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Connected

2: The Pasta and The Pizza and The Sauce

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to episode two of Connected on Relay FM. This episode is brought to you by

00:00:13 ◼   ► OmniGraffle, Igloo and Blogo. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by my partners in crime

00:00:20 ◼   ► Mr Federico Vittucci. Hello Federico. Hey Myke. And Mr Stephen Hackett. Hello.

00:00:26 ◼   ► How we doing guys? Episode number two! We made it!

00:00:29 ◼   ► Dose.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Can we start displaying episodes on the website using Roman numbers?

00:00:38 ◼   ► I feel like that would be more epic.

00:00:42 ◼   ► This is the problem with us now having complete control. It's now Federico conferring these

00:00:47 ◼   ► insane ideas and we have to find a reason to tell him "No, we can't" as opposed to just being like

00:00:52 ◼   ► "Eh, it's not that we're controlling."

00:00:52 ◼   ► How about we're out of money for now? That's a pretty good reason.

00:00:56 ◼   ► I like that one, that works.

00:00:59 ◼   ► But what we'll do with Federico, we'll put that on the back burner and we'll investigate

00:01:03 ◼   ► Roman numerals at a later date.

00:01:05 ◼   ► So we're putting it in the parking lot.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Some people would say that, some people would say that.

00:01:10 ◼   ► So we'll go back to this idea.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's on an index card.

00:01:15 ◼   ► So before we do follow up Federico, you had a pretty exciting day today with a launch.

00:01:20 ◼   ► What is going on?

00:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, so basically I helped my girlfriend.

00:01:28 ◼   ► She's Aylis on Twitter, A-Y-L-Y-S. And she's

00:01:35 ◼   ► been working on this set of icons for OmniFocus 2.

00:01:38 ◼   ► And basically she made this insane huge set of icons

00:01:45 ◼   ► to modify the perspectives in OmniFocus 2.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And these are 100 icons in five colors and two resolutions.

00:01:53 ◼   ► You can change.

00:01:54 ◼   ► You can customize the perspectives in OmniFocus.

00:01:56 ◼   ► You can apply the icons that you prefer.

00:01:59 ◼   ► So it's a little icon pack-- not so little, I guess.

00:02:04 ◼   ► It's an icon pack to customize your OmniFocus 2 experience.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And these icons can sync from the Mac to iOS.

00:02:12 ◼   ► And it's actually the second version of the set

00:02:16 ◼   ► that we call Perspective Icons.

00:02:17 ◼   ► The first one came out in 2012.

00:02:19 ◼   ► It was a huge success for us.

00:02:21 ◼   ► And now this new, this one is a new version.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's just for OmniFocus 2.

00:02:26 ◼   ► We've been, I've been helping her with the design ideas

00:02:30 ◼   ► and actually I just provide ideas because she does the design

00:02:34 ◼   ► and I'm just, I guess, bothering her.

00:02:36 ◼   ► - You're icon director.

00:02:38 ◼   ► That's your role.

00:02:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm an icon director, okay.

00:02:45 ◼   ► No, really, I just like to help out for feedback and stuff that goes on the website, the copy

00:02:51 ◼   ► and the blog posts and that kind of stuff.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And so if you want to check it out, if you have OmniFocus 2, they can also be used for

00:03:01 ◼   ► other apps, like on the website we have screenshots showing these icons with MindNode, which is

00:03:06 ◼   ► the mindmapping app, and Alfred, the application launcher for the Mac.

00:03:11 ◼   ► So if you want to check it out, the website is called iconsandcoffee.com.

00:03:15 ◼   ► You can guess who is the icons and who is the coffee here.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And they're called Perspective Icons 2.

00:03:24 ◼   ► You will see a banner on the homepage.

00:03:29 ◼   ► It was a pretty insane week because we were preparing the launch and contacting people,

00:03:36 ◼   ► the blog posts and screenshots and the website.

00:03:40 ◼   ► It's a lot of stuff to work on, especially if you're just two people.

00:03:47 ◼   ► I have to think about other stuff like backstory and the show.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I need to catch up on some sleep, probably cut down on the espresso, the daily intake

00:03:58 ◼   ► of coffee, but otherwise it's been a great day.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Thank you for letting me mention the project.

00:04:07 ◼   ► awesome and it's you know you showed us some some examples a while back and they

00:04:13 ◼   ► really are good looking and what's cool is you don't just have these inframany

00:04:16 ◼   ► focus you can use them really anywhere you can stick an icon so definitely well

00:04:22 ◼   ► worth checking out. We have a mountain I think metric it's called a ton with a

00:04:33 ◼   ► a double N and an E. Yeah. So a lot of follow up about the iPod and we're going to start

00:04:40 ◼   ► off with the name itself. So a lot of people, Michael Ruggerson was the lucky guy to get

00:04:47 ◼   ► his tweet in the show notes, but a lot of people say portable on demand is what the

00:04:54 ◼   ► what pod stood for. So they got iPod adding an I to the beginning of an acronym for portable

00:05:00 ◼   ► on demand. However according to an article on Wired magazine that's not

00:05:06 ◼   ► really where the name came from and it might be a nice coincidence but this

00:05:12 ◼   ► article on Wired says that it was offered up by a freelance copywriter who

00:05:15 ◼   ► is helping Apple work on the the marketing and the idea was to Federico's

00:05:22 ◼   ► point that the Mac was the hub and you know hub is kind of like a space station

00:05:28 ◼   ► or a spaceship and you have this little vessel like a pod that kind of goes back

00:05:33 ◼   ► and forth which I think is probably Federico where that where the idea came

00:05:38 ◼   ► to in your mind so that's that's you know the quote you know open the pod bay

00:05:42 ◼   ► door how from Space Odyssey 2001 not so much playable on demand at least

00:05:48 ◼   ► according to this article so kind of Federico was that freelance copywriter

00:05:54 ◼   ► maybe that's how he knows maybe maybe in my in my previous life I I chose the

00:06:03 ◼   ► name for the iPod who knows we also have gotten a lot of photos from people using

00:06:12 ◼   ► old iPods so one from Adam on Twitter episode 1 of connected playing on a

00:06:21 ◼   ► first-generation iPod yeah that was we awesome we did get a bunch of photos but

00:06:28 ◼   ► I think this was my favorite I think this is the there were a bunch of people

00:06:31 ◼   ► that were sending in there like the show playing on iPods or just like their old

00:06:35 ◼   ► iPods but this was like the major above for those things yeah it was like

00:06:40 ◼   ► episode one of connected playing on the original iPod thank you Adam for doing

00:06:45 ◼   ► that and we're gonna put a link to that along of all of our other links into

00:06:49 ◼   ► today's show notes Federico. Oh God. Federico where would somebody find the show notes?

00:06:59 ◼   ► Well the show notes are, well first they are a piece of material that you can find in textual

00:07:05 ◼   ► form on the website, on the web. So if you're so inclined to go on the web and to surf to

00:07:14 ◼   ► the Relay FM website, you would go to relay.fm/connected/2 and you will find the show notes that you

00:07:26 ◼   ► are looking for.

00:07:27 ◼   ► That's the best description of where to find show notes.

00:07:30 ◼   ► I think I've never heard.

00:07:31 ◼   ► I think you were stalling while poking around the website.

00:07:34 ◼   ► No, no, no, no.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Not at all.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Why don't you trust me, Steven?

00:07:41 ◼   ► I trust you completely.

00:07:42 ◼   ► I do wish however you would stop leaving and joining the Google document.

00:07:46 ◼   ► It's freaking out.

00:07:51 ◼   ► It's like your face keeps disappearing and reappearing.

00:07:53 ◼   ► It's very exciting.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So the next chunk of iPod follow up is about skip protection, which I believe the exact

00:08:02 ◼   ► quote from Myke was, "I don't know how it works, so we're going to move past it."

00:08:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was my way of dealing with the conversation,

00:08:12 ◼   ► which is to ignore the conversation.

00:08:14 ◼   ► - So I went to the K-Bass as one does,

00:08:18 ◼   ► and I would like to read you

00:08:21 ◼   ► from frequently asked question number nine about the iPod.

00:08:24 ◼   ► The question is, "Can I use iPod while running

00:08:27 ◼   ► "or doing other activities?

00:08:28 ◼   ► "Will my music skip?

00:08:30 ◼   ► "Answer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:08:33 ◼   ► "iPod offers a 20 minute of skip protection,

00:08:35 ◼   ► twice that of any hard drive base blah blah blah blah blah.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Not really all that exciting.

00:08:41 ◼   ► The real fun question is number 10.

00:08:45 ◼   ► How does it work?

00:08:46 ◼   ► So it says like we spoke about, the iPod has a memory cache, it has made a solid state

00:08:51 ◼   ► memory meaning it has no mechanical moving parts blah blah blah.

00:08:54 ◼   ► iPod skip protection works by preloading up to 25 minutes of music to the cache at a time.

00:09:00 ◼   ► iPod plays music from the memory cache rather than the hard drive so even rigorous activities

00:09:05 ◼   ► won't cause music to skip.

00:09:06 ◼   ► So more or less what we talked about,

00:09:08 ◼   ► where it preloads and then plays from that.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And so every 20 or 25 minutes, the hard drive spins up.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Of course, if you're listening to shuffle

00:09:15 ◼   ► or bouncing around your music,

00:09:19 ◼   ► that is a little less effective.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And of course now it only matters to me

00:09:23 ◼   ► 'cause according to ATP,

00:09:25 ◼   ► might be the only person with an iPod Classic, so.

00:09:27 ◼   ► - I do have an iPod Classic under my desk.

00:09:33 ◼   ► - Is it keeping it level?

00:09:35 ◼   ► Now I think it's, I don't know if it's broken or not.

00:09:38 ◼   ► I just don't use it.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Because you actually

00:09:42 ◼   ► use your iPod Classic.

00:09:44 ◼   ► - Mostly in the car, but yes.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:49 ◼   ► So, a little more on this.

00:09:54 ◼   ► We have a tweet from Michael somebody,

00:09:59 ◼   ► Baron, Baron Bach?

00:10:03 ◼   ► who in addition to you know obviously Apple spun it as hey you can be really

00:10:07 ◼   ► active with it and it's really good

00:10:09 ◼   ► Michael's point is that the real reason is that the hard drive had a pretty big

00:10:13 ◼   ► power draw as well and that

00:10:14 ◼   ► you know pulling music from solid-state memory

00:10:17 ◼   ► is uh...

00:10:19 ◼   ► is less power intensive so the battery can last longer

00:10:22 ◼   ► it's kind of a you know a dual uh... dual purpose which is

00:10:25 ◼   ► which is really nice

00:10:28 ◼   ► uh...

00:10:29 ◼   ► I guess really uh... two more links and then Myke you can tell us about this email

00:10:33 ◼   ► this awesome email that we got.

00:10:34 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:10:35 ◼   ► - So minimallyminimal.com,

00:10:40 ◼   ► which is the hardest website name to read.

00:10:42 ◼   ► There's always like really nice photo essays on this website.

00:10:47 ◼   ► So the one of the show notes is to the iPod mini,

00:10:49 ◼   ► they have a silver one.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And it's a lot of like really nice photos of it

00:10:53 ◼   ► along with like the iSight camera and some iPhones

00:10:55 ◼   ► kind of putting it in place with other products.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And we spoke about last week

00:11:00 ◼   ► how the iPod mini was a fashion accessory.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Like, when you look at these pictures, like the personality that it has really comes out.

