Microsoft Windows Goes Password-less

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Microsoft Windows Goes Password-less, and the Productivity and Technology News This Week

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In this Cast | Microsoft Windows Goes Password-less

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00

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. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:12

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:14

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode us at 1081. On September 20 2021, Microsoft goes Microsoft Windows goes password lists, and of course the productivity and technology news this week. Each week, we bring you the productivity blogosphere news first and then we go into our productivity technology headlines. And so Okay, so let’s get into our headlines for the first part of the show. What productivity article Do we have up first?

Augusto Pinaud 0:46

So the first article we’re going to discuss is scheduled time from self reflection from ions, messy desk, and I told you it was the beginning, we talked about this show and I talked relentlessly about self care. And I mentioned self care consistently. And this is what this article is, you know, take an honest look at the search and questions How do we feel about today, what I have achieved, what I have enjoyed what I have done, to look after me what I have done anything that I regret, what I have thrown my values, and I have been myself, and it is really, really important to take that time to analyze to do self reflection about ourselves where we’re going, what we are trying to accomplish, are we taking good care of ourselves, so but it was an incredible article to start this show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:37

Yeah. So I do some modification of this using Peter Bergman’s. 18 minutes, the book he published on the topic of, you know, in essence, doing a little bit of planning at the beginning of the day, a little bit of reflection and planning at each hour of the work day, and then some reflection and planning at the end of the day. And so that’s all, you know, those kind of constructs he created. And then of course, I applied on top of it my own modifications to make it my own. And these questions actually copied because I wanted to compare and contrast against my own daily and weekly reflections. Because during my my weekly review, Allah GTD, I do a little bit of that type of reflection. And so I’m really curious to see how those questions line up with my own questions, and seeing whether they spur different questions, different answers, and what other kinds of you know, kind of emotion and thought comes to mind. When I do answer some of those questions. Some of them are the same, some of them are slightly different. So I’m curious to see how that goes. But I think you know, I think reflection is a really important part of productivity. And this is a good reminder of that. Great onto our next story

Augusto Pinaud 2:42

is Google workplace, or Microsoft 365. Which one will be better for productivity? And it’s a great article, okay, I need really going into detail into comparing those two. I think the answer at this point, it’s really which poisons you want to drink. I have because of work and clients, clients who go and leave in Microsoft 365. And you need to, and you know, I start using some other software and others that leave in the go workspace. So some of the readings happen in teams, some of the meetings happening soon, some of the meetings happen. And same thing with the manager and the documentation and all that I don’t think neither of them really is better or worse for productivity. It’s a matter of education. There are things that Microsoft do in a more traditional way that what Google do. But that doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t have the power. It’s just not done, do it the same. And on Google Docs is an example. You have a massive directory and lets you sort that thing. Okay. But if you don’t pay attention, then you end up with a massive director, that is easy to lose thing that said, search in the Google environment. Incredible simple. So you get that compensation, you know, in the Microsoft well is what you know, about the Microsoft Outlook and teams. And the reality is many organizations I know, leave in the teams, especially now, during this pandemic, and these people working remotely and all that. Well, the big gamers has been sued and teams, even more than Google meat we have discussed about the shortcomings of Google meats and the things they’re trying to do better but still being a little behind on that race. So do anyone is better than the other one? Not for me, I now comes to your personal poison. Okay, I will prefer to voice on myself was Google done my goodness, but that’s my but it’s not really for a capabilities perspective. It’s not like I will not install Microsoft because it’s going to be less effective than more than Google. No, it’s just, I will prefer Google or Microsoft any day of the week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:09

