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It’s been said that Productivity is a form of Art, so we’re going to chat a bit about art, productivity and being productive, then on to the productivity and technology news of the week. This week’s featured story covers T-Mobile big 5G Home announcement.
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In this Cast | How Art Impacts Your Personal Productivity
Headlines & Show Notes | How Art Impacts Your Personal Productivity
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
13 Ways to Be A More Productive Artist
iOS 14.5 Adds New Siri Voices, No Longer Defaults to Female
Todoist have updated their plans, and renamed Premium to Pro
Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences
Day One Journal Text Messaging via SMS | Day One
Samsung launches ‘iTest,’ a new web app for turning your iPhone into a Galaxy device
All-New NOOK 2021 Lenovo Tablet Unboxing
Google is quickly working to integrate Neverware CloudReady into Chrome OS 90
7 Exciting New Features Coming in Chrome 90
Chromebook Files app adds an option to prevent synchronization over mobile data
How Employers Could Be Spying On You While Working From Home [VIDEO]
How to Beat Procrastination – Harvard Business Review
NY Times: We have all hit a Wall
TechCrunch: Note-taking app Mem raises $5.6 million from Andreessen Horowitz
The Guardian: The evidence is in: working from home is a failed experiment
New Tools of the Week
FEATURED STORY OF THE WEEK
T-Mobile officially debuts 5G home internet with no data cap or contract from $60/month – 9to5Mac
T-Mobile launches wireless home internet (The Verge)
Announcements
CNBC: Supreme Court rules in Google’s favor in copyright dispute with Oracle over Android software
How to Schedule a Meeting in Microsoft Outlook
Cisco Webex Updates Put People Over Productivity – SDxCentral
WhatsApp begins testing chat migration between iOS and Android
Woven is shutting down on May 28, 2021
Raw Text Transcript |
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 0:04
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. 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. Today’s show is Episode 53 how to how art impacts your personal productivity. And we’re recording this on April 12 2021. Each week we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. But before we do that, we usually have a theme for the show. And today’s theme is all about how art impacts your personal productivity. And so I’m just going to open this up to dialogue here and go with a question around the idea of what do you think about kind of the discussion around the art and science of personal productivity? I’d like to talk a little bit about how artists approach personal productivity as well. But I know that we have frequently this this discussion about kind of the art of personal productivity, even getting things done Subtitle by David Allen, the book is subtitle is called the art of stress free productivity, there’s there seems to be this art form around the principles of productivity, how do you kind of think about it from that perspective, the art and science of productivity?
Unknown 1:17
You know,
Augusto Pinaud 1:20
for many years, personal productivity is sold in one perspective, that really when you get in, it’s an art, it’s a you know, I I have said, or I have said often that productivity is nothing else, there are a set of principles, tricks and habits and using technology to support it. But those principles, those tricks, those habits, they have a certain heart, they have a certain form. And what is even better is they have almost a unique form, because not what works for me will work for everybody else. And it is one of the most beautiful things out of this, you know, there is not a okay you do ABC and your life will be fixed. Now, it’s way more complex than that. That’s what make it a lot more close to heart than not, you know, this did last week, I have been working with this client for for a while. And we reach a big aha moment that came out of something that has zero relationship with when we were working, what we talk what he do what I do. But suddenly this serendipity happened, and that thing came and it produced or generate a big aha for this person that cannot be produced other than art, you know, when if you disconnect from productivity, when is the last time that you look at something and you simply got lost in the time just admiring that thing? and productivity, the art of productivity? Yes, it has a lot of scientific backups, it has a lot of repetitive things, you have a lot of technique. But the end result is an art. Because it will depends on not only what it is, but where do you want to go? How do you want to get there? And what is the way that you want to accomplish? And all of those that combination that makes that recipe at the end of the day? It’s a form of art.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:44
Yeah, I would agree in in, in large part to what you’re saying, you know, I think about productivity, from the perspective that it’s actually a meshing of art and science in order to be able to improve on one’s personal productivity. And the reality is, is that for any artist, I tend to call them performers in my world, because we know what performances when it comes to, you may have a performance review, you have a performance evaluation, that kind of thing we think about performance. And the reality is, is that when we think about performance, we understand it from a number of different perspectives, you know, or stages. And those different stages are that you learn some core amount of material that allows you to be able to get started. So there’s a learning process to begin with. We then practice those skills, we have experience with those skills, and ultimately we master those skills. And we perform those skills. And it’s through that process of going through that that arc of, of going from learning to performance, that which is the art of productivity, the science of productivity are really the enduring principles that underpin why that works, why certain things are the way they are as it relates to productivity. And to be quite honest, science ends up being the thing that we know, the it’s not the least we know about productivity, but it’s the things that we’re having An ongoing dialogue about because we are in an ever changing conversation about what we know about what’s going on under the hood. For example, we can define procrastination. But it’s not until science looks at it, that we then understand the underpinnings of why we procrastinate. we procrastinate because of, you know, a psychological reason for procrastination, which means that we need science to be able to bear out the truth of what and why we actually procrastinate. So we can start to learn the more soft reasons, the behavioral reasons why we procrastinate. And so it’s actually quite interesting to me to think about the art and science of productivity, because it tends to be that with the art side, the performance side, we actually know how to perform quite frequently. But on the science side, it’s the things that we need to learn about the most, so that we can apply those things to the art form, which is production. And I wanted to just switch gears, then to the conversation of the idea of being an artist, and being productive as an artist. So there was a really great article on life hack, I’m sorry, it’s the abundant artists calm, and I’ll put a link to this in the show notes for you, you know, after the afterward, and the the abundant artists is all about teaching you how to basically sell art, but the article itself, the the article really provides these really great set of tenants for being a productive artist. And, you know, as I have frequently stated about being an artist, being a writer myself, you know, I do a lot of writing, although I’m in the nonfiction space, I’m not in the creative non nonfiction space, I find that no matter what type of art you’re producing, you know, not just a performance artist, but producing art that is, you know, that’s some kind of tangible art. The idea behind production doesn’t change, you know, you have to be able to learn how to produce content, and producing content requires some structural productivity principles. Augusto, I know, you are a writer. And so as an writing artist, how do you think about the idea of production of producing in that sense?