00:11:08 ◼   ► You know, that it is a device with personality and a device that you connect to.

00:11:14 ◼   ► It's a really great photo essay.

00:11:16 ◼   ► All of these photo essays on this site are really well done.

00:11:19 ◼   ► This isn't in your RSS reader, it really should be.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Wasn't this the guy who did the surface redesign that got hired by Microsoft for Xbox?

00:11:27 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Maybe the chatroom knows that.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:11:30 ◼   ► I think that's the case.

00:11:31 ◼   ► You have good memory, Myke.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Does that ring a bell with you, Federico?

00:11:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I'm not sure about this website, but I do remember one guy.

00:11:40 ◼   ► You know, I think this guy actually didn't...

00:11:44 ◼   ► He's not the same guy you did the office redesign with the space wallpapers.

00:11:48 ◼   ► You remember those?

00:11:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Like, office on the moon.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Well, no, people were telling in the chat room, Carl's the Grey.

00:11:55 ◼   ► The same guy?

00:11:56 ◼   ► the Grey, the wizard who is, has just told me that yeah it's him.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Kyle's next in our show notes.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:12:05 ◼   ► That's serendipity.

00:12:06 ◼   ► See I told you there's Microsoft 2012, there's the Microsoft logo on the moon and stuff.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I do remember correctly, I just thought it was another guy.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:12:18 ◼   ► So Kyle wrote this really great article about the iPod Nano, how it was, you know, influential

00:12:26 ◼   ► in his life. It's sad that he was in fifth grade when the iPod nano came out. I think

00:12:31 ◼   ► Kyle's like 15. He talks about sex appeal in the fifth grade which is kind of weird

00:12:37 ◼   ► but a nice article. Bye everyone! See you next week!

00:12:47 ◼   ► Well, Relay FM was a good idea. An article that really is nice in what we were talking

00:12:55 ◼   ► about how the iPod struck a whole generation of people sort of in a very profound way and

00:13:01 ◼   ► I think that was Kyle's experience and I think it's the experience of people who have been

00:13:05 ◼   ► sitting in pictures right like you don't keep around your first generation you know magic

00:13:12 ◼   ► mouse or something right like this is a device that people care about and unless you're Steven

00:13:16 ◼   ► yeah you know I have I'm doing it for historical research sure but uh you know

00:13:27 ◼   ► that idea that you know you have all your music with you you know just like

00:13:30 ◼   ► we talked about I think that really hits home for a lot of people I think that's

00:13:34 ◼   ► why the iPod is still even though it might not important to Apple's bottom

00:13:38 ◼   ► line like I can't help but think the company itself might have a little bit

00:13:44 ◼   ► of that still, that they themselves have a sense of connection, if you will, to the device

00:13:53 ◼   ► that they can't shake.

00:13:57 ◼   ► So the next part of the follow-up came to me directly via a secret channel.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And this is from Elliot, who is @skipperel on Twitter.

00:14:08 ◼   ► If you all allow me, gentlemen, I'd like to read a part of this amazing email.

00:14:12 ◼   ► So what Elliot says, he says he was actually working as an intern at Sony in Tokyo when

00:14:19 ◼   ► the iPod was released in a group that was doing music software and weird music hardware

00:14:23 ◼   ► like PCs and mini-disc drives and speaker outlets and stuff like that.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Which is incredible.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Sony is so, like there was an article on the Verge about weird Sony, like they do crazy

00:14:35 ◼   ► things.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Anyways.

00:14:37 ◼   ► So shortly after the iPod was released someone brought one into the office that he was working

00:14:40 ◼   ► and everybody gathered around. Everyone had kinds... they had all over the place all kinds of weird

00:14:48 ◼   ► portable music players that they were developing. Some, Elliot says, were pretty neat. Many never

00:14:53 ◼   ► saw the light of day for various, various weird reasons. But everyone there was fascinated by

00:14:59 ◼   ► the iPod. Elliot says, and I'm going to quote this part, "I think it was apparent that it was going to

00:15:03 ◼   ► be a big deal and it was going to hurt Sony. It was obvious to me at the time and at that moment

00:15:08 ◼   ► that they were kind of screwed.

00:15:10 ◼   ► In many ways, that was the beginning

00:15:11 ◼   ► of the end for them in that domain, which

00:15:13 ◼   ► was shocking considering how significant the Walkman had

00:15:16 ◼   ► been up until that point.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I think it's just a nice way of putting it into context.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Clearly, Sony were working on stuff,

00:15:22 ◼   ► but the things that they were working on

00:15:24 ◼   ► just simply weren't as good.

00:15:26 ◼   ► >>And especially for context, it's funny to remember

00:15:29 ◼   ► that when Sony introduced the PSP in 2004, I'm going to say,

00:15:37 ◼   ► They tried to present the PSP, which is the PlayStation Portable, as the next generation Walkman,

00:15:44 ◼   ► which of course failed because of Sony's decision to rely on UMD, which were a proprietary disk format for the PSP.

00:15:53 ◼   ► So it appears to me that Sony, like other companies such as Blackberry,

00:16:01 ◼   ► they are kind of aware of the future and where the competition is going and what people are going to want

00:16:08 ◼   ► but then for some reason they remain stuck on their own old principles and ideas

00:16:15 ◼   ► because after the iPod you cannot imagine that people will want a PSP as their everyday portable media device

00:16:26 ◼   ► that's just unreasonable to expect people to use that

00:16:30 ◼   ► So the PSP had many problems and reading this email and the Walkman reference, I remember

00:16:37 ◼   ► that Sony is the kind of company that when it comes to phones and portable devices for

00:16:44 ◼   ► music, they never quite understood the future.

00:16:50 ◼   ► And there's also an argument that you can make about the PS Vita, but we have another

00:16:55 ◼   ► show for that, I guess.

00:16:57 ◼   ► Sorry, Steven.

00:16:58 ◼   ► No, that's fine.

00:17:01 ◼   ► That show is virtual on Relay FM.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Is that your announcer voice?

00:17:06 ◼   ► Apparently so.

00:17:07 ◼   ► It's good.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Do you change personalities when you do those voices?

00:17:11 ◼   ► I change personalities for every show.

00:17:14 ◼   ► This week on Connected.

00:17:19 ◼   ► So yeah, that's iPod follow-up.

00:17:22 ◼   ► That's all follow-up.

00:17:23 ◼   ► Well, we only have one episode, so the follow-up can only therefore be about one thing.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Yeah, because everything was about the iPod.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Myke, we have a very exciting sponsor.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Do you want to share their awesome news?

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00:20:07 ◼   ► So gentlemen, topic zero.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Have we explained what topic zero is before?

00:20:17 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:20:18 ◼   ► So we plan ahead, but then today especially is a very busy day.

00:20:22 ◼   ► And so topic zero is often like things that we weren't going to talk about, but we're

00:20:27 ◼   ► going to talk about now.

00:20:29 ◼   ► And so Federico, you kind of want to walk us through what Dropbox did this morning?

00:20:34 ◼   ► Yes.

00:20:35 ◼   ► The too long, didn't read version is that Dropbox has been cutting costs on the Pro subscription,

00:20:43 ◼   ► so you can now pay 10 bucks a month and you get 1TB of storage.

00:20:49 ◼   ► The longer version is that the Pro Dropbox subscription is cheaper for 1TB, the 100GB

00:20:58 ◼   ► plan has gone away.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Dropbox is cheaper than Google Drive if you want to pay on an annual basis, so you only pay 99 bucks

00:21:08 ◼   ► if you want to buy 12 months of Dropbox Pro.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And the Pro version gets you extra features, such as the possibility to assign passwords to shared links

00:21:19 ◼   ► to control the people that can access a shared folder, whether they can view or edit the contents of a folder.

00:21:28 ◼   ► you can remotely wipe a device that's connected to Dropbox.

00:21:32 ◼   ► So if you use your iPhone or your iPad or a Mac

00:21:36 ◼   ► or if you're a set person, an Android device,

00:21:39 ◼   ► you can remotely wipe the Dropbox app

00:21:42 ◼   ► from another computer.

00:21:44 ◼   ► And the next time the Dropbox client on that device

00:21:48 ◼   ► is launched, it will be automatically erased

00:21:51 ◼   ► from the cloud.

00:21:53 ◼   ► And what else?

00:21:55 ◼   ► There are other features, such as--

00:21:57 ◼   ► there's the old packrat add-on for Pro customers which allowed you to

00:22:03 ◼   ► essentially keep an unlimited history of changes to your files in Dropbox as

00:22:10 ◼   ► being changed with this transition to Dropbox Pro and it has been

00:22:15 ◼   ► reduced to one year of version history for files and it's

00:22:21 ◼   ► called extended version history and this has upset some people and the basics

00:22:27 ◼   ► of the Dropbox Pro, you pay on a month-by-month basis, you can pay an annual subscription,

00:22:36 ◼   ► you can still upgrade to Dropbox for business, but that's for companies and small teams and

00:22:42 ◼   ► such.

00:22:44 ◼   ► The basic idea is that Dropbox is now as competitive, at least from a price point perspective, as

00:22:50 ◼   ► Google Drive and is actually cheaper if you want to pay for 12 months right away.

00:22:56 ◼   ► And personally, I think this is a great move because, I mean, one terabyte of storage for

00:23:03 ◼   ► 10 bucks a month is pretty much a standard at this point.

00:23:07 ◼   ► And I'm glad to see that they are starting to add extra features to the Dropbox website

00:23:11 ◼   ► and apps because they have been kind of slow in terms of new features for consumers.

00:23:22 ◼   ► have been adding new APIs and new developer features over the past couple of years, but

00:23:27 ◼   ► really for consumers they haven't added much new groundbreaking stuff. I mean Dropbox is

00:23:32 ◼   ► still Dropbox, it's just a folder that connects to apps. So I'm glad to see new consumer features.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And I am going to buy a Pro subscription again. I don't have it right now because I have tons

00:23:47 ◼   ► of storage and I didn't really need it, but the extra features for the links and the passwords

00:23:53 ◼   ► and the permission controls and the extender history, I want those, so I'm going to upgrade

00:24:00 ◼   ► it again. Also because I don't think I'm going to use iCloud Drive much, which is coming with

00:24:05 ◼   ► iOS 8 and Yosemite, hopefully next month. So what are you guys going to do? Are you

00:24:11 ◼   ► You guys gonna stick it out with the free version, try iCalc drive, switch to Google

00:24:17 ◼   ► drive, switch to Amazon.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm gonna put everything on S3 and pay every time I need to access it.

00:24:23 ◼   ► No, I am.

00:24:24 ◼   ► You can switch to Picasa.

00:24:26 ◼   ► No, no, what's the name?

00:24:30 ◼   ► Not Picasa.

00:24:31 ◼   ► What's the name of the weird startup that gave you like unlimited storage?

00:24:35 ◼   ► Picture life?

00:24:36 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Like infinite storage.

00:24:40 ◼   ► That's the tagline.

00:24:42 ◼   ► BitKaza, I think.

00:24:44 ◼   ► You guys remember that?

00:24:45 ◼   ► BitKaza.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:47 ◼   ► I don't.

00:24:48 ◼   ► I don't remember that.