Yeah, the only clarifications I would make from the article are that it talks about having a native application, you have the Office application on mobile, and it said, Oh, well, you know, you get basically Word, PowerPoint, and I think Excel inside of the Office application, and you don’t get that with Google, you would have to install all three applications on our to do that. And that’s not true. So if you do install the Google Drive application, you do get a lightweight version of basically Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Slides, you can open them, you can make some light, view edit components of it, just like with the Office application, you’re going to get some lightweight of it within the Google Drive application. So that was the only real error in the document in the in the article itself. The compare and contrast is as it kind of notes, I mean, the the article says it’s trying to help you decide, but but it’s just giving you the information. Ultimately, it’s preferential. It’s, for me, it’s, you know, what does everyone use mostly in the company already? And what are they willing to learn? And how much energy are you willing to actually integrate these tools into the other tools you’re already using in the company. So if you have CRM, if you have an AARP, if you have these other tools, integrating them into either of those ecosystems require some heavy lifting, and you need to, you need to be mindful of that as you start to make those choices. For me as well. I mean, I know that you’ve chosen Google workspace for business, I’m in the Google workspace for business environment as well, although I do training on both of both platforms. So you know, like, I don’t consider I don’t consider them anything other than equal in measure. And so the reality is, is that both Google and Microsoft have put a lot of work into making sure that their productivity platforms make sense for most businesses, and where they, where they fail, they have built out integrations with many other partners to make it work. So I’m, I think, you know, at the end of the day, as you noted, it’s preferential, but it’s also really looking at your organization, looking at the business and saying, what really is going to work for you if this is a personal choice, right? If you’re making a choice and in your personal world, for say home or otherwise, I think you ultimately end up getting more out of Gmail and Google for free than you do out of the Microsoft 365 family. So I don’t really see the the rationale for paying for Microsoft 365 in a family setting. So I mean, I just I don’t see the argument for for it. But you know, if you’re very comfortable with it in the work environment, and you want to be able to utilize it at home, so you sit on maybe the board, or you’re doing some philanthropic work, and you want to be able to stay inside of that pseudo professional ecosystem, Microsoft may actually work for you in that environment. But for the vast majority of us who are in the personal space, Google is going to be probably the better bet for a family. All right, on to our next story

Augusto Pinaud 8:06

mindful.org, why a time crunch, mindset backfire, and how leaders can learn from that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:15

Yeah, so this is an excerpt from the book and I put it up on screen so folks can see it. So this book is called work better together, how to cultivate strong relationships to maximize well being, and boost bottom lines. And this is a book by Jennifer Jen Fisher and on Philips, Jen Fisher is the chief wellbeing Officer of at Deloitte and on Phillips is a researcher there at Deloitte as well. And the book itself gives some straightforward hints for dealing with some things. It starts out by defining scarcity mindset. Do you want to kind of give folks a little hint in terms of what that is a gousto?

Augusto Pinaud 8:55

Yeah, they said Nero, you know, everybody suffers from time crunches. But time is the only one from surfer with scarcity. And that’s, you know, they were they start Attention Deficit may come from lack of money, collaboration, food, companionship, but other scars can be a hidden distractor that constantly pull cognition away from other important of less urgent needs. And they really go into the detail of scarcity. And you know, I have said, not in the article, but I have wrote protan talk about it that one of the problems with the scar city is that the definition that most people have of time is not the definition of time, but the definition of scar city. And then when you start their definition is really important, but until you understand where are you on what are the definitions? You are going to be in that negative spin.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:55

Right. So I think it was really helpful for the for the authors to explain what what a scarce mindset is that the opposite is an abundance mindset approaching things from a place of abundance means that you’re not limiting yourself in your planning about the limitations that you might come across. But what are the possibilities that you can come across? There is a bit of Stephen Covey Dr. Covey’s work here in that in that language and mindset perspective, there’s a little bit of of because to help me out here, what is the researchers name around mindset?

Augusto Pinaud 10:34

Carol Dweck,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:35

thank you Dr. Carol Dweck and her work around mindset. And so it was a little bit

Augusto Pinaud 10:40

in the current that crossbreeding.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:45

There’s a little bit of that going on in in in this book here. And I find that to be fascinating. They also talk about five simple strategies to create more space in your day. And I’ll just cover them very quickly because it’s helpful here i’m quoting from the excerpt number one, start your day off, right, take the time to define and prioritize your daily goals and refer to those goals throughout the day to to ensure alignment. Number two, create meeting buffers, reduce meeting times to 25 or 50 minutes to create time to reset before moving on to the next meeting or task, basically rejecting the the concept of time rules. You know, we can set meetings for whatever time we want. Continuing on, again, quoting, schedule focused work time, during this time, turn off your email and your phone so that you can get your full attention to the task at hand. Number four, take breaks scheduled time to mentally recover. This means stepping away from your work to get up and move around or practice deep breathing to center yourself. And number five, schedule quiet time. Regular pauses for quiet meditation or breathing exercises can provide a wide array of mental and physical benefits and quote, so I am looking forward to reading this book, I’m going to grab a copy and and go through it. But this seems like a really good, you know, kind of entrance into the concept of getting away from the perspective that somehow we are time starved, that were time scarce. And that that is the that’s not the position of command and control that we should be looking at when it comes to our lives, we should be coming at this from a much more healthy perspective, a much more abundant abundance mindset perspective. And I appreciate any book that brings that to our attention in that sense. Alright, so from the positive perspective of the abundant abundance mindset of gousto, we move on to our next article from the New Yorker magazine,

