HomeTech.fm - Episode 311 - Nerding Out

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 10th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? I forgot where I'm from. That should explain how today's going. You still got all your fingers and toes and appendages from the 4th of July? Barely, barely. Only had one, no, two incidences with the... A brush with death.

One of them was, yeah, a brush with death. One of them was a close shot. There are estimates, you know, as to like the explosion was about 10 feet to two inches somewhere in that range from from a child so uh oh gosh that's not yeah yeah it was it was scary she she wasn't scared though she was she she took it like a trooper she didn't want to play with she didn't want to watch me launch big fireworks anymore so we we had those little snap things yep uh and we we played with those for the rest of the night did you have the ones that are just like are they little white bags with like the string coming off of them so those are poppers

you had that you throw yeah got it those are the ones i've always seen our neighbors had some poppers for the fourth of july that were like they looked just like little miniature like really really small i don't know picture like a stick of dynamite right and they were probably like i don't know five times louder than those old paubers uh so my kids thought those were pretty cool well i mean yeah anything that's five times louder than yeah definitely i think that's pretty cool too anyways we got to blow some stuff up here and uh nobody died yeah i mean that that i'm chalking it up as a win because the same thing like it came close to uh to us but it didn't kill anybody it didn't hurt anybody 10 figures 10 you shared that video with me and uh i'm just i'm glad you're sitting here to talk with us this week it was a fun one

maybe i'll put a uh a gif of the explosion uh i'll link it in the show notes i think you need to yeah well we'll make we'll make it the cover photo of the giant explosion that happened 40 feet away from where we were sitting but some people are a little close got a little bit got a little bit exaggerated it was it was close i will i will should, it, it was closer than it should have been. And it was in the wrong direction. It should have been in the air and it was in the ground in front of us, which that's not right. That's not right. I'm not, I'm no firework engineer, but I don't think that was supposed to happen. That's right. Well, I see a note here, Seth. Have you been doing some TV watching? Yes. Yes, I have. So let's see. Last week, I recommended Hamilton and you recommended Defending Jacob.

So Jason, let me ask you this. Hamilton was a runtime of two hours and 40 minutes. How do you think that went? Well, we didn didn't even try so i can tell you that much uh i'm guessing it had to be broken into multiple segments yeah i'm about a third of the way through it it's literally one of my favorite musicals and uh we tried to watch it on friday we we like sat down it's eight o'clock at night we were gonna sit there and watch it and of course the fireworks are too loud we couldn't actually hear anything so um yeah lovely there you go so so yeah uh didn't didn't make it through hamilton and uh we'll get through it eventually but i did i did have a chance to sit down and watch a couple episodes of that defending jacob that you read what do you think it's good it's good i uh i'm not there's like some like suspension of disbelief you know like the the two the two people the two actors in there uh

what's it chris evans and like what's the lady's name uh michelle i'm the worst with that but yeah the mom and the dad right that's who you're talking about i'm pretty sure she was like mary on on yeah downton abbey uh it looks like the two hottest people in the world had a kid and he's a little creepy kid i don't think so you just can't get past that huh no i just like you two didn't have that child he does look creepy doesn't he like i'm only like he plays a part well for sure yeah yeah it's a slow burn it it uh it's kind of one of those slower moving uh shows but yeah i i definitely liked it it's kind of got that uh mysterious vibe to it i didn't get the same sort of issues with suspension of disbelief but it's funny you say that no i was i was just joking well i'm only half kidding about that but uh the and i'll let

you determine which half but the uh like it is a good show uh it does have some uh you know good uh good courtroom drama i suppose and it does have uh you know some a good story behind it it seems uh you said it came from a book i guess it did so it's always yeah that can be like good or bad right like the good the book can be really good and then like the movie can be like what am i watching that's right so and then you get the obligatory comments from the people who read the book who say that the show is not as good as the book and blah blah blah, blah. Right, right. I'm happy enough not knowing, and I will be ignorant. But I think so far, so far, good recommendation. Good.