Augusto Pinaud 7:14
You know, and you pick a bad example, because writing is a bear, as you know, and nobody likes to write, okay, everybody likes to have written, okay, whoever thinks that you write for love, nobody writes for love, okay, everybody loves to have read. But, but at the end of the day, you know, there is more people who go through their own texts, thinking how bad the text is, you know, and we are terrible critics that said, we are terrible critics also in productivity, you know, the most productive people that I know if you will ask them, okay, they will never tell you how productive they are. Okay, they tell you how productive they are, how much they can improve, you know. And David Allen used to say, you know, the people who need this the most is the people the people who need this the most are people who are not coming to the training, the people who needed the least are the people who are trying to see how far they can toss that rock and and that’s part of that art component. It’s how what can you improve? What can you discover what can use stylish that are going to allow you to make it is your better, more fun, or last longer?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:47
Yeah, for me, I have always taken to the Stephen King model, which is produce art every day. Stephen King is very notable for sitting down and writing for set hours every day, he just produces words. And the goal, hopefully, is that with a great deal of practice, and that is sitting down and doing the work, he’s capable of becoming a better artist. And I think for all of us, we can take that to heart in the productivity space, to become better at whatever we’re doing requires us to sit down and do it every day. And if it’s the most important thing that you want to be doing, then you have to be doing it every day. And so it’s something that I have, I have certainly tried to hold on to and lately I have not been but I would like to get back to that place where I am sitting down and writing every day because if you write every day, you’re just going to produce more art and more art means that you have more options to pick from when it comes to putting that art out into the world. And so that’s the one that’s the one thing I can offer to any artists no matter where you are, is that if you’re producing on a daily basis, it becomes a part of your routine and and that becomes something that you can I truly feel good about which is no matter what the quality of the art is, the the art will get better over time as you produce more of it. And that’s the most productive part.
Augusto Pinaud 10:11
Well, I think you said something critical in there, and is the word practice. No practice of productivity practice of writing practice of art, in general, is something that is never done. And on your own. You don’t find any great artist on history that says, Oh, um, I don’t need to practice I just produce No, no practice is big, big is a big component. If you look on sports, you know, practice is a big component, if you any of these things that has a big component of art on it. The practice is a massive, massive component, you are never, you know, when you think you get there, in the productivity world, you will discover all there is so much to go on. When you get to that next place, there is so much to go on. The reason for that is the practice. And the reason it’s you need to come and practice every day and remind yourself of the victories and remind yourself of, again, the principles, the tricks, and the habits that you have used in the past to be successful. And as I said, technology’s only use it to support it. But technology, change and evolve so fast that sometimes we need to look at those principles, those tips, those tricks, those habits, and how technology has affected them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:37
Absolutely. Well, with that we have talked about art and its impact on productivity, and of course, how artists can be more productive. And like I said, that article that I’m putting in the shownotes, it’s really well worth checking out, it’s a really good article, it just covers some really good pieces for artists, if you are thinking about producing art, if you’re an artist who’s feeling any level of struggle, I feel like those suggestions, the 13 or so items that are suggested, I think are just really good to think about in totality. And so with that, that brings us along to our stories of the week, a gousto. What is our first story this week,
Augusto Pinaud 12:16
the only word I have about that is Jarvis. So 14.5 will add new voices, and no longer will be a female default voice. And I know Apple is not going to let us customize any voice that we want or anything. But I would love to have Jarvis on my phone.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:44
Oh, my my my quandary there is that on Mac OS, you’re able to change the different types of voices in the accessibility settings. Siri has always held to only the female voice. And so I’m presuming they’re just expanding and extracting the voices from their accessibility settings into Siri. And I’m hoping that’s the case because I actually really like some of the voices that they have any accessibility features. So I’m hoping that that’s how it’s going to roll. I’ve actually changed my, in the Google Assistant world, you can you can change the google assistant to be a wide variety of voices. I’ve changed it to the Australian female voice. And this is really, I mean, it’s comical. But the reason that I’ve changed it to the female Australian voice is because in the morning, when I asked the google assistant to turn on my coffeemaker, she says Keurig really funny. And it just makes me it just makes me laugh when she turned when I asked her and she says I’m turning on the Keurig it’s just a fun way to start my morning. And so I’ve decided that I like the Australian accent just generally. And it’s a it’s a nice way to wake up in the morning to that but fun unique pronunciation but either way I think more options and choices in this particular category I think makes a lot of sense moving on what’s our next
Augusto Pinaud 14:08
Oh to do is came and now change announced that they are going to change their their plans and they’re going to be named different are really trying to rename and rebrand what the premium
Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:24
channel there is no longer a premium. It’s now pro right they’ve changed they crave created a pro.
Augusto Pinaud 14:30
Yes, there are now two what what used to be the premium now it’s called a pro and they’re changing all those names, offering things. The free version now has more capabilities that were not available for the free version before. So they’re trying to there have been a lot of critiques about the paid on the free version that I have. Honestly, not understand. I think The free version was good enough but now they’re offering offering even more. What I hope now is that now they come and do even more for that pro version but only time will say
Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:18
Julie bestiaries in the chat hi Julie. She says her Siri is an Irish male. And and and my yeah the Australian females it’s like I can’t I can’t do it justice but that you just have to in the Google Assistant you just have to change it to the Australian female voice and and ask it to say Keurig well you can say it’s there’s no other way to do it to describe it. I am not a voice person. So anyway it just makes me laugh It really does. It makes me giggle. Just thinking about it. Alright, moving right along from to dust free and pro to now some more Apple notes
Augusto Pinaud 15:58
Apple Apple had this fantastic thing called find my okay was initially get to get find my phone then extended to Find My iPhone, my headphones, Mike Mac my everything. But he has always been closed. And a lot of people have criticized that there was a lot of people having these tags. And there have been rumors for the last year or so that Apple is coming with their own version of tags and how that is going to damage the existing competition. So what we can get is on lieu of those tax Apple tax coming in Apple has decided to open their their network and they start with one that I love that is a bike I don’t have a bike but but if I will have a bike I will have a GPS into that thing, especially you know how much they lost. The other one was Belkin who has been for longest time a partner close ties with Apple now you can find your Belkin Urban’s and the other one was a company that I particularly have not heard about them before this announcement, and it’s called chipolo, and chipolo. It’s basically a tracker, similar to what they’re saying the apple version will be. And now you can find your chipolo it has a really nice name into your find my network. But that said, It is really cool to start seeing Apple opening to this. And yes, we understand there is nothing on the good heart of them is so they can cover for other things. But the expansion to an accessory world into one interface for me as a user, it’s really positive.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:42
Yeah, it makes total sense that they they open this up to partners, I’m shocked that they didn’t open this up to tile or maybe tile chose not to make this partnership with them. It makes total sense for tile to do it. I mean, they’re gonna have to, but it’s clear that Apple has an advantage here, there are way more Apple devices out there in the world. And there are tiles, and this I’m not sure this ends tiles business, but it certainly clamps down on their future. I’m I’m concerned for the business now. And they’ve they’re great product, and they do a great service. But you know, with Samsung, working on their own version in the galaxy brand. And now with Apple working on, there’s that high end market that’s going to buy these types of, you know, tracking devices, they’re really going to get soaked up by those two major parties. And we’ll see if Google comes out and decides to do something like this at some point in the future, because it does make a lot of sense for people who are who are buying all of these products to want to be able to track it. And again, with the Android platform, you’re very easily capable of tracking any Android device. You know, I can I can see where in the world exactly every one of my Android devices are. And that’s helpful, especially when you know you leave a laptop in the coffee shop and you’re like, Oh gosh, where is it, you can just log in and find it. You’ll now be able to deal with all kinds of, of tracking attached devices. And I think that’s going to be really useful to people
Augusto Pinaud 19:00
Yeah, not only not only that, my parents are old, my in laws are old. And we they have we have give them iPhone so we can track where they are and and they know they’re aware of this, but it’s really comfortable when you call them and they’re not picking up the phone. And you can go open the thing and see okay, they are in there or not home or they are here they are moving or what is happening. So I think this use of technology. It’s more and more critical for especially as for my parents, for example is a fantastic piece of technology.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:33
Absolutely. All right, moving right along.
