50: The Edition Episode
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From Real AFM, this is Connected, episode 50.
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Today's show is brought to you by Igloo, an internet you'll actually like.
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Fracture, photos printed in vivid colour directly on Glass, and Todoist,
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the task management app that's with you everywhere.
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My name is Myke Hurley, and I have pleasure to be joined by my lovely co-host as I am every single week,
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the one and only Mr. Steven Hackett.
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- And Mr. Federico Vittucci.
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- Hey Myke, what did you say all those nice things
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about Steven and not about me?
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- I said my lovely co-hosts.
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- Yeah, you are also of the lovely.
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- So I'm also lovely, okay.
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- You're very lovely, you're very dear to me Federico.
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- Okay, hi Myke.
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- Hello Federico. - How are you?
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- I am very well, I am very well indeed.
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Congratulations everyone, we have made it to episode 50.
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So it's the... in terms of wedding anniversaries, this should be the golden something.
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Yep, and if you look under your chairs, you will find that I have prepared Apple Watch
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editions for you.
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Steve, I understand that you're at home in Federico.
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You're at home, right?
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Okay, great.
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Then if you look just under your chairs, then you'll find them because I put them in those
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specific places for you.
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I looked under my chair and there's a Roomba. You know one of those vacuum robots?
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Uh the Roomba right the addition.
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Robot or not man.
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It's charging like it's kind of scary there's a light.
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Why is it under your chair?
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It's under the desk actually I don't know who left it here.
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I hope it's not on because...
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No there's like a green light and it says clean. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean.
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I think it may be... see that's confusing. Does it need to be cleaned or is it cleaning?
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No, I believe it's a button that you need to press when you want to clean.
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Should I turn it on?
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Yeah, just press it, see what happens.
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The end of the podcast.
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Oh my god, it's making sound, it's moving.
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Turn it off.
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No, no, no, no, no.
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How do I turn it off?
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Oh my god, it's moving again.
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I don't know it's making noises.
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Alright well we've just got that guy.
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The light is orange now and it's beeping and it looks like it's about to assault me.
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Just gonna start crawling up your leg.
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What do I do?
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It's not even mine.
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I would just leave it now.
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Should I just like throw it out of the window?
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Don't know, if it's not yours I wouldn't do that.
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Why did you make me do this?
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I thought it might be fun to have a roving Roomba reporter.
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It's got like little brushes underneath and they move very fast and it looks like a predator.
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That's how it does the cleaning.
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Steven, please take us into follow-up.
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Let's talk about, well we have follow-out.
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Follow way out into space.
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Yeah, I did.
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- Puerto Rico is growing in the background,
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but Jason and I did a space show thing
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last, over the weekend.
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- Why don't you come think of me about this?
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- I can't tell if you're into space or not,
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it's hard to tell.
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You can go check it out, it's on the B-Sides feed,
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which is sort of where we put extras as a network,
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episode 12, let us know if you like it.
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We would like to maybe do more of these things
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in the future, so your feedback would be
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welcome to Jason and I. It was a lot of fun to talk about Pluto and stuff.
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There'll be a link in this week's show notes. Yes. Where could show notes be found?
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In space. Let's ask the Roomba. No, no, I'm not touching that thing again.
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Okay relay.fm/connected/50thebig50. Right. So it's the edition
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episode today. You bet it is. We decided last week that would be the title I think.
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So moving from follow-up to follow-up, we have a tweet from James Woods, period, on Twitter,
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asking Myke to follow up on being happy with Apple Music even though you couldn't stream for
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six days. And you answered this on Twitter, Myke, but I thought it was an interesting question,
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actually one that I wish I'd asked during the show. So how do you reconcile being happy with
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something that was broken for a week? So I'll just preface this again, frankly I doesn't remember. I
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I was saying that last week that there was some sort of DNS issue or something with Apple
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Music which meant that some people in the UK couldn't listen to music on their Mac, they
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couldn't stream for a week.
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I was just fine with it.
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I mean look, at the end of the day, I knew what was happening there, like there was a
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systems problem in specific scenarios and my iPhone sits on a dock which is elevated
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and I have one of those high rise docks by 12 South,
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that's right next to me.
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So when I couldn't stream,
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because anything that I'd listened to recently
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seemed to be playable,
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like it was cached in some way,
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but it wasn't downloaded.
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Like I didn't download anything on the Mac,
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so I don't know why it was doing that,
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but some things it could play.
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But anything that I wanted to stream or whatever,
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I could just do it on my iPhone,
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and it was just sitting right there.
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And to be honest, the quality difference,
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like to my ears between my iPhone and the MacBook speakers,
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are not massively different.
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So I was just able to deal with it that way.
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Like if, for example, it's still today
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I was having this issue,
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it would have been really, really annoying.
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But in all honesty, it hit me like maybe four or five times
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over the space of a week.
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And I maybe listened to,
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like I maybe pressed play on Apple Music
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like 50 times in that time period.
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So it wasn't really that much of an issue.
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I get why maybe you would ask the question,
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but it wasn't a problem.
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- Wow, Myke, I'm so disappointed in you.
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I know, I've let everybody down really.
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Don't you know that if you buy really good, expensive headphones, the music completely
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Like, you can hear sounds that not even on the strongest of acids you could hear those
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Like it's day and night difference, yeah.
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Like you can hear colors?
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You can feel the guitar strings in your head.
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very painful sometimes. Well I don't really have much to say to that but... I'm
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just gonna move on. Yeah. We have spoken a lot about iCloud Drive as Dropbox
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replacement as a backup etc etc and we spoke briefly about versioning something
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that Dropbox offers a really nice web interface for versioning so I can go
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back and retrieve files I've deleted or files that have been changed and of
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course on the Mac time machine offers this the built-in backup utility in OS 10
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so I can go and I can pull up a folder or even a document and go back in time
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on my local time machine drive and pull old versions of it.
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There's some thoughts, we have a tweet in here in the show that's about
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documents being versioned in iCloud Drive accessible through the time machine
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interface and I got some emails about this too and so I wanted to to clarify a
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little bit. Best I can tell
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iCloud Drive documents, the documents that are in the iCloud containers and finder
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are not versioned by iCloud. If you go to the time machine interface and you go
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back in time it is pulling those files from your time machine hard drive. So for
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me I have a 3 terabyte hard drive plugged into my Mac, my time machine drive and is
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pulling old versions of iCloud documents from there. I tried to recover old iCloud
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documents with that drive unplugged. It doesn't work, it gives you an error saying I'm
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looking for this volume I need this hard drive attached. So it doesn't seem like
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this is a true thing. Looking at Apple's website as well they don't really
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mention versioning anywhere in the iCloud Drive stuff and so if versioning is important
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to you I would say stick to Dropbox if you want your documents synced in the cloud somewhere.
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Dropbox offers a really nice system for that and iCloud doesn't seem to offer really anything.
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So there's that.
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Dropbox leading the way.
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Yeah I'm making a decision this week.
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I'm struggling to find a way to properly organize my screenshots for the iOS 9 review.
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And right now I have a mess of screenshots in the Photos app.
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And I'm thinking, should I make an album in iCloud so it updates all the time on the iPhone,
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the iPad and the Mac?
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I don't know if it matters but still it'll be there.
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Or should I just go the old fashioned way and create a bunch of folders in Dropbox and
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every time I know that a screenshot is going to be used I can maybe, I can also organize
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folders for like beta 4, beta 5 and each time I take the same screenshot so I can track
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changes across different beta versions of iOS 9.
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And I think I'm going to go with Dropbox because of the control that it gives me.
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I can create folders, subfolders, and right now, iCloud Drive simply isn't an option if I want to do this kind of stuff.
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And also, I still don't completely trust it, so I think I'm gonna go with Dropbox.
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Actually, I just talked myself into using Dropbox right now, so thank you, Steven and Myke, for letting me talk to myself.
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Sometimes the best decisions are the ones that you have to come to on your own.
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Yes, especially during follow-up.
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- Yep, it's the only real time.
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- It's where I make all my big decisions.
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There are a couple links in the show notes too
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from the chat room,
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discussing versioning and Time Machine stuff.
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Again, iCloud Drive is nowhere to be found in there.
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So it'd be nice if it could do it.
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I think the Time Machine interface is an obvious choice
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of where to put that stuff, right?
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That's where you go now and maybe you can switch
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between iCloud and Time Machine or something in the future.
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But as for now, I think Dropbox is the way to go
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for most people if you need that sort of control.
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Federico, I'm with you.
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My stuff is in Dropbox.
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I have very few things in iCloud Drive.
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And most of those are just scratch notes
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and that sort of stuff.
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We got two more pieces of follow up this week.
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The first is about headphones and earphones and running.
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I got a lot of email and tweets.
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I'm not putting any in the show notes.
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Not really gonna address any of it.
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Specifically, I have lots of things to look at on Amazon.
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Thank you for emailing me in.
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I'm not sure what'll work and what won't yet,
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but if I find something I like,
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I will follow up at that time.
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And finally, we come to a very non-tech related
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piece of follow up.
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- Wait, what is this? - It's really a request.
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- Just look at this now.
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- So Jamie emailed us, and Federico,
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do you want to read this and then maybe--
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- Steven's only said this because he's seen words in here
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that he knows he can't do. He like bailed out last minute. He's like "uh, Federico,
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do you want to read this?" No, Steven, why don't you read this? No, I'm not gonna read
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it. Okay, maybe, so Jamie writes, maybe Federico can validate this and give his expert opinion.
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Best pizza in Rome is at Pincerio Pincerio on Via Flavia, just next to the Marcella Roya
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Hotel and follow that up with ice cream from Gelateria Caruso on Via Colina just around
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the corner. I'm in love. Can you just read that again, please?
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The best pizza in Rome is at Pincerre - never heard of this before - on Via Flavia, just
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next to the Marcella Royal Hotel, and followed it up with ice cream from Gelateria
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i Caruso, I believe. Not just Caruso. I Caruso on Via Colina. I like that you put
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more Italian in the second go.
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I appreciate that.
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Yeah, so I don't know.
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Never heard of these two places before.
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It could be that I'm not huge on going to the center of Rome, because it's super busy
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and parking spots are a complete mess, and I also don't like to take the subway during
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the evenings, especially in the late evenings in Rome.
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So I should drive there, but it's always a problem to find a parking spot.
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So I'm not a big expert in, I believe these places are, because it sounds to me like Via
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Flavia should be in the center of Rome.
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So I'm not sure.
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I can ask around Jamie if that's okay.
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I have a few friends who are experts about pizza in Rome.
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I think I should actually go to the center more.
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Because I live in Rome and I never go there.
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In two years I've never been to the Coliseum once.
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So it's kind of a shame right now.
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It's different when it's the place you live, right?
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Like I don't feel the need to go to the center because it's always there.
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But at the same time I'm kind of missing out because I don't go there.
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It's beautiful.
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Maybe Jamie has provided a turning point for you in your life.
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Thank you Jamie.