Definitely a good one to watch. I'm looking forward to, and we'll move off this quick and get into the news, but Greyhound as kind of a history geek, Apple TV movie, World War II, submarine-based with Tom Hanks. I think that comes out, I believe, the day this show will come out. Yeah. July 10th. Um, so that, that's, that'll be a good one. I think I'm looking forward

to that. Nice. I've heard, I've heard only a little bit of news around that mostly from the Tom Hanks, like grumpiness about it. Like he was not grumpy, but he was kind of like joking around saying, you know, Apple was not, I guess i guess not like uh i don't know they were like making him say things or something like i don't remember but like uh the the show actually looked pretty good so and tom hanks generally does a good job producing these things yeah he's the producer on this so for sure yeah all right seth well what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it all right we going to start actually here with a story from last week that we didn't touch on. We had a full slate last week, but felt like this was worth

bringing back up and talking about here for just a few minutes. Google owned YouTube TV is raising its price for television subscription service to $64.99, so $65 a month, an increase of $15. The company announced this again last week. The new price took effect on June 30th for new members and on the July 30th billing cycle for existing subscribers. The latest price bump comes at the three-year anniversary of YouTube TV and follows a $10 price increase last April. So the price continues to go up and 65 a month now that's very much in line with uh what you'd pay for a for a basic cable subscription yeah no kidding especially after you uh you factor in the high speed internet you're going to need to actually watch youtube tv

uh yeah i would say it's exactly in line with the high speed internet. I mean, a cable subscription, especially since like, I think now you can get with like Comcast. They called me up the other day and they upgraded my service, but they also said, you can get this like Comcast flex thing. And it's got all these channels. You can, it's like free TV. I'm like, oh, that sounds great. Send me the box. We'll send you the box. It's free. And I never got the box. And it turns out you need their little stupid modem to like also have the box and get all the free TV. I'm like, I'm not using your modem. Like I have my own modem. I don't want to pay $20 a month or whatever it is to rent your modem.

So like I have my own modem. I don't need that. And they were like, well, it doesn't work with anything. So, but if I did do that, like that's another way I could get most, not all of these channels that YouTube TV is offering, but a lot of channels and high-speed internet. I don't know. This is not looking like a deal anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, it's difficult. Definitely looks like these providers are, you know, having a tough time scaling these offerings. And as they're trying to bring on more and more content, you know, obviously, it's not shocking that the prices are going up. But the rate and the amount at which we've seen that happening is definitely one of the big patterns, I'd say, in home technology this year. I feel like we've talked about a ton of these stories where streaming services are going up in price. But look at the, there's a big difference in the prices like this type of service where they're offering traditional channels. You know, it says here that they're looking to add BET, CMT, Tomody Central, Paramount Network. Like this is still part of that older, like it still has YouTube slapped over the top and you get all the cool features and stuff that YouTube has.

But it's still like a traditional cable system, right? It's still a traditional cable network just with some like shiny paint on top. The ones, the brands that haven't really raised their prices, not to $ uh or like netflix apple tv hulu like these are the newer companies that are doing the original content that people want to see uh hbo max now whatever it's called um like that those those are what people are are really interested in and those aren't costing you $70 a month. Right. There's another, I mean, I hear you.

I think you say those are the ones that people are interested in. I would say, yeah, certainly some people, and it's an important distinction to make. I definitely agree, drawing a line there and being clear about the differences there between an offering like YouTube TV that's offering live, it's sort of a cable alternative. Linear TV. Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. Linear TV versus something like Netflix. But there's a good article we'll share a link to in Digital Trends. At least I thought it was good. It's a quick read and, you know, it's titled, I'm paying more for YouTube TV and that's all right with me. And again, quick, nothing earth shaking here, but he talks about the interface, how he really likes the interface of the system compared to other live TV options over the top options. But I thought the most salient point

that he made in here, and we've talked about this before, is the experience. And he says, sometimes I just want pleasant background noise provided by HGTV or Food Network. Throwing them on is so much easier than selecting a specific episode of The Office or futilely browsing Netflix library for anything new. And I think he's touching on something there that I agree. There are times where we don't watch a ton of TV, but every now and then, I just want to throw something on and not sit down and deliberately pick a show. We've got our tableau here in the house. So we have, you know, stuff coming in over the antenna that we can pick and kind of scratch that itch sometimes. But it's certainly not like having YouTube TV have Pluto TV, which has 250 channels.

I would say maybe 100 of them are music. So maybe like 100 channels rather. They have a bunch of like on demand movies in there, too. Like if you just wanted one of those basic like things making noises in the background like that would be a you know cheaper way to do it yeah cheaper way to do it like not the full-blown youtube tv i think it's just like you're being picky at that point to uh to go with something like youtube tv for that price like i i just i don't know i don't i don't see it as a value now like at 30 that was a great deal.