Augusto Pinaud 19:36
Well, now you can vent to your text application to your journal application via text message. So I put on my favorite my favorite application for journal day one just released a journal that you can text. So it’s a new feature where you can use your text message and text things to your journal application as entering so if you need to vent in Send it to somebody send it to the journal, you can now use the text pay for the fee and be happy. But it is really cool. They’re trying to make easier for people to get into the habit of journal journal is not necessarily easy, but it’s incredibly powerful. So making and giving people more ways to access to journal and to give them, you know, more entries, I believe is a powerful thing. So I am really excited for they want that released this little feature,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:34
I’ll play the devil’s advocate here, SMS is not secure, I would not be texting, I would not be texting my journal entry. I don’t even say anything that would be all that weird or like, you know, somehow, you know, incriminating in my journal entries, but I still wouldn’t feel comfortable with texting my journal entries into my journal app. But, you know, again, I think that if you are trying to use day one for, say, tracking things, you know, you want to like track some kind of habits, or you want to put things in there as you’re making your way through the day, or they’re coded messages. So no one else would know what they are. I think that’s okay. But we’re having I mean, it’s weird to go back to SMS for me, when you have, you know, you have the Apple Watch app, you’ve got the you’ve got the app on your phone, you’ve got the devices all around you you’re capable of track tracking in, I’m really curious why they chose to add SMS as a capture, you know, facility in all of the things they could have captured with good on them. But I don’t think I’m ever going to be like capturing via SMS, my task manager of choice. Remember, the milk has had the ability for you to text tasks into Remember, the milk has had it for many, many years? And I never would use that. Because I was always like, Yeah, it’s great that they have the the facility but I don’t want to use text to add tasks to my system. I guess at one time when you were limited in that sense. Alright, moving right along. What’s our next story this week?
Augusto Pinaud 22:03
Well, I sent a text message early today to our girl walks, telling him about the screenshot of my new device, a galaxy device. Of course, the only way I was going to use galaxy device is with the eye test application. Samsung is launching basically a web app that turns your iPhone into a galaxy device that you can play and discover. It’s technically only available on the New Zealand but because a website, you can test it anywhere. So if you are curious, what is experience on a Samsung device, you can download the app. I’d side of the story. Why do you want to do that? It’s a surprise for me, because if anything goes wrong, now what you give the impression is, oh, this experience is not great. You give me one more reason not to leave my device. But Samsung things to thought that it was a good idea.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:04
Yeah, I don’t really understand the the premise here. I mean, other than to give people a fun way to play around with it. But I can’t I can’t imagine what they thought they were doing in this particular regard. I really don’t. I mean, it’s not a true emulator in the sense of being able to do what you would normally do with an emulator. It’s not persistent, that I’m aware. So you’re not really getting the Yeah, you’re not really getting the experience of it. And to be quite honest, both Apple and Google, Android, Samsung, you name it, all of them, whether it’s the ties on operating system to Android to iOS, they’re all really similar today. I’m the marginal features that separate these operating systems don’t particularly Make me like one or the other. And so it’s not, it’s not, you know, I use my I use, you know, I’ve several Google pixels sitting on my desk here, I’ve got iOS, an iPad, on my desk, I’ve got all kinds of devices. And the mobile experience is actually quite similar on all of them. For me, I don’t feel myself experiencing the challenge, say five years ago that I had, if you picked up an iOS device, and you picked up an Android device, you had a real real challenge here. Now the the challenge the the, the items are on the margins. And so I don’t
Augusto Pinaud 24:29
agree with you more. I have here the iPads I have the Android and it is the same thing. Five years ago, there was a difference today, it’s a matter of how you like certain things to behave. But it’s not about capabilities or lack of capabilities. There used to be a gap between the capabilities you get on the iOS side versus the capabilities you get on the Android side and and you needed to pick which ones were the important for you more and more. that gap is exist and is how you want Do one thing or the other, but it’s not about any of these, Oh, those platforms to be able to do or not do.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:06
Yeah. And it’s really about your integration with any given platform. You know, if you’re in the apple ecosystem, it makes a lot of sense for you to stay in the apple ecosystem. If you’re in the Android ecosystem, and or Windows ecosystem, it makes a lot of sense to be with the Android mobile platform, because it’s going to have more integration there. That’s just the nature of the beast. And, you know, I think I think it’s interesting and fun to talk about the differences between these. But there’s actually not that much in the sense of being concerned from a perspective that I need to emulate one device on another. Anyway, moving right along to our next item this week.
