PodSearch

Connected

50: The Edition Episode

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:06   From Real AFM, this is Connected, episode 50.

00:00:10   Today's show is brought to you by Igloo, an internet you'll actually like.

00:00:14   Fracture, photos printed in vivid colour directly on Glass, and Todoist,

00:00:18   the task management app that's with you everywhere.

00:00:21   My name is Myke Hurley, and I have pleasure to be joined by my lovely co-host as I am every single week,

00:00:27   the one and only Mr. Steven Hackett.

00:00:29   - Hello.

00:00:31   - And Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:33   - Hey Myke, what did you say all those nice things

00:00:36   about Steven and not about me?

00:00:39   - I said my lovely co-hosts.

00:00:41   - Oh, okay.

00:00:41   - Yeah, you are also of the lovely.

00:00:44   - So I'm also lovely, okay.

00:00:45   - You're very lovely, you're very dear to me Federico.

00:00:47   - Okay, hi Myke.

00:00:47   - Hello Federico. - How are you?

00:00:49   - I am very well, I am very well indeed.

00:00:51   Congratulations everyone, we have made it to episode 50.

00:00:55   So it's the... in terms of wedding anniversaries, this should be the golden something.

00:01:04   Yep, and if you look under your chairs, you will find that I have prepared Apple Watch

00:01:08   editions for you.

00:01:10   Both today.

00:01:11   Steve, I understand that you're at home in Federico.

00:01:14   You're at home, right?

00:01:15   Yes.

00:01:16   Okay, great.

00:01:17   I am.

00:01:18   Then if you look just under your chairs, then you'll find them because I put them in those

00:01:20   specific places for you.

00:01:22   I looked under my chair and there's a Roomba. You know one of those vacuum robots?

00:01:26   Uh the Roomba right the addition.

00:01:28   Drow no.

00:01:30   Robot or not man.

00:01:32   It's charging like it's kind of scary there's a light.

00:01:35   Why is it under your chair?

00:01:38   It's under the desk actually I don't know who left it here.

00:01:41   I hope it's not on because...

00:01:43   No there's like a green light and it says clean. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean.

00:01:50   I think it may be... see that's confusing. Does it need to be cleaned or is it cleaning?

00:01:56   No, I believe it's a button that you need to press when you want to clean.

00:02:00   Should I turn it on?

00:02:03   Yeah, just press it, see what happens.

00:02:05   Okay.

00:02:06   The end of the podcast.

00:02:07   Oh my god, it's making sound, it's moving.

00:02:09   [Laughter]

00:02:10   Turn it off.

00:02:11   No, no, no, no, no.

00:02:12   [Laughter]

00:02:15   How do I turn it off?

00:02:16   [Laughter]

00:02:18   Oh my god, it's moving again.

00:02:19   I don't know it's making noises.

00:02:22   Alright well we've just got that guy.

00:02:24   The light is orange now and it's beeping and it looks like it's about to assault me.

00:02:30   Just gonna start crawling up your leg.

00:02:32   What do I do?

00:02:33   It's not even mine.

00:02:35   I would just leave it now.

00:02:38   Should I just like throw it out of the window?

00:02:41   Don't know, if it's not yours I wouldn't do that.

00:02:45   Why did you make me do this?

00:02:47   I thought it might be fun to have a roving Roomba reporter.

00:02:51   It's got like little brushes underneath and they move very fast and it looks like a predator.

00:02:58   That's how it does the cleaning.

00:02:59   Okay.

00:03:00   Steven, please take us into follow-up.

00:03:03   Let's talk about, well we have follow-out.

00:03:06   Follow way out into space.

00:03:09   Yeah, I did.

00:03:12   Wow.

00:03:13   - Puerto Rico is growing in the background,

00:03:17   but Jason and I did a space show thing

00:03:22   last, over the weekend.

00:03:24   - Why don't you come think of me about this?

00:03:26   - I can't tell if you're into space or not,

00:03:27   it's hard to tell.

00:03:28   You can go check it out, it's on the B-Sides feed,

00:03:32   which is sort of where we put extras as a network,

00:03:34   episode 12, let us know if you like it.

00:03:37   We would like to maybe do more of these things

00:03:39   in the future, so your feedback would be

00:03:42   welcome to Jason and I. It was a lot of fun to talk about Pluto and stuff.

00:03:47   There'll be a link in this week's show notes. Yes. Where could show notes be found?

00:03:52   In space. Let's ask the Roomba. No, no, I'm not touching that thing again.