00:24:49 ◼   ► It's like infinite drive.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Infinite drive, your external hard drive in the cloud.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:54 ◼   ► You could switch to one of these startups like copy.com just on principle.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:25:03 ◼   ► I'm not going to do anything yet.

00:25:05 ◼   ► I also, like you, have lots of storage.

00:25:09 ◼   ► I would be much more comfortable paying the $9.99 a month.

00:25:12 ◼   ► I can't remember how much Dropbox was before,

00:25:15 ◼   ► but I remember thinking it was maybe,

00:25:17 ◼   ► I don't know, it just felt a little expensive to me.

00:25:21 ◼   ► So $9.99 a month for it, it's fantastic,

00:25:25 ◼   ► especially for that sort of storage size.

00:25:28 ◼   ► I don't know if, I mean, I'm not even using

00:25:31 ◼   ► my current space, whatever that is.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And I'm kind of interested to see

00:25:37 ◼   ► what I move to iCloud Drive.

00:25:39 ◼   ► I put my photos in Dropbox at the moment.

00:25:41 ◼   ► I don't plan on doing that.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I would like to move them to Apple solution

00:25:45 ◼   ► whenever is a good time to do that.

00:25:48 ◼   ► - So it took two episodes to get the photo management.

00:25:50 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:25:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually wanted to mention these as well.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So I'll go after Myke.

00:25:54 ◼   ► So you've seen one.

00:25:55 ◼   ► - I will continue to use Dropbox as my file system.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And once I get better internet,

00:26:01 ◼   ► I imagine putting more larger files in Dropbox

00:26:05 ◼   ► than I do at the moment.

00:26:06 ◼   ► You know, like more like logic project files

00:26:08 ◼   ► and stuff like that, which I'm not doing right now,

00:26:11 ◼   ► because my upload speed is too bad.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I basically would never be able to record

00:26:15 ◼   ► because you'd never hear me.

00:26:16 ◼   ► But yeah, I think that this is a fantastic move.

00:26:21 ◼   ► I'm really pleased that they've sort of

00:26:23 ◼   ► standardized the price in a bit more.

00:26:25 ◼   ► - So right now I'm still using Dropbox

00:26:27 ◼   ► for photo management and storage with Picture Live

00:26:31 ◼   ► as a kind of backup and fancier web view.

00:26:36 ◼   ► But I've been talking about this with my MacSorries teammates.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And basically, I'm torn between my willingness

00:26:46 ◼   ► to give Apple a second chance with iCloud Photo

00:26:49 ◼   ► Library and iCloud Drive.

00:26:51 ◼   ► But also, I'm scared by Apple's previous track record

00:26:56 ◼   ► when it comes to the cloud.

00:26:57 ◼   ► So right now, I have 20 gigs of photos.

00:26:59 ◼   ► What do I do?

00:27:00 ◼   ► Do I simply drag and drop them into the Photos app for iOS 8?

00:27:04 ◼   ► Am I going to make the app explode?

00:27:07 ◼   ► Will it work?

00:27:08 ◼   ► Can I buy a storage plan already?

00:27:12 ◼   ► So I wanted to try iCloud Photo Library for my iOS 8

00:27:16 ◼   ► coverage, which is coming together quite nicely.

00:27:19 ◼   ► But I also don't want to trust Apple as a single place for all

00:27:24 ◼   ► my photos.

00:27:25 ◼   ► So on the other hand, am I going to end up

00:27:27 ◼   ► with photos on Dropbox, Picture Life, and Apple?

00:27:31 ◼   ► That's a bit much maybe, even for me.

00:27:33 ◼   ► So I really don't know what to do.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Maybe I'll just switch to a hard drive

00:27:37 ◼   ► and let's see, I'm just gonna, you know,

00:27:40 ◼   ► - I've heard. - cut my connection

00:27:41 ◼   ► from the cloud and be, you know.

00:27:44 ◼   ► - I've heard that you can make an iPod

00:27:46 ◼   ► act like a hard drive, so.

00:27:47 ◼   ► - See, see, that's an idea.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I could resurrect my--

00:27:50 ◼   ► - So many people were upset at me

00:27:52 ◼   ► because I thought that was funny, like all ridiculous.

00:27:56 ◼   ► They were like, "No, these are the reasons,"

00:27:57 ◼   ► or "I love that," and I'm like, "No, it's cool, man,

00:27:59 ◼   ► "I get it," but it wasn't for me.

00:28:03 ◼   ► So some more iOS 8 kind of centric news today, smile kind of introduced the text expander

00:28:12 ◼   ► keyboard for iOS 8.

00:28:13 ◼   ► So it works kind of how you think it would work in their video.

00:28:19 ◼   ► You know it knows all your snippets so you type a snippet and it fires the expansion

00:28:23 ◼   ► and because it's a keyboard it can work in every application.

00:28:28 ◼   ► many people probably know. Currently TextExpander, like a third-party

00:28:33 ◼   ► developer has to integrate the TextExpander SDK and there's X callback URL

00:28:38 ◼   ► to sync and it's sort of siloed off but with the keyboard you could use a

00:28:43 ◼   ► TextExpander snippet in Mail or in Safari or in Evernote or any app sort of

00:28:49 ◼   ► without that SDK. Which is really interesting. You know one thing in

00:28:55 ◼   ► Federico I wanted to ask you about this out of the three of us you spent the

00:28:59 ◼   ► most time with iOS 8 and I don't even know if there are keyboards in the beta

00:29:03 ◼   ► yet but I don't want to have to switch between keyboards like all the time you

00:29:11 ◼   ► know like on my phone especially I'm really interested in like a swiping

00:29:15 ◼   ► keyboard I really like that on Android phones that I've used and I will have

00:29:19 ◼   ► the tech expander one because I do use it heavily but do you think it's going

00:29:23 ◼   ► to be a pain in the rear to switch between keyboards several times, maybe even to do

00:29:27 ◼   ► just one task?

00:29:28 ◼   ► Yes, and you're going to have a problem because there are going to be lots of keyboards. So

00:29:33 ◼   ► basically what I'm seeing right now, and I've been testing like four or five keyboards for

00:29:37 ◼   ► iOS 8, and I'm supposed to get more in the next week, this is not a humblebrag, it's

00:29:42 ◼   ► just work.

00:29:43 ◼   ► No, no, it's like the...

00:29:44 ◼   ► I've been testing it for some time.

00:29:46 ◼   ► No, no, you know, it's just, I gotta do this for a living. So basically what I'm seeing

00:29:51 ◼   ► is that on a smaller scale, we're

00:29:55 ◼   ► going to get the same App Store scenario of 2008.

00:29:59 ◼   ► There's going to be lots of new players in the keyboard field,

00:30:02 ◼   ► and you're going to want to check out all the keyboards.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Because you're a nerd, and you're a geek,

00:30:09 ◼   ► and you want to try all the new stuff.

00:30:11 ◼   ► And there's going to be lots of keyboards.

00:30:13 ◼   ► There's going to be the keyboards with the swipe.

00:30:15 ◼   ► There's going to be the keyboards that correct

00:30:19 ◼   ► your grammar and your spelling in the text.

00:30:21 ◼   ► is going to be Texas Panda.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Oh, man, I'm getting those.

00:30:24 ◼   ► See?

00:30:25 ◼   ► And of course you're going to want to try all the keyboards.

00:30:28 ◼   ► But my problem is--

00:30:29 ◼   ► my problem that I'm already seeing

00:30:30 ◼   ► is that first you've got to activate

00:30:33 ◼   ► the keyboards in the settings.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And that's not a huge problem.

00:30:36 ◼   ► I mean, it's kind of nice the way

00:30:37 ◼   ► that you can go to the settings, and you can activate

00:30:40 ◼   ► and deactivate the keyboards, and you can grant permissions

00:30:43 ◼   ► to a keyboard to sync and to transmit your information

00:30:49 ◼   ► to the cloud.

00:30:50 ◼   ► For instance, I was trying the other day a keyboard that syncs preferences using CloudKit,

00:30:56 ◼   ► and I got the permission dialog.

00:30:59 ◼   ► So, I didn't really know what it meant, and I asked the developer, and it's basically,

00:31:06 ◼   ► even if you use iCloud, not some nasty third-party service, you're gonna get the permission dialog

00:31:11 ◼   ► anyway.

00:31:13 ◼   ► So you can manage keyboards in the settings, and then the problem is that, because you're

00:31:18 ◼   ► curious and you want to try all these fancy keyboards, you don't have a place like the

00:31:22 ◼   ► home screen where you can download apps. It's easy to try multiple apps because you can

00:31:30 ◼   ► just switch the home screen and open another one. The user interaction to switch keyboards

00:31:35 ◼   ► is really painful because you've got to hold down on the globe icon on the keyboard and

00:31:42 ◼   ► you get this long list of names.

00:31:47 ◼   ► And every time--

00:31:49 ◼   ► - I feel like iOS 8 is gonna be full of long lists of things.

00:31:52 ◼   ► - Yes, and you get a toggle in the list at the top of,

00:31:56 ◼   ► like you get a toggle on a popover on a keyboard.

00:32:00 ◼   ► So it's kind of messy.

00:32:02 ◼   ► So you switch all these keyboards

00:32:04 ◼   ► and you gotta consider the fact

00:32:05 ◼   ► that because Apple has built this secure system

00:32:10 ◼   ► for keyboards, every time you hit a password field,

00:32:14 ◼   ► the custom keyboard that you had selected before deactivates,

00:32:19 ◼   ► because it cannot type into a secure field.

00:32:21 ◼   ► So at least what I'm seeing right now in beta 5--

00:32:24 ◼   ► so I hope that things will change--

00:32:26 ◼   ► is awful performance of switching between keyboards,

00:32:29 ◼   ► because even when you change to a keyboard that has a slightly

00:32:33 ◼   ► custom design, the system is super slow.

00:32:36 ◼   ► So hopefully it will be better in the GM seed.

00:32:41 ◼   ► And also it can be confusing because unlike the home screen

00:32:45 ◼   ► and apps, you just switch the home screen, try another app,

00:32:48 ◼   ► so you can play around with all the downloads

00:32:50 ◼   ► from the App Store.

00:32:51 ◼   ► The keyboard user experience is kind of messy

00:32:54 ◼   ► and the keyboards are slow and sometimes they deactivate

00:32:59 ◼   ► and you gotta keep track of how many keyboards you have.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:03 ◼   ► It's going to be--

00:33:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a little bit of that

00:33:06 ◼   ► with extensions already in the few that I'm playing with on iOS 8 where Apple's like sort

00:33:12 ◼   ► of slamming them into that stupid horizontal scrolling share sheet and like you can set

00:33:17 ◼   ► the order even though that doesn't seem to work for me.

00:33:20 ◼   ► But like if you've got 10 or 12 extensions in Safari like it's just kind of a lame interaction

00:33:27 ◼   ► to like click the little button that those are gonna share it or export it to actually

00:33:31 ◼   ► see an extension like extensions don't have their own menu and I think there's some growing

00:33:35 ◼   ► pains where they've opened up all this flexibility but the UI hasn't caught up yet so I would

00:33:39 ◼   ► hope that this keyboard problem is a temporary pain and they can fix it in later builds of

00:33:44 ◼   ► 8 or you know iOS 9 which...