Augusto Pinaud 12:36

the frustration with the productivity culture, and why we are tired of optimizing our work life and what we should do about it. I don’t even know where to start in this article. So I’m going to let you start in this article. Sorry.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:47

So this is an article from Georgetown University Professor Cal Newport. He’s well known for, you know, advocating for time blocking and many other things. You know, he’s obviously the author, obviously, but he’s the author of the book, deep work, and many others. Most recently, he wrote the book about email overload, and which is not truly about only email. But the idea here is that I think this is one of those frustrating components about the discussion of productivity generally, which is presumed that there is a culture of productivity, I would say that we actually don’t have a culture of productivity, we have a media discussion around productivity, but we end up not understanding what productivity really is. When we say productivity, quote, unquote, it ends up being a melosh of personal productivity, labor, productivity, and organizational productivity. And when we try to conflate those components, together those different definitional pieces, we end up with this, unfortunately, mistaken assumption about how people should get work done, what outcomes should be made, and how people should collaborate to be more, you know, advantageous to the firm. This article, I think, on its face, on Earth’s a sense we all have about being unproductive in our own worlds. But the reality is, is that what it really is saying is that there is a world out there that is telling us how we should be. And that’s been the case, time immemorial, right? Women should look a particular way women should do a particular thing. Men should act a particular way. And men should do particular things. And then society somehow we’ll be right. That is not the case. We know that right? We have a wide variety of ways in which people can live ways in which people can act ways in which people can present themselves. And when we have this kind of oppressive perspective from the media, then people feel terrible about themselves. But if we choose to take agency over our lives, then this concept of quote unquote, productivity culture falls away, because we get to choose the methodologies, the skills, the strategies, the tools, and the people with whom We operate with. So this whole concept of a frustration with productivity culture ends up being, again, Funny enough, because Joe and I had, you know, we have a podcast, you know, episode where we discussed this earlier this morning, that’ll be out in a few months. And, you know, the concept really harkens to this victim mentality, that somehow just because some productivity article told you, so you have to follow it and that you’re wrong if they tell you so they don’t, they don’t have any control over you, you have agency, you have the power and control to do what you want to do with your life. And so what what is productive for you, as an individual is yours to define. And once you understand that, then all of this becomes monk. And so that’s kind of where I am on on the subject. And let’s move on to our next story. This week.

Augusto Pinaud 15:51

The power of imagination, a lesson from Davey Shan, GI Joe, and I hope I mentioned that I didn’t prefer on his memory, really, really bad. But this was a really interesting article, nice talking, how he found how this imagination plays a critical success on critical element on success. And it talks about the first you know, church Church of Pastor David Young, true and how he founded in 58, again, even quoted the first sermon of service he did, he did have his his three daughters, and a lady who was trying to escape from the rain. And that was it. But how, by 1983, he was having over 700,000 members. And how do you know, go and imagine it’s not enough, but he said, a really important step that is needed with consistency, and conviction to make things happen, you know, we have talked about you can read a stories. Well, this may, Oprah Winfield, and like that, an incredible amount of people that were things to start there on dynamization. But it’s really interesting that how you read about these people who really translate that conviction into action, but at the same time, we tell the younger generations are Don’t waste your time, dreaming, dreaming and creativity that go and do what you’re supposed to do instead of dreaming and daydreaming and those kinds of things was a really fun are

