Google Calendar Adds Google Chat

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Google Calendar Adds Google Chat

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In this Cast | Google Calendar Adds Google Chat

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 0:13

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:14

And we’re hosts for Anything But Idle. Today is September 27 2021. And this is the episode Google Calendar ads, Google Chat. And so of course, every week we read and cover the news of the week. And we start off with our productivity articles from the blogosphere. Agusta, what is our first article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 0:37

So the first article we have is from make use off and it’s titled Why context switching is sabotaging your productivity and what you can do about it. And really what they talk about context switching is fast switching, you know what happened when you’re working on something, and then you get a distraction, you get a beeping, you get a notification, and then you move on trying to do the famous multitasking that the only thing that produces multi failure, at least from my experience, but and I agree it’s a great article, it’s a short article to read. And I love the beginning of the article says When is the last time you get 30 minutes on uninterrupted time. And this is something I work a lot with, with clients, you know, they don’t get interrupted time and sometimes our own fault, because instead of having our devices work for us, we tend to work for our devices. Or when you look most people do not have take the time to decide which notifications are important. Which notifications we’re really want to get, they just instead open. You know the flow of notifications to anything. I I have said for years, I don’t check email on my iPhone, I check email on the iPad, I carry the iPad with me 99% of the time sorry, that I think I’ve been doing this for at least 10 years, in 10 years, there have been three emails that I needed to send while I only had my phone. And it required me to log in, in a different way. Three emails in 10 years. That’s one every three years, it’s not enough reason for me to put him back on the phone.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:21

Yeah, I think I think it was a good article so that people are very clear. context switching is basically the fact of the matter. Your brain knows how to do one thing consciously at a time. And even when you believe that you’re doing multiple things at one time, you’re actually very quickly switching back and forward. I liken this to a car, and it going into first, second and third gear, you can’t go from first to fifth gear, you can’t go from fifth to first gear without going through the other gears, you know, in some logical fashion, right, so fine, I can downshift to first gear, but my you’re gonna feel it. And I certainly can’t go from first to fifth, if you’ve ever used a manual vehicle that’s going to stall your car or break something right, you know, you’re going to break the clutch. So you know, you need to be able to figure out how to appropriately move from one acceleration phase to the next. And then of course decelerate effectively in these regards. And single tasking is for most people the best approach for being able to get more productive, or to be more productive in these environments. And so I think the article just reminds us all that, you know, we, we keep hearing it in popular culture, we hear this in work culture, that, you know, multitasking is a strong skill set to have. And all I can think of is, is that context switching as a strong, you know, work related cult skill is akin to telling people that, you know, whack a mole is the is the appropriate way for you to do surgery. You know, like, I mean, you know, it’s a really, it’s a really strong, unfortunate, our, you know, foundation of our work culture, and we need to, we need to push back against it. And so this reminded me of that fact that we need to consistently be talking about how context switching or multitasking is really damaging our overall ability to be productive. So from context, switching to space, in our days live about is talking about space in our days. What’s that all about?

Augusto Pinaud 4:24

No. It’s, I really like and he’s talking about time, his car city and it remind me as I was reading, you know, the definition I have in connecting visible dots in the pillar of abundance about time and one of the things I teach people is, What is your definition of time? Because the definition of time that most people manage is really the definition of scarcity, not the definition of time. And what Leo is trying to share here is really the day is abundant. There is enough time to do things. The problem is we are tend to cram stuff into the 24 hours on to the point that we break. It doesn’t matter if you you know, Dr. Covey was famous, Stephen Covey was famous for doing that, you know, the big rocks, and then the sand and then the water. Yeah, but it’s, as he said, on those teachings, you begin with the water and then tried to put the big rocks, it’s not going to work. So those principles as much as certain things has changed and continue being the same. And when we think that time is scarce, what we’re doing is putting the water first on hoping and noticing that the rest of this stuff doesn’t work and doesn’t fit. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:41

yeah, I thought it was an interesting perspective. I

Augusto Pinaud 5:44

really like it. And finally, one thing I love is the fear. What are we afraid, you know, if we have talked about the fear of losing out the fear, but pay attention to what is the fear that you have with time?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:02

