Welcome to Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition! Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art use and experiment with hundreds of apps per year in our productive lives. So, a few times per year, we review software and services that we use and recommend to others. We hope you enjoy, and let us know the apps you’re using that are helping you be more productive!
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In this Cast
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition!
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Round 1
Augusto - Firefox Focus (browser)
Art - Edge (browser)
Ray - Rocketbook Everlast
Francis - Twine
Round 2
Art - LastPass
1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden, Enpass, KeePass, Keeper
Augusto - GoodNotes 5
Ray - Pushbullet
Francis - Opus Creator
Round 3
Augusto - Graphic (iPad)
Francis - OBS Studio
Art - Privacy.com
Ray - Trello
Raw Text Transcript | Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition!
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24And welcome gentlemen and welcome to our listeners today. For this episode, what we are going to be doing is our second App-apalooza. And what that means is that we are going to have three rounds. And in those three rounds, each of us is going to pick a tool and explicate why the tool is awesome, how we use it, all of those good things, why you might want to use it. And so let's get right into it. Let's start round one ding ding ding. And let's start with you will gousto What is your first app and Why do you use it? The first
Augusto Pinaud 1:01that I will talk today is an application called Firefox focus in the world of browsers and not exactly a lack of browsers these days, Firefox focus to recent player in the game that bring you put you automatically on privacy mode. That is cool. But second doesn't allow you to open tabs or anything. Basically, you have a window to work for. So there are moments that my level of attention is not the best, and that I'm distracted and that I'm aware that I'm distracted. So are those times it is really, really useful for me to work on Firefox because allow me to stay on that browser. Allow me don't allow me to have the 27 tops at the end of the conversation. I am forced to basically figured out how I'm going to do on one plus add the privacy and other aspects that is really, really cool. So it works well on the iOS. So it is something that I tend to give, you know, a lot of use to be honest with you.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:19And it's available on iOS and Android.
Art Gelwicks 2:21Alright, so if a goose is going to go down the Firefox path, I'm going to go down the Microsoft Edge path, edges there. Unfortunately, it has a bad reputation from older versions, but they've rebuilt edge using the chromium engine. So it's basically chrome with a Microsoft skin. I have found that on mobile and on the desktop, I like it as much as chrome if not a little bit more at times. It's fast. It supports extensions. It will sync between mobile and desktop and as it browser alternative to our classic chrome solution. I think it's something that's a very viable use. If you look at some of the capabilities, there's a nice pop up function at the bottom of the browser on mobile, that gives you access to all of the different controls and features that you would normally have to dig through chrome to get to. So that's my recommendation, if you want to look at an alternative browser, and you're, you know, trying things like Firefox and brave throw edge into the mix too. And give it a good try. I think you might be surprised at how much you like it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:33Yeah, it's like they took all of the Google guts out of the chromium project that goes into Google Chrome, and they put in all of the Microsoft guts. And I think that's actually really helpful for people who are in the Microsoft ecosystem. You know, you're still using a chromium based browser. You've got all the extensions available to you. You've got a lot of really embedded Microsoft you know, company opponents, and I think it'll only get better. And it Now, of course, reduces the number of browsers, major browsers in the market. Because, you know, Chrome, and edge. And all of the derivatives are basically chromium. And then you have the Mozilla Firefox, which produces the focus browser that Lucy was talking about, but also Firefox, General and a couple other different Firefox installations. implementations. So we are having a kind of major reduction in the market, where you have Google Chrome, Firefox and and Safari being the really the only three major browsers if you want to think about it in in the largest sense. So there has been a bit of a consolidation in the market, but very interesting to watch.
Art Gelwicks 4:47Some people get worked up about that, and I always flip them around to it's literally like car platforms. You go and you look at the major car platforms and you wind up with three different models from three different Four sub brands, all built on the same chassis. Well, that's exactly what this is, as a developer, if there's a common chassis between these browsers, it's much easier for me to actually build content and build materials, because I know they're all going to interpret it the same way. as an end user, I can choose the browser that has the look and feel that I want and the functionality and know it's going to render everything the same way. So I don't think it's a bad thing. I think this is one of the areas where that lower level of standardization is much more useful than what you lose in having, you know, not having 18 different things to pick from.
Augusto Pinaud 5:41It is really also really interesting to think that Microsoft when died the route and I'm building on top of chromium two, especially after all the issues that for many, many years they had was internet exploder. I don't know how marketing wise It was a good call but I'm keeping the same scheme of colors and all that it brings as art was mentioned at the beginning the impression that is this just a chain of change of a scheme or it is really something that they have done on the background and I have seen even for people who supposed to understand the technicalities behind the idea of I don't know this is a still you know, it still looks still look like the same Microsoft Internet exploder even that he's not so but that said it is it is interesting for me how Microsoft when when the way of put the Kremen engine in in the bag instead of try to recreate something.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:49Alright, let's let's move right along to Francis Francis. What's your first round
Francis Wade 6:55choice I've gone a lot into what what now has a name is called rapid, rapid game prototyping for learning something like that. But the idea is that you're you, you very quickly put together games for learning. And the instead of trying to put together something like a New World of Warcraft, it's, you know, massive undertaking that takes several years. Instead, you spend a few hours. And it could be as simple as a quiz or, or involve a software like twine. So that's the app I'm talking about is twine. And it allows you to develop branch scenarios in zero time. And it used to be a nice development tool because you could develop in twine and then move on to other programs to use the I guess they the branch logic, so you could develop the app, develop the story or the storyline, in twine and then go to a different software and then actually develop a final product. That was the workflow Up to a couple of years ago, where they changed twines that it actually has a an output of its own, which is great, you don't have to know jump to a whole nother software. And it allows you to very, very quickly, not quite as fast as writing prose, you know, which like writing a story or a novel. That's not quite as fast as that because when you're coming up with a branch story, you need to account for different endings and either keep several threads going on at the same time. But twine does a remarkable job of allowing you to do that very, very quickly. I don't think there is anything else on the market like it, it's free, it's open source, and it just does an awesome job.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:47Fantastic. It's one of those that I have played with, and I find it to be very interesting to see how you can create these very interesting. For example,