Augusto Pinaud 25:43
Oh, the next one, I have tugging this show multiple times of I’ll never wear never wear it say for machine that you know the Frankenstein that was dying. And then Greece resuscitate with thanks to never wearing to a Chrome OS. And that machine stopped working, almost working. And then it was inherited by somebody else to everybody’s surprise. But never wear was bought by Google. And really, nobody knew what was the future of that at least nobody outside of the close group on Google. But this week, we got news that the code of cloud ready is starting to change from GitHub. That is we’re never we’re headed to the Chrome’s to the Google servers. And they are starting to integrate. And that is really, really exciting. Because I believe I, again, there is, as we said, on the previous note, news, now, there is really getting the difference between Chromebook and, and the power and the capabilities are really short. This idea that you can almost install in any piece of hardware, where Windows will not cover security, mag will not cover security. And now Google can come and keep it updated and keep it modern and keep it secure. I believe it is really something incredible. So I am particularly excited about seeing this. Not every hardware deserve to be to be nice to have an installation. There is how are they simply too ugly for that. But it’s still the news are exciting.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:24
Yeah, I don’t think this is necessarily about resuscitating old, you know, devices that are, you know, kind of just sitting on the on the tables, I think Chrome OS, and the Chrome OS team is really looking to be able to revive old Chromebooks, and being able to keep them in some position to continue operating once they fall out of automatic update. You know, they expire from their automatic software updates. And I think that’ll be really powerful. I hope, I hope that as they go forward, they’ll do what never were cloud ready was doing, which was allowing people to be able to zoom from the graveyard, some of these older devices, I have a I have an old HP laptop that I’ve been thinking about running a DB and the latest version of Debian on and which is Linux kernel based operating system. But I’ve been I’ve been thinking, Well, you know what, I could probably get cloud ready on it, if I you know, baling wire and duct tape the pieces together. And it would be really nice if there was a little bit more seamless. If it was just easier for me to be able to say this is Google sanctioned, let me put this directly on the system and make it work, I think I’m gonna have to do a little bit of coding under the under the hood to be able to make that work on this particular HP laptop because of its age and the state of cloud ready. And so that’s just like one of those things where it’d be really nice if Google gave us that capability to bring new life to devices that otherwise are perfectly good hardware, they just can’t run the latest operating system, say Windows OS or, or something else like that. So
Augusto Pinaud 28:52
no, and I believe was what we experienced was a pandemic. And I hope they scientifical right. And this is only once every 100 years. And I don’t need to see the next one. I’m done planning to live under and 40 years. The reality is the pandemic shows that there is more people who struggle at the beginning of this wisdom devices. And I’m talking about the United States studies by any mean, and it’s kill a rich country. So if really, Google can sanction this and bring the security to the third world countries to those places where now all those not only that will reduce significantly the technology, the waste, but also it’s going to allow many of those to really have access to these kinds of technology. And that’s something that it’s really, really interesting for me.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:48
Absolutely. All right, what’s our next story?
Augusto Pinaud 29:50
Well, let’s continue on Google. And we are going talking about Google Chrome 90, the next version of Google Chrome, and it’s done. About seven features that Google 90 it’s going to bring. And the first one is Google Chrome. Now it defaults to HTTPS. And when I read that, I was like, why this hasn’t happened before? Really, that was my I mean, why we wait until version 90, this shouldn’t have been done. And this is not Chrome, Chrome Safari pick, pick the poison. Okay, why this has not been done a long, long, long time ago. So I’m on that one, they are, you know, blocking third party cookies, improve the PDF viewer, improve the video conferencing, and copy and paste files. And that one in particular was the most exciting one for me, because I live on an iOS ecosystem, or gaven, two iPads that on an iPhone that I can send files, one to the other one, when I want to work on the Chromebook, I can send myself be a chrome be either via the Chrome browser, from the iPad, to the Chrome browser, I can tell them send it to the device, and it will pick my Chromebook, like a charm. But if I could use that to send me files, that will end that communication, this ability that my Chromebook has, that every time I want to send a file, I really need to copy it into Google Chrome and under the Google Drive, and then access it from there. It is not a three second action, it is a minute action. If Google can give me that in 90, and eliminate that barrier. I think that is in my world. incredibly exciting,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:42
right. And so what we’re talking about right now is is the browser chrome 90, as opposed to Chrome OS 90 from the prior article. And just so that people have some background on this, if if they had changed at HTTP to HTTPS, say five years ago would have broken about half the internet. So that’s, that’s kind of the reason why, which is that Google, in essence, made some changes a few years ago, that in essence, forced everybody to go to that HTTPS now that we have the vast majority of people with a secure website, having that lock icon, basically, when you’re looking in your browser. And since Google is the dominant browser, it makes sense now that they actually default to the HTTPS. And so just so you know, going forward, you are going to see some broken websites, you’re going to go to some sites, and you’re going to see that it says, This is not secure, or it won’t load or those kinds of things. And that’s because chrome will now go ahead and say, we’re looking for an HTTPS, it’s not here. And so therefore, we’re going to not lead it forward. And so just make sure that you reach out to those, if you go to a website and you like that website, you should tell the developer Hey, by the way, you should get the SSL encryption set up TLS encryption, so that we can go ahead and continue viewing your website after chrome 90 comes out, because once it updates, a lot of those websites are going to go gonna go dark, and they’re gonna lose a lot of traffic, once that happens. So Alright, moving right along.
Augusto Pinaud 33:08
On our final news is Chromebook files app. And we’re talking about about Chrome OS, again, has a now an option to prevent synchronization over mobile. So in the same way you have been able to do in other platforms that has LTE and Wi Fi, you will be able to come into the files and said do not think this over why over LTE only do it through Wi Fi or the network. And again, it is good for people who have limited plans. And and these kind of things, I think it is a fantastic option.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:46
Yeah, well, it’s not even limited plans is the fact that you know, if you are on your Chromebook and didn’t realize you hadn’t synchronized it in a while, and then you go off offline, you go to the cafe, you tether to your device, and then all of a sudden, it’s downloading all of this stuff, it can be a real bear. And now with more of the Google, of the Google workspace, as well as the various applications within Google workspace capable of working offline, you can go in offline mode in Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Calendar, now that you could do all of that, that’s a lot of data for it to be synchronizing in the background. And so just forcing the Google files application to say, Okay, I won’t synchronize this in the background, because you know, you throw a multi gigabyte zip file into your files app, then all of a sudden, it starts to uploading that it can really it can really take a dig out of your, you know, your current plan for the year. So that’s
Augusto Pinaud 34:42
a really good point I didn’t thought about I didn’t thought about that. I thought about but I didn’t, I didn’t connect that is true. You can now work into all those things in the offline mode that you could not until recently.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:57
Yeah, yeah. It’s really, really great. All right. With that, that brings us to our halfway point in the show. And that means we are going to hear a word from our sponsor this week, which is co working space by personal productivity club and we will see you after the break.