Yeah, I thought was a very interesting perspective, especially since, you know, I tend to think about abundance, abundance, mentality or abundance mindset in many, many regards in our lives. And when we think about our days is something that is scarce, as opposed to something that’s abundant, you just, you just think about it from the perspective that if you believe that you were financially abundant, that you had all the money you needed in order to live, if you had all of the things that you needed to survive and thrive, you just approach the world differently, right? And not everybody lives in that space, you know, is absolutely, you know, poverty in those there are restrictions on people’s time and those kinds of things. But as much as we can, we want to make a place from a position of confidence, and abundance, as opposed to a place from fear and shame and guilt, and neglect. And I feel like that’s what Leo is really talking about here. So from the concept of time, scarcity and abundance on to Scrum.

Augusto Pinaud 7:01

Oh, the order of the articles this week in May. But then the next is an article from Bob stanky. And talking about the daily Scrum process from an intrapreneur. And Scrum is a methodology that we tend to see in startups, especially in programming. Okay. And well, the idea is that you go into microburst. Okay. And what he’s saying is okay, let’s evaluate, you know, what we did yesterday, what we’re going to do today, what are the barriers and try to look that in a day today? I like it, it was an interesting, it was an interesting article, he talks about theme. For the days, I don’t do themes for the days, even that some days I shoot my theme for working or not working. And normally it’s working. But But again, I think it was, it was an interesting, an interesting short article. Looking into a different way to evaluate, you know, I’m a big proponent of the week review. That said, there are times that you need to understand that the volume of things you’re have right now on your plate is a lot where these daily temporary reviews are incredibly, incredibly powerful and useful.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:19

I found I found the concept to be quite fascinating, the the idea of a daily theme check, and then a calendar, check in a task check basically spending 30 minutes a day or two and a half hours per week. In essence, preparing for your day, I do something very similar in terms of the preparation for the day, not this particular Scrum concept. And I think that everyone should build one that is appropriate for their day. And so I like to end my day preparing for the next day. But that also requires me to then start my day by reviewing what I prepared for and making sure it’s still reconciles with what’s going on in that particular day. Because I can I can make all the plans in the world but you know, you wake up in the morning and all of a sudden, you know, clients heads are on fire, you know, you need to put out this fires and so you you have to then make some adjustments and you know, you know, because we talked about this before the recording, that’s kind of how my day went right? You know, I had the best of intentions for today. And my morning went sideways, not in a bad way. It’s just I had to make sure that I took care of these particular items for the for client and all positive stuff. It’s just you know, it didn’t go the way my day was brand. And we all need to have that level of stuff. You know, there’s Peter Bregman is 18 minute ritual, you know, he does five minutes at the beginning of the day, an hour at each of the eight hour workday, and then five minutes at the end of the day. totaling that 18 minutes of kind of review reflection. And really for me, it’s like that course correction time, right because you can you hit a trigger in the day and being able to do stuff we’ve talked about the 2555 method on ProductivityCast and That concept of basically every 25 and 55 of the hour, checking in with an accountability partner, any of these methods are really just going to help you stay better and more on track on the rails as opposed to off the rails toward the outcomes that you want to achieve. So I found that to be useful in the article. And onward to our next one, sorry, Rise of planner apps Rise of

Augusto Pinaud 10:22

the planner app by Francesco Su. And he’s talking about the kinds of apps that are really a hybrid to do his calendar, and it’s trying to help you to plan different you know, on ProductivityCast, we have talked about sorted I have talked about sorted how I integrate that with the calendar and to do is, we have talk with other applications like this, the name is escaping me right now on ProductivityCast. Also cosmic time, gospel time, thank you. And like them, there are others that I wasn’t familiar with Susannah focused or at flow, the tree that Francesco mentioned in his article, but I was constantly familiar with the constant, it’s a way to bring the task and integrated task on your calendar, you know, one of the things that happens sometimes is your calendar and your list are completely unaware of each other. And then you have 10 things on that list that you’re going to do. But when you look at your calendar, you have 30 minutes free, okay, well, there’s something that is not going to happen or the left corner means or the 30 are the list. And this kind of applications help you balance that a little bit better.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:40