00:03:58   Okay relay.fm/connected/50thebig50. Right. So it's the edition

00:04:06   episode today. You bet it is. We decided last week that would be the title I think.

00:04:11   So moving from follow-up to follow-up, we have a tweet from James Woods, period, on Twitter,

00:04:19   asking Myke to follow up on being happy with Apple Music even though you couldn't stream for

00:04:25   six days. And you answered this on Twitter, Myke, but I thought it was an interesting question,

00:04:29   actually one that I wish I'd asked during the show. So how do you reconcile being happy with

00:04:34   something that was broken for a week? So I'll just preface this again, frankly I doesn't remember. I

00:04:39   I was saying that last week that there was some sort of DNS issue or something with Apple

00:04:46   Music which meant that some people in the UK couldn't listen to music on their Mac, they

00:04:51   couldn't stream for a week.

00:04:52   I was just fine with it.

00:04:54   I mean look, at the end of the day, I knew what was happening there, like there was a

00:04:59   systems problem in specific scenarios and my iPhone sits on a dock which is elevated

00:05:06   and I have one of those high rise docks by 12 South,

00:05:09   that's right next to me.

00:05:10   So when I couldn't stream,

00:05:11   because anything that I'd listened to recently

00:05:15   seemed to be playable,

00:05:16   like it was cached in some way,

00:05:18   but it wasn't downloaded.

00:05:19   Like I didn't download anything on the Mac,

00:05:21   so I don't know why it was doing that,

00:05:22   but some things it could play.

00:05:24   But anything that I wanted to stream or whatever,

00:05:26   I could just do it on my iPhone,

00:05:27   and it was just sitting right there.

00:05:29   And to be honest, the quality difference,

00:05:30   like to my ears between my iPhone and the MacBook speakers,

00:05:34   are not massively different.

00:05:36   So I was just able to deal with it that way.

00:05:38   Like if, for example, it's still today

00:05:42   I was having this issue,

00:05:43   it would have been really, really annoying.

00:05:45   But in all honesty, it hit me like maybe four or five times

00:05:48   over the space of a week.

00:05:49   And I maybe listened to,

00:05:51   like I maybe pressed play on Apple Music

00:05:53   like 50 times in that time period.

00:05:55   So it wasn't really that much of an issue.

00:05:58   I get why maybe you would ask the question,

00:06:00   but it wasn't a problem.

00:06:02   - Wow, Myke, I'm so disappointed in you.

00:06:05   I know, I've let everybody down really.

00:06:07   Don't you know that if you buy really good, expensive headphones, the music completely

00:06:12   changes?

00:06:13   Like, you can hear sounds that not even on the strongest of acids you could hear those

00:06:23   sounds.

00:06:24   Like it's day and night difference, yeah.

00:06:26   Like you can hear colors?

00:06:29   You can feel the guitar strings in your head.

00:06:34   very painful sometimes. Well I don't really have much to say to that but... I'm

00:06:40   just gonna move on. Yeah. We have spoken a lot about iCloud Drive as Dropbox

00:06:46   replacement as a backup etc etc and we spoke briefly about versioning something

00:06:51   that Dropbox offers a really nice web interface for versioning so I can go

00:06:56   back and retrieve files I've deleted or files that have been changed and of

00:07:01   course on the Mac time machine offers this the built-in backup utility in OS 10

00:07:06   so I can go and I can pull up a folder or even a document and go back in time

00:07:13   on my local time machine drive and pull old versions of it.

00:07:16   There's some thoughts, we have a tweet in here in the show that's about

00:07:23   documents being versioned in iCloud Drive accessible through the time machine

00:07:31   interface and I got some emails about this too and so I wanted to to clarify a

00:07:36   little bit. Best I can tell

00:07:39   iCloud Drive documents, the documents that are in the iCloud containers and finder

00:07:44   are not versioned by iCloud. If you go to the time machine interface and you go

00:07:49   back in time it is pulling those files from your time machine hard drive. So for

00:07:54   me I have a 3 terabyte hard drive plugged into my Mac, my time machine drive and is

00:07:59   pulling old versions of iCloud documents from there. I tried to recover old iCloud

00:08:07   documents with that drive unplugged. It doesn't work, it gives you an error saying I'm

00:08:10   looking for this volume I need this hard drive attached. So it doesn't seem like

00:08:14   this is a true thing. Looking at Apple's website as well they don't really

00:08:19   mention versioning anywhere in the iCloud Drive stuff and so if versioning is important

00:08:24   to you I would say stick to Dropbox if you want your documents synced in the cloud somewhere.