Right. At $40, you start going scratching your head. $50, it's like, yeah, it's a tough choice. 65, I don't think it's like, I don't even think it's in the ballpark now. I think you're back to talking to Comcast and Verizon or AT&T or whatever and going that route. Yeah. I mean, you alluded to it earlier. You got to, you got to factor in your high-speed internet. So by the time you start to bundle things together with an ISP, I think an ISP is going to be competitive price-wise. So yeah, I don't disagree with you there. I think a lot of this just comes down to preference and be interesting to see how big of a market there is for this offering. Another quick note I wanted to point out about this particular offering is he mentions

unlimited DVR. Yep. So I think that's kind of a feature that I should say that's a feature that's probably kind of attractive to a certain audience. So anyways, it's been one of the big themes forever now with streaming. You got to really understand your options and do your homework to figure out what's going to be the right solution for you. Because like you said, there may be cheaper options. If you're just looking for a linear TV provider to throw something on casually, like you may be able to look at this new, one of the new trends we've seen this year is a lot more of ad supported streaming options that have linear TV.

So anyways, just know what you're buying. You did mention something that made me think of subscriber counts, and I thought it was worth noting. I've always been kind of curious when I see these stories coming across, like, where do these offerings, where does YouTube TV sit relative to like a cable provider? And this story mentioned service had 2 million subscribers as of the end of 2019. Sorry about that. By way of comparison, market leading U.S. cable TV provider Comcast reported 19.9 million. So about a 10x difference there in subscriber count. So that thought that

was worth noting. Yes. Significantly more. Yeah. But I mean, not everybody is in a position to even know like YouTube TV exists. Like, right. It's not, it's not like I was driving home today and behind a Comcast van, like that was, you know, their advertisements are everywhere and you know that you need Comcast to get internet in your house. And if they're offering you some kind of like free service, like I just wanted internet. Now I can also get this little free service. Why not? Um, just for the linear TV, I'm going to, I guess it just comes down to like, do you want the on-demand? Do you want to stream? Like how do you want this to work? Um, I don't know, like Anthony, uh, made a, made a funny joke in the, in the chat there about, uh, this is paying $65 a month to avoid the Hulu interface. And I, I think that's essentially what

it comes down to. I think he's right. There you go. Speaking of the chat room, Rashid just shared a good link, the streamable.com. And Seth, we've talked about, I think, similar resources to this where sort of online comparison tools for different streaming resources. And this looks like it's probably a pretty good one to share or look at directly or share with anyone you know that's kind of dealing with the streaming service overwhelm right now. Yeah, it looks like hulu live tv is 55 a month did not realize that uh and then you have choices going down to philo tv i think we've talked about philo in the past at 20 per month but again these i don't know

these just don't appeal to me at all like Like these are like, these are traditional, this is traditional TV. And that's really not like, I, I just haven't watched a network show in a very, very long time. Right. Like everything that I have seen in the past, I don't know, two years, whenever I started doing this two, two and a half years, like it has been all either on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, or, you know, one of those, one of those type channels. It has not been on a, I have not sat down at eight o'clock at night to watch something on a network television network in, in a very long time, much, much, much longer than, than, than when i guess we can say that this the streaming service existed yeah no i'm with you there uh the only things i've really watched live uh in recent times have been

sports and things of that nature that i can pick up over the air so i'm with you all right well speaking of price hikes uh one day after google announced their increase of the base youtube subscription sling tv says it'll maintain the price of its streaming service for one year one day after Google announced their increase of the base YouTube subscription, Sling TV says it'll maintain the price of its streaming service for one year. As part of a new limited time promotion, both new and existing customers won't see the price of the company's $30 per month

blue and orange subscriptions increase before August 1st, 2021. The catch is you need to have an active account with Sling TV before August 1st, 2020. The catch is you need to have an active account with Sling TV before August 1st, 2020. So it looks like 2021, we might see that Sling TV is going to go to $65. Yeah, it's kind of a interesting way to frame it, right? They're certainly not promising any guarantees

over the long haul, but kind of a shot across the bow, I guess, opportunistic marketing here. They don't have a lot to lose by providing this one-year guarantee and gets them in the news a little bit, coming off the heels of YouTube TV's continual price hikes. But if memory serves, I think Sling TV has had some price hikes as well, I feel like. I think they have, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, all of these providers are struggling. This story goes on to say, obviously, Sling is trying to paint itself as the good guy in this situation. But the fact of the matter is that streaming TV platforms don't have much control over how much

their services cost. It says the cost of streaming steadily increased over the last couple of years. When a company like Google signs a new deal, it often has to carry a network's entire lineup of channels. So there you go. Sounds familiar, right? Bundling. Back to bundling. Here we are.