Yeah, so I have a little problem with this, because the big missing, you know, 800 pound gorilla in the room is outlook, people act like outlook doesn’t exist. And in the face of all of these quote unquote, planner apps, and really, that’s who they are, you know, primarily challenging in the market it’s not to do is to or, you know, tick tick or any of these other you know, minor ones not even remember the milk, you know, and I love remember the milk, but they’re not challenging those particular applications. And there is a, there is a, a criticism that you can make of task managers that they, for the most part, do not show your tasks in a calendar view. And don’t bring those together. But to be quite honest, to do just remember the milk, name, many of them, they all give you an ability, Asana included, they have to give you the ability to to see those tasks into your calendar app of choice, so that you could see them in the app, you may not have very strong control over them, but you can see them in the application calendar application of your choice. The real challenger here in the market is outlook. And to some lesser extent, I would presume Gmail and Google Calendar within Google workspace, which you know, more and more today is becoming much much more like outlook. You know, if I opened up I use both of us are in a Google workspace business environment. And when we open up, we can open up Gmail in front of us and then to the side you will see a little calendar icon you click on the calendar icon, you’re gonna see calendar and email next to each other, a new event comes in, you can RSVP to the event directly inside of that interface. And so binding email to your task and calendar management here. And in the Google workspace, as well as the outlook space ends up has also note taking capabilities, it tends to actually satisfy all of those pieces together. So I’m not sure we’ve seen that much of a new development so to speak, but these planner apps I think are also very interesting right? They’re all going and vying for Outlook users to to utilize those people who are using other tools and want to connect them and the problem I have I mean just out the gate you know my base level commentary is say for example Aki flow Aki flow connects to Google tasks and it connects to Asana but it doesn’t connect to remember the milk so my task manager of choice is not in that tool so I’m not capable of really investing in Aki Flo and feeling comfortable connected to those and I know that Francesco made the note of there being a cost savings for example to buy basically utilizing something like Aki flow and then you can disregard those other applications like a fantastic owl or superhuman and otherwise if they’re all they’re all together then you’ll pay one fee and save money I’m all for saving money you know that it’d be so but but the reality is is that I don’t necessarily want to give up my workflows in totality and it would take me a long time to give up something like the remember the milk and segue over to something like Aki flow or you know, or routine, so,

Augusto Pinaud 14:55

no, so not only that, you know, last year, I move after God knows how many years. So from the focus, I moved to do it. And I move one or the other business to not be teams. And it’s not an easy thing to change, you know, only focus in particular allows you to integrate your calendar inside of me, but your calendar and your tasks, so you could see the task B between the calendar is really, really useful. That said, I don’t want to move from where I am, you know, the integration, sometimes it’s not enough on the sense that when you have a tool that works, where the collaboration now works, even if outlook Yes, you are going to challenge outlook, I get it. But the reality is, for many of my clients, outlook is the option of choice period. Okay, that’s what it comes for install. And in many cases, that’s the only thing they can install, really. So sometimes for it, especially for those clients, that challenge is not that it is, you know, why you don’t integrate into Outlook, so I can do things, assuming they can, no, I’m working with a client right now that, you know, he can basically turn on that machine, that’s as much privilege. Okay, so going out of Outlook, installing anything that is not pre approved by the company, is not an option. And that has been the challenge is how we work with those applications that are approved. So this person can be really productive.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:40

