Welcome to issue #13 of The Extra Mighell!
The links here represent the stories of the past week that I found interesting or noteworthy in addition to what I cover on the blog - that’s why they’re “extra.”
The tech news wasn’t all that interesting to me this week, so a shorter issue for you to read. I’ll see if I can get the tech world to be more interesting next week…..
Productivity
I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about productivity lately, so it was nice to see my favorite task manager, Todoist, come out with this interesting quiz to help you discover the best productivity method to fit the way you work.
How-To
The New York Times has a nice article this week on how to buy tech that lasts and lasts. Something I need to learn for myself.
This week LinkedIn introduced possibly the best feature EVER - at least for people like me. You can now upload an audio clip to let people know how to pronounce your name (Wondering if this is the end of “Tom Miguel”…….).
This Week in Apple
The beta release of iOS 14 dropped this week - if you don’t mind a few bugs here and there, or if you have an extra iOS device laying around, why not download it and check out all the new features?
Some of the new features coming to iCloud Keychain will tell you which passwords you have that are easy to guess, or have been leaked in a data breach. [9to5 Mac]
This Week in Microsoft Teams
Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I’m a big fan of Microsoft Teams, and this week gave me great joy as Microsoft announced a ton of new features that will be rolling out soon, including:
Together Mode - forget 3x3 or 7x7 blocks of people in your video meeting. Together Mode separates you from your surroundings and puts you into a theater, coffee shop, conference room, or other place.
Dynamic View, which adjusts the layout and sizing of video and presentation to maximize screen use.
Live Transcript of everything that’s being said in the meeting
Filtering to make you look better in bad light
Microsoft Teams Displays - standalone devices that look like a Google Home or Amazon Echo, which you can use to see your day at a glance, recent messages, or even join meetings so you can free up your computer to work.
Check out the link above to see even more features!
Fun for Nerds
Have you heard of Peacock, the new streaming service from NBC? Well, they made their Terms of Service more interesting to read than the average legalese - just scroll down to #9 if you are impatient. Maybe instead of TL;DR, we should say TL;RI (recipe included)….?
Do you have a Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) account? Open up your web browser and type excel.new - or word.new, or powerpoint.new - I know, it’s pretty nerdy to get excited over this, but it’s still cool……right?
See you next week!
— Tom