We all didn't like this. No one liked having to deal with the subscriptions in these industries and how this all worked and bundling these you know sports packages together and everything turns out entire business models were built around just that and uh you can't get around it once it gets down to actually the creation of the content so yeah um quick quick line of follow-up just for you just for your records records. We're going to go back to numbers. Sling TV as of 2019, I guess, 2.59 million subscribers. So drop in the bucket as well. Close to the YouTube TV numbers, but nowhere near Comcast.

Yeah, and I looked as well really quickly here, found a story from, this was December of last year december of 2019 this was a story the cheap days of sling tv are over they're raising the price of both blue and orange packages to 30 a month um to both so that was the rate oh wait the price raise to 30 30 each month uh subscribing to both bundles now costs $45. Got it. So even post-price hike, they're at $30 compared to YouTube TV at $65 now. But yeah, you got to imagine that a bigger price hike from Sling TV is coming down the pike. All right. And our final headline, Seth, I just wanted to quickly share a security camera sort of scorecard. I thought this one was cool. So it's not necessarily

like a breaking news headline here or anything, but kind of a nice resource that I wanted to share. Digital Trends went through and did an analysis of a bunch of different security cameras. And again, nothing earth-shaking in this story, but they compared a bunch of security features like two-factor authentication, privacy shutter, which is basically a fancy term for a physical cover, although they talk about some that can disable power to the camera. Having local storage, detection zones, facial recognition, things of this nature. I know that cameras are one of those areas where, I got to be honest, I feel a little weird about having them in the house. Like I don't typically when we're here, we don't we don't have cameras hooked up. We use them when we travel and things like that when we want to keep an eye on the house. But by default, I'm not a particular fan of having cameras in the house. But it's kind of good to know. So they compare Wyze, RingCam, Google Nest,

several that I'm not familiar with, Wansview, Swan, Logitech Circles on here. Anyways, they break them down. They got a nice little graphic by all of those different features. So, you know, if you're taking a look at cameras and you're interested in what are the different breakdowns of things

and if privacy is a concern for you, I think this is a good resource, and we'll be sure to include it in the show notes. Yeah, not a bad write-up, especially on the DIY slash indoor-type cameras. These are all of that nature. I've always kind of had that feeling like i don't want a camera inside my house yeah and and uh the other day we were like had this incident happen at night and we're like did our daughter get up like did she did did she get up and go to the bathroom like was she running around playing like we couldn't really like figure out there were a couple like doors

that were open and closed like either we have a ghost or she was up at night so like for a couple of nights following that i set up a like an like a small it's actually a unified camera it's like a 75 dollar uh little tiny it looks like probably about the same size as the ring camera but a little bit different looks so i set that up uh just set it on the table with the table with a giant cable running across and kind of like tried to catch her getting up in the middle of the night, going to the bathroom and running around the house and doing things. But she was good the following couple of nights. So I don't know.

So maybe it was a ghost? Maybe it was a ghost, yeah. That's what I'm thinking because I never caught her that night. I never caught her after that. Well, that's funny. Listeners to the show may recall, um, back in the fall, we had a, a mouse saga in the house and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where this mouse was, was getting in. And anyways, I had a very extensive surveillance operation set up with a handful of the wise

cams, which were like $25 a piece, which is just insane. And they work really well. And so I've got a bunch of those, a bunch, like four of those that, you know, I, they just kind of sit in my closet. I don't get a ton of use out of them, but like when we're traveling or we're going to, you know, there are various reasons why I might set them up and they're super quick to plug in and unplug and the app works great. Um, so these things have become so commoditized that it's easy to have them around, but yeah, I, I've got mixed feelings about, about cameras, especially these DIY variety. I know, obviously as a pro you're, you're looking at a, often a whole different breed of, of cameras and DVR systems where

different set of, of considerations considerations but this was i thought was kind of a good resource to help understand what's out there yeah what's current so yeah you you and dave zatz with your dave is always on twitter hunting those uh chipmunks at his house and you and your mice that's right that's right it's hilarious it's hilarious well i tell you it was like a eureka moment when i when i caught the mouse on camera and figured out, you know, he was coming in under, under a toe kick under the cabinet. And I had no idea there was a void under there. And it got emotional or one night saw him kind of jumping down out of the toe kick. And it was just like, finally, I figured out where he was coming from. And I was finally able to sort of remediate the problem.

