like we have we hung out all weekend at the summit. So this was perfect.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:49:46
And how can folks keep up to date with the great work that you’re doing? Well,

Julie Bestry 1:49:52
I would say that the best way to do it is go to my website, which is my name. It’s Julie best street.com and I am buy cheap to go to my paper doll blog. I don’t just blog about paper, but paper and information. And, you know, paper includes those little green pieces of paper and even when they’re red, recognize digitally, everything in our lives comes down to that kind of information. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:50:17
wonderful. Thank you so much, Julie.

Augusto Pinaud 1:50:19
Thank you. Thank you, Julie.

Julie Bestry 1:50:20
Thank you. Oh,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:50:23
she said, Thank you for having you. And we thank her. Thank you. And so Augusto. That’s it. Thank you very much as always for joining me here on Anything But Idle.

Augusto Pinaud 1:50:35
So what’s fun?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:50:36
All right, everybody. If we have missed something, a story, feel free to head over to Anything But Idle. Basically, everything that you will need is on Anything But Idle comm so if we missed a story, if you need to comment or ask a question about a particular show, or a particular story that we covered, feel free to head over to Anything But idle.com there on the episode page, you can leave a comment or question. Additionally, you will also find show notes inside of every episode. So those will include links to all of our stories. As I noted, the video from Microsoft will embed it directly there in the show notes, tools of the week, extra stories that we didn’t get to cover in the show, those are all caked in there. We also have text transcripts available available for PDF download, where you can actually read it directly on the page, just click on that Read More link, and it’ll pop it out. And so you can listen and read along with the transcript. If this is your first time watching the live stream, feel free to hit the subscribe button. That’ll give you notifications when we go live in the future. You can also click the thumbs up icon. And that helps us to bring new personal productivity enthusiasts to the show and into the fold. And so thank you for doing that. You can also subscribe or follow. It’s a free option to be able to follow our podcast in your favorite podcast app. So you can find that after the fact if you are not joining us live during the show. I know many of you listen to the show after the fact. So thank you for doing that. And so with that, we’ll see you all next time here on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.