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You're making life changes in the follow-up.
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I tell you what Federico, I would say that if you visit these places say on a date, be
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a very special lady friend, and if you report back in follow-up, I would say that that is
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a business expense.
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Maybe Relay can pay for your date.
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My dates can get really expensive.
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Well, it's only pizza and ice cream. Don't go crazy. Don't go to the hotel.
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No, come on. So, nothing to drink? Well, the hotel is mentioned in the request. And it's
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a Royal Hotel. It's a Royal Hotel, so it sounds fancy. I don't know. I'm just saying.
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By the way, in terms of pizza types, I really like the real Italian pizza, which is the
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pizza from Naples. So that, you know, the slightly tall pizza, not a very thin, you
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know, thin kind of pizza. We do have different kinds of pizza in Italy. There's some people
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like my parents, they prefer thin pizza. And so thin slice, thin crust. I prefer the taller
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one, the one from the Southern Italy from Naples. So that's my kind of preference.
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And ice cream, I love ice cream, all kinds of ice cream. So if it's artisanal and I'm
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not trolling here because we actually do make the real artisanal highscreen here even better.
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I found the hotel website and I just need to point out they used the blink tag so they
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have this headline and it's blinking red text to me. It's really not good.
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What does it say? Tell me what it says.
00:15:36
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It says that "New" is blinking in red letters. Click here to become our fan on Facebook.
00:15:42
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Let's move on to our first sponsor of this week's episode.
00:15:53
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On that note, Mr. Federico Vittucci, I know that you've used Todoist in the past to help
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Could you tell me about some of the stuff that you like and if you're going to be using
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it again for that?
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I really like the filters feature.
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So it lets you set up custom views in the app, so if you have a bunch of projects and
00:17:30
◼
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maybe if you assign tags to tasks or if maybe you want to filter just a subset of tasks
00:17:38
◼
►
that have a specific due date, you can create these filters which help you navigate different
00:17:44
◼
►
kinds of views in Todoist.
00:17:46
◼
►
So for instance, last year, and I think I'm going to do the same this year, I had a bunch
00:17:51
◼
►
of filters for my iOS 8 review and app coverage on Mac stories.
00:17:55
◼
►
So I could easily see the apps that the reviews that I needed to finish for the most important
00:18:03
◼
►
So those were priority one, the red setting apps with the due date by next week and I
00:18:10
◼
►
could then see the other apps that were coming up in two weeks.
00:18:13
◼
►
So I could easily, without having to tap on different projects and then sorting manually,
00:18:18
◼
►
I could just tap on the filters.
00:18:20
◼
►
And that was super handy.
00:18:21
◼
►
I also like the collaboration features, which is something that not every to-do app lets
00:18:28
◼
►
Those are usually like single-user apps.
00:18:30
◼
►
And instead of to-do is you can invite others to collaborate with you on projects.
00:18:35
◼
►
So we have, I think, a couple of shared projects with Mac Stories.
00:18:40
◼
►
We have one for pitches, so apps that developers send us over email for consideration.
00:18:47
◼
►
And I created this crazy recipe with IFTTT, or should I say IFTTT, I think it's the correct
00:18:53
◼
►
pronunciation these days.
00:18:56
◼
►
And so IFTTT, and it looks into my Gmail account and every time I drop an email from a developer
00:19:03
◼
►
into a specific, actually every time I assign a specific label, IFTTT sends it to Todoist
00:19:09
◼
►
and because it's a shared project, everybody gets to participate on that email.
00:19:15
◼
►
Not just that, because everybody sees the email as a task in Todoist, but also Todoist
00:19:21
◼
►
can be connected to Slack.
00:19:23
◼
►
So every time there's a new shared task in Todoist, we also get alerted into the Teams
00:19:27
◼
►
Slack room, which is awesome, it's crazy, we love it.
00:19:31
◼
►
And so collaboration filters, and I love the fact that, like you mentioned Myke, there's
00:19:37
◼
►
a rich ecosystem of third-party apps.
00:19:40
◼
►
So you can get crazy like I did and you can create your own Python scripts like in Python
00:19:45
◼
►
Istor or editorial and now there's even a new API so you should be even simpler and
00:19:49
◼
►
faster to use.
00:19:50
◼
►
But you can just use third-party apps for Todoist.
00:19:54
◼
►
So one that I really like is the DoNote app by IFTTT and it basically you create a Todoist
00:20:01
◼
►
recipe with DoNote, you open the app, it starts in a text box, you start typing, you tap a
00:20:06
◼
►
button and you save as a task to Todoist.
00:20:08
◼
►
todoist. It's super awesome. So if you're into, I guess, to-do platforms, not just apps
00:20:16
◼
►
that you use on your own, but a platform that lets you collaborate with others and connect
00:20:20
◼
►
to different apps and use an API and have these advanced features like filters and tags
00:20:26
◼
►
and you can combine all of these things, I really recommend todoist because it's really
00:20:32
◼
►
different from the usual to-do app for iOS. It's really rich and powerful and it works
00:20:38
◼
►
everywhere. So it does get my seal of approval. Not just because it's a sponsor, because I
00:20:44
◼
►
truly love the service and the company.
00:20:47
◼
►
People can go through the archives, we've spoken about them before, you've written articles
00:20:50
◼
►
about it before, I'll put that in the show notes as well so people can see even more
00:20:55
◼
►
about why you love Todoist. Todoist has a community of nearly 5 million users and it
00:21:00
◼
►
continues to grow like crazy. They are completely self-funded and powered by an almost entirely
00:21:23
◼
►
premium accounts to give away to listeners of this show. So you want to
00:21:27
◼
►
follow us on Twitter we are @_ConnectedFM and over the next week
00:21:32
◼
►
I'll be tweeting out some premium codes for you to sign up for your own one year
00:21:38
◼
►
account courtesy of Todoist. Thank you so much to Todoist for sponsoring this
00:21:43
◼
►
week's episode of Connected. Right so today I got Apple Pay! Yes because you
00:21:52
◼
►
You got a shopping problem, so you're the best person to report on Apple Pay.
00:21:56
◼
►
This is unfair, this is unfair, and I won't stand for it.
00:22:01
◼
►
So I woke up this morning and thought I would try it out because my bank said that they
00:22:06
◼
►
were supporting Apple Pay today, and they were.
00:22:08
◼
►
And the setup was pretty easy, so I just went into the Passbook app or in the Settings app,
00:22:14
◼
►
there's like the Passbook section, and I just signed in with my Apple ID, put my password
00:22:19
◼
►
in, and my card was pre-filled for me, right?
00:22:22
◼
►
the card that I use with my Apple ID I just had to enter the security code then
00:22:28
◼
►
I don't know if this is the same for everybody but I had to have a
00:22:31
◼
►
verification code sent to me by email or text message from my bank so I chose to
00:22:37
◼
►
get it by email and they emailed me a code and I just pasted this into the
00:22:42
◼
►
passbook entry for my card so you have to go back in the passbook and you just
00:22:46
◼
►
enter in there it says like enter the verification code which I did I like
00:22:49
◼
►
that it has a little image of my card right there in Passbook and it has the
00:22:54
◼
►
same design as my debit card. Which I think is a really nice touch. Yeah it looks the same.
00:22:59
◼
►
It doesn't have like obviously doesn't have like the numbers and stuff on it
00:23:02
◼
►
but it has all the colors are the same and the background is the same. I assume
00:23:06
◼
►
that the banks can provide an image to Apple to allow this to happen because
00:23:12
◼
►
it's not even just the standard HSBC like it's the specific account type that
00:23:17
◼
►
I have it has a specific color card and I have that one. You can enter in all
00:23:22
◼
►
your default shipping information and stuff which I thought was quite clever.
00:23:25
◼
►
So I guess this is for like apps that use the Apple Pay functionality. This is
00:23:30
◼
►
so old to so many people but I'm gonna talk about anyway because I've been so
00:23:33
◼
►
excited about it. One thing that is kind of annoying, although I know why you have
00:23:38
◼
►
to do it, is I had to enter all of this information in on my iPhone, my watch and
00:23:43
◼
►
my iPad like it doesn't sync it won't and it can't and I get why but it makes
00:23:48
◼
►
yeah it makes sense I get you know in theory I only have to do it once for
00:23:52
◼
►
every card that I add but the moment I only have one card in there. So why do you
00:23:55
◼
►
have it set up on your iPad is that for just the in-app purchasing thing? Yeah I
00:24:01
◼
►
just guess I might as well put it in there I mean because there aren't a lot of apps in the
00:24:05
◼
►
UK yet that are supporting it but I guess as that continues to increase like it would just be
00:24:10
◼
►
useful so I just thought I would just enter in the password. More than
00:24:14
◼
►
anything I wanted to see what happened. If I entered it in, what was
00:24:18
◼
►
the process the same? Because plus I'm using iOS 9 on the iPad. So it's
00:24:23
◼
►
wallet. Exactly. So it's wallet. Which is really weird, right? Because there is
00:24:29
◼
►
wallet in the settings but there isn't a wallet app. There is a wallet app. Is there?
00:24:35
◼
►
I couldn't find it. I think it's because I'm doing that weird region thing anyway.
00:24:38
◼
►
because I'm not, yeah.
00:24:39
◼
►
So I then went out of the house today to try it out.
00:24:45
◼
►
So I had, I did have my wallet.
00:24:48
◼
►
- You make it sound like you don't usually
00:24:50
◼
►
go out of the house.
00:24:51
◼
►
- But that's correct Federico.
00:24:53
◼
►
Not every day my friend.
00:24:55
◼
►
I did take my wallet with me
00:24:57
◼
►
because I was going to buy lunch
00:24:59
◼
►
and I thought if for any reason this doesn't work,
00:25:01
◼
►
I still want to be able to buy lunch.
00:25:03
◼
►
So I took my wallet with me anyway.
00:25:05
◼
►
And I went to two different stores
00:25:07
◼
►
So I could try it out once on the watch and once on the phone.
00:25:13
◼
►
So I was buying a sandwich for myself in a little bakery here.
00:25:18
◼
►
But it's a chain bakery so I expected it would work.
00:25:21
◼
►
They're not listed as a partner.
00:25:23
◼
►
It was a cheese and onion pasty we call it here.
00:25:26
◼
►
It's not actually a sandwich but I thought it would be easier for me to explain it that
00:25:29
◼
►
way but that's what I bought.
00:25:31
◼
►
I went to Gregg's for anybody in the UK.
00:25:34
◼
►
That was where I went today.
00:25:35
◼
►
because I knew they had contactless and I wanted to try it out because they're
00:25:38
◼
►
not listed as a partner on Apple's website which I you know I believe would
00:25:42
◼
►
be fine because it should work whoever contactless is. So I was standing in the
00:25:47
◼
►
line and before I went to the counter I double tapped the watch button and then
00:25:51
◼
►
the watch kind of readies itself and it's like it says ready and I asked the
00:25:56
◼
►
the lady what I wanted. I used the "can I use contactless" trick from our listener
00:26:03
◼
►
last week. Held my watch to the reader, no touching. I would not touch my watch to
00:26:07
◼
►
the reader and it was done. It was very easy. So I just held it up and it went bleep bleep.