Sponsor Voice Over 35:12
Well, working in person may be normal for you, it’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating, and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core, we provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit Anything But idle.com forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do to, again, head over to Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:22
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And I’m with Augusto Pinaud. And we are going into our second part of the show where we’re going to cover more headlines, we’re gonna then do our new tools of the week. And then we are going to do our featured story this week. And it’s all about T Mobile, and so very excited about what T Mobile has in store for us. But that being the case of gousto, what is our next story this week,
Augusto Pinaud 36:46
fake news daily 34% of work from home workers say they write or quit, then return to the full time work. You know, I have only one hope that maybe all this discussion about going full time or staying at work or staying behind or the next thing is going to mean at least for a while, hopefully forever. The end of the discussion about work life balance, suddenly is just going to make it worse. But there is no doubt that work as we understood it as of December 2019 change forever. And really seems like every writer and reporter in his right now trying to find what is that solution? And the reality is we don’t know. The reality is one thing is what we think right now i do i think is going to be a more mixed solution. Yes. Are you think do I think it’s going to be 100 going in or 100? never coming back? No. That said, as I found somewhere on the web during all this, you know, we are in the same storm, but we are not all in the same conditions. You know, I? I am fine working at home. I love working at home and I’ve been working at home for many years. That’s my reality. That’s not the reality for everybody. There is people who their connection to the world. Was that going to home? You know, yes. You see, on some of the studies, one of the articles, we’re going to, quote later talks about a Microsoft story, who says that people now have better relationship with their co workers that they don’t see yes. All those things are real. But what the future is going to bring, and if we are going to go full in or not. It will depends. You know, I have somebody close to me Who? Yes, their conditions are not great. They are in in a good place. But they are now too many in the space. They have it and before they were all roaming around now they don’t feed on the place. They are Yeah, we’re lucky I am. I have an office, we have a basement. But that’s not the reality for everybody. Again, we are on the same storm. Some of us are in small boats, some of some people, you know, are on a smaller one. So what is going to happen? It will depend on so many things. The reality is productivity hasn’t suffered. And that is a great thing. Because all those people who were terrified of productivity suffering as now their numbers showing that is not the case. That said, Can we stay never going out of the houses? No. We need to go out again. Okay. That’s Yes, yes. And we will cover that in another of the articles we’re going to quote today. But that said, all these numbers of the people who are going to quit before going at home or the camp saying, you know, I, every week I read one article that says, you know, New York is going to die. And then the next day, you know, New York is going to be on the same way as it was in 2018. We don’t know, the only thing we know for sure is that it’s going to change, it is not going to be what it was December 2019. And it’s not going to be what it was December 2020. And I needed to put my rent out of that out of my soapbox, because this is insane.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:34
No, I think you’re you’re right, though, I think we don’t know what’s going to happen, things are changing. And there is a, you know, kind of this big berth of opinion, by a wide variety of people out there. There are lots of studies being done. You know, one study says 77% of employees don’t want to go back to work, you know, 34% would quit before returning to work. And that, I mean, just that statement alone, that someone asked that question just goes to to a point of the privilege of the individuals making that statement that they could say, Oh, yeah, I’ll just quit my job. If I’m not allowed to be able to work from home, we need to be cognizant of the fact that most people are not given that latitude. And that 34% of the people that they surveyed must have been a very, very exclusive crowd, because the average worker wants their job and wants to keep their job. And we’re, you know, notwithstanding the recovery of the economy, and how that will go about, we are still in a bad economy and in a, you know, in a rough economy, and it will take time for us to get out of that bad economy. And when that happens, the employers know that. And and they are already currently fighting finding good employees, right, we’re in that position where employers are struggling finding good employees. At the same time, employees also need to be aware that employers know that if employees are not going to show up to work, they’re going to they’re not going to be so you know, lenient in a bad economy, when it gives them an opportunity to potentially cut some costs. So be mindful of that fact, as we as we make our way forward. That being the case, I think you’re absolutely right. This is this is going to we’re going to continue seeing these articles, we’re going to still see more research being done. And I’m actually pleased to see us having this conversation, if nobody was talking about this, it would actually be far worse for me, because then we are not getting this conversation out in the open, we need to be having these open dialogues with employees and with employers, especially managers who just really don’t know how to manage properly. And so therefore, there’s clinging on to the vestiges of if I don’t see people working, then they’re not working. And the only way for us to overcome that fact is for them to really sit with the fact that they need to do more work in order to manage now that they otherwise didn’t have to before, but just because someone’s out of sight doesn’t mean that they are not actually being productive. And the pandemic has proven that to be the case. And it’s not without challenges. It’s not without problems for individuals, and we need to be able to support those individuals to be productive, even when they do need to work from home. And also when they go back to work because it won’t be the same. You know, if you’re the person who’s an extrovert and you want to go back to the office, and it’s, you know, you thrive on the interaction, but you’re now not going to see anybody at the office because you’re the only one going back. You know, it’s, it’s a it’s, it’s like the reverse problem, right, you’re gonna go you’re gonna see, you know, maybe a third of your your staff at any given time coming back to the office, which mean may mean that you don’t see any of your normal coworkers that you’re used to coffee clutching with, that’s just a reality of what we’re dealing with and it takes good management to come in and say let’s do stuff that’s really going to help people be productive here and solve for these kinds of problems. So I’m glad we’re having this dialogue we’re gonna see more of the conversation going forward. And we have to we have to keep having this conversation
Unknown 43:57
like that.