00:08:30   Dropbox offers a really nice system for that and iCloud doesn't seem to offer really anything.

00:08:38   So there's that.

00:08:39   Dropbox leading the way.

00:08:42   Yeah I'm making a decision this week.

00:08:47   I'm struggling to find a way to properly organize my screenshots for the iOS 9 review.

00:08:55   And right now I have a mess of screenshots in the Photos app.

00:09:01   And I'm thinking, should I make an album in iCloud so it updates all the time on the iPhone,

00:09:08   the iPad and the Mac?

00:09:09   I don't know if it matters but still it'll be there.

00:09:13   Or should I just go the old fashioned way and create a bunch of folders in Dropbox and

00:09:19   every time I know that a screenshot is going to be used I can maybe, I can also organize

00:09:25   folders for like beta 4, beta 5 and each time I take the same screenshot so I can track

00:09:31   changes across different beta versions of iOS 9.

00:09:35   And I think I'm going to go with Dropbox because of the control that it gives me.

00:09:38   I can create folders, subfolders, and right now, iCloud Drive simply isn't an option if I want to do this kind of stuff.

00:09:46   And also, I still don't completely trust it, so I think I'm gonna go with Dropbox.

00:09:53   Actually, I just talked myself into using Dropbox right now, so thank you, Steven and Myke, for letting me talk to myself.

00:10:00   Sometimes the best decisions are the ones that you have to come to on your own.

00:10:04   Yes, especially during follow-up.

00:10:06   - Yep, it's the only real time.

00:10:09   - It's where I make all my big decisions.

00:10:11   There are a couple links in the show notes too

00:10:12   from the chat room,

00:10:14   discussing versioning and Time Machine stuff.

00:10:15   Again, iCloud Drive is nowhere to be found in there.

00:10:17   So it'd be nice if it could do it.

00:10:20   I think the Time Machine interface is an obvious choice

00:10:23   of where to put that stuff, right?

00:10:26   That's where you go now and maybe you can switch

00:10:31   between iCloud and Time Machine or something in the future.

00:10:33   But as for now, I think Dropbox is the way to go

00:10:36   for most people if you need that sort of control.

00:10:38   Federico, I'm with you.

00:10:40   My stuff is in Dropbox.

00:10:41   I have very few things in iCloud Drive.

00:10:43   And most of those are just scratch notes

00:10:48   and that sort of stuff.

00:10:49   We got two more pieces of follow up this week.

00:10:53   The first is about headphones and earphones and running.

00:10:58   I got a lot of email and tweets.

00:10:59   I'm not putting any in the show notes.

00:11:01   Not really gonna address any of it.

00:11:02   Specifically, I have lots of things to look at on Amazon.

00:11:05   Thank you for emailing me in.

00:11:06   I'm not sure what'll work and what won't yet,

00:11:08   but if I find something I like,

00:11:10   I will follow up at that time.

00:11:12   And finally, we come to a very non-tech related

00:11:19   piece of follow up.

00:11:20   - Wait, what is this? - It's really a request.

00:11:22   - Just look at this now.

00:11:24   - So Jamie emailed us, and Federico,

00:11:28   do you want to read this and then maybe--

00:11:30   - Sure.

00:11:31   - Steven's only said this because he's seen words in here

00:11:34   that he knows he can't do. He like bailed out last minute. He's like "uh, Federico,

00:11:38   do you want to read this?" No, Steven, why don't you read this? No, I'm not gonna read

00:11:42   it. Okay, maybe, so Jamie writes, maybe Federico can validate this and give his expert opinion.

00:11:50   Best pizza in Rome is at Pincerio Pincerio on Via Flavia, just next to the Marcella Roya

00:11:57   Hotel and follow that up with ice cream from Gelateria Caruso on Via Colina just around

00:12:03   the corner. I'm in love. Can you just read that again, please?

00:12:08   The best pizza in Rome is at Pincerre - never heard of this before - on Via Flavia, just

00:12:15   next to the Marcella Royal Hotel, and followed it up with ice cream from Gelateria

00:12:20   i Caruso, I believe. Not just Caruso. I Caruso on Via Colina. I like that you put

00:12:26   more Italian in the second go.

00:12:28   I appreciate that.

00:12:30   Yeah, so I don't know.

00:12:33   Never heard of these two places before.

00:12:35   It could be that I'm not huge on going to the center of Rome, because it's super busy

00:12:42   and parking spots are a complete mess, and I also don't like to take the subway during

00:12:50   the evenings, especially in the late evenings in Rome.

00:12:53   So I should drive there, but it's always a problem to find a parking spot.