00:33:49 ◼   ► Yeah I mean there are some...

00:33:50 ◼   ► My names are getting silly.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Yeah there are some growing pains here I agree but I gotta say that the functionality that

00:33:56 ◼   ► extensions and keyboards enable is mind-blowing especially like the first time you tried the

00:34:03 ◼   ► the one password extension or I have other action extensions that I've been testing.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I'm sorry to bring up this sentence again, but it's just what I've been doing.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I know that you guys said it, but like I said, it's just work.

00:34:19 ◼   ► And yeah, I seriously cannot wait to write about this stuff.

00:34:24 ◼   ► And it's going to take me a lot of long nights and espressos at 2 a.m., which again, kind

00:34:31 ◼   ► contradicts what I was saying before to reduce my cough intake. I just realised that I gotta prepare

00:34:37 ◼   ► like 30 posts for my stories. So I don't know, hopefully I will survive September and then I'm

00:34:43 ◼   ► gonna buy an iWatch. The iWatch will keep me healthy I guess. So I usually by this point

00:34:50 ◼   ► have installed the beta but I'm kind of not that tempted because I feel like all of the

00:35:00 ◼   ► really good stuff is in third party apps.

00:35:03 ◼   ► So until I have those,

00:35:06 ◼   ► there's not really much interesting stuff there, I think.

00:35:10 ◼   ► - Well, there's the new Safari, which is-

00:35:12 ◼   ► - But I don't use, I suppose I'm gonna have to, right?

00:35:15 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to start using Safari

00:35:16 ◼   ► because of the extensions, unless Chrome is ready on day one

00:35:19 ◼   ► which it probably won't be. - No, any, yeah, of course.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I mean, any app, even if, basically right now,

00:35:24 ◼   ► even if an iOS app, an iOS 7 app isn't built against iOS 8,

00:35:29 ◼   ► but if it uses the native share sheet mechanism,

00:35:32 ◼   ► you can see extensions already in iOS 7 apps

00:35:36 ◼   ► running on iOS 8.

00:35:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think Chrome uses the native share sheet.

00:35:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, of course.

00:35:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:35:42 ◼   ► - Of course it doesn't.

00:35:42 ◼   ► - And you still can't set, even 8,

00:35:44 ◼   ► you still can't set Chrome as your default browser.

00:35:46 ◼   ► So if an extension were to fire the browser,

00:35:49 ◼   ► you'd still be in Safari anyways.

00:35:51 ◼   ► - Guys, we're gonna have like three or four episodes

00:35:56 ◼   ► about extensions.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's gonna be good.

00:35:58 ◼   ► I'm really excited I was talking to a co-worker today and who uses one password and you know

00:36:04 ◼   ► kind of sharing with her you know they're doing this extension thing and it will basically

00:36:08 ◼   ► work more or less like it is on the desktop and this is all details that they've shared

00:36:11 ◼   ► publicly and you know like she was genuinely excited about it because you know right now

00:36:17 ◼   ► even on on seven iOS apps are silos and the ability to pull data from one into another

00:36:24 ◼   ► or pull parts of it like it's really going to make everything the at least you

00:36:30 ◼   ► know a lot of things a lot faster on iOS. I think it's a big complaint you know we

00:36:34 ◼   ► talked a lot about this on the old show of working on the iPad and how a very

00:36:38 ◼   ► common issue people aren't into is that it's slow to do things that are faster

00:36:42 ◼   ► on the Mac and with extensions and with things like text expander keyboards it's

00:36:48 ◼   ► going to speed up there's still going to be some annoyances I think until Apple

00:36:52 ◼   ► sort of figures out how to grow with this stuff.

00:36:55 ◼   ► But overall, I'm genuinely excited about what

00:36:59 ◼   ► some of these third-party developers are already doing.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's an exciting time.

00:37:04 ◼   ► - So, take a break.

00:37:09 ◼   ► - Do it. - Yeah, Myke.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Tell us about other exciting stuff.

00:37:13 ◼   ► - So this episode of Connected is also brought to you

00:37:16 ◼   ► by the Omni Group and OmniGraffle.

00:37:19 ◼   ► So, OmniGraffle is the app that can be used for anything.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Diagrams, flowcharts, mind maps, which Federico loves to do,

00:37:27 ◼   ► wireframes, which Steven loves to do, and even software mockups.

00:37:30 ◼   ► With OmniGraffle, you can take your ideas from imaginative sketches to a detailed final design.

00:37:36 ◼   ► OmniGraffle is currently available for both Mac and iPad, and of course, it syncs your documents

00:37:44 ◼   ► for free using the fantastic OmniSync server, so you can make sure that you're able to take

00:37:48 ◼   ► your work with you on the go no matter where you are or what you're doing. Now guys if you'll let

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00:37:58 ◼   ► inside of OmniGraffle. So if you are interested in user interface or user experience work then

00:38:05 ◼   ► with OmniGraffle you can quickly and easily create sketchy lo-fi drafts whilst taking advantage of

00:38:11 ◼   ► tons of stencils of frequently used UI elements that are used around the web. You can also create

00:38:16 ◼   ► superb looking wireframes and web page layouts easily and quickly on your Mac or iPad.

00:38:21 ◼   ► If you're interested in more old school page layouts, maybe you want to create a flyer

00:38:26 ◼   ► for that big party you're having at Graceland, or maybe you want to create a manual on how

00:38:31 ◼   ► to make the perfect espresso, or some sort of workbook, or maybe the Hurley Family newsletter,

00:38:37 ◼   ► well you can do all of that all in OmniGraffle.

00:38:39 ◼   ► If you're into brainstorming, you can quickly brainstorm or mind map, and the automatic

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00:38:47 ◼   ► without ever needing to mouse around.

00:38:49 ◼   ► You'll also get an outline sidebar to display your great ideas.

00:38:54 ◼   ► You can even import outliner documents and then start to arrange them as mind maps.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Omnigraffle can help you with basically any kind of diagram you need.

00:39:03 ◼   ► You can create precise, beautiful documents of all the right tools and they give you a

00:39:07 ◼   ► whole host of ways to share them.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Don't forget, OmniGraffle 2 for iPad should be launching alongside iOS 8 with lots of

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00:39:16 ◼   ► If you want to find out more about OmniGraffle, go to omni-group.com/omni-graffle.

00:39:26 ◼   ► OmniGraffle for Mac is available for the Mac directly from the OmniGroup website and in

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00:39:35 ◼   ► So that's OmniGraffle from the OmniGroup.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Having is worth a thousand words with OmniGraffle.

00:39:43 ◼   ► So we wanted to talk this week about fitness and diet apps.

00:39:47 ◼   ► There's been a lot of conversation about fitness tracking hardware and of course I watch rumors

00:39:53 ◼   ► and a lot of that's there but there's a lot of great software out now that can help you

00:40:00 ◼   ► know count calories or track your activity.

00:40:03 ◼   ► So we kind of want to share what we're using and Federico is sort of insane experiment

00:40:10 ◼   ► that you've been tweeting about.

00:40:13 ◼   ► And so I guess I can just kind of I'll blast through what's going the order of the notes.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I'll blast through the apps I'm using because Federico what you're doing is much more interesting

00:40:20 ◼   ► than what I'm doing.

00:40:23 ◼   ► So I use kind of three apps.

00:40:26 ◼   ► So you know I'm in relatively good shape but you know want to lose a few pounds want to

00:40:31 ◼   ► run more is kinda my two goals this fall.

00:40:35 ◼   ► So I'm using an app called LoseIt which

00:40:39 ◼   ► is a it's not unlike MyFitnessPal and we're gonna talk about why I don't like that

00:40:43 ◼   ► app in a second.

00:40:45 ◼   ► So I can go in, I can enter meals, I can scan a barcode so I have a drink here

00:40:49 ◼   ► that I'll put in as a snack.

00:40:51 ◼   ► You just scan the barcode and the app finds it automatically.

00:40:54 ◼   ► It can connect to devices like Fitbit

00:40:59 ◼   ► fit like fit bit fit bit um i liked fit hit yeah sorry it's it's a hard word to say when

00:41:06 ◼   ► you can only speak so many syllables a minute fit bit it can connect to it can podcasting

00:41:17 ◼   ► everyone podcast talking into my computer box on the internet so it's

00:41:31 ◼   ► sort of a hub now the problem with counting calories in any system is it's

00:41:39 ◼   ► twofold you have the problem of self-reporting and you have the problem

00:41:42 ◼   ► of a small kind of local restaurant so the second one is obviously you know

00:41:46 ◼   ► an issue where if I go to a local chain or a one-off place and you know, I work sort of the core of our

00:41:52 ◼   ► downtown area and there's a lot of little sandwich places and there's a pizza place and you know, they're not it's not name-brand like

00:41:59 ◼   ► You know, it's not gonna go to Taco Bell and those calories are listed publicly. It's these are private establishments

00:42:07 ◼   ► So you kind of have to guess and get the closest you can so it's not an exact science, but it's definitely

00:42:14 ◼   ► Pounded when you have the problem of self-reporting, and so I don't know maybe Federica

00:42:18 ◼   ► You can speak to this if you're doing it, but I have a big problem of

00:42:22 ◼   ► Estimating volume so like if I eat a bowl of cereal like I have no idea how much cereal

00:42:28 ◼   ► I just ate because I don't measure it if I did

00:42:30 ◼   ► Obviously it wouldn't be a problem, but that's sort of crazy person territory. Oh, yeah, so you got a

00:42:36 ◼   ► Yeah, so I generally kind of you know I look at what the

00:42:41 ◼   ► Box says is the you know what's supposed to be the estimated amount and usually round up a little bit

00:42:45 ◼   ► And so it's it's not exact science at least the way that I'm doing it and that can be a problem if you're

00:42:52 ◼   ► You know if I'm strictly sticking to a certain number of calories

00:42:55 ◼   ► But that's not lose its fault. That's true of any app or any system that does count calories

00:43:02 ◼   ► But it has a lot of positives it can plug into all these services

00:43:05 ◼   ► It has a really nice website in fact most of the time

00:43:07 ◼   ► I do the data entry like at my computer because it's a lot faster than the iOS app and

00:43:12 ◼   ► Overall I like it

00:43:15 ◼   ► Kind of on the fitness side using two apps one is Strava which is actually an app pick of mine on the prompt Strava is

00:43:24 ◼   ► bike

00:43:27 ◼   ► cycling tracking via GPS so you turn it on you stick your phone in your pocket or your bag and

00:43:32 ◼   ► it knows speed and mileage and

00:43:37 ◼   ► Elevation and if you have a pro account and it can talk to accessories so we can do things like heart rate

00:43:43 ◼   ► Strava also tracks running again. There's other apps like this the big ones are map my ride like map my run

00:43:50 ◼   ► Which a lot of people use I like Strava because that's what our local community of cyclists use but nice app

00:43:57 ◼   ► You can even use it with like an external GPS device if you have a good Garmin on your bike it can sync up on

00:44:03 ◼   ► the web and

00:44:05 ◼   ► then

00:44:06 ◼   ► Finally and Federico I want to talk to you about this. I really hate running like

00:44:10 ◼   ► Running is so lame, but I'm trying to do it and the app that I've been using is couch to 5k

00:44:16 ◼   ► There's a bunch of apps like this. I like the features of this one even though the design is a little lame

00:44:21 ◼   ► It is pushing notifications to your lock screen what tells you you know couch to 5k basically as you run and walk

00:44:28 ◼   ► Sort of in alternating patterns and the longer you do it the more you run the further you go and it works you up very

00:44:35 ◼   ► very slowly to doing a 5k.

