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In this episode of Friday Finds, Marty and Linn discuss Streamlabs’ new editing tool for podcasting, the importance of understanding the legal aspects of using free tools, and the need for graphical access for the blind and visually impaired. They also touch on Elon Musk’s Twitter troubles and the importance of reading the fine print. Tune in to stay informed and be inspired!
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Join Marty, Michael, and Damashe as they discuss their essential tech go bags and the gadgets they can’t travel without. From power banks to cables, they share their must-have items and handy travel tips. Don’t miss this insightful conversation on making your tech travels more efficient and enjoyable.
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[MUSIC]
> This has been an ACB Community Call.
[MUSIC]
> This Unmute Presents Community Call was hosted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2023.
[MUSIC]
Hello everyone and welcome back to another un-mute.
Good to see you all again.
Couple announcements here at the top.
I want to remind everyone to please be respectful
for their questions and give everyone the same opportunity
you would to get your questions answered.
Also, we’ll take all first-hands.
If we get through everyone first time through,
we will take second hands or second questions.
Also, tonight, Mac Bytes with Bits is at 5 Eastern 8
five Eastern, eight, or five West, and eight Eastern.
And there was a mistake that went out
and that was a different night.
So the Mac Bites with Bits is actually tonight.
All the information is gonna be in today’s email.
So tonight Mac Bike with Bits,
make sure you check that out.
That’ll be a good one.
Also, I wanna introduce you all to Michael Deuz.
He is going to be here with us
and he’s part of the team now
and he’s gonna be helping answering your tech questions.
So if you see him say hello.
And lastly, the question of the day is,
do you prefer iPhone, Android or blind shell?
And what do you like and what do you hate
about whichever your choice is?
And with that being said, you can raise your hand
and let us know your thoughts on that.
And Michael, what’s going on?
How you doing, buddy?
Oh yeah, Bell, we’re going to throw a question of the day out to people.
Forgot to warn you about that.
So just a quick heads up.
Glad you can roll with it.
So we love your participation.
So feel free to raise your hand to answer the question for me, Marty.
I like them all.
I have frustrations with them all, but I like them all.
My primary device is an iPhone.
I am very comfortable on an iPhone in a blind shell, but I can use an Android
device. I like the consistency of iOS.
which is kind of ironic because one of the frustrations that people have is the
inconsistencies of iOS. So I like how if I use the web browser or I’m using my
keyboard then I know what to expect for the most part. That’s not always the case
with Android. So basically in a nutshell is what you’re saying is you
can’t live with them but you can’t live without them. Exactly and then the
blind shell has that really simple interface so I really am used to that. So
So before we get to these hands and jump over to Belle to ask her to tell us who the first
person is, I want to give you a quick recap and this is going to take a little bit longer
than it normally does.
I’ll hand it back over to Marty and he can ask for hands because Marty never told us
which one he prefers, although I already know.
Yesterday we had two episodes that published and real quick caveat if, I’m sorry, yesterday
was only one.
I don’t even know what day it is anymore.
If you are not subscribed to the unmute podcast feed, feel free to get subscribed and you’ll
get all of this content. Some of this content is its own podcast feed. So if you’d rather just get
some of this content, then I will let you know about that when we go over it. And probably right
after convention, you will be able to get more of the information you’re looking for in a granular
form. So if you only want to get a certain type of content, then that’ll be an option in the very
near future. However, let’s talk about the content that we’ve posted since last time we all connected
Yesterday, Technically Working, which is its own podcast feed, we posted the episode 15 with
Demasi and myself called it Focus Rules because we talk a little bit about focus. We talk a little
bit about real life focus and being able to get things accomplished and not overcommitting
yourself, which I am guilty of doing myself. So check that out if you’re interested.
On Sunday evening, we chatted with Michael Doyes and we published an episode called “Stream
ACB Media and Podcasts with the New ACB Link App.” So you can take a listen to that. We talked about
it last Sunday, but we go more in depth about it. And then earlier on Sunday, I showed you how to
use WayAround. So the WayAround tag and labeling system is now available on the Blind Shell Classic
too. So that Sunday, I published a demo walking you through that process. On Saturday, IACAS
WWDC2023 recap wrap up was published. So Marty, Michael and a couple of other people jumped on
there to talk about what Apple announced throughout the week of WWDC. On Friday,
finds, Lynn and Marty sat down and talked about WWDC updates,
AI in tech and virtual reality updates for people with visual
impairments. So check that out. On Thursday, Lucy came and
talked about the magic of Lady A follow up mode, whisper mode and
a few other modes that you’ll want to check out as well. And
then Shellphone Show, which is its own podcast feed on
Wednesday, we made the announcement about the way around
application being available. And then of course, the ACB
community replay for June six was published. So that’s a quick
recap of what we’ve published in the last week, Marty, what’s
your answer to the question of the day?
I prefer iPhone only because I’ve been using it for so long.
It’s what I’m used to. So I’ve been sticking with that. And
like everything, sometimes I love it. And sometimes I hate
it. So
we got first, though.
All right, first up is Kristi.
Hey, Kristi, how you doing?
Hello, how are you doing?
Good, thank you.
Good, good. My question is, I’m looking for an accessible, but kind of cheap air
printer. Any ideas on that? And my phone of choice is the iPhone because that’s all
I’ve ever used. Yes, I do like it. I hate it.
That sounds like it’s going to be the consensus for everyone, I think we’ll see how we go.
Yeah.
Do you have a suggestion, Marty?
So a question for you is in this printer, are you wanting to print wirelessly?
Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean, like from my phone, and I don’t have a computer.
Yeah, so the first and most important thing when you’re looking is to make sure that it
has the capability to be able to print from iOS devices.
That’ll be something really important.
And it should see that a center.
every single printer has that option. So that’s definitely
something we want to make sure that it does have that. Michael,
what do you think?
So we use a printer and Christy, if you stick around for the next
1520 minutes, I will get the model number. But we have a
printer, it is not fully accessible, and maybe fully
transparent with people. It does have a touchscreen interface to
be able to get it connected to the Wi Fi network. But once
Once you’re connected to the Wi-Fi network, it does have an Ethernet port, so that’s an
option for you as well.
But once it’s on the network with your device, all you have to do is choose the print option,
and then it shows up in the printer list and you can print to it from your phone or your
computer.
And I will look it up.
I believe it’s an app sim, but I don’t remember the model number.
But if you bear with me about 15 minutes or so, I will get that information for you.
So this is my.
I’ve had AirPrint, they call them AirPrint printers
that work with the iPhone.
And so any printer you’re looking for
needs to have the word AirPrint associated with it.
Some look I’ve had is with HP printers
and they do make them without touch screens.
We have one here that’s an all-in-one
that does not have a touch screen.
And you configure the wireless on that printer
with the HP Smart app.
I’m not sure of the accessibility of that app.
I only have to use it once every two or three years
when I need to reset up the printer on a new Wi-Fi network.
But once it’s set up, it’s just seamless.
It just works really well.
I know Brother and Epson also make AirPrint printers.
And the one that we have here,
no more than $100, if not less.
And Canon even makes a portable,
like where you could throw it in a backpack printer.
It’s about $250, but it’s air print as well.
So really neat stuff.
Yeah, and I’d want something small like shoe.
I mean, something that I think,
I’m not necessarily carried,
but I don’t have a lot of space.
So I don’t want something really heavy and bulky and big.
So there you go.
Michael, do you happen to know the model number
for that HP that you have?
I could see if I could go find it real quick though.
we can give you.
And I’m looking through some of my resources here.
So we’ll share some more information as soon as we have.
Okay, first of all, in answer to the question of the day,
I am an Apple girl all the way.
I have my iPhone 14 pro, I have my iPad mini 6th generation and my Mac mini M2.
And I am just having a delightful time.
Awesome.
I’m in your camp.
So there you go.
Yeah.
And I would never go back.
I’m sorry.
I, there’s not much of anything that I like about windows.
And because I’m lucky enough to be of an age where I’m not working anymore, I don’t have
to worry about that stuff. There you go. So, um, so I do have two quick questions. One is, um,
where do I go on my Mac to change the, um, like my, my email notifications are reading out the whole
message every time, um, an email comes in, which I find very annoying when I’m hosting and stuff.
I mean, I’ve got my my voiceover set so that nobody else hears it except me and my headphones
But it still drives me crazy
So I would like to change that and the other thing I have for you is on my
iPad mini I have recently moved to Tennessee and all of my other devices are set up beautifully and
My iPad though in the weather app regardless of what I have tried to do. I’ve gone into location settings
I’ve gone into weather, I’ve gone into everywhere, still gives me all the statistics for Phoenix.
And I don’t live there anymore. Okay. Though it’s interesting, I don’t really always want to know
that. Okay, so here’s the deal with the weather app. What you have to do is do a double click
and hold on the actual weather icon. And then you want to change it a little side menu will pop open.
and you’ll want to change it to local. And then when you do that, it’ll update to where your
current location is now. You’ll notice that when you do that, it’ll be stuck on before you change
it. It’ll be stuck on where you previously were. So once you do that and you update it to local,
then you’re going to be fine. You’ll see, it’ll just update to where you are now.
It’s a weird thing. I actually had that bug for a long time ago and I couldn’t figure it out.
And finally I did.
Okay. Well, that’s awesome because I have not found anywhere where it says to do that.
Yeah, it’s not obvious at all, but Michael is the, you were going to say something.
Yes, this is Michael again. You can actually add as many locations you want in the weather app.
So you could just use a three finger flick left and right to go between them.
It is in the weather app. There’s a, where you can bring up a list and you just go and edit and
and add in that list.
And so like I have Austin twice
because if I’m traveling,
even though it’s my current location most of the time,
I still want it to, if I want to look back
whenever I’m heading home.
And so I add Austin as a location
and add other cities that I travel to,
so I could see the weather in those places.
You could even get push notifications if you add those.
So like my family lives in a town
called Port Neches, Texas.
So I add that town and I see what,
when rain starts and stops where my family is.
So it’s very, yeah, very nice.
Is it a current iPad Mini?
if you’re updated to the current operating system,
when you open the weather app,
you’ll see that if you open the sidebar,
you’ll see those low, the very top one is local.
And then all the cities that you have saved
will also be there in the list.
And if you click on one,
it’ll change the center to show you all the information
of whichever city you click on.
and yesterday it would show me Franklin, Tennessee,
which is where I am.
Then if I went out of the weather app and came back in,
it always still showed me Phoenix.
so you wanna go play with that, Desi.
And to answer your other question,
because I had to do this for the same exact reason
I wanted to disable my email notifications
from being read out.
So two things, number one, you can always close your email,
which I forget about myself,
and that will stop the notification while you’re live.
That’s the basic solution.
Number two, if you go into system settings
and you go in the table on the left down to notifications,
you can actually disable, what I’ve done is
You can configure them how you would prefer them to be,
but what I did is I just went ahead and disabled
all my mail notifications.
That way when I’m ready to do email, I open email.
And if I get a new email,
I seem to still get the sound of a new email,
but VoiceOver does not read the message like it used to.
Well, I actually was able to turn off the sound,
so I’m not getting the sound,
but I’m still getting the message.
So yeah, okay.
’cause I think I went right
and I didn’t even think to go left.
So duh, all right.
Well, thank you so much.
I love the new ACVLink app.
So, and I, for all of you who are Mac users native on the Mac now as well,
and it does work great with voiceover.
I swear I’m my own choice. I love the iPhone. I like the iPhone.
I’m not going to say love. I like it, but it’s the only,
it’s because it’s what I have. So yeah. Awesome.
Thanks Monica. Thank you. All right.
Pam. Hey Pam. Okay.
I too love the new ACB link app.
My phone of choice.
Well, I’m a little like Desi.
I’m an Apple girl.
My computer is a Mac.
That’s all I’ve ever had is a Mac.
And my phone, the only smartphone I’ve ever had,
only smartphones have been iPhones.
And, you know, occasionally, you know, yeah,
I’ll run into a bug or a glitch or whatever,
but overall I love it.
I would not want to go with anything else.
I’ve never used a blind shell.
I understand they’re really nice
and they can do more and more with it now,
but I would not trade anything in the world for my iPhone.
Thanks Pam.
Next up is Pierre.
The first one is, I’m in ACB leadership
and they send emails and most of them have attachments.
How do I get to attachments?
What are you on?
you’ll be in the body of the email.
You scroll down to the bottom
and you’ll see there’s a icon there
that’s gonna represent the attachment.
It’ll say the name of the attachment
and then you do a single finger double tap
and it will open up.
Sometimes it’ll take one extra second.
If it’s not actually downloaded, it’ll download,
then you can open it up.
you wanna go into the body of that email
that you’re looking for with the attachment.
You wanna scroll all the way down to the bottom
and that’s where the attachment’s gonna be.
Typically it’s all the way at the bottom,
kind of on the left side of the screen.
And it’ll tell you there what the name of the attachment is.
If you have more than one, they’ll all be down there.
You do a single, do you use voiceover?
and that will open up the attachment.
right now I’m using an iPod.
So I realized at the end of this year,
I’m going to have to go to something else. Now, I was reading an article the other day
from CNN and they said that not all phones are going to take iOS 17. So are the phones
like the 2020 and 2021, 23, are they going to take that?
Yes, anything that current will work with the new operating system. I think anything
from the 10 R and back is or what is it Michael?
It’s the 10 and back.
So the 10 R and newer are supported.
The 10 and back are not.
So if you have an X or a 10 or an eight
or an original iPhone SE, those will not be supported
but anything newer than the X will be supported.
Like the 2023 will do it.
The 2022 iPhone SE, if that’s what you’re looking at
will be supported.
Yes.
Okay, good.
Thanks.
Yeah, no problem.
That iPhone SE Pure is going to have a similar form factor to the iPod Touch that you have.
I think it’s going to be slightly smaller. Right, Michael?
The iPod Touch would be smaller than that, but it’s not much different. So it’s very similar in
form factor. I wanted to mention going back to one of the first questions about printers. Mine
is the HP Deskjet 2652. So whoever asked that question in the beginning there, I think it was
Kristy, Kristy, did you get that?
Thank you very much.
What is it?
Say it again, please.
All right, thank you.
All right, thanks.
I guess I would say the iPhone is my favorite,
but that’s pretty much any smartphone I’ve ever had.
But I think had the blind shell too been out
when I was looking for a phone, I might’ve considered it.
Except I know it sort of works on AT&T,
but I’d have trouble.
I live very rural and like sprint and stuff is not available.
And so I’d have a hard time with that.
But anyway, I like the blind shell too though.
But so I don’t know, do you guys have any knowledge?
Oh, I’m sure you have knowledge, but.
Well, I have a Google forms question.
a form and I have a question that require that has check boxes
and the person filling it out checks all that apply. But then
I want an other and then I want like an edit field for them to
type in their other, you know, can can that be done?
So it can be done. I don’t know. So naturally what you do is
set up the checkboxes so they can check all the checkboxes.
That’s right. You can do is add an edit box after the check boxes. What I think you’re looking to
do though is only conditionally show the edit box if the other check box is checked. That’s right.
And with Google Forms, I don’t know if this can be done. I can look if no one else raises their
hand with an answer. I can tell you how to do it with Gravity Forms, but that doesn’t help you
because that’s only WordPress. But I will check and see and follow up with you. Okay. All right.
Thank you. No problem. Thanks for asking. Who got the next
belt? Our next person is an iPhone. I just gave you the
prompt to unmute. I wonder if they’re favorite from these
iPhone. Hello, my name is Darlene. Hi, Darlene. How are
you? Okay, so I am still kind of in the Windows world, not
willingly, but I’m there. So the most recent big upgrade to JAWS
kind of killed my laptop. And when I call, okay, so it, it locks up and it’s really slow to repeat
what I’m typing. And it has some other issues. And when I call Freedom Scientific, they go,
Oh, your laptop needs a tune up. It’s not us, it’s your laptop. So I’m kind of willing to play along,
but I’m having a heck of a time finding somebody to come and give my laptop a tune up.
Any suggestions? I live in Portland, Oregon. Any suggestion?
Yes, I can get you information of someone actually in Oregon. He’s in Wilsonville,
but they do make house calls. Okay, yep, need that.
I will have to find that information and get that to you. Is there any way you could email us at
feedback@unmute.show and I could email you the information?
Okay, let me write that down. Feedback.
at unmute.show. Okay, I will do that. Just email there and I will get you the information.
Okay, thank you very much. Yeah, no problem. Next up is Dan. Hey, Dan, how you doing?
Hi, I’m a new guy to this show. No problem, welcome.
Yeah, thank you. I’m very impressed with what you guys are doing. You’re taking questions about the
Mac? Is that right? Yes. Okay. My question is, how do I bring up or open Spotlight search on a
MacBook Air? I’m using voiceover and running Big Sur. Michael, you want to take this one, Michael
DeWis? Yep. Oh, Michael Babcock or Timothy Michaels. For Spotlight, you know what, I use
spotlight for everything on my computer. And it’s the same
whether you’re using voiceover or not command space will bring
up spotlight.