00:12:59   So I'm not a big expert in, I believe these places are, because it sounds to me like Via

00:13:04   Flavia should be in the center of Rome.

00:13:09   So I'm not sure.

00:13:10   I can ask around Jamie if that's okay.

00:13:15   I have a few friends who are experts about pizza in Rome.

00:13:19   I think I should actually go to the center more.

00:13:22   Because I live in Rome and I never go there.

00:13:24   In two years I've never been to the Coliseum once.

00:13:27   So it's kind of a shame right now.

00:13:29   It's different when it's the place you live, right?

00:13:32   Yeah, yeah.

00:13:34   I know.

00:13:36   Like I don't feel the need to go to the center because it's always there.

00:13:42   But at the same time I'm kind of missing out because I don't go there.

00:13:45   It's beautiful.

00:13:47   Maybe Jamie has provided a turning point for you in your life.

00:13:51   Thank you Jamie.

00:13:53   You're making life changes in the follow-up.

00:13:57   I tell you what Federico, I would say that if you visit these places say on a date, be

00:14:04   a very special lady friend, and if you report back in follow-up, I would say that that is

00:14:11   a business expense.

00:14:13   Yes.

00:14:14   Maybe Relay can pay for your date.

00:14:17   My dates can get really expensive.

00:14:18   Well, it's only pizza and ice cream. Don't go crazy. Don't go to the hotel.

00:14:22   No, come on. So, nothing to drink? Well, the hotel is mentioned in the request. And it's

00:14:31   a Royal Hotel. It's a Royal Hotel, so it sounds fancy. I don't know. I'm just saying.

00:14:38   By the way, in terms of pizza types, I really like the real Italian pizza, which is the

00:14:46   pizza from Naples. So that, you know, the slightly tall pizza, not a very thin, you

00:14:53   know, thin kind of pizza. We do have different kinds of pizza in Italy. There's some people

00:14:57   like my parents, they prefer thin pizza. And so thin slice, thin crust. I prefer the taller

00:15:04   one, the one from the Southern Italy from Naples. So that's my kind of preference.

00:15:09   And ice cream, I love ice cream, all kinds of ice cream. So if it's artisanal and I'm

00:15:14   not trolling here because we actually do make the real artisanal highscreen here even better.

00:15:21   I found the hotel website and I just need to point out they used the blink tag so they

00:15:28   have this headline and it's blinking red text to me. It's really not good.

00:15:34   What does it say? Tell me what it says.

00:15:36   It says that "New" is blinking in red letters. Click here to become our fan on Facebook.

00:15:42   Let's move on to our first sponsor of this week's episode.

00:15:53   Today we are very happy to be brought to you by Todoist.

00:15:56   Todoist is a task manager that is available everywhere.

00:16:00   You will be hard pressed to find a system like this that is available in more places.

00:16:05   Todoist is currently on 16 platforms including mobile apps, web browsers, email inboxes,

00:16:11   for

00:16:30   since they launched in 2007.

00:16:33   And this functionality lets you take your productivity to the next level.

00:16:37   This is pure Federico Vittucci level of automated productivity right here.

00:16:42   At its core, Todoist offers powerful task management features like recurring due dates,

00:16:47   natural language date passing, location alerts, task project sharing, subtasks and subprojects,

00:16:53   labels, filters, real-time comments, productivity tracking and so much more.

00:16:57   It is an incredible system that can help you be productive, but also as a system to help

00:17:02   you stay productive with others.

00:17:05   On that note, Mr. Federico Vittucci, I know that you've used Todoist in the past to help

00:17:10   you coordinate around big releases.

00:17:14   Could you tell me about some of the stuff that you like and if you're going to be using

00:17:17   it again for that?

00:17:18   >> Yeah.

00:17:19   I really like the filters feature.

00:17:23   So it lets you set up custom views in the app, so if you have a bunch of projects and

00:17:30   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

00:18:02   apps.

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

00:18:27   you do.

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

00:21:05   you

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   sense

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.

00:30:06   Yeah, nice.

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

00:30:24   that.

00:30:25   So I'll let you know how that goes.

00:30:28   Yeah, you beat me to it.

00:30:30   Yep.

00:30:31   Your bank's never going to get it, man.

00:30:33   You just got to face up to that fact.

00:30:35   I know.

00:30:36   I suggest...

00:30:37   Switchbank.

00:30:38   Switchbank.

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

00:31:15   So

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

00:33:13   I

00:33:15   I'm

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.

00:33:39   - So close.

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

00:34:44   News.