Because by the way, this was like the world's smartest mouse, right? He would not go near a trap no matter what I baited it with. And I'm getting like post-traumatic stress from talking about it. No, no, you don't want them out. Like we had an incident where like one of them was crawling through the, I don't know how i figured out where they were coming from but they like there was a hole where the the air conditioning lines kind of go into the house yep and i don't know i just like well maybe

they're going in that and just kind of like picked a spot and sure enough that's where they were going uh but yeah you could hear them like scurrying around up there in the attic at night and i was like i think we have a boss i hate that yeah yeah and then you just kind of have to like walk around the house and try and figure out what magic hole they have decided to slip through right and uh yeah yeah yeah that's it's no fun no fun to do rashid says my wife would have burned down the house and text me the address of the hotel she was at yeah there was some of that going on for sure. Yeah, no, that definitely would have happened. This was a while back for me too. Like I came home one day and I opened the garage door

and I'm like, not the main door, but like the garage door going into the house and I'm staring like face to face, like with this little mouse kind of like limping around on the ground. And I'm like, man, I'm glad that I'm the only one here. This would have, this would have been that exact situation. No doubt.

All right. Well, that'll do it for our headlines. All the links and topics we've discussed here can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 311, 311. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for a weekly newsletter. We'll send you a weekly show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 311.

Going to edit some 311 music in. There you go. Don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth, I understand you got a pick of the week this week. I do. I do. I do. Hey, Jason, do you like to take notes? I do. You know this. Well, so we've, you and I have talked about this before. Like, what do you, you like to take notes

by, by hand, not so much like on a app in your computer, like the notes app or something, or like how, where do you like to take your notes? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it depends. I like to, um, you know, deface my books. We've talked about that before, like a savage. Okay. I'm not, I'm not going to talk about that because just like your, your, your, your mice and your, uh, yeah, that's giving me too much, too much. No, I, um, you I, you know, I've been playing around with this actually a fair amount recently. And I continue to be a big fan of just handwritten notes. I like to have a notepad sort of nearby at most times, not all times, but certainly while I'm working, I've got one at my desk because I've just found like a lot of times I just

want to capture something and I don't want to get bogged down in thinking about where it needs to go. Right. So jumping into Notion or Trello and like, oh, what list? Where does this go? How do I format it? Like, it's just too much. Even that little bit of friction can stop me from capturing an idea. Right.

So I've found just an old fashioned pen and pad is often the most effective. But for more serious note-taking, um, I've gotten into an app called Rome spelled R O A M. Um, anyways, I won't go super deep into that, uh, yet, but, um, it's pretty, pretty power. I don't want, I don't want to steal your thunder. I'm not sure what you've got here. Uh, but Rome is a pretty neat tool. They, the, the folks over at Rome like to emphasize that it's not really a note-taking app. They call it a tool for networked thought. So it's got some really neat features where you can link and connect notes,

not just at like a page or folder level like you would typically think of, but they call them block references. So almost visualize like a document where you have paragraphs and lines of text. And you can say, ah, this, you know, this idea here is similar to this, this other note I had over here. And you can literally start linking things down to like a paragraph or sentence level. Um, and the idea being that it's a really good tool for, um, I use it for generating, uh, blog posts and creative writing ideas is my primary use for that. So it's kind of like a, what do they use to call those? A brain, a brainstorm, not brainstorm. Like a mind map. It has like sort of elements of that, if that's what you're thinking of.

Yeah, it's got a similar sort of thought process behind it is that we don't really think in a linear fashion as human beings. We think in more of like a networked fashion. So kind of an interconnected node of a network of nodes and ideas and gives you some pretty powerful tools to, uh, to link those together. It's a relatively new piece of software that it's growing pretty quickly right now. A lot of, a lot of people are really into it. Yeah, no, this, this is actually a great pick of the week, Jason. Thunderstone. I totally stole it. Yeah, no, this is, this is really cool. I'm just looking at it right now to see how it works. And I, I, like, I kind of dig how that, that you kind of create things up and link them all together.