Well, when I do command space, it brings up Siri.
If you what you probably want to do is change what you’re
pressing to bring up Siri, right?
You’re pressing and holding a little too. Yes. So if you press
and hold the spacebar for more than a second, it’s going to
bring up Siri. So what I would what I tell people is hold the
command key down with one, I hold it down with my thumb, you
can hold it down with whatever you want. And then with your
other finger, just press the spacebar and release it and
then release command. And that will just open spotlight because
if you hold the two of them together too long, it will
activate Siri.
Wait, I’m a little bit confused. Okay, I should hold the command.
He and then release the spacebar. Okay.
Yep. Because then that will avoid you from holding both of
them too long. And then so what I do is I hold Command key, press
and release spacebar, and then I release the command key. And it
sounds like a long process, but it’s really a simple process.
Okay, okay, I will. I will do that. Yeah, thank you. And then
once I get into that, and if I, I type my my search query, it
will automatically bring up the the search results. I don’t have
to try and find a search button.
Is that correct?
That’s correct.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you.
And one more follow up on that Michael D a question for you, because I do not
use spotlight, I use launch bar.
Um, do you need to use your voiceover keys to navigate the results, Michael,
or do you know if you can just use up and down arrow keys?
I don’t remember.
I don’t remember.
I’ve, I’ve really used it with voiceover, but I could try it real quick.
So give me just a second.
Yeah, that would be awesome.
And then I believe you just had to enter to accept the response that it comes up
with, but Michael will chat while Belle tells us who we have next.
Herbie.
Hey, Herbie.
All right.
Well, first of all, Michael, I got to ask you something.
You know, you mentioned gravity forms earlier.
Do you find that they bring you down at all?
Yeah, no, no, they gravity form solves all your problems when
it comes to WordPress forms.
Okay.
Um, two things.
First of all, um, let’s, I want to go back to the spotlight thing.
I think you do have the best results when using the voiceover keys.
But I wanted to mention that you can go into the Siri settings
and change it to something different
so it will not conflict with the spotlight.
So I have my Siri set to option space
rather than command space.
is you can just go in and customize
all the keystrokes completely.
’cause I don’t use option space for anything
so it doesn’t conflict with anything.
So that is another recommendation.
So they don’t conflict.
Well, first of all, an iPhone user through and through tried the Android a little bit.
It was okay.
Sometimes I thought the keyboard was a little bit more responsive, but then I felt like
I also had more focusing issues.
Maybe I didn’t have the greatest of phone when I was playing with it.
But one of the things I really wish that Apple would do, though, that Android does is I wish
we could have the number row on top instead of under more numbers but um I
you know that I think would be really nice maybe I always have the period at
the bottom you know it’s just those are just some punctuation marks to probably
more likely going to use than others and so you know just I think they can make
things a little bit more intuitive that way but I’m I use iPhone since 2010 it
and I really love how it talks to my Mac and my Mac talks to it and they both
conspire against me but that’s fine. So I really don’t have a question. I
wanted to answer your question. iPhone, Apple, through and through but one thing I did want to
mention which I think is really interesting is because it’s never get
talked about you know and there’s always questions about should you ever upgrade
when and if should you ever upgrade Alexa devices?
So I used to have, at home I have the Echo 4,
like the full-sized one.
And for travel purposes, I still kept it around,
or kept around rather I should say, a dot third generation.
Well, I really, one of the things I noticed
with the three, my dot three versus the four is
there is a major difference in the response time
for some things.
So for instance, I use my echo a lot to set reminders.
And when I was setting reminders on my dot 3,
it was like wading through molasses
on the back of a turtle.
And so I got a fifth echo dot–
the fifth generation echo dot, and the difference
is noticeable.
It understands me better.
It responds to me that much quicker.
And so I just wanted to throw that out there.
Ever wonder, should you upgrade your Alexa devices?
I would say that the answer is yes, there is value in doing so.
Good to know, because I’ve not considered upgrading my Alexa device.
So I appreciate that, Herbie.
I still have one of the second-gen Echos and a third-gen Echo Dot.
And those things have been–
the only thing I’ve updated is the Echo Show.
But most of my devices are just–
because they’ve worked so well.
I will say when I’ve upgraded from second generation Alexis to third generations,
there were some noticeable differences in how the dot was, for instance.
The fourth generation is where I really noticed a difference in the overall way of response to you.
And so that’s where I really noticed the difference in starting with the fourth gen is
the response time is a lot better.
All I can say is may the Echo Tap rest in peace. That was an amazing device.
It was a portable Bluetooth speaker that ran ALEXA. I have so many around here. I know they’ll
activate. So I want to point out you do use the arrow keys with Spotlight with VoiceOver.
Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that. I do see we have another hand here. So I’m going to get
that and thank you, Herbie, for that because, as I said, I don’t really think about upgrading
A-Lady devices. That’s definitely something if your things are running a little slow,
you may want to consider and they are affordable. But I do see we only have one hand. So I’m
guessing that means the rest of the probably 15 to 20 of you don’t have opinions on your
favorite smartphone device. If you haven’t shared with us, please don’t hesitate to raise your hand
and engage. Bell, who do we have next? Next up is Jeff. Hey, Jeff, how you doing?
I’m good guys. Thank you. I’ll try to be brief. iPhone 12 Pro Max was my first iPhone
after years of Pixel phones and I would never consider going back. I got really sick of the,
there are so many issues like Bluetooth, build quality. I could go on but I’ll stop there.
And that’s coming from a person like I haven’t been blind
my whole life, but relatively recently.
So I had to learn a whole new system going to the iPhone,
but I still wouldn’t consider going back.
The second thing, a couple of months ago,
you guys helped with, I was having a problem
getting short codes for two factor authentication.
And my carrier is Google Fi.
It finally got worked out.
I don’t, maybe it was because of them,
but after at least a 50 email exchange
and giving them as much information as I could,
about a month after that, they started working again.
So anybody that uses Google Fi,
if you’re having short code issues,
just yeah, make sure you work with Google Fi.
They’re actually really good to work with.
One more thing. – Awesome.
Marty, you helped me a couple of months ago.
I have three Apple TV 4Ks,
like this past generation, current generation.
So the one that just came back
or came out November, December of last year,
they’re all connected via HDMI.
Each one was having sound issues
like where voiceover, the voice kind of drops out.
It sounds like the voiceover voice was getting truncated
and you suggested using the, use the phone.
And I haven’t gotten used to that.
it’s just a preference thing like I’m an older guy.
So I kind of like having that feel of the remote,
maybe not, who knows, but do you have any idea
what that problem, like that truncation problem is?
One other thing is they’re all connected via HDMI,
but they’re all audio wise different.
Like one’s just TV speakers, another one’s a soundbar,
another one is through a receiver
and then, you know, surround sound.
And thank you.
Have you tried using the remote that comes with it
opposed to your phone to see
if that solves the truncate problem?
And that’s, I mean, I had the truncation problem
from the start.
And so you suggested using the phone
and that is a solid workaround,
but I really like not having to go get my phone
and you know, I thought it was this and that.
It’s gonna be hard to go through every single thing
here right now.
You can always email us and we can try and get back to you
via email and see what we can do to help you more.
But I would first to check to make sure all the boxes
are updated to the most recent updates.
And the thing about all the speaker settings
and everything else,
if they’re hooked up to different TVs,
they’re gonna have, you know,
one has soundbar, one doesn’t.
One has external speakers, one doesn’t.
You’re gonna kind of have to go through the settings
find your happy place to figure out what will work best for you
for each one. Unless you have or you get all three identical
setups, you know, then you can make them all exactly the same.
But otherwise, they’re going to all be a smidge different,
because they have different hardware, unfortunately. Sure.
So go Michael D.
So I, I’ve been doing a lot of research into this because I’m
I do gaming and I have all of these devices hooked up to one
TV and so there’s always some issues you know with with sound one thing you know
if you’re using multiple TVs and you’re having this issue one thing to check is
you know possibly the brand of cables if if it’s a sound issue if the phone is
working just fine then it’s definitely an Apple TV problem it could be the
voice but one thing to check is the type of TV how old the TV is and what it
supports as far as HDMI audio and if you’re using, you know,
up to date cables and things like that. So there’s like, like
Marty said, there’s so many things that go into this. But if
it’s multiple TVs, and you’re having the same issue, then that
does sound like more of an Apple TV issue.
And what can help troubleshoot it is if you can capture a quick
recording of it, because I wonder if it’s not truncating. But
if for some reason, your finger sliding across the bottom remote,
And so voiceover starting to read one thing, but then it
skips to the next thing. So there’s some accessibility
things you can change. And and if we had a recording of it, we
could tell if it’s truncating or voiceover jumping to the next
element.
Okay, there is, and along those lines, and started to interrupt
Michael, when, okay, like I have an app that’s called channels.
And so the quickest way to stop the truncation I found is to, you
go back to the home screen, then open channels. And then for whatever reason, in channels,
on a certain screen, it’ll stop truncating immediately.
(laughs)
Well, I’m wondering that when you open up that particular app,
if it pulls down a lot of data when you open it up and it’s just struggling.
So maybe you need to open that up and let it be open for 5, 10 minutes to make sure it gets
whatever it needs downloaded to it. And then when you start using it, it won’t be trying to download
and trying to perform a task at the same time.
That actually also makes me suspect the channels that may be self voicing because there are some
apps that do that. I’m wondering if that’s the other culprit too.
Okay. Hey, I’ll grab the recording and thanks for your time. Sorry to take up so much.
No, it’s all right. Thanks a lot. If you have any other questions,
go ahead and email us and we’ll try and get back to you.
Copy that.
All right, Bill. All right, our next person is, has a phone number starting in 301 ending in 887.
Hi, good afternoon. This is Nate from Maryland. Hello, how are you? I’m doing well and I hope
you’re doing well as well. You’re doing good, thank you. And I use iPhones because, because
our Apple customer service, both are toll free and going into a store and they’ll take a look
your phone and check it out. Google is just not as pervasive in my area, which is Washington,
DC, or… And the question is, I want to use an artificial intelligence app such as chat,
GPT, or something else to learn a foreign language. I’d like to be able to speak with
a computer, have the computer answer me, and just have a conversation as well as have the computer
generate vocabulary lists with English translations.
Is that all possible?
And where would I start?
> Is this on your computer or your phone,
or what device would you want to do this on?
> Well, can I do it?
iPhone is easier, but I have a PC.
> An app called Duolingo.
> I could sit on the couch and do it.
I have a desktop.
> Yeah. There’s an app called Duolingo,
which could help with this.
I don’t have any experience with it,
and I suspect they’re using some form of AI.
Marty or Michael, do either of you have ideas?
in their app to help with this.
I just, I’ve never used Duolingo,
so I just do not know of the accessibility of the app,
but I do know that it does have an AI component now.
you had to just like play games on it,
and that’s not my thing, but I’ll check that out.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the more direct app for that.
But that being said, however, with AI and where you’re going,
sounds like a great project for AI.
Doesn’t it, Michael?
Yes.
Thank you.
Also, also your email is the last part of the email address
that’s SHOW or SHOW.
SHOW.
So it’s feedback@unmute.show.show.
Thank you very much.
Have a great day.
You too.
Thank you.
You’re welcome.
And next is Kathy.
Hey Kathy, how are you?
Hey everybody.
Can you hear me?
Yep.
We can hear you loud and clear.
How are you?
Fine.
You know, you’ve seen me into raising my hand to vote, but I don’t have a question.
That’s okay.
Maybe I do now, but anyway, it’s I’m an Apple person.
I have a Mac and iPad ninth generation and an iPhone 14 pro looking to get another Mac
because it’s a 15 pro, you know, and the screen doesn’t work.
Everything else works.
Brand new 15 inch MacBook Air just came out.
It’s a great computer.
I know.
That’s what I’m looking at.
Yeah.
I’m going to try to go to the Apple store in Lancaster, which is about maybe 50 miles
for me, but I want to have hands on before I do, you know, make
arrangements and all that and talk to them and see what the 13
inch might be big enough. It’s cheaper. But it doesn’t have as
much as thing as this new 15 inch.
Well, it depends on what you’re doing with it. You know, I mean,
you may not do anything crazy. I’m just doing email and, and
word processing and
you could totally get away with the M one. If that’s where you
choose to go and save a few dollars, it’ll still be amazing
for you. I mean, any day to day tasks, any of the M1 processors, whether it’s M1 or M2,
will be amazing for you. Yes. Yeah. I want to be able to have people see me on Zoom if I choose to
put my video on. But right now, even if I… If you’re going from an older machine
that’s got Intel in it, you said yours was put from 15, is that what you said?
Yeah. When you go from a 15 to a current model with an M processor in it, you’re not even going
going to believe how fast it is. It’s just totally a different world.
Yeah. I also want to do a commercial for the Mac training that I received from
Chanel Allen last year. It was amazing. She’s such a good teacher.
And I saw on email yesterday that there were a few slots open.
Anybody’s interested in attending, you know, her class.
Yeah. We try and recommend her for Mac training as much as possible. She’s great.
Yes. So Herbie, tell her I’m working on things I’m still practicing and doing,
but hopefully, you know, I’ll be able to buy a Mac pretty soon. Thank you, everybody.
All right. Well, have a great day. Thank you.
Thank you very much for raising your hand when we were calling for it.
Yeah, you saved me into it. All right. You feel bad yet?
We’re shedding tears.
Bye-bye.
Who do we got next, Beau?
Sandra.
Hey Sandra, how are you doing?
I’m fine.
First of all, the question of the day, I guess, is about the favorite device.
I would say my iPhone 14, I went from an SE to a 14.
I don’t mind that it doesn’t have the home button.
I’m used to that now.
I don’t have any other Apple devices.
I also do have a Zoom question,
if that’s okay for me to ask.
Any questions?
All right, as long as it’s tech-based.
I use the Zoom app a lot on my phone.
I have no problem with that,
but I’ve noticed when I use Zoom on my desktop with Windows,
I can get into the participants list
and look at all the names,
tells me if their video was on or off,
if they’re muted or unmuted,
but I can’t figure out, it doesn’t tell me who is speaking.
And I don’t know if there’s a way to do that or not
to get around that.
and someone is gonna correct me
because I’m probably gonna get it wrong.
I believe it’s control shift T
and that will tell you who is speaking.
And if you stick around till the end,
I’m sure someone will correct me if that is wrong.
Belle, I’m gonna call out on you.
I know you’re not supposed to.
Is that the right keystroke?
So yes, Control + Shift + T.
And that will, what that does is it will announce to you
the person who’s currently speaking.
Now this does work with, I can guarantee 2023 or 2022.
I don’t know about anything earlier than that.
So hopefully that helps you out.
Give that a try.
Thank you.
any issues. If you ever find yourself stuck in zoom and you
can’t figure out what’s going on, you can’t get to where
you’re used to try the F six key that will save you because it
will move you to different sections inside of zoom. Okay.
Perfect. Well, thanks a lot. Thank you. F six is the best
windows keystroke ever. Yes, sir. Press.
All right. Next up is Chris. Hey, Chris, how you doing? Hey,
Hey, fellas, how you doing?
I prefer both personally.
I think that both Android OS and iOS operating systems,
can you all hear me still?
because Android offers some freedoms and customizations
that you just can’t get on iOS.
And iOS also offers that stability of,
hey, if I get an iPhone, no matter what version it is,
generally the software is not going to go crazy on me
and do some crazy changes and things of that sort.
So I prefer both.
But did you guys hear that there was somebody
that took over the source code for Soundscape
and now they’re testing it and test flight
and they’re calling it OpenScape now?
I don’t know if you guys heard that, but if you didn’t,
they are testing out Soundscape.
Supposedly nothing has changed.
All the beacons and audio sounds are still the same.
I guess a gentleman took over that
because Microsoft made it public as far as the source code.
So I just wanted to let everybody know
if you guys are interested, I can send the feedback,
the link to the test flight
if somebody’s willing to try it out.
Because I know it got full there for a little bit.
And I haven’t heard it yet.
On yesterday’s double tap, if you search for double tap,
I open up with a 3D audio demo of the OpenScape application
and show people using voiceover,
a quick exploration of the interface,
and then you can hear the beacons and action tips.
but thank you Chris for bringing it up.
you know, right.
Some people may not have heard it on the call here
that don’t go listen over there.
So just want to let y’all know.
It’s still in testing.
I don’t know if it’s completely open up yet again,
but Soundscape will be coming back,
but it’s gonna be called OpenScape.
So just want to let y’all know.
It’s an open project,
so people can contribute to it and things like that.
I’m very excited.
I sent the link to Michael on Saturday
because I saw it, I think, on Mastodon or somewhere.
I don’t know where.
But it’s very exciting.
