Transcript

NC_2024_03_10

[0:00] Music.

[0:14] Episode 183. You know, I'm a big fan of Tom Merritt, the host of the Daily Tech

Buy Tom Merritt’s New Book “Synced”

http://tomsnewbook.com/

[0:19] News Show, and I'm guessing quite a few of you are as well.
If you followed his work over the years, you know that he's extremely knowledgeable about tech.
To be fair, he's extremely knowledgeable about pretty much everything, but tech specifically and the businesses behind tech.
Someone once said that he's also almost pathologically unbiased about tech.
So the The good news is that Tom has written a non-fiction book called Synced, Understanding Technology and Make It Work for You.
And this book is to help you understand tech without undue outrage or optimism.
The book is being published by a service called Unbound, and you can back the project by going to tomsnewbook.com.
I bet it's going to be awesome.

Buzz Blossom & Squeak - New Podcast by Jill from the Northwoods

https://buzzblossomandsqueak.com/

[1:01] Frequent contributor to the Nosilla cast and good friend of mine, Jill from the North Woods, has a new podcast out called Buzz, Blossom, and Squeak, and it's wonderful.
The show is all about encouraging you to discover nature outside your door.
In the first episode, she talks about things like fighting the power of the couch, how hard it is to actually get up and go outside.
She encouraged us to slow down when out on a walk and really look and listen to everything around you. So on my next walk, I took out my headphones and I got on my hands and knees to watch a pill bug crawling on the sidewalk.
Then on another part of my walk, I took Jill's advice and I stopped and I closed my eyes just to listen.
I heard the sound of wind whipping through the palm fronds above me, a small bird was chirping a little ways away, and then I could hear the rustle of a flag nearby.
It was a really interesting way to experience the walks that I go on every single day. It was a very different experience doing the kinds of things that Jill suggests.
If this sounds fun to you, and you know, it's Jill, it's fun.
You just got to smile when you listen to Jill talk.
So I highly encourage you to check out the Buzz, Blossom, and Squeak podcast in your podcatcher of choice, or go to buzzblossom, oh, I'll say this correctly this time, buzzblossomandsqueak.com.

CES 2024: Ember Precise Temperature-Controlled Products

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/02/ces-2024-ember/

[2:20] All right, let's start another one of the fine interviews from CES 2024, Thanks to Steve Sheridan putting them all together for us.

[2:31] Every morning, I'm so spoiled, every morning Steve brings me a cup of coffee and he brings it to me in my Ember mug.
And an Ember mug is basically a rechargeable heated coffee mug. It keeps my coffee hot.
We like our coffee hot. And so that's why we're in the Ember booth with Jake Singer. And he's going to tell us about other products, new things coming, what they've got here today.
I love to hear it. I start my day that way every day too. So I love it.
He brings Who brings you coffee? That's amazing. Come on over anytime.

[3:00] Yeah, so along with our typical classic product offerings, we've got our 6-ounce, 10-ounce, 14-ounce mugs with accessory lids available.
But we recently launched in September our new tumbler. This is 16 ounces, perfect for a grande coffee from Starbucks.
Comes with two lids in the box. Got a sliding lid for, you know, quick drinking, and then a handle carry lid as well.
So this one you can for on the go. So both of those come in the box.
We have never gotten the travel mugs before. That's kind of interesting.
So the mugs at home, they sit in a little saucer and that's how they charge.
Is that how this charges as well?
Exactly the same way. Yeah. And on the charging base on the coaster, it'll last all day. Keep your coffee hot all day.
So that's if you're drinking from your mug sitting at your desk.
Exactly. But if you're on the go, that can also hold a charge?
Yeah. It lasts for about three hours with the lid on. Oh, even I don't drink it that slow. So that sounds great.
So what's that travel mug called? This is the Ember Tumbler.
And yeah, this is our latest greatest. So we also have the travel mug.
So this is the Ember travel mug.
I'm sorry, Tumbler, not travel mug. Now, this is the travel mug. Okay, great.
So the travel mug, this is a 12 ounce mug, but the main difference with this is you can actually change the temperature directly on the device itself.
Oh, he's tapping up and down on the plus buttons here and it says 125.