00:26:11
◼
►
Does the watch screen have to like face down on the reader or just like your wrist normally?
00:26:17
◼
►
I just like held my wrist to it. I didn't do any crazy contortion. Like I didn't like flick my arm
00:26:23
◼
►
over or like I just held it towards it. Like I didn't really, I wasn't very specific about how
00:26:29
◼
►
I did it I just kind of like push put my arm basically I've moved my arm towards
00:26:34
◼
►
the reader and before I had any like chance to change the direction it had
00:26:38
◼
►
already gone through no okay so it was really easy and then for the phone I
00:26:45
◼
►
bet it's basic it's pretty different actually the phone so you I had the
00:26:52
◼
►
screen off like I was listening to a podcast I took it out of my pocket and
00:26:56
◼
►
and you just hold it over the reader and then the the Apple Pay UI pops up with
00:27:01
◼
►
like the card and stuff and it's like touch here and then like you hold your
00:27:05
◼
►
fingerprint down and it does the payment like you don't invoke it in the same way
00:27:09
◼
►
like in any way like you do on the Apple Watch like on the Apple Watch you're
00:27:12
◼
►
telling the watch to turn the reader on but with the phone you just hold it at
00:27:17
◼
►
the reader and then just put your fingerprint down and it's done so it's
00:27:22
◼
►
It's they're both pretty simple, but the watch is faster and I think probably more convenient for me anyway
00:27:28
◼
►
Especially because I have such a big phone right but like it was just like it was very simple
00:27:33
◼
►
I preferred the watch I like that it was quicker because it is quicker
00:27:36
◼
►
You know, it's not by a lot
00:27:38
◼
►
But when you're doing something that only takes like a second anyway adding another second on it is doubling the time it takes so
00:27:44
◼
►
So I liked it do you have any either of you have any questions for me
00:27:50
◼
►
Did you like the sandwich?
00:27:51
◼
►
The sandwich was fine.
00:27:53
◼
►
Again it's not really a sandwich, I just couldn't think of a way to describe it.
00:27:58
◼
►
It's like a pastry kind of item.
00:28:02
◼
►
But yeah it was very nice, thank you Federico.
00:28:04
◼
►
I also have a real question.
00:28:08
◼
►
Like when you used the Apple Watch with the reader, did people look at you weird?
00:28:17
◼
►
Was it a big deal that you were paying with your watch?
00:28:21
◼
►
I wasn't hiding but nobody noticed but nobody was looking at me at the time.
00:28:28
◼
►
People behind me may have seen but the lady she was like she activated the car thing and
00:28:34
◼
►
then started like I don't know what she was doing getting some carrier bags out or something.
00:28:38
◼
►
She wasn't looking and I just did it and just pulled my arm away again.
00:28:42
◼
►
So for her like the transaction's gone through it's like not a problem.
00:28:46
◼
►
didn't even notice but I expect that that will happen a little bit over the next little
00:28:51
◼
►
while that people won't understand what's happening because it is weird and I mean I
00:28:55
◼
►
did feel a little bit weird doing it just because it was the first time you know.
00:29:01
◼
►
Yeah, probably because I mean you're paying with your watch that's kind of amazing when
00:29:05
◼
►
you think about it.
00:29:06
◼
►
I mean I guess like in the tech Twitter kind of sphere because we are also experts about
00:29:16
◼
►
you know, tech specs and how stuff works. Sometimes we forget about actually what is
00:29:21
◼
►
going on. I mean, we're paying for stuff with a watch.
00:29:24
◼
►
That's crazy.
00:29:25
◼
►
That's crazy! That's insane! It's amazing, right? And we kind of feel that sense of...
00:29:30
◼
►
we kind of lose that sense of magic, right? That sense of wonder, maybe. I don't know.
00:29:37
◼
►
But I was talking to a friend at dinner the other day and I was showing him the Apple
00:29:42
◼
►
And he was so genuinely excited, you know?
00:29:47
◼
►
I mean, it was like, so you can make phone calls with the watch?
00:29:50
◼
►
And he wanted me to call him to demonstrate the phone call stuff.
00:29:53
◼
►
So hearing you talking about Apple Pay, I feel, I mean, that sounds crazy, Myke.
00:30:00
◼
►
Super, super nice.
00:30:02
◼
►
You just hold your wrist up and you buy a sandwich with the watch.
00:30:05
◼
►
That's crazy.
00:30:07
◼
►
It's pretty magic.
00:30:09
◼
►
I'm very happy with it.
00:30:10
◼
►
I mean, I have to say, I've been looking forward to it for a while and I'm pleased that it's
00:30:15
◼
►
here for me because I get to pay in this awesome way and tomorrow, over the next couple of
00:30:20
◼
►
days, I'm actually out in London, so I'm going to be using it on the tube and stuff like
00:30:25
◼
►
So I'll let you know how that goes.
00:30:28
◼
►
Yeah, you beat me to it.
00:30:31
◼
►
Your bank's never going to get it, man.
00:30:33
◼
►
You just got to face up to that fact.
00:30:36
◼
►
I suggest...
00:30:39
◼
►
It was actually a K-Base article I learned
00:30:42
◼
►
of all the banks that support it.
00:30:44
◼
►
- Of course you know that, of course you know that.
00:30:46
◼
►
- I didn't know that until just now
00:30:48
◼
►
and I used my custom Alfred K-Base search thing
00:30:52
◼
►
that I wrote to find it.
00:30:54
◼
►
Anyways, I thought it'd be interesting this week
00:31:00
◼
►
to talk about how the three of us consume news
00:31:05
◼
►
and then a little bit later how we work.
00:31:09
◼
►
All three of us work sort of in the the tech news industry more or less and I don't consume news I create news
00:31:30
◼
►
Part this is my own our minds a little bit because of Apple news coming in
00:31:35
◼
►
IOS 9 all three of us are running IOS 9 have you guys gotten a chance to play with the Apple news app yet?
00:31:41
◼
►
And if so, what are your thoughts on it?
00:31:44
◼
►
Myke do you want to go first? Yeah, I don't like it
00:31:48
◼
►
I've only used it my iPad, but I think that like the information density is all wrong
00:31:56
◼
►
Like there's there's a ton of articles and they're all different shapes and it's it's really difficult to know
00:32:05
◼
►
where you need to be looking.
00:32:07
◼
►
And I know why they're doing this. They're trying to make it look like a newspaper, but
00:32:12
◼
►
we fixed that model.
00:32:15
◼
►
You don't need to worry about column inches. You can do any layout you like.
00:32:21
◼
►
It's not important. So I don't really know what articles they choose to be bigger than others. I don't like it.
00:32:30
◼
►
I think that the way that you choose the stuff that you want to see is a little bit flawed and like
00:32:37
◼
►
the fact that it seems that Apple is like randomly pulling images like
00:32:41
◼
►
When I'm looking at the sources that I want to read a wheel of colored iPods doesn't tell me that I'm looking at Mac stories
00:32:49
◼
►
But for some reason that's what they choose like that doesn't mean anything to me
00:32:54
◼
►
So this is something I saw for you recently Federico like the big image
00:32:57
◼
►
was something that you were using which was like I think it's from an Apple ad or something like that and
00:33:01
◼
►
It was like a wheel of colored iPods
00:33:04
◼
►
It's like this is this doesn't mean anything to me like and then you have like this tiny little Mac stories logo
00:33:09
◼
►
Like I just want to see a big Mac stories logo like that doesn't make sense
00:33:17
◼
►
I'm not really a big fan of it like when you're actually reading an article it looks fine
00:33:21
◼
►
And it you know it looks like a nice way to look at things and you can quite easily see the source stuff
00:33:27
◼
►
but then it also seems to assign these random tags.
00:33:31
◼
►
The other day I was reading something on Steven's website
00:33:34
◼
►
and a tag was just pixel, which was interesting.
00:33:40
◼
►
- I don't really understand why they're doing
00:33:44
◼
►
some of the stuff they're doing.
00:33:45
◼
►
I feel like they've got too many robots doing this
00:33:50
◼
►
and not enough people and that's why it feels to me
00:33:53
◼
►
a little bit unappley.
00:33:56
◼
►
And I hope, what I hope is that this is just
00:33:59
◼
►
as they're gathering data and like eventually
00:34:01
◼
►
they're gonna be, they're gonna go like,
00:34:02
◼
►
here you go publishers, here's a ton of tools
00:34:06
◼
►
for you to make this stuff look right.
00:34:09
◼
►
That's what I hope.
00:34:10
◼
►
'Cause like, for example, when I look at Mac stories,
00:34:12
◼
►
I've got like these three headings at the top.
00:34:15
◼
►
- Which should be five because I changed them to be five
00:34:19
◼
►
in my publisher setting,
00:34:20
◼
►
but setting is not propagating to Apple News
00:34:23
◼
►
for some reason, I don't know.
00:34:25
◼
►
That makes sense then.
00:34:26
◼
►
But yeah, it's just…
00:34:27
◼
►
It is weird.
00:34:28
◼
►
It is weird.
00:34:29
◼
►
And as a publisher, I can tell you it is especially frustrating when I put out content on my website
00:34:39
◼
►
and there's a difference between what you see on the website and what you see on Apple
00:34:45
◼
►
It's, I would say, curated feed by robots.
00:34:50
◼
►
I don't think there's like an Apple person who sits there and every time I hit "publish" he goes "okay, yeah, I want to feature this"
00:34:57
◼
►
because you know, it's a link or maybe just a quick review of an iOS app.
00:35:02
◼
►
So it's weird because sometimes, at least right now in the beta, sometimes articles show up, other times they don't.
00:35:10
◼
►
And maybe it's just a bug or maybe it's a feature or maybe it's a robot.
00:35:16
◼
►
So I don't know.
00:35:18
◼
►
I would say, I agree with you Myke on all the weird things, like the layouts are just
00:35:27
◼
►
like there's too much white space and some stuff is too big, some stuff is too small,
00:35:33
◼
►
and sometimes I notice this, especially like I was searching for Mac stories. Now I don't know if
00:35:40
◼
►
this is a Mac stories issue but I don't think so. So and basically I search for Safari View Controller
00:35:47
◼
►
which is an article that I wrote a couple of weeks ago.
00:35:50
◼
►
And instead of having a result as a Mac Stories article,
00:35:56
◼
►
I get the Daring Fireball link.
00:36:00
◼
►
So the link that John Gruber put up on his website.
00:36:04
◼
►
But there was one of my images.
00:36:06
◼
►
And not even the top one, just a random screenshot from my article
00:36:11
◼
►
in his post on Daring Fireball, which is super odd.
00:36:15
◼
►
I don't know what they're doing with algorithms and scraping websites, but it seems strange.
00:36:21
◼
►
They're machine learning, man.