Michael, did you say that you saw some, a little bit less
accurate accuracy with that compared to soundscapes or?
No. So what happened?
And it, two things.
Number one, I want to preface this and I know we’re getting low on time
with everything that I say is beta.
So please don’t say what I, yeah, take it with the grain of salt.
I also was running it on the iOS 17 beta too.
So that could play into it.
But it didn’t announce right when I got on top of a beacon.
And that was what I noticed.
But I was able to tell when I hit that point and not so.
And keep in mind, this is an entirely new back end for OpenScape.
So if things don’t work exactly the same as SoundScapes, that’s why is they
what Microsoft had on the back end is not the same as what is there now.
This is a complete like the the the face of the app looks the same.
but the back end that makes it work is totally different.
So keep that in mind if you do use this beta
and the App Store version,
there may be differences on how it operates.
So.
Thank you.
We’re cutting down on time here.
Let’s see if we can get these last couple of people in.
I had something that I kind of wanted to bring this up
because Herbie, I started the discussion with Herbie
and I noticed he was on the call.
On my Mac, I’m trying to download something called
VLC Media Player.
And when I go to that site and I go to the download link,
the screen light jumps around because apparently it
has something on it called Live Regions.
So if I disable the Live Regions,
then it won’t jump around on me.
But I’m also noticing that it won’t read the things
that it’s supposed to read, which is like links to the various versions of VLC media
player that you can download.
It’s not reading any of that.
So I’m wondering if there’s some other setting I’m supposed to change on my Mac or, you know,
how I how I can get this program with, you know, either the either the screen jumps around
or or I can’t read the things that I want to read on it.
So if I’m understanding correctly, Diane, and I’m going to try my best to troubleshoot
this with you, but when you go to the video land website and you choose the download option,
and then it’s not reading the website correctly.
Right, because there’s all the different versions, all different versions has, you know, it jumps
around among them.
It jumps them on.
It’s doing it right now to me.
doing it right now. So what I would recommend doing is if you
go to, so I don’t have an immediate answer for you. I
believe VLC may be available in the app store. Have you looked
in there to see if it’s available there?
Um, no, I hadn’t because I, I’ve always thought that it was
better to go directly to a website, you know, to try to get
something.
If but that, yeah, I don’t necessarily know that that would
be specifically better, but it may be worth looking for VLC in the App Store.
And I just did a quick search for VLC and it didn’t pop right up.
So follow up with us via email.
And we may know.
No, there’s so this is Herbie.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, VLC is not in the app store.
It’s strictly on the website.
I think your best bet on that site is going to be using the web rotor with
VOU going to links, typing Mac, and that should take you
to the download link with the Mac, and then Vio space,
and then Vio space again right away.
And that might prevent it from jumping at least long enough
to download the thing.
But yeah, that site is–
I was just playing with it a minute ago when
I was bringing up the questions.
I’m actually in front of the computer.
And it is definitely one of the jumpiest sites
I’ve definitely come across them.
going to the, what did you call it?
You call it VOU.
I did that before.
’cause I just downloaded the Mac file
and then we do have two more hands in like four minutes.
But real quick, if you go to the Video Land website,
Do VO you to bring up your links type in Mac,
press VO space twice, that’ll take you to the Mac page.
Do VO you again and type in down for download
and then press VO space twice again
and that will download the Mac version of the VLC app.
Oh no, we don’t hear you, Teresa.
Hey, there you are.
There you go.
I’ve got, I got it in 2019.
So I don’t know if it’s the second or third generation of echo, but the plug
is messed up and I try to unplug it and replug it to get a, uh, get some,
you know, results and it’s not, there’s nothing happens.
And somebody said, I ought to, I’m better off getting a newer version of the echo.
I would say so because I believe that is the third generation, which I believe is a round
proprietary plug. I could be wrong at this rate.
It’s a square one.
Oh, it’s a square?
Yes.
Okay. I mean, yeah. What do you think there, Marty?
I mean, at this point, you could try to go on Amazon and see if they sell a cable that
you could buy that would replace the one that you have.
But depending on the cost of that,
you might be better served just to get a newer updated one
with that might be newer software and work better for you.
There are not that much, I believe.
I think there are like around a hundred bucks,
I wanna say something like that.
When is the rollout gonna be
when the Echos will be compatible with NLS,
you know, with the books on Bard.
there’s not been any sort of announcements
or release timeframes as of yet.
but I didn’t know if they did Bard yet.
And thanks for listening at that point.
It is 57 after.
So we’re gonna go ahead and wrap it up.
And Marty, let people know how they can get in contact
with us and everyone have a great week.
If you wanna get ahold of us,
you can reach us at feedback@unmute.show.
And I wanna say a special thanks to Brad and Debelle
for helping us out today.
We always appreciate it.
And everyone have a great week
and we’ll see you guys next week.
Thank you.
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Transcript
Michael:
[0:00] You said something earlier this week that made me think about the way I work.
And I kind of wanted to explore that. And I think we talked about bringing it up, but I’m not sure. And that was, uh, when you asked me, do you ever wake up with full intentions to get stuff done?
And then by the end of the day, you’ve gotten stuff done, but none of the things that you wanted to get done, got done.
So I’m curious what brought that up. First of all.
Damashe:
[0:21] So I do remember that conversation and what brought it up is the fact that we were in team talk for 80 guys and you’re like, oh crap, I didn’t pay to, I forgot to pay the water bill.
Yep. Right. And you’re like, oh, so this time it’s going to cost me, you know, 10 bucks for a late fee.
And it wasn’t that you didn’t have the money, it’s just you forgot to do it.
But you woke up with the intention of doing it.
Like, I think you had told Mallory you were going to pay the water bill or something, that you had it.
And it just occurred to me that that happens to me quite a bit where I will get up and like, I will get up and either someone will have asked me to do something the night before or that morning, or I wake up to a text message like, OK, I will get that done.
And then I get up and I get my coffee going, I get my coffee and do all of that.
I’m sit down on the computer and I start working.
And whatever that thing that I was supposed to be remembering to do first and foremost to start the day off, As soon as I touch the computer as soon as I had a device in hand that allowed me to do that thing I don’t remember it until 8 o’clock at night.
It’s like oh man. I did do stuff I gotta just sit around not do anything today, but the one thing or the two things I said Waking up. I have to do these things today didn’t get done.
Michael:
[1:11] Yeah, I want to know from listeners Thank you.
First of all to those of you who support us one right now, but that will grow But I want to know from you and other people So share those with your friends How do you manage that because that happens to me all the time as the mossy brought up?
But the good news is I was off on the time and we did not have to pay the $10, which is pretty cool.
I was almost guaranteed that I had to, but I was off. It was PM, not AM.
But still, the point is, I do that every day. Mario will text me.
She’ll say, hey, can you do this?
And I’ll say, yep, I’ll get it done. It never gets done. It is at the point now where she or other people expect it, and I don’t like that feeling and I need to figure out a way to solve that problem. And it’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s I get distracted with other tasks all the time.
Damashe:
[1:49] So like learning The thing for me is that you know, there’s some days and I haven’t had one of these days in a while It’s like I really didn’t accomplish anything I basically just you know mess around on the computer all day and really did not actually Move anything meaningfully forward at all.
I haven’t had one of those days in a while But I still end up with the same sort of feeling when you know I clearly say that I’m gonna do this thing or I have to do this thing or you know It’s the third of the month and this is the last day for me to edit my you know, Amazon subscribe and save order And 11 o’clock he says, oh man, I didn’t do the order.
Crap, let me go here and hurry up. Oh wait, it’s not even time, it’s too late. Okay, now I’m gonna end up with stuff that I didn’t need that I gotta pay for.
But it’s like there are times where something occurs to me before, and using that Amazon subscribing save as a perfect example.
I will think about it on the 29th of the month, you know, going into the next month, because my subscribe and save, you know, final day, edit your order is the third of each month.
And you know, before it feels everything is locked in, they start probably billing me for stuff that they’re shipping around the seventh or eighth.
So if I don’t take something out or add something, I ain’t getting it in that order.
And I don’t think about it on the 29th. Like I did it this month, actually. I thought about it around the 29th of May, you know, Memorial Day. Like, oh yeah, I need to go check the subscribe and save order to make sure that we’re getting stuff that we need and then if there’s stuff that we don’t need, I can take that out. And if I need to add something, I can do that.
I did not look at that order until Saturday morning, which was the 3rd, uh…
[3:03] Why didn’t I look at it on the 29th? I was in the middle of cooking some food.
Honestly, although while I was sitting there, I could have looked at it real quick, watching the, you know, smelling the smoke coming off the ribs because they’re already on the grill barbecuing, you know, slow cooking, like it’s not like I’m cooking them on high heat or anything, on the grill for like eight hours.
So I mean I had plenty of time to do it. It’s like, oh, it’s not that important for me to do it today.
And then I forget and this happens with me. Now that particular thing happens to me quite a bit where I will think about something today, and I’ll, okay, I’ll do it. And it’s like, well, I’m doing something else at the moment.
I’m not gonna prioritize getting that thing done today because I know I have time to get it done.
[3:32] Next thing I know somebody’s calling. It’s like did you do this thing?
It’s like Hold on No, I didn’t right, but don’t on I’m gonna go do it right now I’m going to do it right now regardless of anything else I’m doing because I agreed to do a thing, you know It’s kind of like with the unmute account that you asked me to set up Which I did that yesterday by the way, so it’s not ready But here’s the thing though this exact conversation we’re having is why I did it right then I think mean you had just gotten off the phone and you like well, I’ll tell you know Marty that doesn’t be ready You know, I’m probably Friday Thursday or Friday.
All right, that’s okay. Yeah, that sounds good All right, I went ahead and did it right then before I got back into what I was doing before we got on the phone Because I didn’t do it I would forget but it’s also for me introduces the friction of task managers like we we have talked about to do list and You know, we’ve talked about reminders.
We’ve thought about all the task managers out there at some point in life I’m probably trying most of them but there’s that friction, right?
Okay, you send me a text message taking you set up this account with this, you know thing and use that email address Okay, sure. That’s not a problem.
It’s not a hard thing to do. It wasn’t gonna go right in I was looking at all my phone. I’m not gonna go do that from the phone. That’s painful.
I don’t like it I’m a Mac person. Maybe that’s a part of the problem for me, too, is there things that I could probably do from my phone that I don’t do.
[4:34] The one thing I could have done, though, was add that to Todoist instead of due date, so that I got a notification, you know, in a couple of days that says, hey, you’re supposed to do this thing.
Problem for me is there’s friction to getting that in there, first of all, because you got to open it out, like from at the Mac, right now Todoist is not even running. I’m gonna have to open Todoist or open up Fantastical and add a task to Todoist, Which in itself doesn’t seem like a hard thing to do But for me at least sometimes there’s friction because it’s like I don’t know stuff open.
I’m doing things I don’t really want to open that to do this and then what do I set for the due date cuz I don’t have a hard Deadline and what if I say okay due date is Friday June 9th, right?
Okay. Well, it pops up at 9 o’clock on June 9th. I can do this I know what am I gonna do? I’m in a meeting. So it’s kind of that that’s fiction I know some people listen like we got to be more disciplined. I’m working on it.
Michael:
[5:17] I’m trying but it’s It’s the truth. It’s why stuff falls to the wayside.
It’s not that I don’t care about projects.
Yeah, anyways, I listen to Rich on Tech. At least I try to. I don’t know if you listen to that podcast. And he was going over some of his apps.
Here’s how much I listen to it. It’s June 9th.
Damashe:
[5:34] What?
Michael:
[5:35] Isn’t it Rich on Tech? Who’s the guy who took over Leo’s show?
Damashe:
[5:40] Hold on. Oh, Leo’s radio show? I don’t know, actually.
Michael:
[5:43] That might be the name of it. So it is Rich on Tech. I had to look it up.
The guy who took over Leo Laporte’s show.
And he was talking, this is how regularly I listen to it, on his Memorial Day Weekend show, today is when I was listening to that, about how the, or about the apps that he uses on his phone on a regular basis.
And one of the apps made me think about task management, and it’s called Email Me. Have you heard of that one?
Damashe:
[6:02] Email Me? What’s it called again? Email Me.
Michael:
[6:05] Apparently it sounds like it’s a widget that you put on your phone, or it only works on the iPhone.
The closest thing on Android is an app called Boomerang, and it sounds like you open it up and you put in the information you need sent to you as an email, and you hit send and it sends you an email.
And he brought it up because I don’t know if he’s had the love-hate relationship that we do.
I imagine he does, because he’s in tech, because I’m new to his show.
But he said, like it or not, my inbox has become my to-do list.
When I get stuff, it goes into my inbox. So if I have something I need to do or get completed, I’m just going to email it to myself.
So that way, when I see it in the inbox, I’ll actually get it completed.
I’m like, huh, that’s interesting.
If I could get rid of some of these emails and I need to pursue actually getting these cleaned up instead of just deleting the emails, that could be a way to work or set up a label for things that need to go into my inbox And then I, or not inbox, but my email.
And then just delete them out of there when they’re completed.
Because I have no problem with putting stuff into Todoist, it’s going back to look at what I need to do and checking those things off.
I’ll put stuff in there all day long. It’s just going back and looking.
But if I’m already in email, then it just kind of stays where I am.
And like it or not, I’m in email.
Damashe:
[7:04] Yeah, so I can tell you right now, I’m absolutely 100% not even going to try that because I don’t like being in my email. I’m trying to get out of the email.
Although there’s a feature that is handy and is going to come in very handy for me. Even, and I think this may be useful for other people.
Even if you’re not looking to set up a, you know, ticketing system like a Zendesk or FreeScout or HelpScout or, you know, CustomerScout, whatever the scouts are.
There’s a lot of scouts out there. There’s a lot of Zen stuff and a lot of scouts.
Somebody should make ZenScout and then we’ll have a complete solution for all of it.
Michael:
[7:30] ZenScout.app.
Damashe:
[7:32] Michael is looking at that right now. Right down over the page, go register that domain right now.
So something I just discovered, and it’s probably been there for a while, but I haven’t been in the notification settings for email on iOS in a while.
So I hadn’t seen this feature the last time I was in there. is not there.
You now have the ability to…
I don’t know when this got added, but you can set up notifications for, and mine usually are set for VIPs. I don’t want normal emails, but for VIP emails, I get a notification. Another thing you can do though is get a notification for a specific mailbox.
Michael:
[7:59] Oh, okay.
Damashe:
[8:01] So, what I am thinking of doing just to test it out to see how well this works is setting up a rule that will move certain people’s emails, like based off the sender or the domain, into a mailbox and then notify me when an email hits that mailbox because it’ll be a customer.
It’ll be something I need to address. You know Costco hot deals are tomorrow email cuz you know, that’s why they saw my inbox. That’s awesome You just said there was the end of hot deals to write.
Oh, so what are you doing? If you need work on your message Absolutely, you know get.
[8:38] In touch non-paid spot But uh, I’m gonna try that I’m gonna take around that a bit cuz that could be a solution for people who don’t want to go shell out the cost for something like a Zendesk or other ticketing system, or maybe your business is not even structured in such a way that you need that, but you would like to stay on top of the important emails that come in.
You’re not always going to catch all of those, but another way that this could also be useful is if you have a contact form on your website, and if typically, I would say, if typically for you those contact form submissions are legitimate leads or legitimate inquiry from people, again, set up a filter, customize your form, you should be able to do that.
You can definitely do it with Gravity Forms. the from email to be a specific email, you know, on your domain, preferably.
[9:14] And when that email comes in, you can just make your filter rule be whenever I receive an email from contact at bedrockinnovations.com, move it to this folder.
And that would be a folder that I could mark as, you know, support form request.
It does two things. One, I could possibly get notified by that if I really wanted to, but also it helps organize it. So when I’m checking up on inquiries or potential leads for business, I can just go to that one folder. I’m not scanning through it. I’m not having to do a search because it’s already been searched and filtered for me.
When it comes to Todoist, this new feature they added is probably gonna change my life and I’ll probably start using it again for at least two weeks, which is you can now schedule your reminders, which is what I actually need more than the due date notification.
Like, hey, this is due today! It’s like, you know, I don’t have time right now and then I forget because it doesn’t keep nagging me, right?
We talked about due last week and it’s continuing to nag you, but giving me the options to set reminders as I’m putting in the task with natural language, I think is gonna be helpful.
Because if I have something that’s due, you know, let’s say, with that we’ll go back to this, this, this masternode account you wanted me to set up, right?
For me, let’s say, I say, well, I need to have this done before I go to bed Friday night and you mentioned it to me on Tuesday.
[10:16] I will put that in and say, okay, send me a reminder every afternoon at 3 p.m., you know, so Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you know, that’s not the exact same text, but you know, write it in such a way that it’ll send me a reminder at 3 p.m.
On Wednesday, on Thursday, and then on Friday, send me one at 3 o’clock and then send me another one at 5, and probably another one at 7.30.