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

00:38:35   technology.

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

00:39:16   now.

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?

00:41:04   Of course.

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.

00:44:46   Yeah.

00:44:46   You know.

00:44:47   But I have.

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

00:45:10   maybe.

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.

00:45:34   You know?

00:45:35   Should we take a break and then talk about some other services?

00:45:39   Yes.

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   or Facebook feed or something like that. It's super simple. All you do is you just go to

00:46:14   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

00:47:36   them really well and they ship them to, you know, straight to your door. They're all checked

00:47:40   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

00:47:59   yet bought a Fracture they have prices that start at just $15 so they're not

00:48:03   going to break the bank. Just try them out because if you use the code

00:48:07   connected you might only get 10% off for yourself it'll also help support this

00:48:11   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

00:50:34   stuff.

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

00:51:33   of website.

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.

00:55:33   - Sexy.

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.

00:57:49   It's crazy.

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

01:01:35   out.

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

01:02:45   a while.

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.

01:03:38   Yeah.

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.

01:03:48   Yeah.

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

01:09:49   will have.

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

01:12:52   end.

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

01:13:06   about.

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   before I can write exactly the same way I've been working on or thinking I

01:14:28   should say thinking about an Apple watch review for really going on like four or

01:14:35   five weeks now and I don't haven't started because I don't really have a

01:14:40   conclusion yeah I don't really know where it's going and like you that's not

01:14:43   to say that my writing will be influenced by that thought,

01:14:47   but it's that that thought is the writing itself.

01:14:50   It was always very frustrating for me in school.

01:14:53   I took a lot of writing classes

01:14:54   and they'd want to see drafts,

01:14:56   and it's like, I don't, I can't do that.

01:14:58   Like, outline the scene before you write it.

01:15:01   Like, I've already done that in my head.

01:15:02   Like, why, you know, I would often backfill that work,

01:15:05   you know, backfill, hut, and outline,

01:15:07   and really have the whole thing written already,

01:15:09   which got me in trouble a few times,

01:15:12   but I'm the same way.

01:15:14   I thought I could talk about writing the history stuff

01:15:18   that I do, sort of specifically that's unique to 512

01:15:21   to a degree.

01:15:21   I will start with the idea or topic,

01:15:25   so hey I wanna talk about this machine,

01:15:28   or what I'm doing in iMore,

01:15:30   like this history of the iTunes store.

01:15:35   I pick my topic and then I go into research.

01:15:40   that's a very different thing than like an editorial because it's I'm not really

01:15:43   saying my opinion I'm sort of explaining what happened maybe why it's important

01:15:46   and so a couple tools that are really key for me

01:15:50   Wikipedia course is huge the wayback machine looking at Apple's website in

01:15:55   the past can be helpful there's an app for OS X and I was called Mac tracker

01:16:00   which has basically all of Apple's hardware and software products in it so

01:16:03   you can go it's like oh I'm looking at the you know the mirror drive door g4

01:16:08   And I can look at the dates the information the specs

01:16:10   Any interesting background that the app may know about is all in there

01:16:14   It could be a really great reference point for starting out of like where does this fall into history?

01:16:19   What came before it what came after it? What made it unique and

01:16:22   then a couple websites low-end Mac is a great one to cover a lot of

01:16:26   old Apple stuff and a lot of good articles explaining sort of the the nitty-gritty of

01:16:33   differences between you know this this power book in that power book and etc and it could be

01:16:38   helpful to read someone else's take on that the

01:16:41   People who run low and macro super great have had a lot of conversations with them over the years about stuff

01:16:47   And they're always very helpful

01:16:49   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   Write but I will store things in instapaper and and come back to them. I have some folders in instapaper

01:17:03   About some things that you know, hey, this is a weird machine. I can't write about it right now

01:17:07   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   So I can come back to it and find all in one place, which is nice

01:17:21   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   I kind of know at this point what I'm going to say

01:17:31   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   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   Part is usually much quicker than the research

01:17:58   Especially if you know like you Federico research involves videos

01:18:01   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   Okay, it's going to take about an hour even skipping around

01:18:12   So that research time for the history stuff is the bulk of the time spent in an article

01:18:19   Well, they're writing it is usually much shorter

01:18:21   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   Mm-hmm, because I'm trying I'm

01:18:41   working on a call for a site right now and

01:18:45   I

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

01:26:50   displayed.

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

01:27:13   bullets.

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   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.

01:27:56   the

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

01:28:30   guys.

01:28:31   >> Adios, Erci.

01:28:32   >> Adios.

01:28:32   Adios.