Right? All right, on to our next article from the ladders,

Augusto Pinaud 16:45

the worst advice about working from home, and I’d really enjoy and laugh on this article. Because before I begin working from home, I don’t know, eight, nine years ago, okay. And I remember, you know, people giving me these things, you know, when, when my daughter was little, oh, who needs a babysitter, you’re at home, you know, meetings, good. You can do this while you watch the TV. Okay, come on, you’re at home all day. Can you help us? Why did you can, why you, you can help us, you know, fake work in the digital presses. You know, when you work from home, you work all the time. And I love this advice. Because as a person who did this for a really long time, I have here, those five, another five on a version of those 10. But 2020 and 2021 was an eye shattering for a lot of people who work from home, or who have never worked from home and discover, you know, this working from home is not as friendly. As simple. It’s a choice. It’s a choice. Okay, and I love my choice. Okay, but I stopped hearing about when you’re at home, Can Can you do this? Now I get people who were a lot less. Understanding a lot less. Okay, more looking at this and say, Hey, do you think I know you’re busy? But can you help? You know, there is no more people experience, at least hopefully for the next three to three to five years, people will remember the time that they work at home, and how these five things? Were not that easy as they thought in?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:31

Yeah, no, I think I think there’s a newfound respect for the remote worker, and certainly those that have children and work from home, and the responsibility of work first, and then you know, other duties, when you are working from home, there’s a natural kind of disconnect when a person goes off to work, they are at work, and therefore there’s a clear boundary between home and work. And when you work from home, you have to create those boundaries. And this article highlights that component of it, but it also, you know, highlight some funny quips here about you know, Oh, you don’t have to actually attend meetings or watch TV while you’re in meetings and conference calls and other kinds of nonsense so but I think it’s a good it’s a good reminder that there’s a lot of bad advice out there. And and that you know, there is a lot of work when it comes to working from home. At the at the end of all of this once once we go into a period where we get comfortable with the the the after times of whatever this pandemic looks like we will have a better understanding about who really can work from home who can remotely work or work remotely. And those people who feel best to work at work at an office at a at a you know a location other than their home and you can work remotely at an office that’s not the company headquarters, right so you can go off to a co working space and maybe that’s the better place for you to work. So I understand that there are a lot of permutations of remote work and hybrid work that people are not necessarily exploring right now, because we are in the height of all of this challenge, you know, and, and so on so forth. But start thinking through, well, what if you, you know, swap with your neighbor, you know, they, they have the kids from, you know, nine to noon, and then you get the kids from, you know, from one to four. And that way, you’re basically trading off who’s capable of doing what and what meetings happen and what period of time, you know, some of my clients are in, in the US, but they have their primary headquarters of their companies are in Europe, or Australia or Asia. And so their working time is different, right? So they’re both working remotely, but they have to time shift in order to be able to attend meetings. And that can work really well if you have neighbors who work in Eastern time. And you can actually help satisfy their childcare needs during this time, as well. So like, think creatively about these problems, and I think that remote work and hybrid work become less onerous, and a lot more productive in the face of these kinds of challenges.

Augusto Pinaud 21:13

I agree with you completely.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:15

All right. So with that we’ve covered the productivity articles for this week. And we will now have a word from our sponsor this week, which is co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back we’ll cover the productivity technology news, we’ll talk about some productivity resources, our story of the week, and then we will close out with any announcements that we have, we will see you after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 21:35

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 22:46

Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle on Ray Sidney-Smith joined Of course by gousto pinout. And we are now going to hop into our technology news this week our productivity related technology news this week. gousto What is our first story

Augusto Pinaud 23:01

so this was a sub was not a self week that’s not true. The two weeks has been the last two weeks been really intense. The problem is we did a special event with the apple we did a special event for Microsoft and a lot of news were that so it feels going to feel soft. But let’s talk about a Kindle Paperwhite and they released the new Kindle Paperwhite better black light better backlight bigger screen. The problem is those devices don’t die. You know, we my I passed my some of the I’ve been passing I don’t have anybody else to pass my current Kindle Paperwhite I can go get a new one. And they don’t die. I mean, we we still have what it was a third generation I think or fourth generation and he’s working synchronized. Everything works. But the new ones are coming. It’s a 6.8 inch display. It has a USB C port and a lot more powerful. Again, if you are in the market for one. This is a really, really, really nice device.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:17