And if I hadn’t checked it off by then, either I’ve done it and didn’t check it off, and I’ll remember to check it off, so it’s done, or if I haven’t done it, I will remember to do it because it won’t slip my mind in between me seeing one notification and being tied up and then getting free and forgetting I was supposed to do it.
Michael:
[10:45] Do you did you get that email or did you only get when I forwarded it to you?
No, I got Play with that let’s let’s follow up on that because I am curious if you use that for me reminders is my Stay there and Marty has taken off those reminders because I let him take those off and now I am looking at reminders I’m reminding Mallory.
Do you have your laptop on the day? She need that as somebody she doesn’t and so I’m using reminders right now as my as My persistent tool to keep track of things but more long-term stuff for going into to do list sometimes not all the time And just don’t go back and look at it.
Damashe:
[11:17] And I think I’m going to start using reminders in the house.
Because that’s how you got started with it, too. Was you and Mallory being able to, like, Mallory asked you to remind her to do a thing. You start putting in reminders. I think the idea was, I’m going to put it on the share reminder list.
So then she’ll get her own notification that tells her to do the thing.
That didn’t work, did it?
Michael:
[11:32] Sometimes his reminders for her own things that she knows she needs to use reminders And I’m surprised to see that sometimes like I’ll pick up her phone to call her mom or something or show him your phone Well, we’re driving to mines dead because that’s more often the case and there’ll be a reminder there.
Damashe:
[11:43] Oh, oh you do use reminders Okay, that makes sense So maybe what I should do is the shared reminders list or here’s the thing I’m probably already a member of five shared reminder list that we have that we’ve tried out over the years Yeah, I’ve cleaned mine up I think except for the one that you get by default when you set up a family like that when it’s still in place but I haven’t been using it, but I’m going to start using that one and maybe popping because sometimes it is a bit easier with with, you know, Siri or even through the use of shortcuts or something like there’s sometimes ways to get stuff into reminders a whole lot easier than it is to get it to do with it. If it’s just a quick thing, like, you know, that might work too.
Michael:
[12:14] So she added some stuff to her calendar.
And it was a meeting with someone that I have never met, don’t even know the name, but it was a contractor at one of the places she works.
And I didn’t see and it said work. So I thought it was adding it to my work calendar and my work calendar is actually called my quote your own pay instead of work.
And so I figured out that somehow we ended up with a shared calendar that is nice because we both know what’s going on.
So if there’s anything I need heard that like if the boys have an appointment or something that goes on that shared calendar, because as I said, I went in there and I found like five or six different shared calendars that we’ve tried over the years and they haven’t worked, but right now it’s working and I’m not going to break it as long as things keep working.
However, you said something that made me curious to Masi.
I was 17 was released earlier this week and one of the things is now you just say S-I-R-I, and maybe I can just say Siri, and it won’t trigger it.
But I’m concerned, yeah, it didn’t. So I’m concerned, though, that maybe that’ll start triggering people’s, but I guess it knows if you’re intentionally talking to it, because if I say Siri, and then I keep talking, it doesn’t seem to respond.
But when I am, like when I pick up my phone on 17, and I just say Siri, what time is it? It’ll tell me what time it is, which I actually think a lot of people are frustrated with that, but I think that is substantially more pleasant of an experience, personally.
Damashe:
[13:20] So for me, I would like to be able to address device by name.
So my the home part many that you sent me is still on my desk and I named it shadow All right, so it’d be nice if I could say Shadow, what’s the temperature in here?
Michael:
[13:34] I would have laughed if it responded to you man.
Damashe:
[13:36] I would have been happy I’m gonna quit the show right there like man.
I’m done. It’s all over. I have reached my goals in life I’m done.
It’s all over. I talked to my home father.
I’m out here But it’ll be nice if I could do that and maybe we’ll get there at some point the Just using SIRI to address the device.
I don’t personally have a problem with that I think they should leave the option for you to choose which one you want But as long as that is there, I don’t understand why anybody would be pissy about it, like you have an option.
You know, it’s different when someone makes a decision and takes away something that you’ve been using and you were okay with the thing that you were using, even though they’re trying to make it better or more efficient.
But if you still have the option, like there’s no need to be pissy, get over it, there’s a lot more stuff going on in the world. It’s just serious.
Michael:
[14:11] However, there are some other things that were announced, Demasi.
Damashe:
[14:13] There’s a lot of things that were announced. So I’m going to admit, so we said last week we were not going to talk about the keynote prior to it, you know, having happened, because by the time people heard it, it would have been over and then everything we would have possibly said about it, you would have known If we were right or wrong, I would stop listening to the show like all you got all of that stuff I’m not listen to these guys.
I don’t know they’re talking about Well, we did say we’re gonna talk about a day So Michael watch the keynote.
I have not actually listened to it yet I do have it downloaded and I will listen to it go through it But I’ve been picking up bits and pieces here from different podcasts I had to listen to connected to find out who won the Ricky’s so that’s that’s that was my introduction to the things that were Announced I outside of what you told me and what I saw in a message thread here and there Obviously, everybody’s interested in the Apple Vision Pro.
I want to ask you about it, though, because you actually seen the keynote, so you kind of know how they presented it, how they weighed it out to people.
But first question is, what do you think about the name?
Michael:
[15:05] What do I think about what?
Damashe:
[15:06] The name.
Michael:
[15:07] I don’t remember it. Is it the Vision Pro?
Damashe:
[15:09] It’s Apple Vision Pro.
Michael:
[15:10] That’s where I struggle. I’m not sold on that name. I don’t know why.
Maybe I’m overthinking it.
I also see where they came up with it, because I was pleasantly surprised that it had cameras.
Like, a lot of people thought it wasn’t going to. I don’t know why.
Maybe I’m overthinking it. I also see where they came up with it, because I was pleasantly surprised that it had cameras.
A lot of people thought it wasn’t going to, um, but it, it has plenty of cameras 12 from what I understand. And yeah, I’m, I, I have first thing I told you, I’m not going to get this. I’m not super interested in this.
And then I started learning more about it and realized, huh, this does kind of sound interesting.
Maybe this is something I might use. And so right now, if I can save up $3,500, I might get it. Otherwise I’m going to wait like you said until the second or third edition of it to go on. Or if you want to support the show and buy one of us, you know, Buy one and we will share it. We will send it back and forth.
Damashe:
[15:51] We got no problem with mail and stuff So I’m gonna give a fair warning to everybody all of my rates for everything are going up I’m gonna start invoicing Mike just for showing up to do our show And I’m gonna invoice the listeners the 41 listeners we have so The name to me is better than anything that was floating around before the event I like you I’m not sure that I’m 100% sold on the vision probe I mean, that’s what it is or it’s not I can do about that But it’s better than the reality pro or the reality headset and some of the other names that I can’t remember now that I was floating around, like all of those to me were very dumb.
And at least this kind of.
[16:25] Hints at what it does like it gives you I think that pro markers there’s because the plan is this is a first step in Their process of building this they had to eventually put it out I think that’s what a lot of the some of the reporting I’ve heard recently is like internally in Apple There’s been you know disputes on whether it was ready to be released or ready to be announced and etc.
I feel like This was a good time to announce it at WWDC Because right now the primary mode or the primary people that need to be aware and really working on this are developers and you start thinking about what they’re gonna do before the SDKs release and they’re able to do it in the virtual simulator on Mac with Xcode and I also kind of understand why it cost 3,500 bucks.
I just want to point out though Everybody keeps fixating on $3,500.
I heard a snippet from keynote what he said was starting at I did not catch that.
That’s scary Yes, somebody played it on a podcast. I was like to play in that snippet and and you could hear the gasp of the audience Like oh my god.
Oh, that’s not what I thought. He said starting at $34.99. I’m curious.
[17:23] Where does it go from there? Like you initially just based off what I kind of heard and saw very very briefly From from people talking about I was like, I’m not interested in it Like, you know, I won’t keep I’ll obviously but I’m not even vaguely interested in trying to buy this first one Cuz it’s not gonna be for me Like you don’t as more has come out about it and I’ve heard more about the the attention to detail that they put into this It’s like, you know, I kind of wouldn’t mind being on that initial track of trying this out and using it and helping to determine, not like not determine how people are going to use it, but figuring out how this is going to be useful to other people, especially those of us that are blind.
Because again, I’m not concerned about the accessibility. I’m curious about the accessibility, you know, fairly sure it’s going to be accessible to a blind person. I think we already have confirmation of that. If people, for people who were, you know, in doubt that it was going to be accessible, I think we have confirmation of that now.
But I was never concerned about whether it was going to be accessible.
It’s much like Apple watch when it came out just how like how is that interaction mode gonna look for me as a voiceover user?
[18:15] Some things that I am curious to one of the reasons I’m interested in it is Apple has done something.
I think that Wasn’t really fully expected but it doesn’t surprise me which is this really is a AR device with the capabilities of doing VR as Opposed to what the the meta quest and the meta quest pro with some of the other you know headsets that have been out there Are strictly VR headsets right so it’s you in your own world that you’re in and you know You can’t interact with anybody else unless they have an also have one of these headsets and you’re in the you know place that you Can do that This to me I think they really really tried hard to make sure that even though you may be occupied with the headset doing something inside of a Headset, you know, you’re not completely separated from the rest of the world And one of the things they do I’m curious what people are gonna feel about this when they actually get to see it like if you’re Looking at someone through the headset.
They see your eyes being projected onto the lenses. That sounds weird to me It sounded weird the first time I heard it Before like is that leaked that leaked a while back and it was like no I’m not gonna be weird, but they did it the power behind this is a computer on your head So it makes sense why it starts at $34.99.
Michael:
[19:13] So putting eyes on the on the outside is pretty simple when you look at it now in retrospect, but it is creepy and And what type of weird accessibility things is Apple going to do to make that accessible to everyone?
If it sees you looking towards the headset, talking at it, is it going to say, we’re sorry, this person is temporarily unavailable?
Damashe:
[19:32] That’s a good question. I’m curious about that. Because visually, you can see there’s some transparency if they’re engaged with the world around them. But if they’re completely shut off, in a sense, like they’re occupying a VR space where they’re not able to respond to you, you’re going to be able to visually tell that. But yeah, how do you indicate that to a blind person?
Michael:
[19:47] Maybe it plays a soft sound, or very periodic. Speaking of sounds, I never realized how important sounds were until clean feed.
They have very appropriate sounds.
Damashe:
[19:54] Yep, I was messing with him today cuz I was gonna say do clean feelings and then brave look like it wasn’t gonna Let me select a specific device that I want.
I was like, well, babe, you’re dead to me right now And then I drop and then you sent me a link and when I got in like now I can see all my devices So I’m not sure what that whole thing was But I think maybe what have what happened for me the first time is that either I didn’t either it didn’t notify me or I had Missed the alert.
They need a microphone access in the browser. So I could be why I wasn’t working Yeah, very curious and I said I am now more interested in trying to get my hands on one when it comes out next year I’m expecting spring.
I’m expecting like a March or April release for this is my expectation if it doesn’t slip It’s also possible.
It will slip beyond WWDC I would not be surprised to see that some things that I’m interested to do with it though It’s like the virtual workspaces with the Mac, right? I mean, I know it’s not gonna be I can’t see the giant screen is there that they’re gonna project or whatever But that could be interesting for meetings.
Michael:
[20:42] Maybe you know, I Wasn’t interested in the virtual keyboard where you just kind of like tap in the air where the letters are because at first I’m like how am I going to do that?
That doesn’t make any sense. But with the technology that we’ve seen with GPT, if I mentally, I know roughly where the key should be in a general area, I feel like auto-correct is at the point where if I write hi, but I don’t hit, or if I write, hi, how’s it going today?
But I hit maybe 30% of those keys, but I’m a key off.
Then it’s, it’s an understand and be able to correct that. And naturally it’s just going to be, we’re going to just start typing in the air in front of us or something.
That’s, that’s weird to think about, but you won’t have a phone in front of your face and you’ll be able to engage environment.
Like that’s what has me excited because I think about like, like Ben sometimes he’s guilty of it and I’m guilty of letting him play on his phone more than I probably should.
I will admit that. But he will go out and just like when he walks to school, he’ll just pay attention to his phone and not see anything around him or pay attention to anything around him.
And that happens to a lot of people where you’re just focused on the screen in front of you. If you can bring the input to the air in front of you and take the thing blocking your vision and let you see what’s around you.
I think in a weird way, it’s going to bring us closer to technology, but also closer to people around us.
Damashe:
[21:48] Yeah, but I kind of feel like that’s what they were going for with this is like there’s so much of it It seems to I’m gonna recommend people take a listen to upgrade at least the first part of the way to talk about the vision probe.
Wait, is that what it’s called now? See, I don’t like the name.
I think it was Apple Vision Pro.
Michael:
[22:02] It’s Vision Pro.
Damashe:
[22:03] Yeah, yeah, that’s it. It’s the Vision Pro. But it always sounds like, wait, am I sure about that now?
Because I’m not sure. I don’t like it. Because I’m not sure.
But I’m pretty sure that’s what it is, Apple Vision Pro.
When you put Apple in front of it, then it sounds right. But if you just say the Vision Pro, which is what people are gonna start saying, me, I’m questioning it.
But I can recommend that episode, at least up to that point, because that’s about as far as I’ve gotten in it.
But Jason Snell is one of those people who kind of really focused more so on not just like, It’s cool.
They did isn’t look how he did this and they thought about all these things He’s like this is a you know, that’s why I got that line from honestly, cuz I haven’t watched you know It’s a AR device first with the ability to be a virtual reality device So they’re trying to ensure that you’re not Disconnecting from the world by use while you’re using this is meant to be interactive with the world around you and you know reflecting on Tim Cook’s Admittedly somewhat.
I really want to use a big word. I couldn’t think of it Is it middly kind of offhand statements over the years that he’s made about you know, it’s really interesting Oh, yeah, AR is you know something we’re really looking at great like it makes sense with this headset why he was More focused on AR argument reality than virtual reality Because they don’t want to disconnect you from the people around you or have you shut off into your own world I’m also interested in one of the reasons that I probably I’m gonna make every best effort to get it I will say that for me to learn how you know what it can be useful for what is good for but also to you Know introduce it to the family and see how they use it and what they think about it That is also something I’m curious about because I don’t I haven’t got any information about that yet Is this a single-person device like an iPhone or is this a device that when I put it on and it recognizes my iris It says oh, well, I see here’s your stuff, right?
Michael:
[23:26] Right, and then if he’ll puts it on it’s like oh, I see you want to pick up where you were playing this game That is that right there would completely change the price point value for me because now you’re buying an entertainment device for the whole family Well, an entertainment and productivity device, potentially.
Damashe:
[23:39] Yeah, and I can see it being useful in both cases I feel like and not again I’ll just now watch 3500 bucks like I get it because they have done a lot of they’re pushing the edges of technology right now With this from what I understand like the resolution that the screens are at is a little bit more than 4k You’re gonna hear people just say 4k is actually a little bit more than 4k not quite 6k at this point But that’s that’s amazing the transparency and the showing of you know attention like all of these little things that that add up to You know 3500 bucks, and it’s like the way I’ve heard somebody explain it is they kept hitting you with all this technology that was in the thing before they got around to that Price so you hear the price is like this one.
I thought it was gonna be like I’m gonna cost that much money Completely, but yeah definitely interested if anybody has any connections or knows anybody or you know these beta testers or anything We’re here. We’re open. I will walk around.
Michael:
[24:22] I will go to California and walk around with it. Honestly.
Damashe:
[24:24] I mean look You want to call me?
Michael:
[24:26] I’m not gonna fly although it’s like maybe cheaper than buying one I mean you’re close.
Damashe:
[24:32] I’m gonna fly would be if I would definitely be cheaper to buy one careful Should be should be should be deeper than I’m definitely for sure interested in getting one I mean listen like I’m kind of excited to Plug it into the Mac and join his own meeting like just being serious about it as nuts as it seems I’m not gonna be able to see people, but you know maybe it’ll do a thing that’ll make it more interesting Or we doing a presentation I can actually point at a thing over there and people can see the thing over there You should listen to more text.
They had a conversation about VR. I will find episode number for you I’ll build a little special with more text and they were talking about their day.
We’re trying out the Meta quest pro or whatever it’s called the latest thing that meta actually released not the thing they announced on Instagram to try to jump Apple And you know, they have some interesting thoughts about that device and how it worked.
Yeah, definitely interested in the Apple vision Pro you can go to your own bay.com slash support or Ewww.
Or just go there, or go to yourownpay.com.dwa and click on the tip jar link if you want to support us. Thanks to our subscriber that is out there. We appreciate you.
You never get emails that tell us if we could use a name or not, so we’re just gonna keep referring to you as the number one subscriber.
Michael:
[25:38] There you go, the number one. Well, hopefully that doesn’t discourage anyone from wanting to become the number two subscriber.