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:35

fantastic. onto our next article from muesli, oh,

Augusto Pinaud 17:39

let’s keep ourselves into the creativity catching the wave of creativity, time does not equal productivity when you are working from home. I didn’t. And that’s where I start having issues with this article. Okay, I’ve been working from home for nine years now. Okay, I consider myself reasonably Pro. So when you start telling me before I start reading to you, well, time does not equal productivity when working from home and start having the traffic. But because that assumes that the first impression you get is that no, you cannot be productive at home, what is a lie. So what you need to figure it out is what it works, okay, the time works, difference when you are at home, and I will agree on that. Okay, you can do a lot more things in a much more effective way, etc, then when you are in the office, you can manage your mood, you can manage your time, you can manage your energy levels, all that much better. That said, I don’t know, that’s where that’s where I, I again, it was an article that I struggle, because I was looking, how about productivity of productivity and how the creativity helps the productivity. And that’s not what I found on the article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:59

Yeah, so so I’ll give my take on this, which is that this is a design focused article. And this is for designers, in essence, and how designers can really make their worlds more productive in, in the face of working from home or from remote work or hybrid work. And especially in the creative industries, where many times it’s very difficult for you to say, well, what’s going to be a How much time does a a great piece of design take? It takes the time it takes. So I come at the article with the perspective that I don’t think that we can think about creativity and, and and time boundedness in the same ways in say non creative industries as in Creative Industries. And so I don’t know enough to say that, you know, there was one right way here. This is one particular designers perspectives. He did he did give some tips At the end here, and and I thought that was I’m sorry, she, she gave some tips here at the end here that I think are useful. And so if you’re a designer these might help you. And again, quoting, here are my tips. Sometimes you need to force yourself to get started. Once you’re doing something, it’s easier to keep going, I get that momentum. Again, still quoting, finishing anything gives you a motivational boost. If you can’t tackle the job you’re doing, that you’re supposed to be doing, try finishing something else. Do some do activities that let your mind wander, figure out when and how you work best and create a routine around it, then ignore the routine when you need to take breaks when you feel the wall and stay focused when you’re feeling inspired. And quote, I cannot argue with any of those tips not withstanding the article itself and maybe some of the meanderings of the of the author in that sense. So I think all around a good set of tips. And though the, the the tenants of the article don’t seem to really gel all that much for you or me. And so with that, those are articles from the productivity blogosphere. This week, we are going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and then we’ll come back with the productivity and technology news. This week, we’ll see you after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 21:20

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 comm 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 too. 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 22:28

Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined here with a gousto pinout for the second half of the show. And so with that a gousto. What is our first productivity technology headline this week, so

Augusto Pinaud 22:43

sorry, really excited about the fact that the iPad, iOS 15 that was released today will allow to use apps up to 12 gigabytes of RAM on the new iPad. So when the new iPad was released, in the summer, there was two versions pay there was a version up to 512 megabytes of space and then they will have five gigabyte gigabytes of RAM and there was a version with one Giga of space and 16 gigabytes of RAM. So up to now, up to iOS 14 Apple has limit for developers how much memory they can use out of the ram available on the machine. And for the first time, Apple is allowing developers to use up to 12 gigabytes on those machines. That is really, really exciting because the machine is incredibly powerful, allowing developers to really max the RAM, it will make the apps works incredibly, incredibly better. So it is an incredible news. So when you know from two to four to from 12 to 16. So it is going to play if you have an M one iPad Pro, it is incredible news for you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:11

Absolutely. onward to the next article.

Augusto Pinaud 24:15

The next article, it’s really about the job that Apple took Chromebooks and you and I discussed this of offline, because on the last event that we cover with Michael Slowinski, you were not there in that event, we really they went came Apple came and say, well, we’re three times faster than the top selling Chrome. Yes, but your iPad is 399 they must best selling Chromebook is 100 bucks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:42

Not the best, not the best.

Augusto Pinaud 24:46

Not the best fax is when the schools are buying to be destroy and go on to trash when the kids destroy so I don’t think it was a good comparison I think was misleading. And he was on Apple to do that. And I didn’t like it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:08

Yeah. So first and foremost, it’s, I mean, just to make note, it is very rare for Apple to Evernote, the competition, right? They always compare themselves against the older model, right? They say, we’re x, you know, times faster than this prior version, because in Apple’s world, there is no competition. Your your competition is the product you have in your pocket. That’s your prior Apple device. And all it is is about whether or not you’re going to upgrade to the latest version. So the fact that they even have to come out and talk about Chrome and Android as competition, I think is just incredibly, it’s kind of, you know, earth shattering to me in a lot of ways that Apple feels the heat about how much Chrome OS has eaten into their market in that sense. So that’s number one, you know, really probably ate into their iPad sales. And so