So something to keep in mind is that back in 2020, the later part of 2020 Kindle decided to double their memory from four gigabytes to eight gigabytes. So the current paper White can max out now you can go from base level eight gigabytes to 32 gigabytes of storage on these devices. And so just recognizing that now the base paper White is double that which you would have gotten in 2019 and early 2020. And so I have a four gigabyte Paperwhite and I’m thinking well Heck, I might as well now Do a trade in and get the 16 or 32, you know, gigabyte version, just to be able to have the storage because as you said, these things last forever. So, you know, I still have a Kindle 3g, and with you know, with whisper sync and I, did I hear recently that they were going to deprecate the whisper, whisper sync, are they getting rid of Whisper sync altogether? Or

Augusto Pinaud 25:22

you’re getting ready is the plan that came with that plan, the 3g plan that came with those devices is going to die.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:29

Right? Okay. Yeah. So So, you know, at the end, you know, you’re you’re getting, you know, for 189 99 you’re getting a pretty decent, you know, paper white model, this, the signature edition, I think is the is the 180 8999 that has charging, automatic color temperature adjustment, and, and 32 gigabytes of storage, so I feel like it’s a it’s a pretty decent device. And if you are in that space where you want to upgrade from, now’s the time to do it. Now of course, I have a I have a paperweight with existing accoutrement, you know, all the accessories, so now all of those need to be replaced as well. So keep that in mind as well that you know, when you do those kinds of upgrades you do, you do have to then replace some of those pieces because larger screen means larger, you know, I have a one of those folios that, you know, it docks into the folio so it feels like a book and those things are going to change, but I think it’s for someone like in my position where I really do want the larger amount of space because I hold a fairly, I mean, I try to max out the size of my Kindle White’s memory in terms of holding as much on it as possible, so that I have research available to me when I want it as well as having readable material for whatever, you know, piques my fancy whenever I’m stuck with a few minutes to read, and having 32 gigabytes is like I can’t I don’t even know how many records that is, you know, I mean, that’s like, I don’t have any libraries you can,

Augusto Pinaud 27:01

I don’t know how many libraries you can build on four gigabytes. This is the time jet that my Kindle has never said, Okay, we’re done. And I consider that I use it

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:12

good. I’m why I email a lot of stuff into my Kindle and I’m really looking forward to seeing where that how much this 32 gigabyte version will hold comparative to my existing library because I don’t have my entire library on my Paperwhite right now. And I’m curious what would happen if I tried to take the 32 gigabytes and download the whole thing to it, I that’ll be a fun, it’ll be fun project come when I get the when when I get the new Kindle Paperwhite 32 gigabyte edition. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 27:45

Our next story is Europe will require USB C chargers and everybody under precautions are insane on Apple is not happy and that is the reason I picked that news. You know, I think there are issues with that one of the issues is that may require innovation to now have two ports, okay, if the USBC cannot do some of the innovations and you know, people may complain about the lightning switch but the reality is Apple created that so they could do certain things that they may or may not be able to do with a USB regular Now many of their iPads are already USBC so really the changes that they need to do are the phones and you know this is not going to be tomorrow and he’s not going to be backtrack so by the time the new phones come, they will finally make the move and let it go it’s still I think that may affect some of that innovation that comes from Samsung that comes from Google that come from Apple okay in which now they may want to use the port and USBC may or may not be the solution and or they may need to work into that. That said you know the theory behind that is cool you know how many cables Do you have Okay, I’m I have now for years been buying those cables. Everything in the universe because I don’t know which device I’m going to be plugging into that thing. So moving everything to USBC sounds really nice. One cable, one tip that will work everywhere. Now, let me remind up everybody, by the time we finally do the transition and all the devices that we have to the transition, you know, on the past story we talk about devices of 2010 so that Kindle three years 2010 so by the time we did all this, people USBC will not be in the map anymore will be God knows where.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:52

Right and I’m guessing that Kindle Paperwhite will still be a micro USB port, not a USBC on the picture. Paperwhite I’d be curious, I don’t know if you if you know, oh, it is a USBC on the new cable on the new Kindle Paperwhite. That’s very fascinating. Interesting. So they finally because up until last year, they were still putting micro USB, USB ports into those things. So