Augusto Pinaud 43:59
Well the next one, it’s an article that I really enjoy our business review how to beat procrastination and and the article you know goes into we all procrastinate with the human’s brain is programmed to procrastinate and to make good point but but when you go down it gives you some strategies you know how to really get it down you know, visualize how to get it done pre commit you know, politically I don’t know about that. Okay, but get now and study you know, get the action feels smaller you know, cut it into small pieces, you know, see if you can tie the first step was a treat. On my favorite one was remove the hidden blockage and remove the hidden blockage is one of the things that I learned when I read that first time or maybe fifth time, I don’t know they’re getting things done book. Okay when he described exactly Well call Bob. Oh, well, you haven’t Cobo? I don’t know. Did you have Bob phone number? I don’t have a phone number, or do you know anybody who knows? But phone number? Oh, yeah, right knows Bob pub number. Well, and you have seen Ray every Monday in Anything But Idle, but you have not asked about the phone number. And that happened to all of us, again, that has happened to me many times that you put the task, but you put it so fast, that you didn’t think if you really have all the information, all the tools to make it moving forward. So that removed that hidden blockage, you know, look into the task getting figuring out what is what is that hidden blockage? You know, it is one of the best tools against procrastination.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:54
Absolutely, there’s so many reasons why we procrastinate. I think the ultimate, you know, reasoning we can we can surmise is the minds feeling that it’s somehow not safe, right. And we talk about psychological safety as being a mechanism for us being able to take risk. And procrastination frequently comes from that space is in some way, shape, or form our unconscious has set up the the flare, and it is it feels in this emergency state. And that’s because as the article noted, you know, doing the concrete, which is, you know, move this widget, from one table to the next is very easy for us to understand. But develop a project proposal is an abstraction of of any number of kinds. And we need to bring that down to the actionable level, which is why I’ve been such a great advocate of the Getting Things Done methodology, because it takes the abstract in our mind, and makes us have to think about what is the next physical action, because it’s those physical actions that really move things forward. And it helps us just to anchor what needs to be done. It doesn’t necessarily be, it doesn’t mean it’s the thing that’s going to be done. But it gives us a physical representation to grease the wheels to get us going and moving forward. Because I might do that thought process that you did gousto and thought, Okay, oh, no, I need to call so Oh, no, I need to Oh, no, no, no, but I need to Oh, but before I do that, then I need to Oh, right. That’s the next action I need to do. And I’ll anchor that particular item in. And then I come across that next action in the right context. And I recognize that that’s actually not what I want to do. Right, I might want to sit down and do some doodling. But being able to sit down and brainstorm or mind mapping that sense gives me a great deal of power that I otherwise wouldn’t have had and may have procrastinated on doing. If I was if I was not given the choice of just looking at the concrete items in front of me. So great article, always good to read these articles on procrastination and look at it from different avenues and different perspectives to be able to overcome it. What’s your next article?
Augusto Pinaud 47:46
The next article comes from the New York Times, and it’s called we have all hit the wall and it got sent to discuss in what they call the late stage pandemic burned out. And yeah, I think we are we are, you know, there are so many good points into into that article, I need to admit that I laugh when is describing this person say, you know, what, I am on a quasi house arrest for the last year. And I think most of us agree and feel that way and are exhausted. And there, there is a lot of people who has failed to consider the mental cost of all this not if we can work or not work more or less if we can accomplish more or less. But he’s where we set the expectations versus what we can really accomplish. And, you know, the person that were described in the article says I’m tired all the time, and I’m not doing anything. Well, that’s not true. And if you are feeling that way, that’s not true. You are just doing a bunch of different things that you will not need to do before you know it’s one of the things is three meals a day. Most people are guided to okay or one. Now you need to retreat plan for three. You know, decision making is one of the most exhausting things we can do and that has been proved over and over and that’s why you see certain people certain famous personalities you know, Steve Jobs when one of those from brock obama being another one who caught certain decisions, they only wear certain things so they don’t need to decide what to wear in the morning. It’s going to match the bottom and the and the tops are going to match no matter what they pick. Because making decisions consistently is really exhausting. And one of the things a lot of us don’t notice is the distraction and the decisions you know in for us who have kids, the kids come in here Can I play the game? You need to make a decision yes or no and I understand it sounds silly. position, but you need to make it
Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:02
as a death by 1000 cuts.
Augusto Pinaud 50:09
Correct? They did you know, it happened to me that over and over the weekend again, I had all these plans What happened to me? Well, I had a kid who wanted to spend time with me, not with me, he did not want it to meet line with him, he wanted to be in my office again, and wanted to show me stuff that he was doing every three minutes. Awesome. Again, it was a great moment for dad and son to spend together except that I was trying to read a book and he was trying to play a game. So every time every 10 minutes, he came to show me that he solved the puzzle. And every two minutes, I get interrupted into the book I was trying to read. And after 90 minutes, I was like, I have read two pages. Again, I was really upset and took me to reframe because if you ask me Do I did know, I didn’t accomplish anything and those 90 minutes on the task world. Okay. But on the other world, again, he was really happy that he has spent 90 minutes with me. So we also need to look into these things, especially as this pandemic seems to be some are months on to reframe those things into Be conscious, that is not that we are not doing what role are we using to measure accomplishment are doing versus not doing, and tried to adjust and be kind with ourselves.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:36
I can offer two things here. One is to restate what you you said in in psychological parlance, reframing is looking at the situation differently through a different lens, so to speak, but basically thinking about it from a different perspective. And that could be different mindset, it could be a different attitude toward it. And maybe zooming out zooming in on the perspective, I think is very, very helpful. And it’s been validated helps with regard to distress. The second is present mindedness, we can call it mindfulness, we can call it any number of things. But the idea is, is that if you bring yourself into the moment right here, right now, then the thing you are doing becomes that much more. You know, I think interesting, fulfilling in some way, shape, or form. You know, there were times in my life where I didn’t particularly find eating, for example, to be a productive activity, I thought it was fruitless, I thought it was just a waste of time sleep was in among those things. And as I did more study of the literature, I recognize that these things are really powerful and important to both life experience, but also to our biological ability to be productive. And so that became more more important to me. And the more you bring yourself to present mindedness around the doing of those things, that is like even just, you know, picking up your plates from the, from the dining room table and washing them off and putting them in the dishwasher. If you’re mindful about those things, being in the present, actually reduces anxiety reduces that distress, and is actually far more useful to you than thinking about all the other things you would could or should be doing. And so, bring yourself more to the present moment, if you have a feeling of that level of stress. I’m not saying it’s going to solve for this level of, of pandemic, you know, you know, stress that’s happening, but but I feel like it can’t but help in some way, shape or form even in some small way. So, Alright, moving right along to our next couple stories with this
Augusto Pinaud 53:29