Augusto Pinaud 26:00

it did you know, as a parent, and an apple guy, hey, I understand why you don’t want to buy two iPads you, you can buy, you know, you can buy 16 Chromebooks for the price of those two I pad. So yes,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:15

exactly. So that’s number one. And then they say, Oh, well, you know, this iPad is is 3x faster than than our best selling not our best Chromebooks on the market, but the best selling Chromebooks on the market, as you noted, and then it said it was 6x facts fix at 6x faster than the best selling Android tablets, which is also misleading, because the best selling Android tablets are also these low powered, you know, kind of crummy devices, you know, maybe kids can use them, but you’re not going to use that in your own office world. So the fact of the matter is, is that in a lot of ways, it’s pretty flattering to both Chrome OS and Android, that Apple is even mentioning them in this space. And so it just goes to show that we are we are now in a place of probably parity when it comes to these these issues. And I know that you have these kinds of discussions over on the cross platform podcasts that you do with Art Gelwicks. And so I think this is going to be an ongoing debate as to really marginal issues nowadays, right, it’s really going to come down to not operating system, but really the software developers choosing to write good software for those platforms.

Augusto Pinaud 27:18

And that’s it’s been like that, you know, there was a difference. And we have discussed this even even at the beginning of ProductivityCast. The early days, you know, we used to discuss the difference, you know, between Apple devices and Android devices. And then came the Chromebooks. And now really, the hardware is really capable on both platforms, the software, the operating system, it is to it is a matter now, it’s the developers game. It’s what the developers are going to bring and for that interconnectivity, and it’s, it’s going to be an interesting game to

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:53

see. Wonderful onto our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 27:57

The new Microsoft Office is, again, as we said, on the previous part of the show, if you are into office, it’s coming. You know, if you don’t want to subscribe, don’t worry, you know, they will be able to buy office 2021 as a one purchase in the fall, that is interesting. Because Microsoft went away from this one time purchase that you keep for a really long time to the subscription model. And now it’s coming back to Okay, fine, I will let you buy the one time deal, if you want. So, that will be interesting. Why make that decision happen? I don’t know. But it’s still interest.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:37

That’s a short term cash grab, I bet you there are a lot of people out there who like, you know, the the deal of paying a one time fee for something and don’t want to pay the subscription. And then they’re gonna ultimately in a few years, feel the pain of not having the latest and greatest and those still going to go back to Microsoft 365. This is a time immemorial pricing strategy. And I know because I teach digital marketing and pricing strategy is a part of marketing, right. And so what you do is you offer a one time deal, and people buy that one time deal. And of course, it’s limited to X amount of, of, you know, bells and whistles, right, it’s inevitable that you’re going to upgrade and make a product better over time. And so then you can get someone to purchase the next product and the next product and the next product. And if you have a subscription based service, that gives you even greater latitude here in a SaaS based service. So for those of you who are interested in doing so, I mean, you know, that’s fine. You can buy Microsoft Office, you know, and get that version, you know, 2021 as a downloadable, it’s actually the office ltsc version, which is the long term service channel version has been available since last week. And so you can go ahead and get that long term servicing channel version for Windows and Mac, and that’s available for commercial and government users. And then they’ll bring that consumer version out to folks on the fifth of October. So very interesting here. But I bet you it’s just an opportunity to sate the people who are chomping at the bit to upgrade to the latest version of Office, but they don’t want to be in the subscription, kind of, you know, hamster wheel. Because of course, you know, they don’t want to spend the money every year for it. So they want to plunk down the cash right now. My end result though, and my end feeling about this is that Microsoft basically has you between a rock and a hard place Microsoft and Google for that matter. So the while you feel like you’re getting more out of this, unless you keep office outdated for, you know, after the first couple of years, you’re going to get more and more outdated, and you’re going to feel that pain over time that the subscription ultimately ends up being the better bet here. And I hate to say that, because you know, I would love to be once and never pay again. But you know that that’s not the that’s not the name of the game here in this development space. So anyway, onward to our next tech story.