00:36:22
◼
►
It'll get you.
00:36:23
◼
►
The tags can be really weird sometimes.
00:36:28
◼
►
Like if I'm looking at a – I was looking at a Kickstarter article about a campaign,
00:36:35
◼
►
and the tag was "Product Manufacturing Industry," which, okay, yeah, sure.
00:36:40
◼
►
I mean, you were manufacturing a product for the Kickstarter campaign, but maybe that's
00:36:45
◼
►
That's a little too literal, you know?
00:36:47
◼
►
You can get a little more specific than that.
00:36:50
◼
►
But I want to say, I did manage to find a couple of interesting links on Apple News.
00:36:58
◼
►
In fact, I'm using it to kind of discover stuff for our Mac Stories Weekly newsletter.
00:37:05
◼
►
Last week, like three or four links in our links section were discovered on Apple News.
00:37:12
◼
►
And I think if you use the service enough, it gets better relatively quickly.
00:37:20
◼
►
In a week I started following some topics, I used the little love icon to say "yeah,
00:37:28
◼
►
I like this" and the topics got better.
00:37:31
◼
►
But still, the explore section is too generic.
00:37:36
◼
►
Like I go there and it gives me as a recommendation like basic stuff like "I should follow Apple".
00:37:42
◼
►
Yeah, okay, sure.
00:37:44
◼
►
That feels like a healthy amount of news to receive.
00:37:46
◼
►
Yes, I do love my Apple News.
00:37:50
◼
►
I go there and it's a bunch of generic recommendations instead of getting really specific.
00:37:56
◼
►
Before Apple News when there was like Zite and even Flipboard or there was another one,
00:38:03
◼
►
I don't remember, they could get really specific.
00:38:06
◼
►
The sections that they recommended to me were things like Python scripts or Evernote.
00:38:12
◼
►
And those are kind of more specific sections and topics that I'm interested in.
00:38:17
◼
►
But if I go to explore right now in Apple News, I get things like consumer products
00:38:23
◼
►
and services, which, okay, I guess I'm into consumer products.
00:38:27
◼
►
I'm a human being and I live in Italy.
00:38:30
◼
►
Or I get, this is another topic that I get in the suggested topics, computing and information
00:38:36
◼
►
Yeah, sounds fancy.
00:38:37
◼
►
I love me some information technology.
00:38:42
◼
►
Interactive media, there's a human eye with a reflection of the Facebook logo in its retina.
00:38:49
◼
►
And yeah, I guess I do like eyes looking at Facebook.
00:38:53
◼
►
So the topics can get a little bland and generic.
00:38:58
◼
►
But the main page, the "for you", there is some interesting stuff.
00:39:03
◼
►
I feel like I don't want to complain too much right now because it's a beta, because maybe
00:39:07
◼
►
the robots are still learning and doing whatever it is they do.
00:39:11
◼
►
There are some things that are obviously wrong, like the layouts very much to be desired right
00:39:17
◼
►
There's no way to simply say "I don't like this".
00:39:20
◼
►
You can say "I like this" with the love icon, but you cannot say the opposite.
00:39:24
◼
►
You can report a suggestion as being inaccurate or offensive, but there's no basically hate
00:39:31
◼
►
icon, which is maybe a little strong, but even on Apple Music you can tap and hold
00:39:36
◼
►
and say "I don't like this suggestion". You cannot do the same on Apple News
00:39:40
◼
►
right now. So we'll see, we'll see, I don't know.
00:39:44
◼
►
I mean my issue with it, and we're going to talk about RSS in a second, but I for the most part want to read
00:39:52
◼
►
what I have chosen to read, and I read the mix of writers that I pay
00:40:01
◼
►
attention to because they they surface things that are interesting right and so
00:40:06
◼
►
for me it's sort of there's a mix in there of things like Mac stories or
00:40:10
◼
►
Marco's website or doing fireball of things that I I read and I will follow
00:40:15
◼
►
things they link to but then there's also this sort of weird churn going on
00:40:19
◼
►
of stuff that you know it's trying to add or suggest and and it does some
00:40:24
◼
►
weird stuff which is understandable like linked lists style sites like Federica
00:40:29
◼
►
like you and I both do where it will pull in images.
00:40:33
◼
►
Like if I link to something on The Verge,
00:40:35
◼
►
it will add The Verge's photo to my article,
00:40:38
◼
►
which I'm not republishing their article on my site.
00:40:40
◼
►
And Feedly does the same thing, which I really dislike it.
00:40:43
◼
►
'Cause it looks like I am using their images and I'm not.
00:40:48
◼
►
And so, I mean, that's understandable to a degree,
00:40:50
◼
►
but there's some of that weird use case for people like me
00:40:55
◼
►
and reading the sites I read
00:40:57
◼
►
that it can kind of get weird in a hurry.
00:41:01
◼
►
Can I say just one more thing about Apple News?
00:41:05
◼
►
Because right now I'm scrolling through the pages of the suggested topics
00:41:10
◼
►
and on the fourth page there's mobile app.
00:41:14
◼
►
Which, okay, I think I do cover mobile apps,
00:41:17
◼
►
but then I keep scrolling and there's US Politics, Medicine, Android, and Sports.
00:41:25
◼
►
Now, I do wonder if Apple's priorities are not aligned with the correct way of making
00:41:38
◼
►
Apple News a great service.
00:41:41
◼
►
Because by not linking products and services together, so Apple doesn't want to share information
00:41:47
◼
►
for things you look up in Safari or stuff you look up in other Apple apps, they don't
00:41:54
◼
►
want to share this information with other services because they feel like they want
00:41:58
◼
►
to respect customer privacy.
00:42:01
◼
►
And I know that a lot of people feel very strongly about this topic.
00:42:05
◼
►
But when you go to something like Apple News, I go to Apple News and I have an expectation
00:42:10
◼
►
that a service based on robots and algorithms should know that I'm definitely not into sports
00:42:16
◼
►
or Android or US politics.
00:42:19
◼
►
And I feel like that by respecting the user privacy too much, the end user product also
00:42:26
◼
►
becomes worse.
00:42:28
◼
►
And I know that a lot of people, there's many arguments in favor of Apple or the Google
00:42:35
◼
►
way of doing things.
00:42:38
◼
►
I just feel like right now in beta force, or disclaimer, I do know it's a beta and
00:42:42
◼
►
etc. But right now it feels like this strong respect for privacy also makes the product
00:42:51
◼
►
a little dull and generic. And maybe it'll change with time, maybe it'll learn without
00:42:57
◼
►
having to look up my information in Safari or Mail or other apps, but maybe it won't
00:43:04
◼
►
and we'll see when it launches.
00:43:06
◼
►
So I have to say at this point, like, whenever I use Google Now and like I was using it today,
00:43:14
◼
►
I was playing around with my Android phone, it's using my Google search history. And it says to me,
00:43:22
◼
►
like, "Hey, here's a site that you read that has a new article that you might like." And it's like,
00:43:29
◼
►
every time I see one, I'm like, "Yep, that's correct." Or like they, what they do is like,
00:43:34
◼
►
Like I see from sites that I don't know, but it's breaking news about a topic that I've
00:43:39
◼
►
looked at and searched for before.
00:43:42
◼
►
And I see that and I'm like, "Yes, that's what I want to see."
00:43:47
◼
►
Because it's doing exactly what you're saying Federico, it's learning from my search history
00:43:51
◼
►
and showing me stuff that is important to me based on the fact that I have explicitly
00:43:55
◼
►
searched for something like this before.
00:43:59
◼
►
And or I visit this website in Google Chrome and there's a new post on it and they're showing
00:44:03
◼
►
me. And it always tends to, with the new post stuff, they always tend to show me,
00:44:07
◼
►
and I don't know if they do this purposefully, for sites that have
00:44:11
◼
►
infrequent updates. So like it's not showing me every time there's a new post
00:44:15
◼
►
on The Verge, but like it shows me "oh Casey had a new blog post" and it's like
00:44:21
◼
►
"yeah that's useful because I might not have seen that." Like so you know that is
00:44:25
◼
►
the way that that I would love to see this kind of stuff work but I can see
00:44:31
◼
►
have, you know, I see what you're saying Federico, like the fact that they don't
00:44:35
◼
►
want to share this data between the applications means that it's unlikely.
00:44:39
◼
►
But it would be nice if I could say yes please do it.
00:44:43
◼
►
Yes exactly. Or don't do it.
00:44:48
◼
►
And even if you don't give me this setting at least give me proper training controls in the app.
00:44:53
◼
►
Let me say yeah okay this is very interesting or no I don't like this or yes this is mildly interesting
00:45:00
◼
►
so we'll see about this topic.
00:45:02
◼
►
If you don't want to use my data across different services, at least let me say yes or no or
00:45:12
◼
►
Right now there's just a way to say I love this, which is a strong feeling to use this
00:45:16
◼
►
love feature everywhere.
00:45:19
◼
►
Sometimes you don't love stuff.
00:45:21
◼
►
Sometimes I just mildly liked it.
00:45:24
◼
►
Sometimes I just, you know, like sometimes I just don't hate stuff.
00:45:30
◼
►
I just accept that it exists, but I don't love it.
00:45:35
◼
►
Should we take a break and then talk about some other services?
00:45:40
◼
►
Let's do it.
00:45:41
◼
►
This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Fracture.
00:45:45
◼
►
Fracture is a great company of a great product that I love a lot.
00:45:48
◼
►
Fracture is finding ways to help people transform the way that they print and display their
00:45:53
◼
►
favorite images. So a trillion photos are going to be taken in 2015. That is like an
00:45:59
◼
►
number I can barely wrap my brain around. And Fracture is here to help you rescue some
00:46:04
◼
►
of those photos, some of your favorites from the dark corners of your camera roll or timeline
00:46:09
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or Facebook feed or something like that. It's super simple. All you do is you just go to
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◼
►
fractureme.com, you upload a photo and they don't just make a print for you, put it in
00:46:20
◼
►
a frame with a little wooden outline to it and send it to you in the post.
00:46:23
◼
►
They print this photo directly onto a piece of glass.
00:46:27
◼
►
It looks fantastic.
00:46:28
◼
►
I say this so much and I really mean it.
00:46:31
◼
►
Unless you've seen one of these things you have no idea how great they look.
00:46:33
◼
►
They are absolutely fantastic.
00:46:35
◼
►
These Fracture prints, their colours really pop.
00:46:38
◼
►
Like it's that idea I think I've heard people mention before of like you know how you look
00:46:41
◼
►
at like the iPhones now and like the it looks like the pixels are painted right onto the
00:46:45
◼
►
glass there right like that is how it looks because it is stuck right to the very back
00:46:49
◼
►
of the glass right.