Augusto Pinaud 30:16

the improvement from battery and capacity, they tried to put that surcharge faster. But that makes

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:21

it makes total sense. You know, I think the other problem is that, you know, by the time, as you said, by the time we get all the devices on that we’re gonna be on USB D, right. So, USB C and V will be, you know, beyond it. And the regulation is not particularly forward thinking or understanding of some factors, like, for example, you know, my phone’s in front of me, both of them are USBC, except that Google has decided to block the capability of me accessing video from the USBC cable, so I can’t, I can’t connect an external video camera to it and those kinds of things. It would be really nice if they said yes, you not only have to have USB, USB C, but you also can’t block the user from accessing the technology on the device that I mean, I own this phone, you know, $1,000 on this, why are you telling me I can’t use the technology the way I want to, and to some great extent, you know, apple, and Google and Microsoft, and you name it, they all seem to think that they own the hardware that I have purchased with my own hard earned dollars, right. And so I have a real challenge with that kind of EU hard handed approach that doesn’t think it through like, Okay, if you’re going to if you’re going to play heavy handed with technology, the best you could do is do something that’s useful to me, you know. So I felt like that was a little bit, you know, like, Okay, guys, you’re, you’re missing half the boat here. But with that, we have covered the technology news. And we are going to go into our productivity resources of the week. And so of course, Augusto and I scoured the interwebs every week to bring you the news that is Anything But Idle. in that journey, of course, we come across a bunch of personal productivity tools, apps and services we think you might like so we share each each of us shares one of those that we think you might like, and that may be tools that we use, or have used for a long time, they may be new tools to us that we thought you might be interested in, in knowing about. And so this week, we’re going to cover something a lot of fun, I think this is going to be a fun topic anyway. Let me pull it up. Alright, so you want to go first Augusto, I’m gonna I’m gonna throw this one up. And it is Apple translate.

Augusto Pinaud 32:34

So when you want it to do translations on your phone, and for many years did translation of the day was Google Translate, and people is familiar with that with the release of iOS 15. Now on iOS 15, Apple came with their own application, you can translate, you can do translations you can even do, they can listen and do the translation right there. So you can now pull your phone on the table and have a live conversation. You know, I told the story many, many, many moons ago, where I traveled to Brazil, for a business meeting. And when I get to Rio, and meet with a client, the client didn’t speak any English, we have been talking and doing business big business for over two years. Always be text message and email. But but we have never talked on the phone. So I was doing the trick for that reason. Okay, we end up having the meeting in his computer he in front of me and we chat. So we could translate with a computer and send the message back. Now you can do it live without do need to do any of that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:46

Fantastic. So that’s Apple translate. And so on the flip side, of course, is Google Translate. And you’ll have to correct me here a gousto. For the parts that Google Translate has that I don’t know if Apple translate has. But Google Translate actually comes with a whole host of tools built into it. As you noted before, the ability to be able to do real time translation so you can basically set a phone down and or even just, you know, you put one person on speakerphone. And then you can have another device separate from the phone, like an iPad or a tablet of some kind and load up the Google Translate both on iOS and Android. And it will then in real time, listen to both of you and translate on each of your behalves. It also has the ability to look at signage. So if I wanted to, I can go ahead and you know, pull up Google Translate, shine it at a you know, point the camera at a sign, you know and it’ll it’ll you know, see the word banyo in Spanish and say, Oh, that’s the bathroom, right? And those kinds of things, so that you’re able to do that level of interpretation. You can copy and paste text. You can also use Google Translate for full websites. It’s built into Chrome. So when you are on a website and it perceives that you are seeing a website in a language that is not native to you, it will then go ahead and attempt to translate it back into that English. If it’s English, you know, translated in English for you, and can do that on the regular for you, you can set it into offline modes, you can download an entire language library, so that when you are off the grid, say you’re traveling and backpacking through Russia, that says Russia needs Russian on the screen here, you’re in Russia is all there on your system. So you don’t have to worry about having connectivity in order to be able to go ahead and do that language translation. Of course, as I said, there’s the desktop capabilities built directly into the chrome environment. So you can have that. And you can, of course, speak directly into it just by yourself, you can go ahead and speak into it. But of course, you can then do it in this real time translation perspective, it also has handwriting so you can actually write into it. So say that if you are writing kanji, or if you’re writing in traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese, it will go ahead and translate those characters so that you can do that without a keyboard. Really fun, a fascinating set of tools to be able to do that. So it gives you auditory, verbal, it gives you visual, handwriting, and typewritten translation all inside of the tool, and you can contribute to the program. So this is not something where it’s like passive, if you go to the Google Translate website and click on contribute, you can see that you can add more to it by contributing and earning badges by virtue of helping Google Translate get better. And so I just always think that we should all be giving back in some way shape or form to these tools that are doing so much for us. And so yeah, Google Translate is a great option. And it’s good to see Apple out there developing as a gousto. As noted many times, you know, competition is really healthy in the technology space, because then they’re forced to do better and be better by seeing that competition out there in the world. So that is Google Translate. Alright, sir, that brings us on to let’s see here, featured story of the week, which is Google calendar events now allow group chats. And so what do you know about the Google Calendar, events chat functionality that Google has released, I can, I can add further details as you