Augusto Pinaud 31:05

Well, IKEA is launching a gaming themed furniture and accessories. And they are ready to go to the global or to the whole world in October. So you will have from $10 cupholders, you know, mouse bungees, to chairs to standing desk and even a hand so you can hang your headset, your game headset, sir. But it’s but it’s interesting, because this is something that I will have never guessed IKEA was going to go into Yeah, they have the house and yes, they have the home office thing. But gaming was a different animal. So it is interesting to see there are around 30 items that they’re going to be releasing. Again, the release is going to start being in October globally. So we will see we will we will may need to go and stop by on an IKEA store to see all this toys.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:06

Yeah, I mean, some of them are really good. I mean, you know, the the mug holder, I think a lot of these pieces can be useful for anyone who is looking to upgrade their their home workspace or even their office workspace, I’ve actually been looking at that mug holder because I think you know it’d be actually be nice to have the, you know, a cup where you might have precipitate perspiration you know, it’s you know, condensation on the outside, you don’t want it to really stay in the desk. So having it in a holder that is off to the side, you know means less spills, those kinds of things. I’ve I’ve rigged my own, you know, little hooks underneath my desk to hold my earbuds and my my hanging headsets and so on so forth. But if you need something to hold your over the ears, headphones, now they’ve given you something that’s a little bit more stylish to do. So the ring lights and the phone holders, all of those things, I think they’re just useful components for a work environment as much as they are for a gaming environment, obviously the game the gaming chair chair and the and the neck pillow and I mean just a bunch of stuff that I think could be really useful for people who are just trying to make those minor tweaks for those things. And very interestingly though, and this is in partnership with aces and so you know, it makes a lot of sense for them to partner up with a company that is doing electronics in this space and providing these peripherals for usage. I really like the the mouse cable holder for those folks who do have a wired mouse giving you something to basically hold on and manage the cable is also really a nice feature as well. So I thought it was a really interesting play all around

Augusto Pinaud 33:49

I agree and what is interesting to me is many of these things people will not buy because they cannot touch they cannot feel they cannot see how it works but I believe that you know in a in a ecommerce world you know they will go to Amazon they will go but these gamers still go to IKEA for other things so now they will see all this will be able to play put their phone into the thing and visualize and I think that may bring a lot of success to this.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:18

Yeah, I can very much see myself walking through IKEA and if I saw that gaming room that they have set up and I start looking at the various items I think Oh you know what, actually be really nice to get this ergonomic thing or get that particular piece there and I probably walk away with a few things you know myself so I can absolutely see people purchasing these items just remember that you could you can use these things for your own productivity world not just for your gaming rigs. So a good a good there alright with that closes out our productivity technology articles for the week and brings us on to our pre productivity resource of the week. And so as you all know Augusto and I basically scour the interwebs for all of the products tivity blog articles and the productivity technology news that we bring to Anything But Idle. Of course, in that journey, we come across many personal productivity tools, apps and services that we think you might like. And so we share those with you during the productivity resource of the weekend. So we have two of them today. The first one is something that I came across from make use of Comm. And I think it’s just really fascinating. So I know we made the announcement last week, I think it was that the platform, again, helped me out here a gousto, what was the low caste, low caste decided to shut down because of the lawsuit against them. And this platform is called audials. And it may actually solve for that. So what this is, is a set of PC and mobile software, there’s a web browser version as well, that allows you to listen and watch radio, podcasts and TV inside of the application. And so it’s called audials. You can go to audios comm and download the windows, Android, iOS and browser apps from there. And so it gives you a place to listen to radio stations across the world. I use VLC, but you could use audios as well. This also has a podcast player so you can access and download podcasts inside of the application and listen to them, you should subscribe to Anything But Idle in there. And then the thing that I think is really fascinating beyond the music part, and there’s a whole music section in there, you can upload your own music and save it into the application and listen to the music that they have in their in their catalog as well. But the thing that again, going back to low caste is they have live TV that you can actually stream directly within the system. So that’s really powerful to be able to have all of those built into the same ecosystem. And I thought, you know, if you’re looking for an application to kind of solve for what low caste was doing, this may scratch that itch. So audials and I’ll put a link to that, obviously, in the show notes. Agusta What is your?