Yeah. That's a, that's a smart way of doing it. Yeah. So it's a, it's a tough thing to describe on a podcast. Um, but if you're into note-taking and sort of personal knowledge management and things like that, uh, go, go give it a look. It's, you can go on YouTube and find tons of videos and stuff that a visual is really important to kind of internalize how it works. Yeah. I'm going to have, I'm gonna have problems with mine too, because mine's all related to like, so i think you and i both agree like when you have a thought you need to get it down somewhere um a lot of the times like if i'm just walking around with my phone or whatever uh that's gonna be like uh an app i call drafts it's very similar to this uh it is super lightweight i type in something and it just like gets sucked up into

that and goes away. And then I can go back and I can tag it. I can organize it later. But like, I know that it went into drafts when I was somewhere, I wrote it down somewhere. It was probably in drafts. Like that's, that's where most of my, my little like notes like that, like where you're just saying like, I go, I grab a pen and paper. No, I reach over, grab my phone, type it in real quick, real fast or whatever, and send it to drafts. Yeah. It's interesting. You mentioned that, um, I mentioned Rome is kind of a newer tool. And so there, there are areas of that app that aren't really fully baked yet. And the idea of like a quick capture sort of inbox, like Rome has a tool you can use for that, but it's not great. And I know a lot of people in the Rome

community use drafts. I've heard that one mentioned a bunch of times as, as a really great tool for, like you said, just really quickly capturing ideas and then being able to, as I understand drafts, it kind of, you can link it up to things like Evernote and other tools. So it becomes kind of the inbox where then you can quickly send out ideas um to other pieces of software that you might use yeah and i mean it's i don't know if anybody in that that that like group has figured out that you could probably automate something in like a draft is pretty powerful you can probably automate something where it can like shoot it out to um like to There, there's a lot of, um, a lot of like real power users in the Rome community and Rome is definitely built as a tool for, um, I will say, I will sort of mention that

it's not a tool that you're going to pick up and start really using proficiently right away. Uh, there's, there's kind of a learning curve to it because it, it's kind of a blank canvas and you have to start understanding how you want to structure things. There's kind of a learning curve to it because it's kind of a blank canvas and you have to start understanding how you want to structure things. There's no right or wrong way to do things. So almost similar to like a coding environment in a very loose sense. You have to sort of approach it from that angle. Sure. And I would say on the opposite end is the notes app, you know, inside that you have on your phone. I just don't click with that one very well. I know they've made some changes to it, but like for quick capture drafts has been kind of that place for me to go. Um, now that's, if I'm on my phone, that's maybe if I'm on my computer, like, and I want to type something in,

um, when I'm sitting at my desk though, and I have the iPad kind of nearby, I, I tend to like grab a little iPad pencil and start scribbling notes and drawings and that kind of thing. And I've been looking around for a couple of different apps. The first one I came across was GoodNotes, which is which is really well done. It has like a concept of like notebooks inside of it. And in those notebooks, you can put pages and those pages can be like ruled. You can actually upload your own like type of paper, so to speak. So if you had like your own special way of taking notes, I suppose you could do that. But like, I just go with the dotted page. I've kind of settled on that to being like, it's not a clean,

empty page, but it's a, you know, it's a clean page and kind of like, there's some structure there. And if I want to have a structure, I can connect the dots. Um, so I've kind of like settled on that. Uh, I have no complaints at all with good notes. Like it works really well. Yeah, this is, this is nice looking. So, so yeah, I, I, um, was recently, I've been collaborating with a colleague on a, on a webinar that we're getting ready to do. And we were on a zoom call together, excuse me, kind of brainstorming and he had his iPad up on screen share and he had his pen and he was sketching out ideas as we were talking and kind of drawing diagrams and stuff. And that, that combination of technology

and now, as he was telling me anyways, like how good the writing has gotten, like that's always been sort of my hangup is like, I just can't imagine. And I just frankly am behind on this. Like I haven't gone out and experienced it myself, but I have a hard time imagining writing on an iPad surface

and having it actually feel like good, like hard time imagining writing on an ipad surface and having it actually feel like good like you're actually writing on paper and according to him at least it's really come a long way and and this combination of writing on tablets has has gotten at least on ipads has gotten really good it has the the the technology is fast like used to when you had like a stylus in your old palm pilot you would write something and uh the little line would uh follow your your just like a fraction of a second delay or something it was really yeah it's not so much that way anymore and and there's like they have a tip on the pencil that supposedly makes it touching the glass feel like I don't think it feels that way. There's a couple of like I have a paper like cover that you can put on the screen itself and it makes it look more matte and everything.