[4:19] Oh, I should mention, one thing we would like, we would actually like to go hotter.
Our mugs only go to, I think it's 140? 145 is the hottest. So 120 to 145 is the total range.
We order our coffee at 180 degrees at Starbucks.
So if you can heat that baby up, we'll go even hotter.
Okay, we'll do it. We'll take the feedback. Maybe not 180, but 160 might be nice. 145 is pretty hot.
But yeah, most coffees brewed around 185. So 145 is a nice drinking temperature for most people.
Yeah, yeah. We're just weirdos. No, all good. Okay. So actually, I don't want you to go past this. Yes. I didn't say up front, this is an audio podcast.
Some people will be watching video. So what have I got my hands on here?
So this is the Ember baby bottle. This is the first branch outside of the coffee products for Ember.
So we took the heating technology from the mugs and put it into a baby bottle system.
You can take your bottle out of the fridge, drop it onto, we've got a smart warming puck, which is basically where the batteries are.
We've got the bottle itself. and then over the bottle you can put place our double wall stainless steel vacuum thermos we call it the thermal dome so you take your bottle out of the fridge you can cover it with the thermal dome it'll stay cool for up to four hours until you're ready to feed oh I was thinking immediately this was gonna heat it this is to keep it cool the thermal dome keeps it cool and then the system is intended to heat that's so you can heat from fridge temperature to body temperature in five minutes.

[5:47] In the same unit? In the same unit. Oh my gosh, this is cool.
You can double tap the button on the front or if it's in the other room downstairs you can also start heating with your app.
Okay. Okay, this is bananas. I need to take one home with me today for my grandchildren.
This is great. When I started working on this, I had a six-month-old.
I had another baby in the meantime while we were working on it, and I can tell you, it is a game changer. Parents love it.
Oh, yeah, for travel, for home, everywhere. Take it on a plane, take it in the car.
Even before you go to bed, you place it on your nightstand. It'll keep it cool, and when your baby wakes up in the middle of the night, it's perfect.
Boom, five minutes, feed the baby. Exactly. Not going out to the kitchen for the bottle of awesome. No. entirely BPA free dishwasher safe bottles.
And we also have adapter collars so you can use it.
We have our own anti-colic ember nipple that we've designed, but you can also use Phillips Avent or Dr. Brown's wide nipples.
So those adapter collars come in the box.
Now, and so what is this product called? This is the Ember Baby Bottle.
Ember Baby Bottle. And what's the price point on this? $3.99 for the full kit.
We also have a starter kit that has the bottle only and one bottle and one puck without the thermal dome, without the adapter collars, with a lower entry point.
Okay, but we need the thermal dome.
I just want to say thermal dome. All right, anything else here we need to see?
Yeah, if you want to see our cold technology. So we have a cloud-based shipping box.
So this is the world's first self-refrigerated cloud-based shipping box.

[7:16] We use this to ship drugs or pharmaceuticals that need to be maintained at refrigerator temperature.
So this has onboard cellular and GPS so you can use our cloud-based dashboard to track your package in real time.
You always know exactly where it is and what temperature it's at so that when the medication arrives at your doorstep you know it's safe, effective, and not spoiled.
Wow, can you open it up for us? Of course, yeah.