00:44:38 ◼   ► So it has this push notification.

00:44:40 ◼   ► So if your phone is in an armband and you can't see the screen,

00:44:43 ◼   ► it says, OK, now it's time to run.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Now it's time to jog.

00:44:46 ◼   ► Now it's time to cool down.

00:44:47 ◼   ► And keeps up with that in a really nice little package.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I can see right where I am within the program.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Together, this is all software.

00:44:55 ◼   ► It's all just apps on my phone.

00:44:57 ◼   ► But I can get a picture of my activity level, my calorie level,

00:45:02 ◼   ► and kind of see how those things play against each other.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And not using a fitness band, not using any hardware.

00:45:10 ◼   ► I own a Fitbit and I actually own a Nike Fuelband as well.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And I'm not wearing either one of them.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I've kind of just gotten out of the habit

00:45:19 ◼   ► and neither are really attractive.

00:45:21 ◼   ► The Nike Fuelband is actually uncomfortable to wear

00:45:23 ◼   ► after a while for me at least.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And so I'm just doing it with just software.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And so far, in doing this for a couple of months,

00:45:33 ◼   ► has been pretty good.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - So let me jump in Federico,

00:45:39 ◼   ► 'cause you're doing this in a big way.

00:45:42 ◼   ► And as is usual on this show,

00:45:46 ◼   ► there seems to be varying levels of everything.

00:45:49 ◼   ► My varying level is I'm not doing anything right now.

00:45:55 ◼   ► I'm too I'm gonna say this is probably this is a dumb excuse but I feel like

00:46:00 ◼   ► I've have too much to do right now to focus on exercise in any way I'm gonna

00:46:08 ◼   ► be busy for my shorter lifespan no that's I mean that's burning aside like

00:46:14 ◼   ► that's totally like this week has been insane for me and I haven't run I

00:46:18 ◼   ► haven't ridden my bike since Saturday I haven't eaten well like life just gets

00:46:23 ◼   ► in the way. Like I have a plan that as soon as I can get my days back from the

00:46:28 ◼   ► corporate world I will embark on an exercise experiment like Federico but

00:46:36 ◼   ► I've been talking a lot recently about one of my favorite podcasts on the

00:46:40 ◼   ► internet called Hello Internet with CGP Grey and Brady Haran and on an episode

00:46:46 ◼   ► of that show CGP Grey was talking about this exact kind of thing where he

00:46:52 ◼   ► needed to work really hard to get his videos,

00:46:56 ◼   ► he's a YouTuber, to get his videos to a point

00:46:59 ◼   ► where he was able to go full time with it

00:47:03 ◼   ► and that sort of stuff.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And he had a discussion with his wife

00:47:07 ◼   ► about how he would put his health

00:47:10 ◼   ► on a back burner for a bit

00:47:11 ◼   ► to allow him the time to put into his work.

00:47:16 ◼   ► I have not, one, made this conscious decision

00:47:18 ◼   ► or two, had accomplished my girlfriend in this idea.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I'm sure she would not feel the same.

00:47:25 ◼   ► But I just feel like I don't have the time

00:47:27 ◼   ► to do these things right now.

00:47:28 ◼   ► In the past, I have used to success my fitness pal.

00:47:32 ◼   ► And Federico, you can tell us probably a little bit more

00:47:34 ◼   ► about that in a moment.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And I've found it very good.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Steven, I've had the same problems that you've had

00:47:41 ◼   ► in how much do I put in, which I think upsets Federico

00:47:44 ◼   ► 'cause he's probably gonna say he weighs everything.

00:47:47 ◼   ► I didn't do that.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Like you would always,

00:47:51 ◼   ► I feel like I was overestimating,

00:47:53 ◼   ► but like this looks like a regular portion of potatoes.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I'll say I'm having 1.4.

00:47:58 ◼   ► You know, that, this.

00:47:59 ◼   ► 'Cause then you just, you know.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And I lost about a few pounds.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - Spooking like a true American, Myke.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - That's how I do.

00:48:05 ◼   ► I felt like I lost a few pounds using the app,

00:48:08 ◼   ► and it's one that I intend to use again.

00:48:11 ◼   ► But yeah, as I say, right now I'm not doing anything.

00:48:16 ◼   ► I've never enjoyed exercise,

00:48:17 ◼   ► and I've always been more to like control my diet.

00:48:21 ◼   ► So now I'm kind of just trying to keep my eye

00:48:23 ◼   ► on what I'm eating without using an app to help me.

00:48:26 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci, can you please inspire me

00:48:29 ◼   ► to change my life?

00:48:30 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, I can tell you what I'm doing now,

00:48:34 ◼   ► but it's just, you know, my backstory,

00:48:36 ◼   ► that's not really something that I want to inspire you with.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Because basically- - Oh yeah, I mean, yeah.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I get that there.

00:48:43 ◼   ► Yeah, basically I've always been kind of relatively in shape,

00:48:50 ◼   ► but also I never really enjoyed exercising or being

00:48:56 ◼   ► careful with the food that I eat.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And especially in Italy, it's very easy

00:49:02 ◼   ► to eat too many carbs with the pasta and the pizza

00:49:08 ◼   ► and the sauce.

00:49:09 ◼   ► It's easy to get carried away with the kind of menu

00:49:12 ◼   ► that typically you get here.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And so the tipping point for me was,

00:49:19 ◼   ► after cancer and after chemo,

00:49:22 ◼   ► and the kind of consequences that you experience later,

00:49:27 ◼   ► months after, I've been clear since February of 2013,

00:49:32 ◼   ► and months after the chemo and the radiation ended,

00:49:38 ◼   ► I was left with all sorts of basically kind of inactivity,

00:49:43 ◼   ► general inactivity of my body

00:49:47 ◼   ► because I couldn't move before.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And because I couldn't exercise either because I was too weak

00:49:54 ◼   ► or because my muscles were not responding to exercise.

00:49:59 ◼   ► And especially because I had installed in my chest

00:50:02 ◼   ► what is called as a portacath,

00:50:05 ◼   ► which is a little button that is connected to a tube

00:50:10 ◼   ► that basically enables doctors to put the chemo

00:50:16 ◼   ► inside a big, big vein in your body.

00:50:21 ◼   ► The little accessory, I would say, in my chest,

00:50:25 ◼   ► prevented me from doing any sort of arm

00:50:27 ◼   ► and shoulder exercise.

00:50:29 ◼   ► So I couldn't do chest exercise, I couldn't do running,

00:50:33 ◼   ► I couldn't swim, I couldn't do jumping or anything, because I had the risk of breaking

00:50:39 ◼   ► the device, which of course happened last month.

00:50:44 ◼   ► So right now I'm free to exercise.

00:50:46 ◼   ► But before last month, it was around the end of May, basically, and I was really fed up

00:50:53 ◼   ► with the fact that in spite of being theoretically free from the chemo and the other stuff, I

00:51:00 ◼   ► I was really feeling the fact that for the past three years I've been taking what is effectively poison, that helps you, but it's poison in many other ways,

00:51:11 ◼   ► and I really wanted to get healthier on several levels, whether it was my food choices, my exercising more, my being more careful with the stuff that I eat,

00:51:27 ◼   ► how much stuff and when during the day, with the amount of sleep that I get, with the amount

00:51:32 ◼   ► of steps and activity that I get each day, because I was sort of caught in this spiral

00:51:37 ◼   ► of, I gotta get better, but I'm also busy.

00:51:42 ◼   ► So it's important for me to work more, and then I'll think about my body eventually.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Which of course is not a great way to recover after a chemo when you want to, in a way,

00:51:54 ◼   ► detox.

00:51:55 ◼   ► So my idea was that I could try at least this big experiment.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I would say I've always been interested in these wearable devices with the fitness component

00:52:09 ◼   ► and all these apps for iOS.

00:52:12 ◼   ► So I started wearing initially a Fitbit Flex.

00:52:17 ◼   ► I think it's a Flex, right?

00:52:18 ◼   ► The Force is the one that got recalled.

00:52:21 ◼   ► So I started wearing a Flex and it broke two times.

00:52:25 ◼   ► So I got a job on App24, which has been great.

00:52:31 ◼   ► In my experience, I never had a single battery or connection issue.

00:52:37 ◼   ► I started using the job on App24 to track steps and sleep.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Then I started using my fitness pal to track my food choices.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And basically right now, for the past two months, I've been using several apps and the

00:52:53 ◼   ► JobOnApp24, I bought a Wi-Fi scale to weight myself every morning, and I'm seeing the first

00:53:04 ◼   ► results.

00:53:06 ◼   ► And I want to lose a few pounds, so in the past, since June, I would say I've lost 20

00:53:16 ◼   ► pounds, and I wanted to do this not necessarily super quickly, because I want to lose pounds

00:53:22 ◼   ► by eating healthier, but also not in a sort of shock diet.

00:53:28 ◼   ► I don't want to lose pounds all of a sudden, and at the risk of not feeling well or gaining

00:53:33 ◼   ► all the pounds back together as soon as I start eating more again.

00:53:37 ◼   ► So I just wanted to switch to a healthier diet, which meant a lot more vegetables and

00:53:41 ◼   ► fruit and being careful with the pasta and the pizza, and more protein, because I wasn't

00:53:49 ◼   ► eating enough protein. So I started using the job to track my sleep. I'm trying to sleep

00:53:56 ◼   ► at least 7 hours each night and that may not seem like a huge surprise to most people but

00:54:04 ◼   ► actually because of my stories and because of work stuff I was getting 5 hours of sleep

00:54:10 ◼   ► each night on average, which is not great. And since I've been trying to sleep 8 hours,

00:54:15 ◼   ► I've been trying to sleep nine hours during this experiment,

00:54:18 ◼   ► I realized that too many hours are actually not good for me.

00:54:21 ◼   ► So seven hours is the right amount of sleep.

00:54:23 ◼   ► And I feel great.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And I also realized that I'm always going to be busy.

00:54:30 ◼   ► I'm always going to have people pinging me on Twitter

00:54:34 ◼   ► and iMessage.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And I'm always going to have stuff to do, or to read,

00:54:40 ◼   ► or to write about, or to worry about, which is worse.

00:54:44 ◼   ► But I'm trying to find at least 30 minutes every day to do a short walk and,

00:54:51 ◼   ► you know, some, um, crunches.

00:54:53 ◼   ► And I'm trying to drink at least two liters of water, which would be two

00:54:59 ◼   ► bottles, two bottles, I guess, uh, for Americans, just don't know the

00:55:02 ◼   ► conversion, uh, two liters, at least a water every day.

00:55:06 ◼   ► And the job on tracker has been pretty accurate with the steps

00:55:10 ◼   ► and with the, with the sleep patterns.

00:55:13 ◼   ► My fitness pad I use with a barcode scanner.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And unlike you guys, I've gone full obsessive

00:55:22 ◼   ► about tracking food.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I weight everything that I cook, every single ingredient.

00:55:29 ◼   ► I scan the barcode, I search the database.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And if I cook some pasta,

00:55:34 ◼   ► I put in the ingredients separately in the app.