But like when I write on it, it feels a little bit closer to being paper. Maybe maybe not 100 percent, but it's still to me. It's still I don't know if there's any like argument here. Like it still feels like i'm writing on glass right i don't i don't really know like uh what what the difference would be anywhere else but the reason i i went this direction is because i i always have i always have something with me and i don't always have that little notebook that I used to like set in my backpack or in my pocket or whatever I don't always have that and they would get ruined um Florida's hot you know they would get wet if it's raining like it just was never fun to have a notebook and I've

got all these like little notebooks so I I just I thought get an ipad get a pen see how that works um and it works really well like writing drawing on an ipad i'm not an artist like i'm not you you saw some of the drawings i was showing you earlier they're pretty horrible like i was doing good just to put like a square on the page beats me you don't want to see my drawings. So, like, I can do well with, like, Photoshop and, like, Visio or whatever, but not with a pencil. Like, are you crazy? Like, that's... Going back to, like, just getting, like, handwritten notes and sketches and that kind of thing, like, just general ideas out of the head onto the paper, GoodNotes has been working really well for that.

So, I guess as, like, half of the pick of the... Well, I guess a third of the pick of the week this week. We'll run with GoodNotes has been working really well for that. So I guess as like half of the pick of the, well, I guess a third of the pick of the week this week will run with GoodNotes. One that is newer and more interesting looking now that I started playing with it is called PenBook. And it's almost like a GoodNotes clone. It uses the Apple pencil kit, which is their API for interacting with the pen.

So you have like the standard Apple controls on the screen. It has like the same concepts behind it. You have notebooks, you have pages, but they have a ton of like different pages that you can actually add in to a notebook. Like there's day planners, there's checklists, there's all sorts of stuff. But the neat thing is like the, it's kind of like, okay, yeah, that's cool. We've got all these templates and everything. You can use blank paper, you can use whatever. But the neat thing they really have done that I think is cool is that these pages are actually like interactive.

They're not, they're like, I forget what they call them. They call them smart pages or something like that. You can kind of like change elements in there. But if you put like a daily day planner or whatever type paper down, you can put your working hours like 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. I put them on there. And it's got kind of like a calendar feed on it.

And it shows you on the page where you are in the day as it kind of like the little line drops down. If I put in a page for Friday, it shows me in the little calendar that I'm working on Friday and it shows me that today is the 6th on there. Now tomorrow when I wake up, it's going to show me that the same page was going to show me that tomorrow is the 9th. So they're like little elements that update inside of this. And I think that's a really cool idea. Like you could have a calendar view and every day that little red dot is going to go from like the 8th, the 9th, the 10th, the 11th. It's going to go up.

So as your notes all stay on the same place. So really cool idea. And it works well because it's all kind of built on apple technologies and you get a ton of different types of paper with this so yeah i've been having fun with this live paper my thing is what they call it yeah what i'm looking at here these are cool i'm gonna have to go tell my wife that it's time to buy an ipad yeah that's what that's the whole point of this. Pick number four is the iPad. So, so the trick with the iPad too, um, and I, I, I've been using this a lot more, uh, as a, as a, like a general computer, uh, iPad with a keyboard and a mouse or an input method,

pencil, just a third, like a third input method beside your finger. Like you have your finger, you have the keyboard, you have a mouse. It's a whole different experience it really is i i've been shocked by this so uh would highly recommend checking that out like you're gonna have to go all in jason like you gotta get the ipad you're gonna have to tell her you need a you need like a a pencil you're gonna have to get i need it all it's all or nothing and you need to get the fancy case that they offer with the keyboard no like jokes aside i i'm with you i think that it's a um having those peripherals is like i i think would make a big difference because that was always my sort of issue with the ipad is i had a couple for work and i i thought they were nice for certain use cases when i was a project manager out in the field, there were some elements I liked about them.

But I'm telling you, even then, I used to carry around pen and pad. And I've just been a longtime believer in that. But in any event, I feel like things are not efficient when I'm just sort of pecking around on the iPad with my finger. Right. I'm, I'm a big hot keys user. I'm always trying to look for little efficiency gains I can find in, in interacting and not having to even take my hands off the keyboard if I can avoid it, um, to just move through things just a little bit quicker. Cause that stuff adds up over the course of a day and a week. Um, so that, that's always been my challenge with

iPads. I think on the go, that's obviously less of a concern when you're, when you're on the move, that's what you're looking for is something that just mobile and portable, but yeah, that to have the ability to hook those things up and, and engage with the iPad in that, in those different ways, I think would make all the difference. I can totally see that. Did you ever, since you were working in LA with iPads, did you ever have to deal with like the plan grid? Did you ever get into that? Plan grid? I remember that name rings a bell and I feel like we dabbled with it a little bit. Um, but I don't recall using it a lot. I would, I would come across entire projects where like, especially in like the high rise stuff where they would be like everything's in plan grid it's like okay well i guess i'm gonna pay for that but like it's it's a uh it's it's a kind of a construction based uh uh project management

slash you know red line slash that's right i remember that. Yeah. But it's all based around the floor. You upload your floor plans, and you can kind of go in and red line them up and make changes, you know, send it back to the architect for him to make changes or send questions in, do all that kind of stuff. But it's a really good piece of software. I used it towards the end of my integration career,

and I can only imagine it has gotten better. It was great then. Like, you could just load in. I would load it in all our houses, do the layouts on plan grid and just, you know, the guys out in the field would just go there and hit those punch lists and they would just boom, boom, boom, boom.