Augusto Pinaud 37:01

Well, mine is perl dekstop 17. So Windows has come in we have talked a lot about Windows. And we will talk a little bit more about Windows. So find out okay, what happened when you have a Mac and really you need to run that application. I have a client who I once in a while I need to access to their europei. Okay, the VRP runs on Windows, I don’t have a Windows machine. But I have a Mac. So I can install parallels around windows, run Windows as a whole window or run it, what they call congruence. I just run the application I want to run it I don’t need to see the rest of windows, but it works incredibly well. Even pearls have been claiming that they are going to be ready for Windows 11. Even that, when Microsoft has said it’s not going to run in that. But we will see the reality is that right now they’re better off windows 11 run in the m one and parallels has been really really good to keep their work. They are not exactly a new company. They have years in the market. So hopefully, they will keep that running for them one. Yeah. And

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:12

so I think I think the way in which parallels is doing this is actually quite appropriate. Most people don’t realize this, but the whole argument over whether or not windows 11 will run on a computer without TPM. presupposes that you you don’t have a virtual TPM 2.0. So there is a VMware version of TPM, which is the Trusted Platform Module so that people have an understanding this is the the security module there’s a virtual version of this that Microsoft has specked out and themselves have built one. So the idea here is I’m pretty sure what parallels is doing is just using the virtual TPM 2.0 so that it has the Trusted Platform Module so that then windows 11 will run I think this is a whole lot of hoopla Much Ado About Nothing regarding TPM and and something that many devices have. If not, then they can likely also find it by virtue of installing these remarkably, they’re like, I don’t know, you know, 10s of dollars, not more than 10s of dollars, basically little devices that are TPMS you can buy and plug into your computer. If for some reason, Windows 11 does not read the version of TPM 2.0 on your system. So don’t worry about it so much. These are solvable problems, and it’s great to see parallels supporting the windows 11 move so great on them for that. All right. From there on to our featured story this week at gousto with our featured stories.

Augusto Pinaud 39:46

Were things on password 123 I have seen password. Yes. Okay. So, Microsoft is relying on the Microsoft authenticator security view for aura security for login in the future and there basically trying to get rid of unsecured passwords. And this is really designed for corporate environments, I mean should be implemented on every personal PC. But I know that may not happen, but on corporate is great, okay because will give corporate really instead of nagging you because you need to replace your password every 30 days, they will now be able to run this and you will not get nagging for these problems, he will solve some of the problems to form authentications. So, I think it is going to be great.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:37

Yeah, my curiosity here will be whether or not people are responsible enough to manage their security authenticator apps as well as their physical security keys. And so for example, you know, like, I have a, I have a Google Titan key, this is a USB a type key. And it’s always on me, because this is what allows me to log into my Google account. Without it, I cannot log into my Google account. And so therefore, you know, it’s, it behooves me to protect this, you know, in order to be able to do so, there are backup authentication options that I have enabled in the account, and I have the backup codes and whatnot. But still, you know, for the most part, I can’t get into my account without that device, which is a strong amount of protection for me. But I feel responsible, and I take the responsibility for managing that. Most people I don’t think are so you know, whatever. But I think most of you who are listening and watching are and so I highly recommend this for the person who wants the greater level of security, who understands the importance of security to your productivity, you know, if you can’t get into your machine, because it’s been hacked, or you’ve been locked out of it, you can’t be really productive, can you. So the goal here is to is to increase that level of productivity. And what what I understand is that Microsoft, while they’re talking about the Microsoft authenticator app as being the way in which you authenticate into it, remember, this gets rid of the password altogether, there is no password after this happens. So you’re using either a one time, you know, a one time, password or time based password kind of thing. And so I’m curious as to whether or not they’ll allow, say, Google Authenticator, or some other application for those purposes, as well. So we’ll see what happens. But this will work on both your Microsoft account, as well as Windows. So, you know, I’ll be curious here, I know the article that we put in the show notes says that other authenticator apps like authy, and Google Authenticator won’t work. But I’m presuming that over time, they’re going to have to provide,

Augusto Pinaud 42:48

they will open.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:51

Overall, though, a gousto. I think that this is a great move toward what we need in the world, which is to in as many places as possible, get rid of passwords, there, there really is, and a great need. And anyone who’s interested look at the squirrel project, which is SQL, the squirrel project that Steve Gibson has put together, look at these other options for basically getting rid of passwords generally. So that authentication, identity management across the web becomes something that is both trivial, but also highly secure. And we need to be basically, you know, apply pressure on our software developers on our major technology companies. And it takes us also it behooves us as well to go in and set up these tools so that we don’t have that that includes password managers like LastPass, and one password and dashlane. And otherwise, that really gives us control over making highly secure passwords that we cannot recall. And that the password managers themselves just basically input and takes care of for us, but also applies the secondary layers of security, like a second factor or multi factor authentication perspective, multi factor typically being a Password Plus location identification, or location, geolocation, plus a one time password or a time based password perspective. So all of these things together, allows us to be able to protect ourselves from malware and hackers and whatnot. But ultimately, I think we need to go closer toward this perspective of just getting rid of the password altogether. The password is a relic of the past and we need to have some other mechanism for verifying that we are who we say we are, and going from there. Any other thoughts around the Microsoft and Windows passwordless? future?