00:55:38 ◼   ► And I've been asking my people around the house

00:55:41 ◼   ► keep around barcodes for me if they ever happen to cook stuff and throw away the box.

00:55:46 ◼   ► I like people around the house and sort of just moved on past that phrase.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Just the people.

00:55:51 ◼   ► I'm just curious how many people you live with.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't want to get into details but basically I have told my people to keep the

00:55:58 ◼   ► barcodes for me.

00:56:00 ◼   ► So your butler.

00:56:01 ◼   ► So, to back up a second, I have a couple questions about Jawbone.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Let's go through each one of these.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Hey, how's the battery life on it?

00:56:11 ◼   ► It's been accurate. They promised seven days and it's been seven days for me.

00:56:16 ◼   ► That's that's really great. You know something a lot about I watch people talking about you know

00:56:21 ◼   ► Another thing to charge every night really stinks

00:56:24 ◼   ► But Jawbone was in the news over the I guess over the weekend

00:56:28 ◼   ► there was a big earthquake in Napa and

00:56:30 ◼   ► Jawbone had this blog post that is in the show notes and they have this really cool graph of

00:56:38 ◼   ► Jawbone up users in the bay area and

00:56:42 ◼   ► When they woke up basically corresponds exactly with the earthquake and how people in Napa didn't go back to sleep

00:56:51 ◼   ► Afterwards or took longer to go back to sleep

00:56:53 ◼   ► and I get to like cool and like I like data and some fancy graph and you know the website's pretty but

00:57:00 ◼   ► the data is a little a

00:57:04 ◼   ► little weird like

00:57:07 ◼   ► Obviously Jawbone has to know this data because it syncs with their app and with their service

00:57:12 ◼   ► But I would not have expected that that data would be

00:57:16 ◼   ► Geo located or maybe they're tying that data to a user account and the user account has a zip code or something

00:57:22 ◼   ► But I just when I saw that graph I was like, huh?

00:57:25 ◼   ► I wouldn't think that's something Jawbone would know about its users. How did you guys feel about that that blog post? I

00:57:32 ◼   ► I think it's pretty creepy. I mean, you're basically tracking people, their activity

00:57:38 ◼   ► during, you know, nights. And so, of course...

00:57:43 ◼   ► That could be exciting.

00:57:44 ◼   ► I mean, you know what people are doing at night by looking at the movements.

00:57:49 ◼   ► It was in the show notes. I'm just reading what's in the show notes.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, of course, you can assume what people are doing at night by looking at patterns

00:57:57 ◼   ► in your database.

00:57:58 ◼   ► But if we put in a side the fact that Jobbond

00:58:02 ◼   ► has this kind of data-- and I don't care,

00:58:04 ◼   ► because it's not like Jobbond is watching me

00:58:06 ◼   ► from outside the window--

00:58:09 ◼   ► it's pretty fascinating that you can have this kind of insight.

00:58:13 ◼   ► I mean, you also got to consider how many thousands of people

00:58:15 ◼   ► are using a Jobbond app 24 in that area.

00:58:19 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that there are hundreds and hundreds

00:58:22 ◼   ► of thousands of Jobbond customers in the Bay Area.

00:58:26 ◼   ► But it's still a fascinating piece of data, I guess.

00:58:29 ◼   ► I don't really have a lot.

00:58:31 ◼   ► I just think.

00:58:32 ◼   ► If they have the data, fine.

00:58:36 ◼   ► I guess as long as you've accepted it.

00:58:38 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I've got to assume that everybody that has the product

00:58:44 ◼   ► has opted in or has not opted out of that data.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Like you have I can't imagine that they've just gone crazy

00:58:50 ◼   ► and are like, here's some data we didn't tell you we had.

00:58:52 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:58:55 ◼   ► So back to the food tracking.

00:59:01 ◼   ► MyFitnessPalette works well for me because it has a bunch of third party connections

00:59:07 ◼   ► in the settings.

00:59:08 ◼   ► So I connected the app to the job on App24.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So now I get basically what is a food score in my job on App24 application because they

00:59:20 ◼   ► recently added this feature that basically tracks your food.

00:59:24 ◼   ► that's a pretty basic idea, but also according to, I don't know what organization or what, you know,

00:59:30 ◼   ► some doctors, I don't know, some experts, it gives you a score from 0 to 10. So that's been kind of nice,

00:59:39 ◼   ► because, like I said, I've been trying to eat more vegetables and fruit and, you know, to try to avoid

00:59:46 ◼   ► prepackaged food and, you know, to avoid soda and McDonald's, because, I mean, there's the stereotype

00:59:51 ◼   ► that Italians always eat, you know, fancy pasta and fish and, you know, those fancy meals that

00:59:58 ◼   ► you find on Google search. But actually we're, you know, just people. We go to McDonald's and we buy

01:00:02 ◼   ► pre-packaged food. So, you know, sadly that kind of junk food is available anywhere. So I've been

01:00:09 ◼   ► trying to avoid those. And every time I have a, you know, I have a good day in terms of the

01:00:16 ◼   ► the ingredients that I use and the food that I eat,

01:00:19 ◼   ► it's kind of rewarding to see the little green badge

01:00:25 ◼   ► in the job on app for the iPhone.

01:00:28 ◼   ► Also, so MyFitnessPal has been great.

01:00:31 ◼   ► They're a free app.

01:00:32 ◼   ► They are supported by ads on the website.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I would like to pay, honestly, because it's such a great

01:00:37 ◼   ► service, and the database is huge,

01:00:39 ◼   ► and the barcode scanner has been great.

01:00:42 ◼   ► But I've also been trying this other food tracking utility

01:00:46 ◼   ► called Lifesum.

01:00:50 ◼   ► They're a European company from Sweden, I guess.

01:00:55 ◼   ► They share a similar story to Spotify.

01:00:58 ◼   ► They came out from Europe, and now they're

01:01:00 ◼   ► trying to become more popular in the States.

01:01:02 ◼   ► And Lifesum has a great UI, much, much better

01:01:05 ◼   ► than MyFitnessPal in my opinion, and especially the way

01:01:08 ◼   ► that it lets you quickly re-add food from recent meals.

01:01:13 ◼   ► So you have recent breakfasts, recent lunches,

01:01:15 ◼   ► recent dinners and snacks.

01:01:17 ◼   ► And you can just swipe to re-add the food.

01:01:19 ◼   ► They have a more beautiful UI with--

01:01:22 ◼   ► they have photographs.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And they have these little verified badges.

01:01:26 ◼   ► So you can instantly know what you're

01:01:28 ◼   ► trying to add a generic ingredient like, I don't know,

01:01:32 ◼   ► olive oil or an apple.

01:01:34 ◼   ► It's verified from Lifesum.

01:01:37 ◼   ► - I love that you picked those two things.

01:01:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know why.

01:01:41 ◼   ► The database contrary to what I read on the web,

01:01:46 ◼   ► it's actually pretty huge.

01:01:47 ◼   ► And the barcode scanner is basically just as accurate

01:01:51 ◼   ► as my fitness pal for me.

01:01:53 ◼   ► And again, I'm talking from an Italian perspective.

01:01:56 ◼   ► I don't know if Lifesum is better or worse in the US

01:02:00 ◼   ► or any other part of the world, because I just live here.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And the big thing of Lifesum for me

01:02:07 ◼   ► is that the way that, I guess because it's a European company, the way that it treats

01:02:12 ◼   ► quantities when you try to add food to your diary.

01:02:16 ◼   ► So MyFitnessPal has this stupid, stupid interface that either lets you choose from units like

01:02:22 ◼   ► cups, spoons, whatever that means, and you cannot just say, "Okay, I ate 20 grams of

01:02:31 ◼   ► pasta."

01:02:32 ◼   ► So that's interesting that you think that's stupid because that's one of the things that

01:02:37 ◼   ► I like about MyFitnessPal because if you're cooking...

01:02:40 ◼   ► What's a cup?

01:02:41 ◼   ► Seriously!

01:02:42 ◼   ► So this might be a cultural thing.

01:02:44 ◼   ► If we have a recipe book here, that recipe book will quite frequently say "add one spoon

01:02:50 ◼   ► of..."

01:02:51 ◼   ► "add one cup of..."

01:02:52 ◼   ► No, no.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Right, so I mean of course there's more magic and passion in Italian cooking.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean--

01:02:59 ◼   ► - Add as many tomatoes until you fall in love and stir until--

01:03:04 ◼   ► - I guess what I'm saying is that

01:03:06 ◼   ► if I'm buying some Barilla pasta,

01:03:09 ◼   ► it's not like when I scan the barcode,

01:03:12 ◼   ► I get to know from the package

01:03:15 ◼   ► how many cups 100 grams correspond to.

01:03:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, but for things like that,

01:03:19 ◼   ► doesn't it say like half a pack?

01:03:21 ◼   ► - Not usually, either lets you,

01:03:24 ◼   ► it gives you ounces or just 100 grams,

01:03:27 ◼   ► And then you gotta do like one and a half or one and fractions.

01:03:33 ◼   ► I just want to enter grams manually, which is exactly what Lifesum lets you do.

01:03:39 ◼   ► So from an input software design perspective, I'm happier with Lifesum, but myFitnessPal

01:03:45 ◼   ► has more connections with third-party apps.

01:03:48 ◼   ► So I've been trying both, I realize this is not what most people would do, but Lifesum

01:03:52 ◼   ► has actually been also better in terms of visualization of data.

01:03:57 ◼   ► So it has all these nice graphs that break down your meals by category.

01:04:05 ◼   ► So it's been actually pretty helpful to understand whether I gotta eat more protein at dinner

01:04:11 ◼   ► or if I gotta go easy with the carbs, which is usually the case.

01:04:17 ◼   ► All this, all together, in practice, and I'm just talking about the food stuff, I'm gonna

01:04:23 ◼   ► I get to the exercise stuff and it'll be quicker in a bit. All the food stuff comes together

01:04:28 ◼   ► with the yThing scale, which my girlfriend kindly bought for me for my birthday a few

01:04:36 ◼   ► weeks ago. And man, it's such a great piece of hardware. I mean, you just literally step

01:04:42 ◼   ► on the scale every morning, you just wait like 30 seconds and you step down and it's

01:04:46 ◼   ► done. The scale connects to your yThing account, you're using a Wi-Fi connection, so you can

01:04:53 ◼   ► later open the WhyThings HealthMate app for your iPhone. You get this beautiful

01:05:00 ◼   ► UI with all these graphs and charts for your weight and heart rate and you

01:05:06 ◼   ► know other statistics like room humidity or air quality I guess it's called and

01:05:12 ◼   ► that's been super reliable. I can probably try to put together some IFTTT

01:05:18 ◼   ► actions and workflows, but I haven't had the time to do that.

01:05:21 ◼   ► No, funny fact actually, before I bought a whitening scale, I set up an IFTTT action

01:05:27 ◼   ► for Jobbond, so every morning I would input my weight for the day manually into Launch

01:05:35 ◼   ► Center Pro, which would send the number value to IFTTT, which would sync back to the Jobbond

01:05:41 ◼   ► account.

01:05:42 ◼   ► It was pretty messy, but it worked.

01:05:43 ◼   ► So now I'm-

01:05:44 ◼   ► I think I love you Federico Petici.

01:05:45 ◼   ► I love you too.