They'd hit everything out and they'd be done. You know, everything's in the cloud. It was great. Right. Yeah, definitely some valuable use cases there. I do remember that for sure. Planned grid, not a pick of the week. Everything else and the iPad Pro that Jason's going to get. That's right.

Just spent like three grand for you tonight. That's right. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. No problem. Just what we need. Cool. Well, no, this is fun. I love geeking out on these sorts of apps. So I'll definitely make a note of these. And if I do pull the trigger on an iPad, uh, like I, like I alluded to at the beginning of this conversation, I mean that it w it was just really compelling to watch my colleague kind of move around and engage and be able to sketch stuff out. And, um, it just looked fun.

Like it looked like a fun way to interact in a very creative way. Um, I think technology can sometimes be stifling. Like when we get into our productivity systems, they're great. in a very creative way. I think technology can sometimes be stifling. Like when we get into our productivity systems, they're great. I love them. I continue to explore Notion. We've talked about that and really getting my head around that.

Very powerful tool, big fan of it. But ultimately, just writing stuff down, I've always been a big fan of it. And so I'm very intrigued by the progress that seems to be being made in terms of of that convergence yeah yeah it's with the with the pin i i think the they're clearly taking ipad it feels like with the the wwc like they're moving the ipad and the software around it towards the mac they have been been for years, right? The iPads are more powerful now than the current laptops that are out. And so it's like they have been

moving those up the chain. And everybody was worried that they were going to like take the Mac and like turn it into an iPad. And it's like, oh, here's your here's your Mac iPad. But it seems like what they're trying to do is give you like, here's an iPadad it's really powerful it's like you're going to use it for everything but you also have this you know option of using a really powerful mac computer to do kind of the same thing uh and the software is all kind of looking the same you know to give that right like right now if you go from an ipad to a mac there are elements that are like left over from the early days of Mac, like that don't make sense when you're looking from iPad. And now with the new softwares that'll be

coming out later in the year, everything's kind of like slowly converging. So with that, I think things that have been not, you kind of said like technology stifles you. I think the technology has had been stifled itself just because of like the interface, the constraints on like the power behind the behind it and everything. Now, I think we're getting to a point where the iPad really does make a compelling use case for like a real computer. It's not there yet. I know people are going to like email me or text me like, but no, like it's getting very,

very, very close to the day where you're going to it's like, well like it's getting very very very close uh to the day where you're gonna it's like well what piece of glass do you want to buy you know it's like it's all you ever need yeah makes sense cool good stuff if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. And we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month.

Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about watching the movies on a river. That's kind of a wild story.

We're not really talking about it yet, but I think we need to go over there and talk about that a little bit more. A little inside reference, yeah. Theurgence of of drive-in movie theaters now leading to boat in movie theaters anyways it's interesting i i wouldn't mind driving theaters i always wanted to do that like they're fun we used to do them in high school i remember that i've only grown up in places where the weather is not quite cooperative for a drive-in movie theater but like um there there was there were a couple in Texas but they weren't like they weren't like they were they were actually adult drive-in movie theaters which is like it's kind of strange it's like that's a whole another show it's a whole other yeah

really that's really what you want to do okay all right you're in the woods do what you got to do that's funny all right well if you're looking for other ways to help the show we would also appreciate leaving a positive review on itunes or in your podcast app of choice those positive reviews definitely help more people find the show so please take a minute to do that we would really appreciate it all right well that wraps up this week, Jason. I'm going to go try and put that fire out in my yard from those fireworks blowing up. Get after it. Oh man. Well, luckily I guess there's no fires here because it was just like absolutely every, every 4th of July is like eight o'clock on the money. It just pours down rain, which is,

which is like horrible if you think about it, but like what happens is like all the grass gets wet. So there's no fire. We can't, we can't catch any fire. Yeah. Silver linings. Yeah, exactly. That's good. All right, Seth. Well, I hope you enjoy your weekend fun show this week and thanks everyone for tuning in and Seth, we'll talk to you next week. All right. Have a good one. All right. Take care.