So did Apple talk about anything else that you wanted to chat about, or do you have something else that you want to bring up?
Because the only thing in iOS 17 that intrigued me at first, well, I saw it at first, and then I forgot to bring it up a couple times, with that check-in feature, I am super excited about.
I wanna play with that. So you can set it up. So if you are gonna go on a journey home or somewhere else, and you can let certain people know, hey, I’ve made it here, or hey, I’m gonna be delayed by a half hour, you know, expect that I might be a little bit later, but that way it’s all kind of automated.
And I think it’s gonna tie into the journal feature of iOS 17.
I have a mixed relationship with day one.
I want to journal, but I don’t journal. But when I go back and look at some of my journals, I’m like, oh, oh, I was thinking that when that happened, I don’t even remember that. So then I see the value in journaling, And so I start to journal for a day or two and then I stop.
So I hope that Apple being my journal provider because I’m I’m I’m an Apple person I have this pixel to the left of my keyboard and I just don’t give it the fair attention. I should anyways I’m gonna be fair as a pixel 6 pro.
Damashe:
[26:37] And so if Apple does allow I think that oh Wait, now they’re not gonna ever see me anything else. I’m sorry.
Michael:
[26:45] Well, probably not probably not You know, oh focus mode though because that was what I was gonna bring up I’m not sure I haven’t seen any differences in focus modes, but I’m playing with shortcuts on Ventura That’s what I’m on, right?
Yes, I’m playing with folk or I’m playing with shortcuts on Mac OS 13.4 Whatever and shortcuts is a lot nicer to navigate so we can talk about that But have you been playing with focus modes because I deleted all of mine except for do not disturb It won’t let you delete that one.
Damashe:
[27:10] Yeah, so I’ve been playing with them I have not gotten them to the point that I want them, but honestly the past couple of weeks have been busy But I can tell you what I’ve done up to this point where I’ll tell you what I’m trying to end up at and when I Get there.
We’ll definitely I’ll definitely share this on the show. But so for example, I have 80 guys focus mode that I’m in the process of setting up.
And the reason it’s not just a quick boom, boom, boom, knock it out is because I’m trying to take my time and one, let notifications through that I’m not even there to let through.
[27:34] The other part is I’m actually won’t make use of the custom home screen and custom lock screen here for this focus I want to start doing this with more of my focus mode because I’ve never used those features early So I want to make use of a custom home screen and on that home screen should be The gmail app because that’s what I have 80 guys email set up on my phone No notifications come through for that account at all But that’ll be the app I’ll use if I need to check email because you know I’m working and I pull my phone out or if I’m on like I was last Friday, you know I’m at an event for 80 guys I turn on 80 guys focus mode and you know everything that I need is there at my fingertips Slack is another app that should be there also on that home stream.
I would like to have slack there I don’t know what else needs to be there, but those two for sure You know notifications allow from you know Michael and JJ in slack and in messages As well as phone calls TIA a couple other people right block the kids out because they start texting me this You know ridiculous amounts of it.
How does somebody put 37 emojis in one message that quickly?
37 shopping bags yesterday for my daughter’s like now.
I got no money Yeah, but she knew what you wanted shopping time dad So I did to start out when I reset my phone by deleting all of the focus most I had previously set up Except for my work focus I will eventually delete the one is called work But right now it still does the thing that when I’m in a meeting and automatically flip on which means I’m not getting random calls I don’t even know why it’s like message from data.
Michael:
[28:46] Just got to honestly Maybe maybe you said JJ’s a priority comment or maybe iOS is learning about you You want to see messages from See my that work focus is super nice But I want to know why it’s working so I did destroy mine So maybe when I’m setting up a focus mode, there’s an option So I will play with so guys try setting up some focus modes on the Mac instead of on the iOS Yeah The one thing that stops me and I don’t know that there’s anything that can do about it is because I’ve had to go edit A focus mode on the like you say on iOS when I set up to my work focus, right?
Damashe:
[29:16] I wanted notifications from fantastic out because there are times where I have like back-to-back meetings, you know, not back-to-back literally 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock, but maybe I have an 11 o’clock and then I have a 1230 or one or something.
That 11 o’clock runs into like 1230. Well, like I need to know that I’m 30 minutes away from the next meeting I need to be in. So, fantastic notifications.
I would like to get those. Well, I also had to.
Go on the Mac and add the fantastical app on the Mac to allow it to come through as well Like it didn’t go across that platform for me.
Okay with that Messages seems to do that contact things to do that But I’m guessing a third-party apps because you know, of course not every single app is on your phone They’re gonna be on your Mac and they can’t even expect you to have it there.
I guess Another thing I want to set over these focus modes to is calendar sets with fantastic I did discover that you can do this with the default calendar app So it is possible to have a specific set of calendar show based on a focus mode I just really don’t like to default calendar app So moving on from that, but that was one of the questions I want to answer like how far can I go with this and I Actually could get fairly far with it Being fair notification seems to be a little bit more reliable with the calendar app because it’s Apple’s app I don’t know and that’s the only reason like it’s Apple’s app So they get some entitlements that fantastic gallery the other third-party calendar wouldn’t I get?
But there’s an entry thing right so that fantastic I offer me But calendar sets are thing in fantastic I if you’re not using them and you have several calendars as I do and as I know Michael does it is super helpful to to have specific calendar sets. You can always view all calendars.
Right now I have a Bedrock calendar set that shows me my Bedrock Innovations calendar, the one that I use for people booking and scheduling appointments related to Bedrock.
It does show my family calendar, so when someone asks me, are you available for a meeting at this time, I can take a look and make sure there’s not a doctor’s appointment there, if it makes it on the calendar.
[30:45] And then I think that’s it, I have a couple of Todoist projects also there.
There’s an AT Guys now calendar set that shows the AT Guys team calendar, because it’s the only one that I’ll be putting events on, I don’t see a reason to put them on my personal calendar, I’ll probably lose them. It also shows my…
Family calendar, and it shows the 80 guys To do this project Michael’s frankly typing away.
He’s having brew install For once I’m not typing brew install surprisingly.
Michael:
[31:13] I made a cup of coffee with the intentions of drinking it two hours ago Oh, man, how you got cold brew?
Yes, sir Which is not as good as real cold brew for some reason I’ve got it.
Damashe:
[31:23] It is not you know. I’ve got a redeem a cup of coffee. You got left sitting like oh, yeah Well, it’s just my drinking cold.
We know it’s not this it’s not at all You can also set filters with a lot of apps actually a lot and that’s that is the thing I’m wanting to take more advantage of with my focus modes this time around as I am rebuilding them and tweaking them is Being able to filter, you know What’s shown to me in an app based off the focus mode that I’m in?
I’m honestly trying to get to a point where I am always in a focus mode.
Oh okay, whether that’s a You know something dealing with work something dealing with family time or just a general focus mode in from and you know I don’t know what I’m gonna call it probably just be like a you know, I don’t know I’ll put a mochi on or something We talked about that one’s putting emojis on your focus mode microphone for recording or something.
Yeah, yeah, oh, that’s the other one I gotta work on to is my recording focus mode But yeah I’m trying to get to a point where I’m always no focus mode and reason for that being is like there’s often times that there Are things well I guess just being wide open leaves me wide open and focus mode I can filter what I see Which could help me not do things like let’s say if I’m in recording focus mode And I just randomly hit you know right option him because it’s a habit, and then I look at the email It’s like oh, then I get distracted.
It’s like no. I won’t do that because what is it gonna show me?
It’s not gonna show me anything. It’s gonna say mail is restricted.
You cannot use mail right now can Man, I don’t man.
Michael:
[32:33] I’m gonna go look and see if you can set up different activities in iOS 17 and focus modes.
Oh Oh, so you could have different commanders facing your focus on that would be nice, huh?
Right option M will only take you to your 18 guys and it won’t let you see anything else because you have a filter on mail So yeah, that could be fun We’re right option M. Just as a DTS.
Damashe:
[32:51] It’s gonna work But as far as I was 17, again, not having seen the keynote yet, a couple of things that jump out at me recently that I just heard about this morning. Shared.
[33:04] Keychain passwords and patties So and this is actual full-on sharing similar to what you get with one password a bit more nowhere where you have a shared vault With someone you’ll be able to share a password and presumably also the past keys work the same way But share that login information with someone so like you could share this with mattering and if you update to Netflix password It would update for her as well.
Not the oh, I airdropped her the password, but then when I changed it She still had a whole password deal.
So that’s interesting to me I’m going to make a promise to spend some time this summer before the release of iOS 17 using the Windows iCloud keychain integration build to see what is, if it’s useful, because I feel like if it’s useful enough and it’s not too restricting, like if they just say you can only use it in Chrome, like it’s not it’s a non-starter, but if it’s available anywhere in any browser at least, and optionally it would be nice if there was a way to get to your passwords in Windows through the iCloud control panel.
[33:54] It would be a nice recommendation for people who either are not yet using a password manager at all or very likely using iCloud keychain because from a security standpoint is solid like what they’re doing what I got keychain is solid like that’s not my issue with my issue is number one I couldn’t share stuff but actually have a shared you know constantly shared items so when changes were made they reflect everywhere for everybody and we got a lot of shared passwords in this house a lot of shared info in general you know so that’s handy and that’s also going to share your two factor codes if you’re saving those in iCloud keychain so this could be a way to get out of one password for some people or you can get out of spending money all together for a password manager I mean granted Japan a thousand for your phone, so you’re paying for it, but it’s not a residual, ongoing, monthly or annual bill that is due for me in August.
Because that’s when it’s coming up in office.
Michael:
[34:40] I’m gonna play with past keys on my Google account Let tell them I’m a glutton for punishment because I heard a couple of people fed problems I am gonna play with it and I will follow up next week to see if I notice or see how that experience says I’m Gonna reach out to my workspace administrator and get him to turn them on and I will try them to on my workspace again And see how you work because I you know one I need to stay on on them Even though I have issues with them.
Damashe:
[35:00] I want to be fair like I honestly have issues I was just having this conversation with somebody before I start recording But I honestly have issues because I feel like with Apple.
I think they have prevented this I don’t know enough about what Google has done to say they have or have not Solved for this potential issue, but the scenario is let’s say I switched over to using the pixel And that is my phone I go out and buy a pixel 7a like man this phone is really great I’m gonna use this the rest of the summer and I can put a beta on my iPhone.
Yay all right So yeah, anybody got a pixel 7a?
That’s not actually a bad idea if I had to buy a pixel 7a I would do it and use that for the rest of the summer so I could put betas on my iPhone But let’s say I do that and you know of course before you can really proceed beyond any point or to get access to your data interview store and all of that with an Android phone very much like on iOS you have to sign into your account.
Well on Android that is your Google account. What if I only had the passkey on my Android phone?
Now of course it’s syncing through Google’s services but I don’t have another device to get my you know let’s say I wipe my phone or I break my phone then I have to get an entirely new one so all of them for whatever reason there’s not an alternative device available to me when I need to set up my phone again.
How do I log into my Google account?
Michael:
[35:59] You send Google your photo ID.
Damashe:
[36:02] That will be horrible because I don’t have a way to take a picture of my ID to send it to you because I can’t get it to my phone.
And if I bypass the login, then will I never get to send anything anywhere to anybody for help because I don’t have my contacts.
Now I I can think of some ways around this Google could still allow for you to log in where you use a name and password And you know an alternative two-factor method which is probably gonna be a solution for them for a while But the dream or the hope of past keys is that you’ll get rid of passwords all together So again, how do I solve for that?
If I don’t have another device that I can log into or that I’m already excuse me already logged in to because I can’t log Into anything else without the passkey What do I do?
Michael:
[36:37] And I do not have focus mode enabled because I deleted all my freaking focus mode So that means I got a phone call from a spam call And see that is why I am considering going into always being in a focus mode of some sort So I can get rid of those spam calls And you know leave a voice man.
Damashe:
[36:51] Hey, I set up my voice mail on my personal phone for you know Since I’m twitching I mean it just tells you the number you call But at least is there now because I can’t forget you can you bring audio in it? So people can hear what happens when they call me now because Apple stole my voicemail.
[37:07] That might change maybe we don’t want to do that, but Apple stole my voicemail So the feature Michael’s talking about we can we can do it at the end, and then you can drop it in if you want to But the future Michael was talking about is what if they call this is this like Voicemail transcripts voicemail transcripts or live transcripts or something They wanted to call it visual voice.
Maybe I can call it a something voicemail. I think though Transcribed whatever the features anyway the way it works is someone calls your phone Do you have this feature turned on and I was 17 only so right now my cousin on the baby because he’s a voice There we go live voicemail.
They want to call a visual voice. We open this already been taken I called Mike and what I heard was please leave your message after the tone the person you’re calling may pick up.
[37:47] Was like, okay So I start talking like well, I was just returning your call such a researcher blah blah blah.
I think you answered. Yeah, you did answer Yeah, yeah So those reading the transcript the first thing I thought about is This is gonna turn back into what I finally have gotten some older people to stop doing when they call you and they get your voicemail and they sit there and they spend the first two minutes of the voicemail of the five-minute voicemail they leave you saying pick up are you Pick up! It’s Sons of Pickup!
Can’t hear that now people are gonna start doing this again when they call it a look because I know you’re probably there Just pick up you read my voicemail right down pick it up No, no, I’m not.
We have a little voicemail. No, that’s not what the call live voicemail Seems interesting kind of this is like to bring it back after machines everything that was old is now new again Look, here’s the answering machine Don’t think there’s any more things that I’ve heard There was one thing that I think I asked you about like why did nobody tell me about this thing?
You guys just missed the whole thing. Nobody said anything about this about what was now So I will tell you I’ve told Mallory who have Snoopy come to the watch face.
Michael:
[38:44] Oh, I’m excited about that Yeah, and you know what else is coming to the watch That’s great transition is now you don’t have to swipe up to get to your control center Your side button becomes your control center button.
Damashe:
[38:52] So I’m gonna buy an Apple watch or whatever it’s called ultra.
Michael:
[38:56] Yeah Mallory loves hers.
Damashe:
[38:57] I’m gonna probably get one I’m waiting to see if they’re gonna update this year or if it’s gonna be like one of those every couple of year cycles And whether I whether they updated this year or not, I’m probably not gonna pick it up until next spring Hey, it’ll be in the same box for my Apple Vision Pro.
Yeah. So what I’ve heard about the watch leads me to think that basically they’ve taken some of the functionality of what I liked about the Siri watch space and made it kind of available everywhere and enhanced it a great deal.
And I don’t know anything else beyond that. Widgets somehow have a role here and you can put complications inside of a widget. I don’t know.
It’s confusing the way people are talking about it without having looked at the keynote.
Michael:
[39:34] Where I was going with that, and I don’t think I finished, I thought, is I tell everyone I’m not going to update. I told Mallory I wasn’t going to update. I’m probably going to update my watch, honestly, because.
I only get half of the iOS experience until I update my watch, but I don’t want to update my watch because when things break, I don’t have a watch, but I’m also not keeping a move streak.
Ooh, there’s the transition.
And that brings me to, um, unless you have anything else to talk about WWDC, I want to get a fitness update in because I have gotten nowhere on my fitness and I need to go out and do more. And I think you and I should start a contest or something and track it on the show.
Damashe:
[40:01] We should do that, Will. So, one of us will challenge the other one before Monday.
So, we start on Monday and we won’t report on it next Friday because we won’t have finished the challenge, but we will follow up that week after.
Michael:
[40:10] But we can check in on the challenge next week for accountability.
Damashe:
[40:12] Yeah, I mean we’ll do it for sure I never had a problem Right, but I also need to start in on the fitness stuff so that it will be a good way to get started and I should also reach out to, I Think oh, yeah But I should do that also I put it to do it.
I should also probably reach out to what I think is for an episode Jeff Uh, yeah, are you listening and uh, we’ve never got feedback from Jeff.
Yeah, once not once not one single time That’s what I think from the show.
I don’t know man. I don’t know. Yeah, we’re just moving So yes, I mean he should be listening to the show while he’s moving He should be but you know Sometimes when you’re moving especially other people are helping I want to have your ears completely wide the hell open man because you do not want to take that couch to the shin like I promise you don’t So I can completely understand why not but Jeff does a lot of consistent fitness stuff every day So it would also be motivating.
I’m assuming it will be motivating. They turn out to be like, oh, well, you know, whatever But it probably will be some motivation to Have to compete against Jeff As well as Jeff does what I think he would do which is also trash talking a little bit like that Oh, that’s big Stuff to go to and like man, you know what? I’m gonna get out there.
Michael:
[41:21] I’m so ultimately By the end of the summer I want to have a plan to explore this leader dog program the more I think about it not for a guide dog But the cane training that yeah, I was talking about so But unless I go out and start walking, it’s at the point right now where I don’t go anywhere on my own.
And it’s not a good feeling. That’s the best way I’ll put that.