01:05:46 ◼   ► I'm on the whitening scale.

01:05:48 ◼   ► So now I'm on the whitening scale and you were scared.

01:05:50 ◼   ► It's also got a heart rate feature,

01:05:54 ◼   ► which brings me to my last section,

01:05:57 ◼   ► which is exercise and activity.

01:05:59 ◼   ► So my understanding is that the portacath

01:06:03 ◼   ► that I used to have in my chest after the chemo,

01:06:07 ◼   ► the fact that it broke was entirely my fault

01:06:09 ◼   ► because in June, I went to two concerts.

01:06:14 ◼   ► So as you can imagine, there's lots of jumping going on.

01:06:17 ◼   ► - I saw the dubstep just like blasted out of you.

01:06:21 ◼   ► - No, it's either the concerts or the fact

01:06:25 ◼   ► that I was so intrigued with FitStar,

01:06:28 ◼   ► which is an iOS app that lets you choose training programs.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And it gives you these great videos

01:06:34 ◼   ► from professional trainers.

01:06:37 ◼   ► I think that like the main guy is a former football player,

01:06:42 ◼   ► like Gonzalez something.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't live in America.

01:06:47 ◼   ► So he's a great guy, by the way, great videos.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And I started doing these exercises every day,

01:06:52 ◼   ► like fat burning exercises or get lean

01:06:55 ◼   ► or seven minute workouts.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And they were great.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And I was so motivated because, you know,

01:07:00 ◼   ► because there was lots of jumping and stuff

01:07:02 ◼   ► that I haven't been doing for years and the app is great.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So it was like a double satisfaction for me

01:07:07 ◼   ► because I was happy from a software perspective.

01:07:10 ◼   ► and I was also happy because I was getting exercise done.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So it was like a nerd doing exercise stuff.

01:07:17 ◼   ► And I was so just, you know,

01:07:19 ◼   ► two things coming together perfectly.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And so my, the problem was that the device broke,

01:07:24 ◼   ► in my chest broke.

01:07:26 ◼   ► So I had this, you know, surgery like a couple of weeks ago.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And so I got kind of scared.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And then I realized after, you know,

01:07:35 ◼   ► a couple of days after the surgery, I just thought,

01:07:38 ◼   ► you know, by myself, I don't have the device anymore.

01:07:40 ◼   ► So I can start using FitStar again.

01:07:43 ◼   ► And so I did.

01:07:44 ◼   ► And now I'm using FitStar again.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And the nice fact is that it syncs back to my fitness pal.

01:07:50 ◼   ► So the exercise that I get done in FitStar

01:07:53 ◼   ► goes to my fitness pal.

01:07:54 ◼   ► And the food that I track, also in my fitness pal,

01:07:57 ◼   ► all together, they go back to the Jobon tracker.

01:08:00 ◼   ► So basically right now,

01:08:01 ◼   ► my main dashboard is the Jobon bracelet.

01:08:04 ◼   ► And maybe you could argue that all these

01:08:08 ◼   ► is just teaching going crazy with apps.

01:08:11 ◼   ► And maybe it is, right?

01:08:14 ◼   ► - But it doesn't matter because the output.

01:08:16 ◼   ► - The output, it's on a practical level.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I've lost 20 pounds.

01:08:21 ◼   ► - Exactly, so yeah, you are kind of going crazy

01:08:24 ◼   ► with these things as you do,

01:08:26 ◼   ► but this is different to just them working out

01:08:29 ◼   ► how to build a custom UI for a file downloader

01:08:32 ◼   ► in editorial. - Exactly.

01:08:34 ◼   ► this is something that you're actually getting more benefit out than just tinkering in editorial.

01:08:41 ◼   ► I like that you're sublty trolling me, but also proving my point.

01:08:46 ◼   ► No, I'm honestly not trying to troll you.

01:08:49 ◼   ► I know, I love you Myke.

01:08:51 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, I feel much better.

01:08:56 ◼   ► I think I've made a conscious decision to pay more attention to the water that I drink,

01:09:06 ◼   ► the food that I eat, the amount of sleep that I get.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And I mean, you could maybe say that I'm obsessive about this stuff, but I think I gotta be.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Because after all the other kind of junk that they put into my body to help with another

01:09:24 ◼   ► That leaves you, you know, the consequences and the kind of stress that it leaves on your body.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I need work to get better. I need to seriously... I need a system that motivates me.

01:09:38 ◼   ► And I think I found the system in software. And I'm gonna write an article about, you know,

01:09:44 ◼   ► I'm gonna have photos and a diary and a lot of extra details about this. But the single fact

01:09:49 ◼   ► that I can use a device, which is the iPhone, and all these apps to make an important improvement

01:09:59 ◼   ► in my lifestyle. I think that's pretty incredible. And of course, you could look at this from

01:10:06 ◼   ► a... Of course, maybe he's doing this just to try apps, because I'm a nerd, or maybe

01:10:13 ◼   ► I just want to write for Max Stories, but at the end of the day, I'm putting my body

01:10:16 ◼   ► through all this, you know, just eating better and doing exercise every day.

01:10:20 ◼   ► And, and it's, uh, and it's amazing, you know, that, that I can track all this

01:10:25 ◼   ► stuff and, and find connections and just leading a healthier lifestyle.

01:10:30 ◼   ► And I feel better.

01:10:32 ◼   ► I think I look better.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I, I, I have, you know, I have work to do still.

01:10:36 ◼   ► And, um, and especially because, you know, like I said, all the drugs that they gave

01:10:42 ◼   ► you, the, the leave other effects, which was not nice, but

01:10:46 ◼   ► Anyway, so far I've been doing this for two months now.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And there's the Apple announcement, supposedly next month, with an iWatch.

01:11:01 ◼   ► I'm just looking forward to seeing whether Apple has been experimenting with the mic

01:11:08 ◼   ► way for notifications and the Pebble-like device.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Or if this is really a device for -- no, I'm not trolling you, Myke. You do have a point

01:11:19 ◼   ► about notifications, because there are people like you who like them. So I'm not making

01:11:23 ◼   ► fun of you in any way. Or if the device -- I never make fun of you.

01:11:28 ◼   ► >> Have we got some sort of trolling treaty going on today?

01:11:30 ◼   ► >> No, no.

01:11:31 ◼   ► >> No one's allowed to troll anyone.

01:11:33 ◼   ► >> I'm just glad no one's trolling me.

01:11:35 ◼   ► >> Not yet.

01:11:36 ◼   ► >> Any more than normal.

01:11:37 ◼   ► So, to conclude, guys, I tried a bunch of apps. I have plenty to talk about, Ciel, and

01:11:47 ◼   ► I don't know when or how I will write about this. It's just, you know, I wanted to discuss

01:11:52 ◼   ► this with you today. And the conclusion is that it's amazing to me, honestly, and I'm

01:12:00 ◼   ► genuinely impressed with the fact that there's a phone, right? A phone with this software

01:12:09 ◼   ► that can make you feel and live better. And that's just, you know, for all the Twitter

01:12:16 ◼   ► clients and Flappy Bird clones and weird apps on the App Store, the fact that I can download

01:12:24 ◼   ► stuff and buy software that lets me eat better and feel and try to overcome the consequences

01:12:31 ◼   ► of cancer and chemo, that's pretty incredible. It's mind blowing. I wouldn't say magical,

01:12:37 ◼   ► because it's not magical. It's software and it's people making it. But yeah, it's such

01:12:44 ◼   ► -- I don't know. It's amazing. I keep coming back to this word because I -- yeah. I'm sorry.

01:12:53 ◼   ► I just got carried away.

01:12:56 ◼   ► So I want to take a quick break.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Congratulations Federico by the way.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I want to thank our last sponsor for this week's episode and then we're going to talk

01:13:04 ◼   ► a little bit about what Apple is doing in iOS 8 and how this could potentially add to

01:13:12 ◼   ► more on top of what Federico's already up to of these third-party applications.

01:13:17 ◼   ► So I want to take a quick moment to thank our third and final sponsor for this week's

01:13:21 ◼   ► episode and that is our friends over at igloo.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Connected is brought to you by igloo who are an intranet that you're actually going to

01:13:32 ◼   ► like.

01:13:33 ◼   ► igloo is built with you in mind.

01:13:35 ◼   ► They have super easy to use apps like shared calendars, twitter like micro blogs, file

01:13:39 ◼   ► sharing and so much much more.

01:13:42 ◼   ► And they are all integrated into igloo's platform and are really simple to set up and configure

01:13:47 ◼   ► to make them just the way that you want them.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Everything that you are going to need is built right into igloo and everything in igloo is

01:13:56 ◼   ► social.

01:13:57 ◼   ► This means that when you upload a file, maybe a word document with all of your waits for

01:14:01 ◼   ► the last six months, or you write a blog post, your team can share it, comment on it, rate

01:14:06 ◼   ► it and like it.

01:14:07 ◼   ► This is just like all of the social apps that you're used to using every day.

01:14:10 ◼   ► It's bringing something a little bit more fun and refreshing into the day to day, bringing

01:14:13 ◼   ► in some paradigms that you're used to, like social stuff.

01:14:18 ◼   ► It makes the work that you're doing a little bit more fun to interact with, I think.

01:14:22 ◼   ► With igloo's latest release, you can also manage the tasks that are associated with

01:14:27 ◼   ► your content that you're putting into igloo.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Like for example, updating the images on the big keynote presentation that you're delivering

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01:14:38 ◼   ► Tasks is what igloo calls it, is the latest app to be integrated into igloo's intranet

01:14:42 ◼   ► platform, and it was released just last week to all of their customers with their unicorn

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01:15:18 ◼   ► Igloo is free to use with up to 10 people and you can sign up today at IglooSoftware.com/Connected.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Igloo for supporting this show and all of Real AFM.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Show your support to them and to us by going to IglooSoftware.com/Connected and sign up.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:15:39 ◼   ► So we wanted to kind of wrap up this week talking about what Apple is getting

01:15:44 ◼   ► ready to do in this space.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Obviously the hardware is a little bit of a question mark,

01:15:49 ◼   ► Thinness, Watch,

01:15:53 ◼   ► some sort of thing maybe next month, sort of vague, but Apple has been very

01:15:58 ◼   ► forthcoming about what iOS, what, there's the talking thing again, it's hard,

01:16:04 ◼   ► what iOS 8 is going to do in this area with their health app and with things

01:16:09 ◼   ► like health book and it's kind of kind of multiple things we're going to get

01:16:17 ◼   ► into that in a second of what you know health on iOS 8 is not just a single app

01:16:22 ◼   ► it's an app with some services and a bunch of different ways to interact with

01:16:29 ◼   ► And so

01:16:31 ◼   ► WWDC Apple talks about this

01:16:34 ◼   ► You know with the iPhone 5s and the iPad air with the m7 the motion code processor people can take advantage of

01:16:40 ◼   ► Step counting and things with the hardware now our friend underscore has a great app that does that

01:16:45 ◼   ► But there's a lot more coming and

01:16:49 ◼   ► Federico you know you've been spending some time with this and talking to some developers about it kind of what what is coming to iOS

01:16:56 ◼   ► later this year

01:16:58 ◼   ► So, yes

01:17:00 ◼   ► What's coming for consumers is a new

01:17:04 ◼   ► pre-installed app on the iPhone which is called the health application and for developers, there's this new

01:17:12 ◼   ► health kit

01:17:15 ◼   ► APIs and set of you know software features to to interact with the with the earth application and

01:17:21 ◼   ► Read and write data to the app. So essentially developers of

01:17:27 ◼   ► food or fitness related apps, they can take advantage of these new EarthKit APIs to

01:17:34 ◼   ► provide their own data to the app as well as read data

01:17:40 ◼   ► stored in the application and try to do something with it. So I'm trying to think of a practical examples.