00:46:50
◼
►
no air in between it, nothing like that. These things is a completely different way to look
00:46:55
◼
►
at the pictures that you love. I've done it with podcast artwork, they have a great square
00:47:00
◼
►
size for that. I have a painting that Tiffany Arment made and she sent it to me which is
00:47:06
◼
►
really awesome. And it came in one of the rectangle sizes that they have. So I've received
00:47:11
◼
►
fractures as gifts, I've given them to people's gifts. I bought Steven a relay logo fracture
00:47:17
◼
►
for his birthday. It's a great way to give an original gift. Like every time you send
00:47:24
◼
►
a fracture it's an original gift because you use a different picture every time. Right?
00:47:28
◼
►
So they're getting these great prints but it's like it feels original every time because
00:47:31
◼
►
it's a brand new picture that they have. They have a super simple order process. They package
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◼
►
them really well and they ship them to, you know, straight to your door. They're all checked
00:47:40
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►
for quality by their team in Gainesville, Florida. I've had them sent from Florida to
00:47:45
◼
►
London and they've had no problems no breaking no scratching nothing. They put
00:47:49
◼
►
everything in the box that you're going to need they'll put a screw in there
00:47:52
◼
►
they'll put a little stand in for the square small sizes if you want it. I
00:47:55
◼
►
think they're absolutely fantastic. If you're listening to this and you haven't
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yet bought a Fracture they have prices that start at just $15 so they're not
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going to break the bank. Just try them out because if you use the code
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connected you might only get 10% off for yourself it'll also help support this
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◼
►
show and that means a lot to all of us. So just go to fractureme.com to get
00:48:15
◼
►
started right now and thank you so much to Fracture for their support of this show.
00:48:18
◼
►
So RSS then. I'll start off. I don't use RSS at all anymore.
00:48:27
◼
►
You're fired from this show. I tried to pare down my subscriptions to like 30
00:48:33
◼
►
maybe about six months ago and I still wasn't I just wasn't doing it I just I
00:48:40
◼
►
I just don't check it enough.
00:48:43
◼
►
It's just not something that interests me anymore.
00:48:45
◼
►
I don't really read like that.
00:48:47
◼
►
Yeah, I guess you don't have a blog and you don't do links like Steven and I do.
00:48:53
◼
►
So maybe you just don't need RSS.
00:48:56
◼
►
Maybe Twitter is enough for you.
00:48:58
◼
►
I don't know.
00:48:59
◼
►
I'll talk about Twitter in a minute and why I think it is, but I think that you've hit
00:49:02
◼
►
the nail on the head.
00:49:05
◼
►
What about you, Steven?
00:49:07
◼
►
I do use RSS.
00:49:08
◼
►
use feed bin for the back end and the unread app on iOS and I maybe we can
00:49:19
◼
►
get into Twitter a little bit but my issue there is that Twitter flows by too
00:49:24
◼
►
quickly and I know with RSS that what I subscribe to will be waiting for me so
00:49:29
◼
►
like I haven't opened reader on my Mac in hours but I know that I won't miss
00:49:33
◼
►
anything not that I will look at it all but I know that everything that has
00:49:38
◼
►
happened will be in there waiting for me and I like that sort of handle on things
00:49:43
◼
►
that RSS gives you and I just you know Twitter is fleeting and fast and even
00:49:48
◼
►
with things like lists I just can't keep up so I've used RSS for a long time
00:49:52
◼
►
it's early Google Reader days and it continues to be really central to how I
00:49:57
◼
►
how I read and how I work.
00:50:00
◼
►
I use RSS a lot. I tried many services over the years and it's been since December or
00:50:11
◼
►
January and I'm not switching from this one. I use NewsBlur. It's not pretty. It's kind
00:50:19
◼
►
of ugly in places. It looks like a Windows app sometimes but it's got all the right features.
00:50:27
◼
►
Basically, NewsBlur lets you subscribe to RSS and create folders and all that kind of
00:50:35
◼
►
And it lets you save articles you can even share with other NewsBlur users.
00:50:39
◼
►
So it's kind of like Google Reader, you know, when you used to be able to comment on articles
00:50:43
◼
►
with other people.
00:50:44
◼
►
But I don't care about that stuff.
00:50:47
◼
►
The key aspect of NewsBlur is that it lets you promote and downvote keywords in headlines,
00:50:58
◼
►
entire websites, specific authors, tags from articles if the CMS exposes tags to the user.
00:51:07
◼
►
So you can get very specific about the kind of topics that you like.
00:51:11
◼
►
So I can follow a lot of websites, and even websites like The Verge or Polygon or Kotaku,
00:51:20
◼
►
which have the noise to signal ratio, is very much inclined towards a lot of posts kind
00:51:35
◼
►
But I can follow them, because then whenever they write about things that I don't like,
00:51:40
◼
►
I don't know, Donald Trump or the latest game for the Xbox One that I don't have anyway.
00:51:48
◼
►
I can just highlight the keyword or the author if the author always writes about the topic
00:51:55
◼
►
and just say thumbs down, I don't want to see this ever again.
00:52:00
◼
►
And in the future, if an article matches that kind of thing, it'll be hidden from my list.
00:52:05
◼
►
So I follow a lot of websites in NewsBlur, but because I've been very careful about promoting
00:52:11
◼
►
and downloading stuff, now it's a feed made just for me.
00:52:16
◼
►
And the best thing is if you spend time kind of training the service and you say "okay,
00:52:24
◼
►
I like this topic, I like this website", you can create the focused list, which is like
00:52:30
◼
►
a specific feed of just the things that you like and that you're interested in.
00:52:36
◼
►
So if I go there and it's been like a couple of days and I haven't checked RSS, I can just
00:52:41
◼
►
go to the focus list and I can just take a look at those so I know it's the most important
00:52:47
◼
►
stuff for me and I can be done with RSS quickly.
00:52:50
◼
►
So in NewsBlur and RSS it lets me follow the websites that I wouldn't want to follow on
00:52:55
◼
►
Twitter because Twitter doesn't have these kinds of controls to say thumbs up, thumbs
00:52:59
◼
►
down, I don't care, I do care, and instead I can use this smart feature in Newsblurr
00:53:06
◼
►
to do this and I discover a lot of blog posts that I link to or maybe
00:53:12
◼
►
links that I can use in the newsletter. I am thankful for this kind of feature
00:53:18
◼
►
and I hope the Newsblurr never goes away because there's no other service that
00:53:23
◼
►
does this so I'm really happy.
00:53:25
◼
►
So I mainly use Twitter as the way I find out about a lot of things and this
00:53:32
◼
►
comes through in a different way, a couple of different ways. I follow a lot
00:53:35
◼
►
of people, right, so if something starts happening and it's getting a lot of buzz
00:53:40
◼
►
I'm likely to see the link come through. I'll either see it come through a few
00:53:44
◼
►
times or I'll catch one of the people that tweets about it. I also follow the
00:53:49
◼
►
accounts for blogs that I like, so you know things like Steven's site and
00:53:55
◼
►
and Federico's site and Brad's site and Jason's site
00:53:57
◼
►
and you know, sites that I like,
00:53:59
◼
►
I follow their Twitter accounts.
00:54:01
◼
►
I also follow a couple of the fire hosey types of accounts.
00:54:06
◼
►
So I can follow The Verge and I follow Polygon
00:54:10
◼
►
'cause they tend to be my favorite sites
00:54:12
◼
►
in those scenarios where they're just gonna
00:54:15
◼
►
spew a bunch of news at me
00:54:16
◼
►
'cause I can only take a couple of those.
00:54:18
◼
►
I've tried to do more than one in each category.
00:54:21
◼
►
- It gets out of hand.
00:54:22
◼
►
- Yep, and one of the annoying/great things about those
00:54:26
◼
►
is if something's really good,
00:54:28
◼
►
they'll tweet about it multiple times
00:54:30
◼
►
over different time periods.
00:54:32
◼
►
So that can be annoying, except for the time--
00:54:34
◼
►
- In case you missed it.
00:54:36
◼
►
- Yeah, but they don't even, luckily they don't do that.
00:54:39
◼
►
They just pretend like you never saw it, you know.
00:54:41
◼
►
They actually do it in case you missed it,
00:54:43
◼
►
because they don't actually use the thing.
00:54:45
◼
►
But whilst it's annoying sometimes,
00:54:48
◼
►
'cause you're like, oh God, this happened like two weeks ago,
00:54:51
◼
►
why are you still tweeting about it?
00:54:52
◼
►
There are times where this is where I find stuff.
00:54:54
◼
►
So it's like, you know, I take the good with the bad.
00:54:57
◼
►
Because most of the time they don't annoy me.
00:54:59
◼
►
And most of the time I am getting the information
00:55:01
◼
►
that I want because it's sometimes the only place
00:55:03
◼
►
that I get it from.
00:55:05
◼
►
So I've been, I mean, it works for me
00:55:08
◼
►
because I never feel like I'm behind the curve.
00:55:12
◼
►
Like I don't maybe find that like little unique piece
00:55:18
◼
►
that that person wrote that maybe one or you,
00:55:20
◼
►
like one or two of you may find,
00:55:22
◼
►
like you two may find it and link to it.
00:55:25
◼
►
But then if you link to it,
00:55:26
◼
►
I'm gonna see it from your blog, you know?
00:55:28
◼
►
So I find that I follow a select handful of curators
00:55:32
◼
►
that I quite enjoy.
00:55:34
◼
►
- Yeah, I know.
00:55:35
◼
►
And that works for me.
00:55:37
◼
►
Like I don't want another inbox to be checking
00:55:41
◼
►
and that's just how RSS feels to me today.
00:55:44
◼
►
- I guess using RSS, using Twitter
00:55:49
◼
►
and all these other types of feeds,
00:55:51
◼
►
comes down to whether you have the inbox mindset or not.
00:55:55
◼
►
So by design, I am the kind of person
00:55:59
◼
►
that is a completionist.
00:56:01
◼
►
I need to read all my RSS.
00:56:03
◼
►
I need to manage all my email.
00:56:06
◼
►
I need to look at all the tweets all day.
00:56:10
◼
►
When I wake up, I load the timeline from eight hours ago,
00:56:14
◼
►
usually just seven hours or six,
00:56:16
◼
►
And I read every single tweet.
00:56:18
◼
►
And during the weekends, I read every tweet.
00:56:21
◼
►
I don't miss any tweet.
00:56:23
◼
►
And Twitter is, in fact, part of my job.
00:56:26
◼
►
And it sounds crazy.
00:56:27
◼
►
What is it that you do for a living?
00:56:28
◼
►
I write and I do podcasts.
00:56:30
◼
►
Oh, and I also check Twitter.
00:56:33
◼
►
No, but seriously, I discovered--
00:56:35
◼
►
it feels weird to say you discovered people,
00:56:38
◼
►
because I'm not like Christopher Columbus.
00:56:40
◼
►
I didn't discover people.
00:56:41
◼
►
But I just, you know, I get to know new people like developers and bloggers and sometimes these connections, right?
00:56:49
◼
►
It feels very social networking kind of talk.
00:56:51
◼
►
But these connections lead to maybe I get to be a beta tester for a new app or maybe I get to be interviewed by someone for his blog.