When you don’t go places.
Damashe:
[41:44] Yeah. I’m kind of there too. Some of it is, so I get that feeling.
I have been comparing my time in, well, my time in Tuscaloosa compared to my time just about everywhere else I’ve lived.
And in Atlanta, man, I went from every side of the city. When I lived in Denver, I was in Denver for a summer, I went everywhere, which kind of I had to because I was teaching on him So didn’t really have a choice about going everywhere like you can’t just hang out at the at the center with students That’s from the pond you’re supposed to be teaching them Houston I got around quite a bit Even in places that there was not public transportation I believe like I’ve done a lot of walking And here like I have not done any of that nearly as much as I would like I know some of the area But I’m not as familiar with Tesco loses I should be for as long as I’ve been here right my measurements right not not by anybody else but my own and that does bother me a little bit right because you know, am I losing the ability to do certain things?
Am I losing the ability to travel independently without being, you know, like, I’m gonna be honest, man, I’m nervous as hell about this airport.
I’m not gonna even lie to you. Because it’s been a while since I’ve been in an airport anyway, and then just the lack of.
Constantly using those travel skills makes me feel a little bit more anxious than I ordinarily would usually go into an airport in the past I would be like Okay, so let’s see how good or bad the service is gonna be here like how much trouble am I gonna have actually get into? My game, but there’s not any concern.
Michael:
[42:52] I’m gonna be the issue right where now I’m like I need to I might need to hire me a personal assistant to get here Yeah, never though we have tools to help with that and that’s what I forget sometimes in the heat of the moment I need to be aware of that like we do have tools that I did not have when I was confidently traveling independently.
Damashe:
[43:11] And that’s kind of the weird dichotomy here, is that there’s way more, way more tools available for navigating.
I mean just general navigation. Never went to an airport. Just general navigation.
I had in a lot of places I have lived, it was just moving around like it was nothing.
And it’s like now, you know, you got all these apps and if I get to the airport, there’s, you know, there’s things like Aira, there’s Be My Eyes, there’s, you know, whole tons of stuff to use. I don’t even know if the airport has any, you know, indoor navigational things, right?
Michael:
[43:33] The technology we have though now, I think I think I’m so ultimately we’ll come back to it.
We’ll follow up. We’ll see who is Who’s more productive and gets out there cuz I’m gonna get out there and be more active I gotta get more comfortable my local community I can’t even go to my local grocery store and go find the stuff I need at the store in a general idea I mean, I guess I have a general idea, but I haven’t done it And that that bothers me because I realize you know, that’s a skill that I have and if you don’t use it You lose it. Uh-huh.
Damashe:
[43:56] And that is one of my concerns and you know, there’s also just the fact of you know, lacking, I don’t want to say not having the independence, but not using the skills, right?
That’s the thing that’s, you know, beginning to kind of bother me a bit.
It’s like, I don’t, somebody tells me, oh, you know, I need you to come here to this place.
I’m like, I have no idea where that place is in Tuscaloosa. It turns out it’s like two blocks away, well, probably not two blocks, but you know, five minutes, seven minutes away, probably what would amount to maybe a 20-minute walk for me to get there.
Right, yep. You know, the furthest I have been from where I live now walking or, you know, walking, I get in somebody’s car going somewhere, is to the key of school.
Michael:
[44:26] Which is you know literally a 10-minute walk for me, maybe a five and a half six minute walk for me from walking by myself But I’ve got to do better So yeah, we will you know revisit this topic for sure as we get out I only did that cuz I didn’t go test on that uh that one thing on the blind show That’s literally what puts me around corner Yeah, cuz convention So you back on the travel once you get I will tell you from experience because I have flown more recently than you have Like you I was I had concerns about going there But once you get back into the groove of figuring things out it naturally it’s like riding a bike it comes back to you But it’s that time until you get there, and then you realize, oh, I can’t do that.
That’s encouraging, but then you get home from convention, like, I traveled across the country.
I’m not going anywhere in my little community.
Damashe:
[45:02] I don’t feel like walking around to just pick a video. I don’t want that.
Michael:
[45:05] That’s why I want to explore this leader dog program, because maybe that’ll give me some more confidence or some more skills that I can apply.
Because I can travel. I had no problem when I got to Omaha traveling.
Traveling was fine, but, you know, getting out and going and doing stuff.
It can be a point of laziness, but here’s my thing, and maybe I’ll work like a guide dog. I have to have a destination and a purpose to go and really everything I can do is at home From the computer for the most that’s a little bit of it too for me It’s like by the time I you know started noticing.
Damashe:
[45:27] I hadn’t been traveling as much here at all here It’s like well What do I need to go anywhere for I need to grab something small you know there’s a little convenience store trying to build A block I walk there, you know a lot, but But exercise I think will also help that that is the other reason I think fitness has come back around to me once again because it’s not the first time but once again Is because that is putting those two things together solve that problem that you just identify Which is if I don’t really have a purpose to go walk to you notice this little plaza That’s about 15 20 minutes away from us and then you know do something and come back home like why am I walking over there?
Right, but if it’s exercise because I gotta get my rings closed so that Mike doesn’t stop the crap out of me in his competition Well, you know what?
Guess what? I’m out there and I’m where people see me which does lead to conversation at times, too So there’s that aspect of it.
So and I am interested in that leader dog program myself, too I don’t know when I’m gonna go but I am absolutely going if it you know, I won’t say that We’re not gonna move what I was about to say, but yeah I have every intention of going there to do that. when is going to be.
[46:22] Thing but it’s more of a win not a well, maybe right I heard about it I was like, oh, I’m so like absolutely 100% soul because I know I’m not I mean, I’m pretty good I taught people but it doesn’t mean I know everything I just like being able to teach somebody something on the Mac doesn’t mean I know everything and I’m aware of that.
I’m fully aware of that and embrace that and you know, just you know, he probably didn’t listen to our show, but uh, just to applaud kayaker for Recognizing that within himself and taking that that journey to go to the look at our program and I appreciate that He appreciated that he did it and also appreciate the fact that he was he shared it because I never knew that existed No, you neither or well, I think I knew something like it existed, but like him I assume they’re gonna teach me how to use to point out or how to Trail a grass line to find the end of a of a block or something, you know Like the basics that I really knew I I need to be more confident with using the skills that I have versus learning the basic skills And that was Andrew Hey, hey, hey, hey over here.
You’ll see me look. Yeah.
Michael:
[47:17] Hey Hey, take me to work with you. I could be the mascot right restaurant We’re about 70 minutes if you have anything else we can go into that or we can wrap it up either way I remember there was anything we supposed to follow up on it.
Nobody add to a list Probably let me pretty sure that would mean that one of us would I don’t know listen to the show I mean you edit the show man Said listen to the show.
I didn’t say edit the show, but you’re listening when you’re editing by the time No, not really actually. Most of the time I hear the show, but I listen for like, um, I listen for keywords or mouse smacks.
I don’t really re-listen to the content too much, usually.
Damashe:
[47:54] So, I can’t think of anything. I got Reaper installed. I gotta get Reaper set up today, because I gotta do a project for it.
Michael:
[47:58] You need to go to theglobalvoice.info slash Reaper.
Damashe:
[48:00] All right, I need to go to theglobalvoice.info slash Reaper.
Michael:
[48:03] Yep, that’s theglobalvoice.info slash Reaper. Oh wait, we’re not being sponsored by them, but no, I downloaded that file. It’s actually in the root directory of Sync. It’s a, I think I put the zip file in there.
I’m gonna dive with some more cool things about Reaper. And then there’s another training that I’m gonna look up that teaches you that’s free from Drew Weber.
You know Drew. And he made a Making Liners for Radio Station course that That he’s giving away for free using Reaper to teach you how to make voiceovers for liners and then sell those to radio stations Hmm.
Damashe:
[48:29] Hmm. I’m starting, you know, this keeps coming up. It keeps coming I know why some of it keeps coming up is because I talk to you a lot and you’re doing voiceover work and you’re breaking Into that space, but it keeps coming up from other people to me about voiceover work. I’m like I wasn’t really trying to go do this.
Michael:
[48:42] So don’t Advertise yourself. I’ll take 15% to do the follow-up and stuff and then we’ll just sell your voice Because people want your voice, but you don’t want to run the business behind it.
I thought that was going somewhere completely different.
Like, well, don’t, just send them to me. No, see, that’s the thing is, is I know there’s some projects for your voice.
That would be a think about it, it’s kind of like reading a weird formatted audio book.
Damashe:
[49:17] Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna dispute that person’s comparisons.
I’ve done neither of these two things, but from my perspective I would think going into reading a transcript for audio description is a little bit more like honestly I think that might be harder for me Then doing an audio book And the reason is because you have to try to keep the inflection out of your voice for most things with the audio description Yeah, you can’t start reading about you know guy that is tiptoeing around and he has a you know sniper rifle or whatever and start Decided about it.
Oh, man, what’s gonna happen now the assignment song?
Michael:
[49:47] You can’t do that neutral or follow the guidelines that are in the script is there are some that you have inflection Yeah, but that’s the thing though.
Damashe:
[49:54] You got to stick to whatever their guidelines are and I know me like, you know If I was reading my oh, man, what’s gonna happen?
I might have to go read the whole script today come back and like okay Well now I could do this because I know what happened But yeah, I mean, I’m not I’ve told you this before I’m not one I’m not closed off to doing any sort of voiceover work at all It just wasn’t a thing that I thought I would ever end up being involved in at all Even when you started talking about look man if you need me to do something I reach out, but I’m gonna go set up a Voice that me account and let people hire me.
I don’t know if that is just don’t go there. Don’t don’t go there Listen, I’m telling you not to go there Mike’s already done it, but I have a lot of it was clear So I’m just fair warning.
I just made it up because I couldn’t remember the service that a lot of people use Michael will remember it’s Voice one two three there we go see that’s what I was thinking about what I couldn’t remember So I just made up a voice without me.
Michael:
[50:37] I’m telling you I do not have a voice one two three account I did not send one of those up.
So don’t look for me there.
Damashe:
[50:42] Yeah, it keeps coming up. I was having a chat with a Good friend of mine yesterday about he has a internet radio show that he does and we were talking about we actually got into talking about Hybrid meetings and knowing that he’s like this sounds interesting because all the times I hear people doing like hybrid meets the audio quality is crap I said, yep, that’s thing.
I can’t stand Oh, I finally found another person who really cares about one the audio quality and two they are As vain as I am about showing up in video meetings and looking good I feel like I don’t know.
Michael:
[51:09] Zoom cuts actually got me to look at shortcuts on the Mac. And I realized that at least in 13.4, or whatever the latest Mac OS version is, shortcuts really isn’t that bad. And when you set your enter key to be your actions button, you can take different things inside of shortcuts and add it to your shortcut with like two keystrokes.
Damashe:
[51:25] Yeah, Ventura 13.4 is the latest version.
Michael:
[51:28] So yeah, on each of the things, so right, I need to work on it, but I’m setting up a Zoom shortcut that automatically enables original sound anytime I go into a Zoom meeting, because that is an action now.
Damashe:
[51:36] Nice so for because I don’t think this was out when we recorded last week It wasn’t okay, so zoom cut is a new app from the people liminal who belong to zoom now cuz I’m good by them That also makes zoom. I so if anybody’s heard us, you know talk about zoom ISO or zoom. What is the OSC?
Control and I sent I for the micro email about it Well, I first got the email from liminal because I’m on their mailing list and I was like, ah, this is cool I honestly thought it was just like you install like a rapper app and it you know exposes a bunch of stuff in shortcuts That’s apparently not how it works It didn’t Mike Ford me a link which we will put in the show notes for anybody interested Because those let you add more shortcuts with our zone the Mike Ford email to the office hours where they were discussing this and My first thought was I got that email probably My second thought was huh?
Why did I’m not suspected they were gonna have a conversation about this when I saw the first? I should have known this is gonna be a thing Did you watch it?
I have not watched it yet. I’m gonna I’ve grabbed it and downloaded it but I’d miss it to a J.
Michael:
[52:32] Spoiler alert, you can run Zoom cuts, and because Zoom cuts is not just a wrapper, you can run those shortcuts on iOS.
So if you have admin access, or if you are a host of a meeting, there are specific shortcuts you can run on iOS that would allow you to do things inside of Zoom.
Which means, if you wanted to, you could assign a double tap or triple tap, back tap to a shortcut that would provide any details in a Zoom meeting if necessary, or mute all participants, or something else that you need to do in order to make that happen, so.
Damashe:
[52:57] Right, so we will be playing with that. I will be looking at shortcuts on the back again, it honestly feels to me like it would be easier to create and modify shortcuts on the Mac if shortcuts is you know working and navigable on the Mac.
So it sounds like that has changed. try to see this is one of the problems with software for me this is a problem that I have.
I used to be better about this whenever there would be an update if something was broken prior I would always go check to see if they fixed it But then they train you to you know, no didn’t fix it.
No, we didn’t fix it. No way They just stop looking which is where I’m at now.
I just stop looking so we’ll follow up on that Maybe shortcuts will help us with the journaling or medical Oh, I’m gonna go back to that for a second with the journey So from your perspective because I was thinking about this and there’s a little maybe you can clear up first I’m gonna actually clear up some possibly clear up some Confusion for me if you can’t understand if you cannot because people are confused about and I have not watched any of the keynote sessions So, this journaling app that Apple has introduced, it has the ability, and there’s an API for the app, so that my understanding initially was that apps would be able to donate information into the journaling app for suggestions.
And then walk it back for a second and tell me if I’m wrong.
So, with the journaling app, one of the features about it that is cool is that when you go in to make a new entry, there’s going to be things that are going to suggest that you may want to add to that journal entry, right?
Michael:
[54:05] Yeah.
Damashe:
[54:07] So, my initial understanding of the API that Apple has created and that is there for developers Is that let’s say carrot weather right here’s why I’m gonna do this so care whether could donate the Temperature for where I was that day or the weather conditions for where I was this particular day I’m making a journal entry right so I can incorporate that into my journal entry and say well You know today it was you know These weather conditions and you know didn’t make my fill out the journal entry because it was such a nice day I took the kid down and blow up your pool and you know, they got the plan.
Michael:
[54:31] Oh, right now Here’s some pictures that Apple has here’s the Apple suggested.
Damashe:
[54:35] Yeah, right so that all makes sense to me I have and it only shows you pictures of the kids and pools because it interpreted that information Then you just tap on those pictures That’s how I see it working because obviously we haven’t been able to try journal out, but right day one kind of does this But I think it’s gonna be better with Apple now the thing that I and people when rumors first leaked about you know There’s supposed to be a journaling app that Apple is gonna make it’s gonna have these kind of features in it The obvious question was is it’s gonna be a day one killer or is day one going to be able to also play in this Space and when I say day one killer I don’t mean like, you know, day one’s got a business now.
It’s all over because there are people that are probably never going to stop using day one. I think their business is probably fine, honestly.
But the question really was, are people going to jump over to using like, people like me, for example, who I played with day one, or Michael will even be a better example, because he has stuff in day one.
And maybe he goes to the journaling app now because it has these features and day one does not have all of these features and capabilities.
Or would Apple have an API that day one could hook into to also be able to receive, say, that notification, I mean, that weather conditions from Carrot and the suggested photos based off what you’re writing or things like that, right?
And I’ve heard dissenting opinions about what the API does. So.
[55:42] The first part that I’ve just discussed which is carrot can hook into this and say hey I’m gonna donate what the weather was here in overcast to say well you listen to these three podcasts today And you know so on and so forth That’s a part of it like third-party apps can push in content of what you’ve done so that you can incorporate those very easily into Your journal entry make sense.
I’ve heard mixed opinions on whether or not day one could make use of that same information or not for an example What were they clear about that in the keynote or is it? I do not have that answer or they just say and there’s an API and then they ran off stage.
Michael:
[56:08] Yeah I don’t remember for sure.
Damashe:
[56:11] Okay, we’ll follow. I was just curious if you if it was something that like, you know Sometimes people are watching the keynote when they get laser focused on one thing and then they miss a keyword You know I miss a miss word here miss couple words there was gonna be called a difference when they packed in as much stuff as it seemed Like they did But yeah, the journey up is interesting to me I think it may I’m gonna say for sure might start me to journaling just because it’ll be easier I will definitely have a few entries cuz I’m gonna test it and see how it works I’ll keep doing it, but we’ll see we will see help is coming to the iPad.
That’s a new thing. I’m kind of happy about that And we’ll be following up with more information more things that we’re interested in I think because there’s a lot out there I have heard things and did not remember what they were For this last week they it was WWDC every day except for Monday.
Yeah, I tell you what I will listen to do things up so for sure And probably Wednesday’s because Shelly Brisbane is on Wednesday You’ll be talking about some accessibility stuff.
Michael:
[56:59] Nobody else is talking about and listen to Saturdays, too Yeah, but it will be Saturday when people get this. Oh, yeah, I’m forewarning you to listen to Saturdays, okay?