01:17:49 ◼   ► For instance, if you develop a sleep tracking app

01:17:55 ◼   ► such as the one that I've been using which is called Pillow for the iPhone. If you develop an app to monitor your sleep at night and

01:18:03 ◼   ► you know, visualize sleep patterns, you could for instance

01:18:08 ◼   ► offer to the health app

01:18:12 ◼   ► the amount of hours that the user gets. So when I open my health dashboard

01:18:17 ◼   ► I get the hours recorded by the third-party app that I use.

01:18:21 ◼   ► But also that same third-party app, it could ask the health application to receive data for the user's step count,

01:18:33 ◼   ► or for the user's calorie intake.

01:18:37 ◼   ► So it's basically a way for developers to communicate with a single dashboard,

01:18:43 ◼   ► with a unified application where they can read and write data,

01:18:49 ◼   ► And to do something meaningful with it in a way that doesn't require developers to implement third-party APIs or integrations which can be problematic.

01:19:02 ◼   ► So in theory, at least based on the conversations that I had and the apps that I saw,

01:19:11 ◼   ► There's going to be an interesting new approach to making fitness and food related apps.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Because right now, if you go to the app store and if you read the reviews of a popular fitness

01:19:28 ◼   ► app, you're going to see comments about people asking for a third-party integration.

01:19:32 ◼   ► For instance, "Oh, this app doesn't support RunKeeper" or "It doesn't support my fitness

01:19:36 ◼   ► or I want to have job on integration. In theory, with the Health app and with HealthKit for

01:19:42 ◼   ► developers, there's going to be this unified place for developers to feed and read data,

01:19:50 ◼   ► which in theory is great. So I've been talking to developers, and most of them say that HealthKit

01:19:58 ◼   ► has been a game changer in the way that it lets them not care, basically, about integrating

01:20:05 ◼   ► with the third party API, with the third party web service.

01:20:09 ◼   ► They don't have to care about handling privacy policies for different services, such as the

01:20:15 ◼   ► privacy policy from Jobun or from MyFitnessPal.

01:20:18 ◼   ► They just need to integrate with the system API, which has another set of built-in permissions,

01:20:24 ◼   ► but that's another topic.

01:20:26 ◼   ► So most of them say that it's been a game changer, the ability to export data and to

01:20:33 ◼   ► make it useful to other apps will be a great improvement for this category on the App Store.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Just as big as extensions are for productivity apps, HealthKit and the Health app and the

01:20:46 ◼   ► Dashboard, there are going to be a major change for this category.

01:20:51 ◼   ► Some developers that I talked to said that getting the HealthKit stuff up and running

01:20:56 ◼   ► was a no-brainer.

01:20:58 ◼   ► said that it's a bit of work because you gotta handle conversions between different unit

01:21:05 ◼   ► types such as, I don't know, liters and, what is it, ounces for liquid or other types of

01:21:13 ◼   ► measurements.

01:21:14 ◼   ► So I have no doubt about the fact that it's going to be, you know, it requires developers

01:21:20 ◼   ► to do some work, especially because Apple has been adding new features to the API during

01:21:26 ◼   ► the iOS 8 beta.

01:21:27 ◼   ► So of course it's not completely done and we don't know whether there will be another

01:21:31 ◼   ► beta or a GM, it looks like a GM at this point.

01:21:35 ◼   ► But it's going to be a major change for the food and fitness category on the App Store.

01:21:40 ◼   ► But also not necessarily just for that category.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Because now that you have a single place right on the system that tracks all this data from

01:21:48 ◼   ► different sources, in theory if you make any sort of app you could take advantage of that

01:21:55 ◼   ► information about the user and make it useful and give it some sort of meaning in your app

01:22:01 ◼   ► that isn't a fitness tracker.

01:22:04 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that the...

01:22:07 ◼   ► What's the name of the podcast client by underscore?

01:22:10 ◼   ► Pod Wrangler?

01:22:12 ◼   ► It has a feature that makes the playback controls bigger if the app detects that you're moving,

01:22:21 ◼   ► right?

01:22:24 ◼   ► I think it has a car mode, an automatic car mode.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Exactly. That mode comes from the M7, from the motion core processor on the iPhone.

01:22:34 ◼   ► So you see, David Smith with the podcast app doesn't have a fitness client of sorts.

01:22:40 ◼   ► It's an audio app. But it takes advantage of contextual information and movement in a different

01:22:47 ◼   ► way. So you can imagine how having health kit on the device, on the system, could enable some

01:22:53 ◼   ► interesting new ideas. So I'm very excited to see what developers come up with. And of course,

01:22:59 ◼   ► I guess the first and most obvious change will be for apps like Java or myFitnessPal, hopefully.

01:23:04 ◼   ► So we'll see. Yeah, I can see, you know, just talking to you about your setup and what I'm

01:23:13 ◼   ► doing. It's sort of like you have to string these things together in the right order. So for me,

01:23:20 ◼   ► Strava and lose it don't talk directly to each other. So I kind of like Strava tells me

01:23:24 ◼   ► You know how far I rode in the time and I can go in manually entering that and lose it and that's

01:23:29 ◼   ► Something that I would hope that this health kit plumbing can help ease

01:23:34 ◼   ► But it's only going to be as good as third party developers make it

01:23:38 ◼   ► You know, they've people have to get in there and decide

01:23:41 ◼   ► This is what we're gonna do. So say for example, and I don't know if they have said anything so I'm not I'm not

01:23:48 ◼   ► Commenting on news but say that job and we're like, you know what we're gonna do our own thing

01:23:52 ◼   ► we're not gonna share this data with the health app and like that sort of puts a

01:23:57 ◼   ► kink in my plan to just use you know, the first-party app to to be my dashboard for all this so I hope that

01:24:04 ◼   ► Everybody plays and gets along and I think it's best for everybody if they do that

01:24:09 ◼   ► but kind of the back of my mind is that voice of like

01:24:12 ◼   ► There's gonna be somebody popular to hold out, you know, and they're not gonna want to do it

01:24:17 ◼   ► but because they're you know it's not like new stand or or even passbook where you can

01:24:27 ◼   ► get away with not using those like wire can still have just a regular app now they're

01:24:32 ◼   ► in new stand because they made that decision but you can exist outside of that and it's

01:24:38 ◼   ► the same thing here it's it's a very similar situation where a lot of third-party developers

01:24:43 ◼   ► are running around doing a bunch of crazy stuff and now Apple is saying "Hey, we sort

01:24:48 ◼   ► of have a hub for all this, it would be great if you tied into it, but you don't have to."

01:24:52 ◼   ► And I hope that it is a utopia of fitness and tracking and measuring, but I worry there

01:24:59 ◼   ► is going to be pain points along the way.

01:25:01 ◼   ► No, that's actually a great point, especially because fitness apps are not like feed readers,

01:25:08 ◼   ► right?

01:25:09 ◼   ► Or Twitter clients.

01:25:10 ◼   ► I mean, you can imagine that if your favorite email application or feed reader, RSS reader,

01:25:17 ◼   ► doesn't support extensions or another productivity-related feature, you could easily jump to another

01:25:24 ◼   ► app and switch and start using the app that takes advantage of the latest features.

01:25:29 ◼   ► But with a fitness app like MyFitnessPal or the Jobun app, you have this sort of locking

01:25:34 ◼   ► of your personal data that you don't want to lose.

01:25:37 ◼   ► Typically, the exporting options are not great in these apps. So you're kind of forced to stay within their ecosystem.

01:25:44 ◼   ► So if they don't want to support the new API,

01:25:49 ◼   ► I think it will be harder for most people to just, you know,

01:25:53 ◼   ► say I'm gonna switch to another app because all your data and months and months of tracking food and barcodes like me,

01:25:59 ◼   ► they're going to be stuck into the app. And even if you can export as a CSV, that's not gonna be great.

01:26:05 ◼   ► and honestly who wants to use CSV. So yeah it'll be interesting to see what happens.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Totally and you know it's all this could be out the door in a couple weeks if Apple does

01:26:22 ◼   ► hardware that's what's you know interesting about this there's a lot of good software

01:26:27 ◼   ► there's a lot of mediocre hardware you know sitting here I was thinking maybe I should

01:26:31 ◼   ► by job owned up and I'm gonna wait and see if Apple is doing something but it's

01:26:36 ◼   ► um it's a it's interesting time and and because the phone is always with you or

01:26:41 ◼   ► at least with you most of the time can give you a really good picture you know

01:26:45 ◼   ► that's why I really like things like underscores pedometer plus plus I don't

01:26:50 ◼   ► have an iPhone 5s so I can't take advantage of it but like of course your

01:26:54 ◼   ► iPhone knows how far you walk because your phone is always in your pocket and

01:26:58 ◼   ► As these devices get smarter and more powerful that sort of data is only be

01:27:03 ◼   ► going to become better and better and more clear to give us a picture of the

01:27:07 ◼   ► you know the quantified self of you know I can put a number on how I did today

01:27:10 ◼   ► and and if you can do that and build a history and build patterns then you can

01:27:14 ◼   ► work to be in better shape or to be able to run a 5k without dying or whatever

01:27:20 ◼   ► those goals are they knowledge you can get us there and that's sort of the

01:27:24 ◼   ► point of the technology in the first place so I think it's really exciting.

01:27:31 ◼   ► So I think we've come to about the end of this week's episode of Connected. Thank you

01:27:35 ◼   ► very much for listening. Steven, where can people find the show notes?

01:27:40 ◼   ► Relay.fm/Connected/2. Fantastic. We have a couple of Twitter accounts

01:27:46 ◼   ► for you we are _ConnectedFM and _RelayFM for the show and the podcast network.

01:27:54 ◼   ► I am iMyke, i-m-y-k-e. Federico is @Vittici, v-i-t-i-c-c-i and Stephen is @ismh. Federico

01:28:03 ◼   ► writes @backstories.net and Stephen writes @512pixels.net. I podcast in many various forms

01:28:11 ◼   ► at relay.fm. I want to thank again our sponsors for this week's episode, so that's Blogo,

01:28:19 ◼   ► Omni and Igloo. Don't forget that we do broadcast this show live, we have a chat room as well which

01:28:26 ◼   ► you can join. Go to relay.fm/live, you'll also find a link to the schedule there as well if you

01:28:33 ◼   ► would like to come along. So gentlemen do you have anything to add before I sign off for this week?

01:28:40 ◼   ► I really want an iWatch.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Okay, well I'll work on that for you.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Steven?

01:28:46 ◼   ► I really want to argue with Federico about the iWatch in the future.

01:28:51 ◼   ► Excellent stuff, I have no doubt that we'll do that.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Thank you all for listening to episode 2 of Connected.

01:28:56 ◼   ► We'll be back next week.

01:28:58 ◼   ► Until then, bye bye.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:29:02 ◼   ► Adios.