00:57:00
◼
►
And look at the three of us.
00:57:02
◼
►
I mean, exactly.
00:57:04
◼
►
Exactly. We are living proof that Twitter silliness can lead to even more silliness
00:57:12
◼
►
just in front of a microphone. So, reading Twitter, it's annoying sometimes, especially
00:57:22
◼
►
when the Americans decide to pile on the same joke or the same politician. Other times it's kind of
00:57:28
◼
►
of amazing when a big event happens and you see all these reactions.
00:57:33
◼
►
It's crazy during Apple events.
00:57:36
◼
►
So my timeline gets cut off during Apple events because it's just too many tweets.
00:57:40
◼
►
But on average, I read every tweet because I discover and I follow over a thousand people.
00:57:47
◼
►
People ask me how I do it.
00:57:50
◼
►
It's part of my job.
00:57:51
◼
►
I dedicate a solid couple of hours each day to Twitter.
00:57:55
◼
►
And that's part of the deal.
00:57:57
◼
►
You gotta follow the people to find the links and that's how it worked for me.
00:58:03
◼
►
I've been trying, I've installed and I've been tinkering with Nozzle as a way to surface
00:58:09
◼
►
some of that stuff but one of my main problems at the moment is I follow a handful of writers
00:58:15
◼
►
that work for some of these sites.
00:58:19
◼
►
Like I follow a bunch of Polygon writers and a bunch of Verge writers so every time there's
00:58:24
◼
►
big article on either site it always comes up on Nozzle because they all link to it.
00:58:27
◼
►
Which is totally fine I get why they do it right but it makes that service kind
00:58:32
◼
►
of pointless so I might not use it. It feels like because there have been a few
00:58:36
◼
►
things that I found in Nozzle that I liked that I didn't see otherwise but I
00:58:43
◼
►
feel like maybe the service is pointless unless I unfollow people that I don't
00:58:48
◼
►
want to unfollow. So it's I don't know if I'm gonna if I'm gonna keep using it.
00:58:53
◼
►
I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Jack's Twitter were to buy Nuzzle soon. I don't know anything,
00:59:03
◼
►
just a suspicion. It feels like such a perfect fit. It's such a good match for the service,
00:59:10
◼
►
especially now that they're getting into this curation stuff with Twitter lightning project,
00:59:16
◼
►
whatever. I just feel there's too much talk about Nuzzle being a great enhancement to Twitter for
00:59:23
◼
►
Twitter not to consider an acquisition. I don't know. It's a great product and it's useful.
00:59:27
◼
►
The notifications, I like them. Maybe I'm away from Twitter because I'm focusing on
00:59:35
◼
►
writing an article as I am this summer, for instance, and I see eight of your friends share
00:59:40
◼
►
the same link and I know almost, you know, almost foolproof that it's something that I should check
00:59:46
◼
►
out because again, nozzle uses people as the engine and not just all kinds of people but
00:59:53
◼
►
the people you follow and you decided to follow those people.
00:59:56
◼
►
So it's a very, very clever trick and yeah, I use nozzle a lot.
01:00:03
◼
►
It's my go-to on days that I can't keep up on Twitter or that I've been maybe offline
01:00:09
◼
►
instead of completing my timeline or if ArcSess is out of control, that's sort of my safety
01:00:16
◼
►
of hey I just wanna make sure that there's something
01:00:19
◼
►
going on I should know about.
01:00:21
◼
►
And it really is nice for that.
01:00:23
◼
►
- It's a good way to take the temperature.
01:00:25
◼
►
- Yeah, exactly, that's a really good way of saying it.
01:00:28
◼
►
One thing I do wish, and maybe it does this,
01:00:31
◼
►
it sounds like it doesn't though if you haven't found it,
01:00:34
◼
►
of a way to mute people in Nuzzle.
01:00:38
◼
►
So if those Verge writers are sort of coloring
01:00:43
◼
►
your experience in Nuzzle that you could turn them off.
01:00:45
◼
►
or have their links weigh less in the algorithm or something.
01:00:50
◼
►
I could see some growth there for them
01:00:52
◼
►
of fine tuning it a little bit.
01:00:55
◼
►
But overall, yeah, Nozzle's great.
01:00:57
◼
►
It has an adorable icon, which is always a win as well.
01:01:01
◼
►
But definitely something that I use
01:01:02
◼
►
as a sort of a second line if I can't keep up during the day.
01:01:06
◼
►
I just kinda go to that and see what's going on.
01:01:09
◼
►
- You know, something that I've always wanted
01:01:12
◼
►
to bring up on the show.
01:01:13
◼
►
When you follow a lot of people on Twitter, you start to notice this weird metamorphosis
01:01:20
◼
►
of memes and jokes on Twitter.
01:01:24
◼
►
And you see this cycle repeat over and over.
01:01:27
◼
►
And it gets to the point where there's usually an outrage happening and a big news comes
01:01:36
◼
►
And you see, it happens all the time.
01:01:40
◼
►
Because people making a joke, mixing the two, or maybe it's a big world event and maybe
01:01:48
◼
►
something about Apple, and you see people mixing the two as a joke.
01:01:53
◼
►
Like I remember when the Americans, the Marines caught Osama bin Laden a few years ago.
01:02:03
◼
►
And also Apple Maps was having issues.
01:02:07
◼
►
suddenly there's everybody making jokes that that he was using Apple Maps and he
01:02:11
◼
►
got caught. Or, you know, and it happens all the time, like there's a politician
01:02:16
◼
►
says something and they make the joke about, you know, technology. And you see
01:02:20
◼
►
this repetition of the joke, like the transformation of the meme, and it's kind
01:02:26
◼
►
of amusing but also annoying to watch. So when you follow a lot of people, I know
01:02:32
◼
►
I can reliably tell you when a news comes out and when Apple or Google are doing something,
01:02:39
◼
►
there's going to be the in-between meme or the mixed joke, and it gets annoying after
01:02:46
◼
►
But there should be a joke filter on Twitter.
01:02:50
◼
►
There should be a Twitter for Business and there's a toggle and you say "serious Twitter"
01:02:54
◼
►
and you hide all of the jokes and you just get the news.
01:02:57
◼
►
I would love this.
01:03:01
◼
►
My favorite thing, and I know that we all have this, is like, I follow different Twitters.
01:03:07
◼
►
Like I have Tech Twitter and Space Twitter and like Video Games Twitter and you know,
01:03:13
◼
►
I don't have Space Twitter, Stephen does, I don't know why I said that.
01:03:16
◼
►
That's really weird, words can't be unmasked, I didn't expect.
01:03:20
◼
►
But like, you know, I follow a bunch of different Twitters and it's really interesting to me
01:03:25
◼
►
because I'm like, "Oh, you're from Video Games Twitter."
01:03:27
◼
►
Like it's really interesting.
01:03:29
◼
►
Yes, yes. Do you follow anyone from weird twitter?
01:03:34
◼
►
Oh yeah, well at least I've tried and I can't.
01:03:39
◼
►
Maybe like Darth is the only person that I can deal with in weird twitter.
01:03:45
◼
►
That's kind of weird/cute twitter.
01:03:49
◼
►
But like you know there's a lot of buzzfeed people in weird twitter and I love it for a while.
01:03:53
◼
►
like there's too much weird that I can't keep a handle on so I have to kind of
01:03:59
◼
►
let it go. Yeah step in and then you then you see... maybe Kyle's
01:04:07
◼
►
the gray maybe he counts as like a beginner weird Twitter. Yes. Alright
01:04:16
◼
►
shall I take a break and then we have an interesting final topic today to run
01:04:20
◼
►
through. So this episode is brought to you by igloo the internet you'll
01:04:24
◼
►
actually like. With igloo you don't have to be fixed to a certain place to get
01:04:28
◼
►
your work done. Everybody's mobile these days and your internet should be mobile
01:04:33
◼
►
too. So you can do whatever you want you can go wherever you like and you can
01:04:38
◼
►
still access your internet you can still get your work done. You can access your
01:04:42
◼
►
internet on a bus. You can mark off your tasks when you're in the garden when
01:04:47
◼
►
it's sunny outside. You can manage your documents from the beach if you really
01:04:53
◼
►
want to, although when you're at the beach even though that your internet is
01:04:56
◼
►
mobile and it's with you everywhere if you use igloo you probably shouldn't be
01:05:00
◼
►
looking at it like take the time and go to the beach you know. Anyway so with
01:05:05
◼
►
igloo these days they allow you to do all this stuff they allow you to
01:05:08
◼
►
customize it they can let you set different teams up in different ways
01:05:11
◼
►
with their group spaces functions so for example if the accounting team and the
01:05:16
◼
►
marketing team, the different facilities. One of them needs
01:05:20
◼
►
document sharing, the other one needs micro blogs. You can set them up that way.
01:05:23
◼
►
If they both won't use it then they don't need it. You can say this team gets
01:05:27
◼
►
this, this team gets this. You can give them the colors and the logos and all that
01:05:30
◼
►
cool stuff. You can customize it for exactly how those teams work. You can
01:05:34
◼
►
customize your igloo for your entire company, giving it the
01:05:37
◼
►
branding that you like. It's really surprisingly configurable and it does
01:05:41
◼
►
genuinely feel like all of igloo does. Like it was built today, it wasn't like
01:05:45
◼
►
built 20 years ago. One of my other favorite things about igloo is the fact
01:05:50
◼
►
that they allow you to integrate services like Box and Google Drive and
01:05:53
◼
►
Dropbox into their one big easy to secure platform. This stops documents
01:05:57
◼
►
leaving your company and going to people's own personal information and
01:06:01
◼
►
their own personal accounts because that's not a good idea you don't really
01:06:05
◼
►
want that happening that can break security policy in some companies it
01:06:08
◼
►
would have broken security policy in mine in my old company. Actually Steven
01:06:13
◼
►
or break security policy here too. So watch out where you're taking that documents.
01:06:17
◼
►
igloo allows you to look after all this stuff. They allow you to integrate that all into their
01:06:22
◼
►
platform. They have super, super secure stuff going on here like 256-bit encryption, single
01:06:27
◼
►
sign-on and active directory integrations, all that stuff for the security nerds out there as well.
01:06:32
◼
►
They also have with their own document engine, you can have red receipts so you can know if people
01:06:37
◼
►
have seen documents. This is really useful if you need everybody to see that new policy document or
01:06:42
◼
►
or the new fire safety procedure.
01:06:43
◼
►
You can make sure everyone's seen it
01:06:45
◼
►
without having to go up to everybody's desk
01:06:46
◼
►
and bugging them, you can just see.
01:06:48
◼
►
So if you like the sound of this
01:06:50
◼
►
or if you are using an intranet that you hate,
01:06:52
◼
►
then you should definitely be signing up
01:06:53
◼
►
and trying out igloo,
01:06:55
◼
►
especially because it's free for teams of up to 10 people
01:06:58
◼
►
to use for as long as you want.
01:07:01
◼
►
So go to igloosoftware.com/connected and try them out.