Damashe:
[57:07] I mean who’s on Saturday me again.
Michael:
[57:10] Well, did you did you hear what they did last Saturday? With the like news recap the 15 minute. Yeah, she just read down the news That’s what I wanted with Friday finds, but it kind of turned into its own show.
However, they’re trying something a little bit different So yeah, I did it episode.
Damashe:
[57:25] That’s that’s interesting. I’m not sure I tuned in to double-tap for this Right, right.
Yeah, which is kind of a problem though. I mean given that it’s a Saturday show I can see and I think I know what happened.
Well, I’ll give you a bit ed points You don’t have to try to edit around it.
So I was listening to that and I legitimately thought like oh, that’s interesting I did not tune into double-tap to hear somebody just read out a bunch of headlines for me though Like I really didn’t and why did you get Laura like you’re gonna do this?
But the other thing I thought about is I see what happened here, though So, but Sean was probably like, listen, man, I did not sign up to do this six days a week and I’m not happy about it.
Michael:
[57:54] They’re like, okay, we’re going to try something like that.
Damashe:
[58:01] That’s interesting though, that Friday Fives was meant to be that, and it’s now turned into another thing altogether.
Michael:
[58:06] All right. So somehow we lost part of Demasi’s recording.
Don’t know what happened there. And honestly, this episode is already late and I’ve got other stuff to work on.
So I’m recording this quick outro if you want to connect with us, then feel free to reach out at payome P-A-Y-O-W-E-N well, I guess let me redo that. I’m payone at unmute.community.
This is Demasi, D-A-M-A-S-A-G, at Unmute.community, and send us your feedback, T-W, at YourOwnPay.com.
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On this episode, Michael tasks with Marty, Lynn, and Angie about the following topics.
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Join Marty and the Michaels as they discuss the incredible features of ACB Link, the official app of the American Council of the Blind. Discover how ACB Link provides a seamless experience to access the latest news, affiliate information, live streams, podcasts, and more. Streamlining your ACB media experience has never been easier!
Marty S:
[0:04] Hey all, Marty here, and today with me I have the Michaels. Say hello, Michaels.
Michael B:
[0:09] Hello.
Michael D:
[0:11] Hello.
Marty S:
[0:12] Today, we’re going to be talking about ACB Link. So Michael D., why don’t you give us a little primer on what ACB Link is?
Michael D:
[0:20] Sure. ACBLink is an app on iOS and there’s a version on Android currently.
It needs the same love that the iOS version has gotten recently.
But ACBLink is the official app of the American Council of the Blind.
And basically, it allows the user to go in, find out the latest news and what’s going on with the American Council of the Blind.
And then you can check to see all of the different affiliates that you can join and get information about that affiliate.
We have the different ACB Media live streams and podcasts and all of that great content that you can get from ACB Media in the app.
So it’s a very convenient place to quickly get all of the information you want from the American Council of the Blind.
Marty S:
[1:14] Excellent. So, one feature about it that’s really cool in this new version is the streams, one through, I don’t know what the last number is. How many are there? 10, So, do you want to talk about that because that’s a really cool feature.
Michael D:
[1:35] So I’m really excited about this because in the past in the app you had to double tap on the stream, go and find the play button, and then go to play.
Now all you have to do is just double tap on each of the streams to play it.
It’s kind of like you’re changing the dial on the radio. You could just go from one to the next to the next very quickly by flicking and double tapping and then if you want to stop or start back up the playback you can just do a two finger double tap if you have voiceover on or there’s an out playing button at the top right of the screen that’s a like visually it’s a music note kind of signify something’s playing and you double tap on that and you can go play and pause and and all those things see what you’re listening to so yeah, i will say that the acb link update has caused me to listen to acb media a lot more than I ever have in the past and I will stick by that statement because it’s just so easy.
Michael B:
[2:32] You go in there, you tap streams and then you tap the stream number.
Used to be you go in, you tap the menu, you tap on ACB radio, then you tap the stream number, then you tap the play button. See?
See? It’s a lot simpler to just go and tap streams, tap the stream number.
You can also listen to podcasts there, Michael. Can you explain what that process looks like?
Michael D:
[2:49] Sure. This process is just as easy. So you go into the podcast tab.
Yes, there’s a new tab for podcasts.
And you find the podcast you want, you double tap, you find the episode you want, you double tap. It’s as simple as that.
And you can go back and forth between episodes of the same podcast.
I think it’s faster to do this method than going through a podcast app, like Apple podcast or anything like that, because everything is just in one place for that podcast.
You don’t have to look at show notes. You don’t have to look at any of that stuff. You just want to listen, find the episode, double tap.
Michael B:
[3:27] Can you adjust play speed for podcast episodes?
Michael D:
[3:31] Yes, you can. In fact, that now playing button that I told you about is at the top right corner on every screen for the most part in the app.
So you just find that now playing button, double tap, and then there’s a one X button, which represents the speed.
And you can go all the way up to 3X on the speed, which a lot of apps do, but I feel like this does it really well.
Nice. The the other thing that you could do in podcasts that you obviously can’t do in streams is set the position.
So there’s a little slider at the bottom that you can flick up and flick down on if you have focus on it and it’ll change the progress and the playback progress in the app.
Michael B:
[4:13] This is the simplest way to stream ACB media. I think it’s even more simpler than going to it on a webpage.
Another thing that’s been improved is the affiliates tab. I hadn’t noticed this And I went and I looked at the affiliates tab prior to recording this, Michael.
And can you talk a little bit about that? If someone’s interested in a special interest affiliate or a state affiliate, how can they get those details?
Michael D:
[4:35] So I’m curious before I explain that. What did you find different on the tab?
Michael B:
[4:40] So to me, and it very well could be that I missed or that I misremembered.
But I thought in the previous app, you tapped on the affiliates or you got to the affiliates under the menu, and then your phone interrupted you with a voicemail to let you know that you forgot to put your phone on do not disturb.
So hold on, there we go. You would tap on the affiliate and then it brought up a web view that you would scroll through the list of the different affiliates. Was that not how it was?
Michael D:
[5:08] That is not how it was. The affiliates tab has been streamlined as far as performance, so it loads faster.
But it still, it has worked that way. We have the two different types of affiliates.
One thing that we also did though that does improve use of the app is we had little promotions and things about ACB at the top of each screen.
Those have been removed.
And so you get right to the content that you care about without having to go through as much, you know, learn more about ACB or certain things at the top of each screen. So everything’s a lot more streamlined.
Michael B:
[5:48] And that could have been it, is just the fact that it’s a lot more of a streamlined process, but it’s super nice.
Michael D:
[5:53] And you know, one of the things if you go into the state affiliates, you can go, there is a button to see the nearest state affiliate.
So that’s a very nice feature because it uses your phone’s location to tell you where the nearest affiliate is to your location.
Marty S:
[6:14] Oh, that’s pretty cool.
Michael D:
[6:17] Yeah, it’s a very nice app and then there’s, as at the time Steve Jobs and Tim Cook like to say, one more thing.
The app has a new device that it runs on natively and that’s the Mac.
So ACBLink is now a Mac Catalyst app. So it’s basically the iPhone version but built to run specifically on the Mac. And my testing, everything I’ve seen, it works really well. Do you want to talk about that, Michael?
Michael B:
[6:49] Yeah, I think it works pretty seamless. I use the VO keys to get to the tab bar and I can interact with that.
And then you see the tabs that are across the bottom on the iPhone app.
So if you know, for example, you want to go to the affiliates tab, you can use VO right arrow key to get to the affiliates tab, press VO space. And then there’s a table that contains all the information.
So if you can jump back to the previous table, You can interact with that and get all the details.
Or what’s even more convenient for me is when I tap on the stream, well, when I locate the streams and I press VL space on that, I can get to the table with a list of streams and then use my up and down arrow keys independently, not using voiceover.
I get down to stream number five and then I can start that playback with the space key.
Michael D:
[7:34] Yeah, and they’re now playing and all those things work just the same as they do on iPhone or iPad.
So everything works just as it does on mobile. So this is really exciting to have ACB Link in more places for more users. So if you’re working, you want to have the streams on in the background, you can do that now.
Marty S:
[7:52] That’s really cool.
Michael B:
[7:53] So, Michael, thank you so much for joining Marty and I. We are going to demonstrate the ACB Link next Sunday on the iPhone, and I’ll give you a brief glimpse at the Mac version of it as well.
Do you have anything else you want to mention before we let you do it today, Michael?
Michael D:
[8:10] No, I just want to say thank you guys for having me on. It’s always a pleasure.
And you know, if you’re, you know, we always love feedback about the app.
So, you know, just let us know and we’re always going to be upgrading it and making it better.
This is just kind of the, the next best thing that we can do with it.
So we’re always looking for, you know, feedback on that.
So, I’m really excited about ACB Link and I just love working with everybody, you know, Jeff and everybody involved with that. So, I want to say thank you to all the users out there that use it.
Marty S:
[8:44] And if anyone wants to find you out there, where can they find you?
Michael D:
[8:48] So, you can find me in a lot of places. I’m on Twitter as Mike Doeise, it’s M-I-K-E-D-O-I-S-E.
You can email me at mikedoeise.icloud.com. I’m on Mastodon at Mike Doeise.
It’s the same spelling, at techopolis, T-E-C-H-O-P-O-L-I-S dot social.
And you can find me, just Google my name, and everything comes up, so.
Marty S:
[9:10] Cool, sounds great. Well, thanks again. We appreciate you coming out, and we’ll see you guys next time.
Michael B:
[9:20] To Andre Louis and his shorts collection for the music in this audio.
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In this episode, Michael demonstrates for you how to use the Wayaround tag and labeling system on BlindShell Classic 2.
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On This episode, Michael, Taylor, Marty, and Lynn discuss everything announced at WWDC 2023’s keynote.
Visit this page to get the original episode, with links and a transcript.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of Friday Finds! In this episode, Marty and Linn dig into the highlights from Apple’s WWDC, ponder over the conspicuous absence of AI in the presentation, and analyze Apple’s preference for the term “machine learning” instead.
They also discuss ‘EmpathEyes,’ an innovative VR simulator that helps parents and caregivers understand a child’s exact visual impairment, and how this could change the way we perceive and react to visual impairment.
Finally, they explore the recent controversy over Reddit charging for API access and its impact on accessibility, including an exemption for accessibility apps and an upcoming user protest.
Join Marty and Linn as they unravel the intricacies of these fascinating developments. Stay tuned, leave your comments, and don’t forget to join us next week for another Friday Finds!
Reach us for any questions or feedback at
feedback@unmute.show
Marty:
[0:05] Hey all, Marty here, and welcome back to another Friday Fines with Lynne.
Hey Lynne, how’s it going?
Linn:
[0:10] Hey guys, this has been quite a busy week, huh?
Marty:
[0:13] Yep, definitely. So quick announcement here at the top, I just want to let everyone know that Michael and I were on IACAS doing WWDC Recap, and that’s going to drop in the unmute feed on Saturday, so look for that.
Lynn, what’s our first topic?
Linn:
[0:32] Okay, so we will start out with WWDC and I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it because I know that we’ve been pretty saturated with it all week.
But the one thing I did want to touch on, of course, there were a lot of things, the headset, $3,500 headset that I won’t be able to afford anytime soon.
But yeah, and it has voiceover built into it. So it’s going to have some accessibility features.
And I guess I listened to the entire presentation.
[1:16] And of course, I’m sitting there and I’m thinking about it. And I’m like, okay, where is AI?
I have not heard any discussion of AI.
So I was very surprised by that.
But I found an article in The Verge that was titled For Better or Worse, Apple is Avoiding the AI Hype Train.
And it was written by James This is Vincent from June 6.
And basically, what they discussed in that article is that Apple is really taking a more cautious approach to the whole AI thing.
Of course, there was AI throughout the whole presentation, but they didn’t call it AI.
They preferred to use the term machine learning.
[2:11] And I think that some experts are saying that actually machine learning is a better way to describe AI.
Artificial intelligence has sort of like a science fictional connotation to it.
And AI is Apple is really taking more of a cautious, conservative approach in talking about it. it. It doesn’t mean they don’t have it. It just means, you know, that they’re going to kind of describe it in a different way.
And that’s probably not a bad thing, because as many of us know, AI has really gotten some bad press.
A lot of people, when they hear about AI, they hear about about the end of humanity at the worst, and AI taking jobs and misinformation and all sorts of malfeasance, whatever.
So yeah, AI is starting to have some negative, you know, public press.
[3:21] And I think that that’s gonna be, that may have been something that Apple was thinking about when they actually did not say the word.
Because as we know, if you listen to the Google presentation and the Microsoft presentations, if we had a dime for every time they use the word AI, we probably could get a nice pizza for everybody in the audience.
Marty:
[3:44] Yeah. So do you think that they should explain what they mean by changing the verbiage to something different, or you think they should just go with it just let people figure it out.
Linn:
[3:58] I think that by using the term machine learning, they are accentuating the positives about AI.
So in that respect, I think it’s a smart move on their part.
Marty:
[4:12] And not to say anything, just to let it ride and just let it be a different…
Linn:
[4:18] Just have it be a different, right. Because again, AI just has such a negative publicity right now.
And it’s a shame, because it shouldn’t. There’s so much good about AI, and we need to focus on the good.
And in sort of changing the name, maybe like a euphemistic sort of expression, Apple is really trying to accentuate the positives.
It is AI after all, but they’re changing the name of it. So I don’t know, you know, the jury is still out on whether this is a good idea or not.
Marty:
[4:57] We’ll see moving forward. Right. I mean, we’ll just have to see how it goes.
Linn:
[5:00] It may actually be a very smart move on Apple’s part, you know.
So this this article I found, it is really kind of a very, very interesting technology.
[5:17] And basically, you know, I was born totally blind.
And so when you say totally blind, you sort of understand what that means.
There’s not much room for misinterpretation, right? You can’t see at all.
That’s it. Yeah. But most folks that are considered blind actually are not totally blind.
And one of the things that I have noticed, I have blind and visually impaired friends.
But in discussing this with a lot of my visually impaired or partially sighted friends, they very often face sort of the challenge of, you know, trying to explain to people why they can see some things, but they can’t see other things.
And I can imagine that this would be especially difficult for kids who really don’t have the ability to communicate this type of information.
Plus, their parents may not even understand the child’s eye condition well enough to, you know, advocate well for the needs of the child. So, there was an article in…
[6:43] Blind cool tech from june fifth and it was posted to the tech vi list that was run by my friend david goldfield which is a great list and the product is called empathize and i’m going to spell it.
E-M-P-A-T-H-E-Y-E-S. And basically what it is, it’s a VR simulator.
And what it tries to do is, it tries to represent an individual’s exact visual impairment.
So when And you put, you know, it’s a sort of like a, I’m trying to think AI or VR, sort of like a headset, I guess you could say.
And you put it on and the technology will actually allow you as the parent, you can put in the child’s eye condition, what it is, And it will show you what your child is seeing in different places, like on a bus, on the playground, in the classroom.
[8:01] And there are like 50 eye conditions that are in this software.
And it was, basically it was developed by a mom who has twins who are blind, in Ireland.
And she did this because she was trying to…
[8:27] Help not only herself but other people get a good idea of what their child is able to see and not able to see and it also has different views and different ways of looking different light conditions different strengths to sort of show the parents in real time what their own children are seeing.
And I just think that is an amazing thing, because this is really one of the challenges.
If you have difficulty seeing, you can see. And some people say, well, you can see or you can’t see. But that’s really not true.
I mean, there are different levels of visual impairment.
And with this virtual reality simulator, it’s sort of like a flight simulator, right?
You get in there, and it allows you to actually experience what your child experiences from a visual perspective.
Marty:
[9:32] I think this is really cool. I mean, if you are a parent and you’re trying to have some sort of idea of what your child is going through, and you can actually sit in a simulator and at least experience, oh, this is what their vision is like, or, oh, this is what they’re going through.
I mean, that goes a long way to let the parent understand exactly how and what their kids are dealing with.
I mean, this is, you know, taking something like virtual reality, which is used mostly for gaming and, you know, stuff like that, and putting it into a real world problem, you know, and letting you being able to experience.
So I think that’s really, really cool, you know?
Linn:
[10:22] 360 degree immersion, so that, yeah, so it’s pretty awesome.
And it has, you know, you select the eye condition that your child has.
And I imagine that this would even be able to help not just children and parents, but other people as well.
So it’s in it’s.
There, the person that developed this does have a lot of.
Academic resources behind her and is trying to raise money to.
Make this more widely available and it’s going to be shown at, it seems like it’s like an optometric conference soon, and it’s going to be tested with a lot of other people, and then they plan to offer it all over the world.
This is pretty cool. That is empathize, right? E-M-P-A-T-H-E-Y-E-S. Yeah.