Augusto Pinaud 37:27

are, you may need to go with 90% of the details. But the good news with this is you will have now the chat in the millions, that is really cool, that you are going to be able to come and chat on the meaning same way like you do it, let’s say on Microsoft Teams. And one of the things that it is interesting to see is how much Google is trying to match that, you know, there is an impression that you need to have Microsoft to go to a certain level when really Google, it’s completely capable. So it is good to see that they are trying to close that gap on the feature side for the impression of the people now you don’t need to have this. And Slack, you can have only this and you will now to have your spaces that is equivalent to the channels and leave all these. And I don’t know how this may have been a mistake, they did not create a specific app for this, but one that they already had. The joke is the joke. It’s been so many apps that you don’t know even how the chat thing is calling anymore. So but that is really positive. I am really looking forward to this because in some of this chat, it is you know, when you interact with clients on the teams, that is really nice, okay, when you are in the middle, and somebody said I will get back to you, and then they don’t need to send an email, they can come back into that same meeting, then everybody gets the message at the same time, especially when Is there a piece of information key quick, okay, that and that’s what I hope this is what is going to happen. I have a client that I work with, they live in Google, and they use slack and I don’t like slack. And I hope this means we are since we are at Google house starting to move people into this feature and having people all there instead of everybody on a different place.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:31

While some some clarification so that everybody is aware, at least at present time, the Google calendar feature so you have an event. When you have that event, you will now see a chat icon and set instead of just an email icon normally on an event, your list of attendees you can send an email to them and you can just generate an email and send them a quick message. Now you will see that chat icon and that will create a group chat. Now my understanding is that that will not create a group chat with everybody. in that chat in that, whose was an attendee, only the people who are inside of your Google workspace organization will receive that message. So right now it is limited to the people inside the organization. So if you have external participants even say You and I are both Google workspace users, you’re outside of my organization, you’re not one of the domains inside of my organization, you’re not going to be I’m not going to see that chat option for you. If you and I were the only attendees in that in that event. Now, I’m presuming over time, they will expand that to include more people, even potentially, Google accounts, say gmail account owners, to being able to access those as they roll out the features to more and more people across the ecosystem. But right now, it is only for within the Google workspace account that you’re in with users of that same Google workspace account. So the the the idea, then, is that akin to teams or you know, all of the other environments, you’re really chatting in amongst the people that you’re attending that event with. And I think that’s great. Now, the thing that I’m really curious about is Google’s choice here to bake in Google Chat, as opposed to going and developing a lightweight other chat client. This shows that, as you noted, they Google has has committed to Google Chat here. And so they have replaced Hangouts, they’ve deprecated aloe, Google duo is built into most of the hardware ecosystem that they have right now and end into Android. So chat has become an integral part of the Google ecosystem, certainly of Google workspace, and I’m, I’m really excited to see what they do with Google Chat. You know, they recently brought back calling within the within Google Chat, so you can make, you know, phone based calls. And I think, you know, just overall, this is a good step in that direction to really, you know, consolidate all of those features that you need inside of a communications platform within Google workspace. And what I’m really hoping is that they actually add, so if you go to your Google Calendar right now, and you see your little sidebar, your sidebar doesn’t have an app an option to add Google Chat. And what I’d really like is for whether I’m in Gmail, or in Google Calendar, or even in Google Drive, I’d like to see that sidebar everywhere and be able to add the components I need, say, Google, keep Google tasks, Google Calendar, you know, Google Chat, what have you in that sidebar, so that I have my primary application, right, and then I have my secondary application next to it. And I can just work in that dual mode for whatever I need and switch between them, of course, because you can, you know, like in Gmail, I can switch between Google keeping and Evernote and remember the milk, and so on, and so forth. And all of those things interact appropriately with the email messages that I have open. So I’d like to see Google do a little bit more in those other applications to be able to give that cohesiveness there. And I think Google Chat is a good first step into that for re a good first foray into that environment of, of events. But I want to see events, I want to see chat outside of the events. So similar to now in the Gmail application, you see the little meat icon and you see the spaces icon and you see the the chat icon all there inside of the Gmail application. It just feels whole. To me, it feels like you can do all of those things inside of the Gmail application as you need it to. So I think this is a really good positive step in the right direction for Google. Any final thoughts there good stuff?