01:07:04
◼
►
Thank you so much to igloo for supporting this show.
01:07:07
◼
►
- So I thought it'd be interesting to talk briefly
01:07:11
◼
►
about how we get our work done from a sort of,
01:07:16
◼
►
not really workflow perspective,
01:07:18
◼
►
but sort of big picture maybe.
01:07:20
◼
►
So all three of us being independent,
01:07:24
◼
►
doing sort of overlapping things
01:07:26
◼
►
that could be interesting to run through.
01:07:28
◼
►
So Federico, you write for a living
01:07:32
◼
►
for the majority of your time.
01:07:34
◼
►
What does that planning look like?
01:07:37
◼
►
What is getting an article from your brain
01:07:39
◼
►
through your iPad to the internet? How does that go?
01:07:45
◼
►
It depends on the kind of article that I'm writing.
01:07:48
◼
►
Primarily I do app reviews
01:07:51
◼
►
and stories, so editorials, kind of opinion pieces
01:07:56
◼
►
on the website.
01:07:58
◼
►
My writing process has been...
01:08:02
◼
►
looking back I think it has always been the same since high school.
01:08:06
◼
►
And that is, I don't write multiple drafts of an article.
01:08:13
◼
►
And I always compared myself to my friends back in high school and now to people I know
01:08:20
◼
►
that do the same job that I do.
01:08:23
◼
►
And there's people, they write entire stories and they're not happy with them and they just
01:08:31
◼
►
throw them away.
01:08:33
◼
►
And I've never had this mindset, and I guess it's that the article happens in my brain
01:08:40
◼
►
before it becomes words with a keyboard.
01:08:45
◼
►
And the same way.
01:08:47
◼
►
Like I'm capable of... sometimes I find myself thinking about an article for like weeks and
01:08:54
◼
►
weeks and weeks and I don't start typing because I don't have a clear angle.
01:09:01
◼
►
Every time I write an article it's because I have an angle, a specific point of view
01:09:07
◼
►
that informs the entire article.
01:09:10
◼
►
I guess a thesis maybe you could say, but it's just a central topic or a central idea
01:09:15
◼
►
and from that idea I extrapolate everything else and the article happens around that idea.
01:09:23
◼
►
And sometimes that takes weeks or months.
01:09:26
◼
►
Other times it's a Sunday afternoon and I see something fly by on Twitter and the idea
01:09:33
◼
►
pops out on its own in two seconds and I know exactly not just the topics that I want to
01:09:40
◼
►
cover or the other ideas of the article, but I also know the kind of flow that the article
01:09:50
◼
►
And so it's like if, in those occasions, it's like, and I know that this sounds incredibly
01:09:55
◼
►
hippie and kind of magical, but you know, creativity, it's kind of weird like that,
01:10:01
◼
►
but I know, I visualize the article in my brain, and I know how it's going to turn out
01:10:06
◼
►
on the page.
01:10:08
◼
►
But that's very rare, and usually I need to help the idea become an idea, you know?
01:10:16
◼
►
I need to put myself in the position of saying, "Okay, now I know what I'm going to write."
01:10:21
◼
►
And usually that implies research.
01:10:23
◼
►
And I feel like for most articles, research can be testing, so whether it's software like
01:10:32
◼
►
an iOS update or an app, research is knowing what I'm going to talk about, and in this
01:10:38
◼
►
case it is software, so maybe it's how the software works or how the design is structured
01:10:45
◼
►
or why the developer chose to make this kind of feature or design choice.
01:10:51
◼
►
And maybe for weeks or even months in the case of IOS reviews, I don't write anything,
01:10:57
◼
►
I just sit there, I watch videos, I take notes, I take screenshots.
01:11:02
◼
►
And for big articles I do mind maps.
01:11:05
◼
►
I really like iThoughts for IOS and the iPhone and iPad.
01:11:12
◼
►
I like it because it lets you use text and images and you can export in different formats,
01:11:18
◼
►
but really I can zoom out from the mind map and I can take a look at all the topics from
01:11:24
◼
►
like a top-down perspective and that's not just cool to look at, that's kind of useful to see.
01:11:31
◼
►
You know, I use a horizontal layout so there's a central idea and then it's like a flower
01:11:37
◼
►
with all ideas around that central topic.
01:11:41
◼
►
And I feel like being able to see the density of those ideas and of those notes helps me
01:11:48
◼
►
form a structure of Jericho in my brain. So when I sit down, I already know the intro,
01:11:54
◼
►
and I already know what's going to follow that intro. And usually, and this may sound
01:12:00
◼
►
weird to other people. But it's not so unusual for me to write the conclusion before the rest
01:12:08
◼
►
of the body of the article. And that's not a preconception. That's because I wait until I
01:12:15
◼
►
have a conclusion to start writing the article. So for me, the conclusion doesn't happen
01:12:20
◼
►
in high school, in Leighton, we would say in Medias Res, which means in the middle of things.
01:12:28
◼
►
And the conclusion doesn't happen to me.
01:12:31
◼
►
The conclusion lets me start the article.
01:12:34
◼
►
That's maybe strange for some people, but that's just how I work.
01:12:38
◼
►
I don't start until I know how it ends.
01:12:43
◼
►
And that really helped me.
01:12:46
◼
►
I feel free, you know, when it's liberating to know what it's going to be like in the
01:12:53
◼
►
And I feel like it lets me enjoy the writing process more.
01:12:56
◼
►
Because if I were to start writing without knowing where things are going, I would just
01:13:00
◼
►
feel anxious.
01:13:02
◼
►
And I would just feel like I don't know what I'm doing, like I don't know what I'm talking
01:13:07
◼
►
And at the end of the day, mind maps, notes, screenshots, those are just tools.
01:13:16
◼
►
The basic point for me is knowing what I want to talk about.
01:13:22
◼
►
Is knowing the idea.
01:13:23
◼
►
using the idea, the central, the very simple idea, I feel like the copyright now, in Inception.
01:13:31
◼
►
But the basic idea helps form the entire article, whether it's a short article or a long one
01:13:39
◼
►
or the kind of work that you need to do for three months.
01:13:43
◼
►
But that's always the case for me.
01:13:46
◼
►
And everything else is just a tool.
01:13:48
◼
►
So editorial, I cannot live with editorial, Python-y stuff, photos, Dropbox.
01:13:54
◼
►
But for me, I would say I don't do drafts because I don't like the anxiety of discovering
01:14:01
◼
►
the idea while I'm writing the article.
01:14:05
◼
►
The article needs to happen after the idea is as a conclusion.
01:14:08
◼
►
And I guess that's my writing process.
01:14:13
◼
►
That's really interesting to hear.
01:14:14
◼
►
as far as the I need the conclusion I need the I need the the complete thought
01:14:21
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before I can write exactly the same way I've been working on or thinking I
01:14:28
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should say thinking about an Apple watch review for really going on like four or
01:14:35
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five weeks now and I don't haven't started because I don't really have a
01:14:40
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conclusion yeah I don't really know where it's going and like you that's not
01:14:43
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to say that my writing will be influenced by that thought,
01:14:47
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but it's that that thought is the writing itself.
01:14:50
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It was always very frustrating for me in school.
01:14:53
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I took a lot of writing classes
01:14:54
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and they'd want to see drafts,
01:14:56
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and it's like, I don't, I can't do that.
01:14:58
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Like, outline the scene before you write it.
01:15:01
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Like, I've already done that in my head.
01:15:02
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Like, why, you know, I would often backfill that work,
01:15:05
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you know, backfill, hut, and outline,
01:15:07
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and really have the whole thing written already,
01:15:09
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which got me in trouble a few times,
01:15:12
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but I'm the same way.
01:15:14
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I thought I could talk about writing the history stuff
01:15:18
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that I do, sort of specifically that's unique to 512
01:15:21
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to a degree.
01:15:21
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I will start with the idea or topic,
01:15:25
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so hey I wanna talk about this machine,
01:15:28
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or what I'm doing in iMore,
01:15:30
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like this history of the iTunes store.
01:15:35
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I pick my topic and then I go into research.
01:15:40
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that's a very different thing than like an editorial because it's I'm not really
01:15:43
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saying my opinion I'm sort of explaining what happened maybe why it's important
01:15:46
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and so a couple tools that are really key for me
01:15:50
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Wikipedia course is huge the wayback machine looking at Apple's website in
01:15:55
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the past can be helpful there's an app for OS X and I was called Mac tracker
01:16:00
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which has basically all of Apple's hardware and software products in it so
01:16:03
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you can go it's like oh I'm looking at the you know the mirror drive door g4
01:16:08
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And I can look at the dates the information the specs
01:16:10
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Any interesting background that the app may know about is all in there
01:16:14
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It could be a really great reference point for starting out of like where does this fall into history?
01:16:19
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What came before it what came after it? What made it unique and
01:16:22
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then a couple websites low-end Mac is a great one to cover a lot of
01:16:26
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old Apple stuff and a lot of good articles explaining sort of the the nitty-gritty of
01:16:33
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differences between you know this this power book in that power book and etc and it could be
01:16:38
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helpful to read someone else's take on that the
01:16:41
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People who run low and macro super great have had a lot of conversations with them over the years about stuff
01:16:47
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And they're always very helpful
01:16:49
◼
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Often my research will span more than one working session that we'll see if that changes now that I have a little more time to
01:16:57
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Write but I will store things in instapaper and and come back to them. I have some folders in instapaper
01:17:03
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►
About some things that you know, hey, this is a weird machine. I can't write about it right now
01:17:07
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I'll put it in the evergreen folder or I can have a 512 active folder. So if I'm working on
01:17:13
◼
►
Something about the Newton all my new stuff will get saved into that folder for later
01:17:17
◼
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So I can come back to it and find all in one place, which is nice
01:17:21
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And then and then I jump in into writing like like you Federico. I don't outline. I don't really draft
01:17:27
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I kind of know at this point what I'm going to say
01:17:31
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Kind of the way I'm going to say it the order in which I'm going to talk about things
01:17:34
◼
►
I started to sit down at Ed Byward on the Mac or editorial on my iPad and
01:17:39
◼
►
And just you know go through it. I write in markdown have a lot of text expander stuff happening to make
01:17:45
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►
Pulling links in and that sort of stuff faster
01:17:48
◼
►
And so I can just you know take that research to kind of turn through it and and and write my piece and the writing
01:17:55
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Part is usually much quicker than the research
01:17:58
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Especially if you know like you Federico research involves videos
01:18:01
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So if you're watching like like WVDC sessions or like old keynotes, like I can't make an hour-long video go faster
01:18:09
◼
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Okay, it's going to take about an hour even skipping around
01:18:12
◼
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So that research time for the history stuff is the bulk of the time spent in an article
01:18:19
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Well, they're writing it is usually much shorter
01:18:21
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I'm gonna sit down, you know, get it out, you know proofread it go through it
01:18:27
◼
►
I do have a copy editor I use for big stuff, which is nice and then and then publish and do it all over again
01:18:33
◼
►
It's hurting me to listen to you guys talking about the writing process
01:18:38
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Mm-hmm, because I'm trying I'm
01:18:41
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►
working on a call for a site right now and
01:18:48
◼
►
Struggling I'm really struggling like I know what it's about right like I know what it's about
01:18:56
◼
►
But I just can't I just can't do it
01:18:59
◼
►
Like I'm trying to say the stuff that I'm trying to say and it's really really difficult for me to do it
01:19:06
◼
►
It's it's definitely a skill that some people have and you both have it in abundance
01:19:11
◼
►
And I just really really struggle with it. It drives me mad
01:19:15
◼
►
So obviously I'm not going to about writing so rather than talking about the recording stuff because I think
01:19:23
◼
►
there's not really a lot of interest in. I use Skype Core Recorder and then I
01:19:28
◼
►
put it into Logic. There's not really a lot for me to say there. I wanted
01:19:33
◼
►
to talk about how I prepare for shows because I think that's maybe a little
01:19:37
◼
►
bit more unique to me maybe, I don't know, or at least it unearths a little bit
01:19:41
◼
►
about my thought processes, they're just slightly different. So let's say that
01:19:48
◼
►
say that the show has an idea, right? So every episode requires an idea,
01:19:54
◼
►
whatever it is you want to talk about that week. That could be
01:19:58
◼
►
something that's in the news or it could be like a specific topic or an idea that
01:20:03
◼
►
you want to talk about. Like let's say for example with this show today we had
01:20:08
◼
►
to think up these two different things because there wasn't really anything in
01:20:10
◼
►
the news that we wanted to talk about so much. So like a couple of weeks ago I
01:20:15
◼
►
I suggested maybe talking about news,
01:20:18
◼
►
and we've been pushing it along as we were waiting,
01:20:20
◼
►
but it was just like it was something that was on my mind,
01:20:22
◼
►
'cause I'd just signed up for Nozzle,
01:20:23
◼
►
and I wasn't using RSS anymore.