note taking up meme raised $5.6 million from Andreessen Horowitz, I have not been able to play with it. I am on that list. God knows for when but it is interesting to see you know how coda raised money Rome, raise money notion raise money, Evernote, who has been an old gamer came to really re do I make budget but it’s Evernote came to reread the sign and re envision everything that they have done to in a new platform in a new way. And how this note taking market is getting more and more attention and to finding ways to make it in this new app free app called mem it’s a platform that is going to be dedicated to make quick notes. That said, we need to see I haven’t played with it. I’m curious about the back end. I’m curious if you’re just going to make notes, you know, not being able to process organize them or what is going to be you know, and again, I have not been able to play I have a nice email that says I am on a list and someday they may may or may not call me.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:45
Well, again, it goes back to this whole like capturing your these notes via any modality and of course meme or meme or however they’re going to pronounce their name. They they talk about capturing via SMS again, why on God’s good creation, well, I want to text message, my notetaking application. If there are folks out there who you’re thinking about capturing by SMS, please, there are better ways, they’re just simply better ways to capture then by SMS, certainly more secure. But I like the idea of what meme is trying to do here, which is the idea that you are able to seamlessly capture from anywhere they talk about this idea of bringing meme to a place where, you know, you can capture from your watch, and from, you know, other kinds of wearables, from assistive devices, and that kind of thing, the idea of it being embedded everywhere, I think, is really powerful and important, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t end there. And I think that’s where I’m really curious to see how we’ll go from this point, which is, you know, they give very easy sharing capabilities, you know, being able to connect what you’re what you’re putting into the system, and being able to then tie them together, you know, this, whatever their, whatever their ontological approach is to notes. And so we’ll see what happens. I mean, they’re clearly have some, some thoughts about how to do these things, and reorganize the content in a way that seems interesting. My problem with this whole notion of making tools. So opinionated, hate comm is one of those, you know, this very opinionated email program, there’s to some extent where some of it may work. But it won’t work for the vast majority of people. And if it only is going to work for a small majority of people, that’s fine, or a small minority of people, that’s fine. I’m not quite sure that’s going to really break through in the market. So we’ll see what happens they’ve got this $5.6 million to burn down. And, and we’ll see where they get to, with the product. And certainly, you know, just like any other application that’s in it’s in a waiting, you know, in a waiting list, you know, mode, they’ve got it, they’re up against the clock, right to get enough users on, so that they can go ahead and get those people introduced to it so that they get enough of a user base to then figure out how they’re going to monetize what their business model is going to be. And I don’t know, but we’ll see. I’m curious to play around with it myself. I’m on the waiting list. And we’ll see when when I get access to it. And I’ll certainly play around. But I’m, I’m I’m not skeptical. I’m always interested to see these products. But I I am, I guess I am skeptical, but not skeptical in a in a cynical, cynical way. I’m skeptical in the sense that I want to see how they’re actually organizing content that’s being captured, and the security of that content. Because as I said before, SMS is not secure. And that like just the idea that they would put that front forward as their marketing component just really concerns me. But I may just be taking a marginal marketing, you know, statement and making too big a deal out of it. But we’ll see what happens. All right. What’s our final story?
Augusto Pinaud 57:44
evidence in, according to The Guardian, working from home, it’s a failed experiment. And that’s all that I’m going to say about that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:55
Yeah, so again, you know, you’re going to get, you’re going to get people on both sides of the aisle here. And gene marks is a noted small business opinion columnist on, you know, in many different publications, and he’s writing here that he’s, you know, basically seen the results. You know, he talks about Microsoft, saying that somehow their study shows or proves that employees are failing, in some way, shape, or form this experiment, I disagree with his reading of the report, I don’t think that that’s what it says. And there are countless other reports that show the exact opposite of this. So we have to be mindful of the fact that not every organization is the same, you know, if I’m in a business that has 20 employees, and Microsoft is a business with 10s, of 1000s of employees, this is a much different environment to be able to manage people and the data sets are going to show you different data. And, you know, it could be that if you have a set of artisans working in a small business of five people, they may be able to, you know, work only in person because it requires them to work on physical material together. Who knows the environments are but we’ve got to let this play out before we start calling anything failed experiments. I just I think it’s ridiculous.
Augusto Pinaud 59:14
That’s all.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 59:18
Alright, with that, that ends our stories this week. And let’s head into our new tools of the week, talk about our featured story the week and close out. So of course, as you know, obviously, when I come across many personal productivity tools and services each week, In this segment, new tools of the week, we try to bring you a tool we think you might like And so with that, let’s get into the new tools this week. The first tool, let me just bring this on screen here for everybody. And I am pressing run buttons here, so bear with me a moment. The first tool is a tool that actually I found in search of solving a problem of my own. And so this tool is called Plexi. I’m guessing it’s called Plexi. But Plexi is a tool That allows you to, in essence, synchronize not just not just move tasks from one place to the other, but truly synchronize, which is brilliant Microsoft to do tasks and to do list tasks. Now, it integrates with a wide variety of other tools. So you can see here if you click on the Microsoft to do tab here, you can see that it goes ahead and synchronizes with Asana, Basecamp, clickup, Evernote, Gmail, JIRA, Monday, OneNote, Outlook and Trello. So you’re capable of, again, this is like a true synchronization of those tasks on the to do aside, they’ve got the looks like the same ones, because they’re using, there must be some difference between them, do you see a difference? I see seven, I see 910. And I see 10 here. So it seems to be the same task. So I don’t know why.
Augusto Pinaud 1:00:54
I did not check the Microsoft side, I checked it to do it side for me.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:58
Right, right, of course. So it’s synchronizing the same 10 from Microsoft to do and to a port to do list. And so this gives you a synchronization for these particular tools, which is phenomenal, I’m just really, really excited to see how this will really work. And it does have a pricing schedule that goes beyond two connections, you have to pay about $3.33 USD per month, billed on an annual basis. But there is a free option here you can connect any of the supported applications, that is just two of them. So that is Microsoft to do and one other connection and then to do list or one other connection. And it has a slower synchronization. So five minutes as opposed to real time. And so really nominal in terms of pricing, especially if you stay on the free plan. And you can set up rules. So you can say here, I want to stay in sync with these particular tools. And I can also set up task roles. So certain types of tasks don’t synchronize or only certain types of tags synchronize, and it can do that for you as well. So it’s uses a lot, so it’s secure. And yeah, I’m really I’m really pleased to see how Pixi works with these applications. And you should try it out if you’re using to do list or Microsoft to do and you want to be able to get them out of the system. Or if you’re say in Asana or Evernote or outlook and you’re trying to get them out of that system and into your task manager of choice, you now have a synchronization tool back into it, which is really powerful.
Augusto Pinaud 1:02:25
Already, I am really, really excited to see this there is a certain project that lives in a center that is problematic for me. And now this may be the solution for that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:02:39
Fantastic. What is your tool this week,
Augusto Pinaud 1:02:42
code notes and co nodes give you Cornell Method notes into any browser i i’ve been using Cornell notes for I don’t know a really long time. And I really is really useful for me. But I can only do it in paper have not ever find a really good way to do it when I type. Now you can do it with this works on any browser, you can open a browser and then after that, it will turn that thing into a PDF and you can do with that whatever you want. So it’s been something really fun to play with and to use for for taking notes in meetings. Great.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:32
I love it. And you can you can preview it doesn’t look like it has any sharing functionality but you can still create these items and then share them very easily.