Augusto Pinaud 44:45

No, I think I agree with you. I think this is great. And yeah, it should be it has been proved that people will not create the intense passwords that we need the secure passwords that we need. So hopefully with this, people will keep that and will happen and we will get to your passwords.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:08

Fantastic. All right. And with that, that brings us to announcements this week. We’ve got a couple a few several announcements this week. So go ahead and let us know those announcements.

Augusto Pinaud 45:18

So the first announcement is, Microsoft event is going to be on September 22. Frame two days from now if you’re watching live in one day for now, as you’re listening to this on the 21st. And then we are going to run into 23rd, an episode special episode of ABI zero at Microsoft a special event and Art Gelwicks will be here with us discussing what was the Microsoft event and the implications. The second announcement is good notes. That is my notes, application of choice on the iPad, create, introduce our new community Introducing goodnotes community, it’s a note sharing platform to get inspiring story better. That’s really, really excited. The next announcement is iPad, os 15, iOS 15. tv, iOS, as well as a watch OS eight was released today. So if you want to update to the latest, do it if not, as we mentioned last week, at least update to 14.8. So you can see all that little holes that we were having in the calendar. And finally, there is a new article, a new video from David Allan Coe, all this smell of the roses. And he’s talking about issues and what happened when things got delay. And I we thought it was really interesting to bring it up. As we’ve seen more and more people with this feeling of everything being late, everything been delayed. Nothing happened as we planned it many months ago.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:52

Fantastic. Thank you. Okay, so And of course, that with that we’ve covered the productivity news this week. And so thank you to Augusto Pinaud, for joining me this week and every week and putting together the show and making it all happen.

Augusto Pinaud 47:07

My pleasure.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:09

All right, everybody. I would recommend that you head over to Anything But idle.com forward slash 081. That will take you to the episode page where you will be able to listen to and watch the episode once the episode is live. So it’s not there now, if you’re watching live, but if you’re listening to this after the fact it is there now. But that’s where our show notes are. Our show notes include links to all of our stories, the tools of the week, our productivity resources of the week. It includes any extra stories that we couldn’t cover during this time together. And it also includes a text transcript for you to both read on the page or download after the fact there’s a download link below the little expandable read more section that has the transcript embedded in it. Beyond that, though, if for some reason we did miss a story, and you’d like us to cover it, feel free to head over to Anything But idle.com click on that contact button, complete the contact form. And let us know you can also tweet or dm us on Twitter at Anything But Idle. And so Anything But Idle we have our DMS open so you can go ahead and let us know about a story that you’d like us to cover. And also if you have any questions or comments, you can comment directly on the episode page or you can go ahead and fill out the contact form on Anything But Idle comm this is your first time watching, feel free to click the subscribe button. That of course will notify you when we go live weekly. If you click the little bell icon, it also gives you some options, go ahead and turn on either personalized or the other option for being able to get notified whenever we go live. If you’re listening to the podcast show, feel free to subscribe to the podcast that may mean follow in Apple podcasts. But once you follow it, you also have to click into the settings and make sure that you download new episodes when they come live. And that actually downloads the episode to your systems of follow only gets you I think a notification or shows up in the feed in the apple podcast app in any other application you’re using. If you subscribe to the podcast, you will get the new downloads each week when we put them out. And you can also find instructions for all of that by going to Anything But idle.com and clicking on subscribe. If you’ve enjoyed spending time with us, feel free to click the thumbs up icon. You can also rate and review us on Apple podcasts and Stitcher and other places like pod chaser and listen to us and so on so forth. Really your ratings and reviews help us grow the podcast listening audience. And so thank you for doing that. Thank you for those of you who have reviewed us and rated us and so on so forth and that really does help us grow. And so with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to your productive life.

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