01:20:25
◼
►
So all of it tends to come in ideas,
01:20:27
◼
►
but as I just mentioned, these ideas aren't necessarily
01:20:30
◼
►
like you have the idea on Monday for the show on Tuesday.
01:20:33
◼
►
I might like have an idea for a show
01:20:36
◼
►
I wanna do at some point down the line.
01:20:38
◼
►
So these tend to get saved in drafts
01:20:40
◼
►
if they're over long term.
01:20:42
◼
►
And I tend to have a note for each show,
01:20:44
◼
►
would be like ideas for connected ideas for upgrade ideas for cortex that kind
01:20:48
◼
►
of thing. That tends to be where that stuff goes. Sometimes they just go into
01:20:52
◼
►
the Google Doc outlines but a lot of the time I save some of that stuff myself in
01:20:57
◼
►
drafts until I flush it out a little bit more into something that's a little bit
01:21:01
◼
►
more meat to it before putting it into or sharing it with my co-host so I know
01:21:06
◼
►
exactly what it is I want to talk about. Show preparation actually lasts for
01:21:12
◼
►
seven days for each show. So for basically the moment that we stop
01:21:16
◼
►
recording I'm already preparing for this week's episode, next week's episode of
01:21:20
◼
►
Connected and that's the same for all of the shows that I do. As soon as I stop
01:21:23
◼
►
the preparation for the next week begins because I save links that people send in
01:21:28
◼
►
as follow-up, make notes for corrections for follow-up and again like start
01:21:32
◼
►
thinking about the ideas again. When people send me links and stuff recently
01:21:37
◼
►
I've noticed that like I'm losing stuff so like people send me something on like
01:21:41
◼
►
Tuesday for upgrade and I forget to add it to the Google document or whatever I
01:21:47
◼
►
just see it online it's like I come reading Twitter I was like oh yeah
01:21:50
◼
►
that's cool and then I don't think to do anything with it so I've started this
01:21:54
◼
►
system recently again of using drafts to append these links using the drafts
01:21:59
◼
►
extension to a specific like upgrade follow-up note in drafts this is
01:22:04
◼
►
something I'm still like fleshing out a little bit but it feels like a pretty
01:22:07
◼
►
good system. I might end up using the Notes app for this when I'm on iOS 9
01:22:11
◼
►
everywhere. It was actually the fact that the Notes app was introduced that made me
01:22:17
◼
►
think to check out this functionality in drafts because I'm not on iOS 9 on my
01:22:22
◼
►
iPhone yet so I don't want to start using Notes everywhere but I'm thinking
01:22:26
◼
►
that maybe Notes will be something that I use although I do like markdown
01:22:29
◼
►
preview. Anyway, so we'll see. I'm not, I'm not, I haven't fully tried out Notes yet
01:22:35
◼
►
but I know that Federico has been using it to some effect.
01:22:39
◼
►
And that was, talking to Federico about the way he's using notes
01:22:41
◼
►
is making me think about using it in drafts.
01:22:43
◼
►
So I have like follow-up notes for a bunch of shows,
01:22:46
◼
►
and I just add things into those notes,
01:22:48
◼
►
and then I can check them and add things in for follow-up later.
01:22:51
◼
►
Or I just add them directly into Google Docs.
01:22:54
◼
►
Like if I'm on my Mac, I usually just add them straight
01:22:56
◼
►
into the Google document for that show,
01:22:59
◼
►
so I could open up the connected one,
01:23:00
◼
►
make a little line above this week's notes,
01:23:03
◼
►
add in some just quick notes until I go in on the morning of the show being
01:23:07
◼
►
recorded and flesh out the outline. So that's typically what I tend to do the
01:23:11
◼
►
morning of. I've got my coffee and I will start doing the outlines for the shows
01:23:16
◼
►
that happen later in the day for me. So this will be cleaning out the document
01:23:21
◼
►
from last week, cleaning out the topics that we covered and the follow-up so
01:23:25
◼
►
that's all gone and then I start taking any notes from drafts off that are already
01:23:29
◼
►
in my Google Doc and outlining them, fleshing out the ideas, adding in my thoughts about
01:23:34
◼
►
follow up, that kind of stuff, creating the actual outline.
01:23:36
◼
►
I look on Twitter, if we have hashtag suggestions for the shows that I do on a bunch of shows,
01:23:41
◼
►
I look for those to put them into the show.
01:23:43
◼
►
I look through my email, because I tend to, when I get an email which is feedback for
01:23:48
◼
►
a show, I just snooze it in mailbox until the morning of the show.
01:23:53
◼
►
Because a lot of the time it's not really, it tends to be follow up and I don't want
01:23:56
◼
►
to be looking at follow up for all of the shows all of the time because that's
01:24:00
◼
►
too much to keep in my brain. So I just move them to the morning of the
01:24:04
◼
►
applicable show and then just start going through them all then. And then
01:24:08
◼
►
this takes me up to like so I've got the document all done and
01:24:12
◼
►
everything that I need to do is taken care of. Sometimes I will then pass over
01:24:16
◼
►
to my co-host and say my stuff's in, have a look at it, flesh it out, add some more
01:24:21
◼
►
stuff if you want to. And then about 10 minutes before we go live, I make sure I have all
01:24:27
◼
►
of the documents I need in front of me, so like the show outline, the sponsor reads,
01:24:31
◼
►
and have all of those in front and all correct. Then I start a new post in our CMS to add
01:24:38
◼
►
links as we record, and that's it. Then the recording begins.
01:24:44
◼
►
So that is my little system.
01:24:46
◼
►
It's quite the workflow.
01:24:49
◼
►
I feel like when I started writing this down, I felt like I was more organized than I believed
01:24:54
◼
►
I was, so that was good.
01:24:56
◼
►
I didn't realize that I had a real system for it, but I do have a system for it.
01:25:02
◼
►
I've been using the Notes app, like you said, it's been very effective for me.
01:25:07
◼
►
I use it to manage the links that we use on virtual.
01:25:13
◼
►
I use it for Mac Stories Weekly.
01:25:15
◼
►
I save all the links there.
01:25:18
◼
►
I have an iOS 9 review folder with all my research and the big reason why I keep using
01:25:25
◼
►
it is that it's just so fast and reliable.
01:25:29
◼
►
I mean, iCloud sync.
01:25:31
◼
►
All my changes are consistently always there and of course it was one of the first apps
01:25:38
◼
►
to support multitasking on the iPad so I could load up the W3C session videos on the video
01:25:46
◼
►
videos app on iOS which I never ever used but now it's been useful to watch
01:25:52
◼
►
videos and take notes at the same time. I'm really excited about notes. It's
01:25:59
◼
►
been a nice upgrade and I'm surprised Myke that you
01:26:06
◼
►
like, you mentioned just in passing the markdown preview. What is it
01:26:11
◼
►
that you like about markdown videos?
01:26:14
◼
►
I just like being able to preview my notes in markdown.
01:26:17
◼
►
I know that sounds a little bit weird, but the other thing is, oh, the other part is
01:26:21
◼
►
that say I've written an outline in markdown.
01:26:24
◼
►
If I go into a markdown preview in drafts and copy that, when I paste it into Google
01:26:29
◼
►
Docs, it maintains the formatting for Google Docs.
01:26:33
◼
►
I had a suspicion there was a copy and paste related benefit for you.
01:26:39
◼
►
Because I know that you go insane if the formatting is not the same in Google Docs.
01:26:45
◼
►
It really annoys you and I understand because it also annoys me when formatting is not properly
01:26:53
◼
►
So I understand.
01:26:55
◼
►
Very nice, Myke.
01:26:56
◼
►
Yeah, I like my formatting to be all nice and clean and clear and crisp and just right.
01:27:02
◼
►
I like to have the formatting, like if I've sat and done the outline in Markdown with
01:27:08
◼
►
like nested points and stuff like that, you know, like I've got like bullets and nested
01:27:15
◼
►
The reason I do that is because then when I bring it over into Google Docs, I want it
01:27:19
◼
►
to be the same, right?
01:27:21
◼
►
I want it to maintain all of that.
01:27:23
◼
►
But if, and if it doesn't, then I get a bit annoyed about it.
01:27:28
◼
►
So there you go.
01:27:29
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►
That's that.
01:27:30
◼
►
I get to do something a little special and talk about some of our, the ways that we work
01:27:34
◼
►
and some of our thoughts and feelings on our magical 50th episode.
01:27:39
◼
►
And I hope that you've enjoyed it and we'll have our links and everything.
01:27:43
◼
►
There's lots of links today over at relay.fm/connected/50.
01:27:48
◼
►
If you want to find us online, there's a few ways that you can do that.
01:27:50
◼
►
You can find Federico at maxstories.net and he's @vitiaci on Twitter.
01:28:15
◼
►
Relay.fm. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Todoist, Igloo and Fracture. Go support
01:28:21
◼
►
them if you want to help support us. Every little helps, it really really does. But most
01:28:26
◼
►
of all, thank you for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye
01:28:31
◼
►
>> Adios, Erci.