Augusto Pinaud 1:03:42
Right You can turn them into PDF and then you can share them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:46
Fantastic. Fantastic. So that’s co notes and co notes is at ko notes.io but we’ll put links these in the show notes for you all to be able to access that already gousto that brings us to our story this week. And as I said earlier, this is all about T Mobile doing some fancy new work in the 5g space. what’s what’s T Mobile doing?
Augusto Pinaud 1:04:10
So now that 5g is out and are in a lot of places T Mobile is trying to the booth at home with their 5g home. And their initial offer is no data cap and $60 a month without contract. That actually is impressive. I we have rice and files here at home and we pay more than that. And there is a contract and you need to do a bunch of things in order to get that great. You know where it is. The fact that you are making that that you have no capital you have no limit. If you can really get good internet on many places. This is going to be for at least as long as for as long as it lasts, I mean it’s going to be a fantastic solution. We another things we learn with the pandemic was a number of devices connected is we don’t have enough bandwidth. So I even check it to see if we can split, you know, the load between the devices that we have, because it will have been worth it to, it’s not available where I live right now. But it will have been worth it if if availability will have been a possibility,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:25
I’m really curious how they’re going to make the 5g light up the home, presumably, there’s got to be some connection between the 5g Tower and some device in the household that then you know, some kind of receiver that receives the signal and then propagates it to Wi Fi, presumably, that’s how it works, I have to look into it and see how that would, would work. And it’s, I mean, if they can, if they can bring 5g to more and more places, that will be really, really great. I just think it’s a great other option to have for being able to light up your home without having to be dependent on so many other monopolies in areas where, you know, if you want high speed internet access, you only have a choice of one provider, sometimes maybe two. And and that’s, that’s a real problem in the United States, specifically, but probably the case in other countries as well. You know, some folks have have nationalized internet backbone, and then they the last mile is provided by some other provider. We’ll see what happens here. In terms of this, I also see a really great small business opportunity here for small businesses to be able to access broadband internet access. And we’ll see what happens as we move forward. And of course, there’s starlink, which is the Elan musk driven, satellite based internet. And that’s going to be providing internet to, you know, really anywhere on the planet. Now, you can basically get good internet access, hopefully, except if you’re underground, I suppose. But the but the, the hope is that as we get more and more of this infrastructure in place, we’ll be able to light up places that otherwise wouldn’t have access to it. 5g is a little bit more limited in that sense, because it’s a short range, frequency. So it needs a lot more towers to be able to provide coverage. But I see satellite being kind of the next big thing. I’m glad to see T Mobile bringing this to the, to the market. And we’ll see what happens as they as they grow. T Mobile is pretty aggressive about being forward thinking and innovative with regard to their plans. And there are a lot of MV and O’s that run on top of T Mobile, as well as sprint, which they recently acquired. So or they merged or whatever. So now we’re going to see a lot more of these, you know, opportunities proliferate, because of the MVA knows, which presumably at some point would be able to resell the home internet based on on those plans that T Mobile are putting out. So curious to see all of that come together. Either way. That brings us to do any any announcements that we want to talk about this week?
Augusto Pinaud 1:07:53
Well, did you know that we have a couple but we will put them on the show notes. But one of them was an interesting article about you know how to schedule meetings, Microsoft Outlook, there is so many things that Microsoft has add to Outlook that it is interesting to see. You know, to get this tutorial, there is an interesting article in a dispute on which Google got a favor from the Supreme Court between then and Oracle in Android software. There is also WhatsApp testing our chat migration between iOS and Android if you decide to change and the sad announcement is that woven it’s going to be shutting down on May 28 2021 are woven was a service to that allows you to make appointments for multiple people was really interesting concept. But sadly, they announced that may 28, they will be out of business.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:08:54
Now. So I will note that the Google Oracle case is landmark it’ll be I think it’ll be taught in law schools in you know, for in future forevermore, it’s a it’s a landmark case to finally come down and kind of have some sense of settlement at the supreme court level in the United States. And so, you know, landmark fair use case, for one, two, it’s lasted like more than a decade and a half. So it was great to see this come down and Google one of all things, this case about the use of Java, or this very little bit of of Java code that is built into Android now. And so I’m glad to see it come down and also means that Android gets to live on as Android has been, and without $9 billion being shuffled over to Oracle, I bet Oracle’s a little bit peeved that it doesn’t get a cash cash today on this, but it was I think the right choice. I think the the the justices looked at the case and recognized that this wasn’t really particularly anything you know, the amount of money that the Oracle could have made his de minimis from from Google’s use of Java in this case. So, you know, sorry, Oracle, you know, they bought, they bought the whole product, just so that they could sue Google. And, and they, and they lost out from all of this litigation. So that’s, that’s on them, you know, and it just goes to show that sometimes being litigation happy doesn’t benefit you. And and that proved to be beneficial to Google, in this case. So with that, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you. Augusto, as always, for joining me here on Anything But Idle and helping put the show on.
Augusto Pinaud 1:10:41
As always, is my pleasure. I’m the one having fun here.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:46
And with that we’ve covered the productivity news for this week. That’s of course it goes to pan out. And if you have if we’ve missed any stories, please feel free to head over to Anything But idle.com you can tweet or DMS on Twitter at Anything But Idle also. So on Anything But idle.com you can leave a question or a comment directly on the show episode page or on the contact page, click on contact and you can go ahead and do that. Back on the Show page. For the episode page, you’ll find our show notes with links to all the stories we discussed, including the extra stories in the announcements that Agusta just outlined are tools of the week, we have our extra stories and we also have text transcripts both in a read version that you can just click on the Read More link that will expand the transcript for you to read along while listening or watching. And then of course, you can download it as PDF so you can download it and read along as well. If this is your first time watching the live stream, feel free to click the subscribe button on YouTube that will help you get notified when we go live weekly. If you’re listening to the podcast after the fact, feel free to consider adding us to your favorite podcast app, you can click on subscribe or follow depending upon your podcast app. And you’ll go ahead and be able to get the new episodes downloaded each week. If you go to Anything But idle.com you’ll see instructions on the follow page and my say subscriber follow and you’ll find instructions to go ahead and follow or subscribe to us and get the episodes downloaded every week for you there and it’s free. If you’ve enjoyed spending time or listening with us today, feel free to click the thumbs up icon or if you’re in the podcast, feel free to add a rating a review and that really helps us find new personal productivity friends and so thank you for doing that. With that. We’ll see you all next time 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.