Marty:
[11:29] I’d love to see this thing move forward, make some progression, and really get into more of the mainstream if that’s possible, but it sounds really awesome. So, cool. Yeah.
Linn:
[11:41] It’s a headset, I guess.
Marty:
[11:43] Awesome.
Linn:
[11:43] All right. This is the week of headsets, huh?
Marty:
[11:46] Yeah, definitely.
Linn:
[11:47] Okay. My last story for today relates to something we talked about a while back.
I don’t think it was on this program, but we were talking about the social media site, Reddit.
And Reddit has not made its users happy because they have started to charge for their API.
And I’m trying to remember, Marty, you were saying one of the developers.
Marty:
[12:18] Yeah, there’s a really famous Reddit app that people use on iPhone, which is called Apollo.
And that’s been a really famous app for Reddit for quite a long time.
And I believe what they said was they were going to charge them like $20 million a year or something ridiculous like that.
Linn:
[12:40] Yeah, something ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah.
Marty:
[12:42] Just to be able to keep their app going?
Linn:
[12:47] So what they have done is they have now made an exception for accessibility clients.
And so lately, you know, like many blind folks are mods on Reddit.
And it’s really difficult because there are accessibility challenges with the current Reddit clients, the official ones that are out there. and, you know, people are saying, wait a minute, how are we going to be able to access this if we are stuck with one client or one or two clients that are not, that have accessibility issues?
So, they, Reddit has addressed this, and it’s, it’s non-commercial and And apps that address accessibility needs, they won’t have to pay to access Reddit state data.
So that’s good. And…
Marty:
[13:57] So does that mean that, let’s say Apollo implements voiceover into their app so that blind people are able to use our app with voiceover?
Does that mean they won’t have to pay the fee or is there some other thing that has to happen or something more that has to happen?
Linn:
[14:15] Yeah, so basically, Reddit says that they’ve connected with select developers of non-commercial apps that address accessibility needs and offered them exemptions from the large-scale pricing that they’re doing.
And there’s a, supposedly there’s going to be a huge protest.
I remember thinking, you know, is this just going to tick off blind people?
But it turns out that no, other other Reddit users, which I thought would be the case, are not happy campers.
Because of this, they’re going to lose access to the apps that they like.
And this is sort of a Twitter-esque kind of move, right? Sort of…
Marty:
[15:11] I don’t understand why numbers have to be so outrageous. Even if they’re going to charge a fee to use their APIs, I don’t understand why the price is so outrageous.
It seems just way out of line for developers to be able to use their APIs.
I’m not sure what’s behind that, why they’re doing that, but it would be interesting to know.
So clearly we’re just hearing now, you know, that Apollo is pulling the plug on their app, I guess, so.
Linn:
[15:39] Right. So there are a few blindness-specific apps.
One was called Luna, I think, Luna. The other one is called Reddit for Blind.
Um and so they apparently will still function but gosh wouldn’t it be nice if they would just go ahead and make their app accessible like really that would be in my opinion the best way to one of the well not the best way but you know then you wouldn’t have to have these special things right you could just say well yeah you’re talking about the actual reddit app is that what you’re talking Right.
Marty:
[16:25] And it’s not accessible currently.
Linn:
[16:28] I think it’s, it may be accessible, but I think it has accessibility challenges from what we talked about on, I think it was IACAST.
Right. We had, we had discussed this.
So apparently the, there’s a Reddit, a subreddit for, that’s for blind folks And they’re going to join in with other subreddit in shutting down on June 12th to June 14th in protest.
So the blind subreddit says that they are going to participate in that protest.
So we’ll see what happens. That’s, you know, it’s really a shame. Definitely.
Marty:
[17:17] It’s really interesting, you know, all of this stuff that’s happening.
All right, Lynne, thanks so much for another Friday Finds.
And if you have any questions, comments, you can reach us at feedback at unmute.show.
And everybody have a great one and we’ll see you next time.
Linn:
[17:35] Thanks a lot, guys.
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On This episode, Michael, Taylor, Marty, and Lynn discuss everything announced at WWDC 2023’s keynote.
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Join us for another exciting episode of ‘A Lady with Lucy’, where our hosts, Marty and Lucy, dive deep into the fascinating world of Amazon’s virtual assistant. Discover the magic of various features like the Follow-up Mode, Whisper Mode, Routines, Themes, and the intriguing VoicePad. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a smart device lover, or someone new to the realm of AI, this episode is sure to provide you with some hidden treasures and secret hacks to make your life a tad easier.
In this episode, Lucy walks us through how to optimize our usage of these features, from enabling and disabling different modes, understanding themes, to experimenting with recording through VoicePad. So, are you ready to level up your interaction with Lady A? Tune in now!
Marty:
[0:04] Hey y’all, Marty here and we’re back with another A Lady with Lucy.
And Lucy, welcome. How’s it going?
Lucy:
[0:13] Oh, it’s going great. Going great. Yeah.
Marty:
[0:16] So what are we going to be talking about today?
Lucy:
[0:18] Okay. So today I thought I would go over just a few things that you can do with your Lady A, just some kind of, oh, miscellaneous things, modes that you can set up and things like that.
So, first one is called follow-up mode.
And that means that you can ask your Lady A more than one question without having to say her name again.
Because normally, you You know, you ask her one question and then you have to say her name again before you can find out anything else.
So with follow-up mode, I’m not actually sure how many questions you can ask her at a time, you know, without having to stop and say her name again, because I asked her that question and she didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to find out.
Marty:
[1:21] That would be a fun game to play, you know, see how many questions you can ask before she cuts you off.
Lucy:
[1:26] Yeah, yeah. So the first time you use it, you have to say enable follow-up mode and then it will be turned on from then on. So.
My device today is called Ziggy.
Enable follow up mode. Follow up mode is now on. Ziggy, what’s the weather today?
Currently in Lansing, it’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit with partly sunny skies.
Tonight, you can expect mostly clear skies. What’s the humidity?
Right now, the humidity is 26%. Is it going to rain?
No rain is expected tonight. By the way, there’s an air quality alert in effect until Friday, June 2nd, 9.30pm.
What’s the date today? Today is Thursday, June 1st. What’s the weather tomorrow?
Tomorrow in Lansing, there will be partly sunny weather, with a high of 92 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 62 degrees.
By the way, there’s an air quality alert in effect. Hmm.
Marty:
[2:35] So I would have never even thought that I thought that what you were doing, you could just do. I never. So if you didn’t have that mode on, you’d have to say her name every time.
Lucy:
[2:46] Yeah. So let’s, let’s try this.
Ziggy, disable followup mode. Followup mode is now off. Ziggy, what’s the date today?
Today is Thursday, June 1st.
What’s the date tomorrow?
Yeah, I see.
So maybe it’s just like never ending. You can just keep asking it questions.
Marty:
[3:12] Or maybe there’s a time limit. Like I wonder if you waited long enough with a pause in between the questions, if it would disable.
Lucy:
[3:19] There is. I don’t know what that time limit is, but I know it’s not very long.
I would say 10 to 15 seconds at the most.
Marty:
[3:29] Right. casket questions one after another, like you were doing, it probably could go for a long time. But if you wait too long, whatever that time limit is, then you’ll get out of that mode properly and you’ll have to say your name again. Yep.
Lucy:
[3:43] Yep. Hmm.
Marty:
[3:45] Interesting. But that’s pretty cool though.
Lucy:
[3:46] Yeah, it is kind of cool. I have mine on all the time just because, you know, there’s yeah. Yeah.
Marty:
[3:54] If it’s on, do you have to still say her name in the first time?
And then once you say her first time, then you can continue without saying her name.
Lucy:
[4:02] Correct. Got it.
Marty:
[4:03] Cool.
Lucy:
[4:04] Yeah, you always have to say the name the first time to activate it, yeah, to wake it up.
So the second one, I don’t really see much advantage, but it’s kind of cool.
It’s called Whisper Mode.
And it is what it says it is.
So, Ziggy, enable whisper mode. Sure. Whispered responses is now on.
Marty:
[4:32] Did she speak?
Lucy:
[4:38] Yeah, she did.
Marty:
[4:40] It doesn’t come across in the audio, just so you know.
Lucy:
[4:42] Yeah, unfortunately. I thought it would, but it doesn’t. But yes, she was whispering.
And it’s actually kind of creepy. I don’t like it. Because it’s just, I don’t know.
Marty:
[4:55] Well, here’s an interesting question. If you whisper at her, she’ll whisper back without having to enable whisper mode, right?
Lucy:
[5:04] I don’t think so. I don’t know.
Marty:
[5:06] That’s what happened to me anyway, that’s why I said, you know, it was all let me see.
Lucy:
[5:10] So let me see Ziggy disable whisper mode. Okay. I’ve turned off whispered responses.
Ziggy, hello. Hello. No, the Stanley Cup playoffs are almost done and I’m taking my best slap shot to predict the Ziggy stop.
Marty:
[5:28] How did it come out of the hockey question? If you whispered at it by saying hello.
Lucy:
[5:34] I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. Who knows?
Yeah, you must have had yours on somehow because I’ve noticed that, yeah, if you’ve got to have that on in order for her to reciprocate the whispering.
Marty:
[5:52] All right. Got it.
Lucy:
[5:53] Okay. So the next thing is kind of silly also.
And I don’t know exactly how many themes there are that you can activate.
I’ve only found two. And the only thing that it does is it kind of gives you some sound effects before it says something.
One is the space theme and one is a cat theme. So let’s enable the cat theme.
Ziggy, enable cat theme. disabled cat theme in the past. Do you want to enable it again? Yes. Okay, here’s cat theme.
Welcome to the cat theme. And just so you know, I’ll add some cat fun to the weather, timers, and even jokes.
And if you ever want to pause, just say, no more cats.
To start right meow, just say, hello. Hello? Hello? Hello?
[7:01] Ziggy hello.
Hello to keep kidding around ask me for a cat joke Yeah, see that’s just kind of stupid And I don’t know you know Who are severe cat lovers are gonna probably love that or you know people who are into Star Wars and Star Trek would like the Space theme what’s the Star Wars one sound like oh, let’s see let’s see Ziggy enables space theme You’ve disabled Space Theme in the past.
Do you want to enable it again? Yes. Okay, here’s Space Theme.
Welcome to the Space Theme. Engines are go for liftoff.
I’ll add an interstellar twist when you ask for things like the weather, timers, alarms, and even jokes.
Marty:
[8:15] That there.
Lucy:
[8:16] Here’s a fun fact. A laser battle in space would be dark and silent.
To lighten things up, try asking for a joke about space. Oh gosh.
Yeah, see, it’s just, it’s silly. I don’t know. It’s probably, you know, something for kids, you know? Yeah, definitely.
Marty:
[8:33] They like those sounds and stuff, you know?
Lucy:
[8:38] So another thing that’s kind of cool is you can set up what they call routines.
And this means that it’s kind of a bundle of tasks that it will perform when you say a certain thing.
So it’s kind of like what you can do on your iPhone by setting up activities.
Don’t really want to get into that, but they have some routines that are pre-set.
In other words, you can enable like the weather routine.
It’s like, so after you dismiss your alarm that you have set for the morning, it will give you the weather.
And there’s one called Start My Day and this, it’ll give you the news and traffic updates and more, just what we need, traffic updates. Right, Marty? Oh, yeah.
Marty:
[9:37] I’m going to need that.
Lucy:
[9:40] And then there’s one called, and I don’t know how this works.
It’s called Morning Shower.
And it’s like, it says it will give you weather and favorite radio station when Lady A detects water running for two minutes.
Now I’ve never tried that one so I don’t know you know, how it would.
I guess, I guess it would, I don’t know, that’s pretty weird one, I know, right?
Marty:
[10:07] Maybe it does that. It’s the thing is, well, if it’s raining, you’re not going to go anywhere. So here’s your favorite radio station.
Lucy:
[10:16] And there’s one called Sunset. And that turns off the lights.
Or I mean, wait a minute. It’s called Sunset Lights, excuse me.
So it turns on your lights when the sun goes down.
That is if you have smart lights, smart home lights, and we’ll get into smart home devices in another episode of this.
And then there’s one called good night and that wishes you good night, turns off the lights, and plays sleep sounds.
And so in order to find these routines you would go into your Amazon Alexa app on your smart device and go under the more tab in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen and then flick to the right until you find routines.
Double tap on that and there are some tabs at the bottom of that.
And to find the preset ones you go into gallery and that will give you the preset routines. There’s tons of them in there. Hmm.
Marty:
[11:24] That’s kind of cool.
Lucy:
[11:26] Yeah. And you can also…
Marty:
[11:28] You don’t have to mess around with all the different ones to see which one would suit your needs.
Lucy:
[11:32] Yeah. You can also set up your own routines. I’ve never set up my own routine, but it’s not difficult at all.
So, um, yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. All right. So the next thing I want to talk about is something called voice pad.
Now this is kind of a cool thing.
Once you enable it…
You can ask it to, it’ll ask you, what do you want to do? Do you want to record?
Do you want to read your notes? Or, you know, what do you want to do?
It will allow you to record things quickly.
[12:16] Like if you, let’s say, you know, somebody gives you a phone number and you don’t have your phone around or it’s dead or whatever and you don’t have anything to record with.
So you would just ask your Lady A device to open VoicePad.
So let’s just see. Let’s do that. Ziggy, open VoicePad.
Welcome to VoicePad. Say record to start recording. Say stop to stop recording.
Say read to read everything back. Say email to email yourself your notes.
What do you want to do? Record. Recording. Please speak now.
This is a test just to see how this works.
And in a minute, I will ask you to read back what I just said.
[13:14] Recorded. read my notes oh let’s see how do I do this now read back maybe recorded Ziggy stop stopping recording okay what do you want to do now read my read my recording sorry I am not currently recording and say record to start recording or say help for help.
What do you want to do? Read. You want me to read you your notes, right? Yes. Please email me the words that I am saying.
This is a test just to see how this works and in a minute I will ask you to read back what I just said. Read my notes.
That’s the end. What do you want to do now? Stop. Okay, goodbye.
Marty:
[14:02] So is that in text or is that an audio file?
Lucy:
[14:05] It’s in text. Okay.
And you can only have that email you that text if you have your email linked to your Lady A account.
And you would do that by going into your Amazon Alexa app, and then you go into settings and you find, you flick around until you find mail and calendars.
And there’s only certain email providers that will allow you to do that, but Gmail and Google, they’re one of them.
So you could, yeah, you could have it email those notes to you.
And I mean, you know, with all the devices I have, I don’t really find much of a use for that, but you know, somebody might. It’s kind of a cool thing to have around.
Marty:
[15:04] Yeah, you never know.
Lucy:
[15:05] Yep. Okay. So, um, that’s about all I have to talk about today.
So we will be back next time.
And so I’ll see everybody next month.
Marty:
[15:23] All right. Thanks so much, Lucy. We appreciate it. And thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time.
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[Music]
This is the Shell Phone Show.
Showing you how to do something on the Blind Shell Classic 2.
Brought to you by Peyone Media LLC.
[Music]
All right, so I’m going to answer a real quick question that I’ve gotten a couple of different
from individuals who have asked.
And that is what is this way around application that’s
available in the blind child classic two app catalog.
So if you go to the app catalog, as of today, seven June, you can
download under the new applications, an app called way around.
Once you’ve downloaded this, you’ll want to set up an account
if you don’t already have one and then acquire some way around tags.
Of course, you can get them from AT guys, but you can also get
at WayAround.com. I recommend AT guys only because I work for them, you know. I don’t get paid a
commission, but definitely, you know, check them out. So once you’ve gotten those WayTags, then you
and you’ve set up your account. The very first thing you’ll want to do is press and hold the
down button once you open WayAround. This will put you on the very last button, which is to write.
And if you press okay on that, you can actually write a description. There’s going to be an edit
field that you can put a description in and this is what you can put on your way tag. So for example
let’s say you have milk and you want to keep track of the expiration date. You can put those details
in the description and then the last button on that screen will be right. When you hit okay on
right it’ll say touch a tag to the back of your phone. This is about halfway up the back of the
phone that you just want to touch one of the way tags against. When the phone has read it, it will
vibrate and let you know, “Hey, this has been written,” and you can move on with your day.
Then attach that tag to the item that you just labeled.
Once you’ve done that, next time you open the way around application, you simply touch
the back of your phone against that tag.
The phone will speak and vibrate and let you know, “Hey, I’m reading the tag that you already
wrote.”
Then once you’ve read that, you use your down arrow key and it’ll let you read the information
that you saved to that tag.
Tune in to unmute presents on Sunday.
I’m going to demo this for you, but that is a quick overview of how to use the
way around system with the blind shell classic to make sure you get your
account set up, get some way around tags.
If you’re looking for something to get started with, there’s a sampler pack for
$15 that’ll let you get one of each of the tags, or if you really want to get
involved, get the starter pack and that’ll give you between 10 and 15 of each of
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