Augusto Pinaud 43:39

No, I think it’s a great thing. And it’s showing to people how Google is really committed to give the tools that people think they need that are going to make them more efficient, more effective, and more efficient.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:56

Fantastic. And so with that, we’ve covered the productivity news for the week. Thank you to Augusto Pinaud, for putting together the show and making this happen every week.

Augusto Pinaud 44:05

You’re welcome. Always,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:07

while we are talking about the news, if you are on Anything, But idle.com, where if you go to Anything, But idle.com, forward slash 083, you will find all of the links in the show notes to all the stories that we’ve covered. That includes the productivity resources of the week, and as well, it’ll actually have some extra stories that we didn’t cover during the show. And so you can find all of those there. Of course, if you learn or seeing the extra stories, a and then you say Oh look, there’s a story that they didn’t cover. Feel free to let us know we’re happy to add those into future stories or to tweet them out or otherwise. But you can let us know about anything that we’ve missed by utilizing the contact page on Anything But Idle Comm. You can also tweet or DMS on Twitter. We have a Twitter account dedicated to the show that’s at Anything But Idle and you can go ahead and tweet at us or dm us and we will get those messages there. If a question or comment about anything we’ve discussed during the show, of course, you can join us during the live shows and comment and tweet at us and otherwise message us. But you can also leave a comment directly on the episode page at Anything But Idle comm again, it’s forward slash the episode number which is 083. And so on that episode page, you’ll also find a text transcript that is readable on the page, just click on the Read More link, it’ll expand it and you’ll be able to read it there. You can also click on the link below that that’s a PDF download link. If you click on it, it’ll download a PDF and you can read that offline from the site. If this is your first time watching the live stream. Feel free to subscribe to the channel. Feel free to click the little bell icon so that you get notified when we do go live weekly. If you’re listening to the podcast and you’re not subscribed, feel free to subscribe to the podcast in Apple that’s following and then going into the settings and clicking the little auto download functions. You know they’ve changed it a bit. We have instructions for all of that on Anything But Idle comm just click on the subscribe tab, and you’ll see instructions for all of that. And of course, if you’ve enjoyed the episode, feel free to click that thumbs up icon rate or review us on Apple podcasts and Stitcher or anywhere else that you might see the podcast and its capability to be rated and reviewed. Your comments help us reach more of the personal productivity listening community and helps grow our community just generally. And so thank you for doing that. We also have a community inside of personal productivity club. So if you go to personal productivity club or if you just go to Anything But Idle comm and click on the community tab, you’ll be taken directly over to personal productivity club to join. It’s free, easy to join, and then you can chat about the news and everything we discussed during the shows there as well. And so with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle history, productive life

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