[7:46] Open up the lid. And inside we've got a cold ginger ale. You can feel the walls.
It's actually quite cold in there. It's quite chilly, but that's about the size of a ginger ale.
Yeah, and that's what, right now we're shipping drugs like Humira and at Penn's, that'll fit, the payload will fit perfectly in there.
Oh, okay, so it's maybe three ginger ales tall, one ginger ale wide, so it's a pretty big box, though.
Oh, what is that, 10, 12 inches, 14 inches on a side there? I believe 14 inches, 14-inch cube, yeah.
Then when you're ready to, so you've taken your medication out, you're ready to ship it back, we've got a one-touch return to sender.
We have an e-ink shipping label display on the front.
So you can actually just push one button, the label will change to the return, and it'll notify the carrier to come pick up the box. Okay, he said that very blase, but there is an electronic display here that is a shipping label.
I mean, it's a, who is it, UPS or somebody? Yeah, UPS Ground.
And it's electronically put that on. That's crazy. That's really cool.
It's very convenient. No printing labels.
You know, it arrives at your door. You take one button, and it'll call the carrier and change the label for you.
So who is this for again? Is this for medical companies to ship to you, and then you press this return to sender?
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So right now we're piloting with some of the largest pharmaceutical cold chain distributors.

[9:12] Very, very interesting. I'm not going to ask the price point because I don't think it's something that a regular human would buy, but I like the idea of you guys solving this problem.
You're going the whole hot to cold thing now.
Hot and cold. That's been the vision all along. Yeah. Start with the coffee products and the baby bottle and this cold chipper have really really been part of the vision since the very beginning of Ember.
We're a precise temperature control company.
Very good. Very good. And where would people find Ember products?
Ember.com is the best place.
Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Apple Store, lots of retailers near you.
All right. We'll be drinking our coffee and thinking of you.
Thank you so much. Thanks for coming.
Well, I do have to say this is a case of an interview costing us money.
While we did have the Ember mugs, just the regular coffee mugs, we've been using those for years and years, we ended up buying each other Ember tumblers which is a 16 ounce the 16 ounce container that they sell we bought them for each other for our anniversary and I'm going to do a full review of it so I don't want to spoil what we think of them but anyway that one cost us money so you're welcome if it cost you money too.

CES 2024: Belkin Qi2 Chargers, GaN Docks/Chargers, and Auto-Tracking Stand

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/03/ces-2024-belkin/

[10:23] I'm about to play you an interview with Jen Warren from Belkin that we've recorded at CES.
She's fantastic. We've enjoyed meeting up with her every single year for years and years and years.
Well, a few weeks ago, I taught you about the new Qi2 standard and what it means for charging devices, both Apple and Android.
The interview with Jen took place before I did the research to learn about Qi2 so that I could teach it to you.
Because this is out of sequence, and I did this interview before I did the research, you will hear me misunderstand a few things she says.
At one point, you'll hear her say, we're waiting for people to come to the party. Android?
I didn't catch what she was saying. She was talking about the fact that now that Qi 2 is out, Android vendors need to create new phones that adopt the charging coils and firmware to be compatible with Qi 2.
When they do, our Android friends will be able to use the beautiful Belkin chargers Apple folks have enjoyed for years.
So we get it basically for free. We still get to use Qi 2 because it uses the Apple MagSafe standard that got turned into, I forget what the name of the standard is anyway, inside Qi 2.
So we'll be able to use them right away, but the Android vendors need to make the phones compatible with Qi 2.
Oh, the other thing that I messed up was I got her name wrong at the beginning, even though I've known her for years.
Her name is Jen Warren, not whatever you're about to hear me say.

[11:43] It absolutely would not be CES for me if I didn't get a chance to interview Jen Way, from Belkin.
We're like old friends. We've been doing this for so many years.
I've missed you, Jen, and the pandemic and everything. Glad to be back with you. Same. It's like a family reunion.
There you go. All right. We're going to do a speed walk through some things and then see some new products.
But the first thing here I see is the Belkin charger that I have at home, but you say it's not the charger I have at home.
Describe what we're looking at here. That's right. So it is a familiar form factor.
It's the beautiful Belkin design, as you know it. Premium materials, materials, stainless steel, chrome stand, however... This is the three in one, right?
So this is the iPhone and the Apple Watch and then a charger.

[12:27] Wireless earbuds. Okay, there we go. Yeah. But what's new?
The difference is this is a Qi2 module, and it also rotates, so you can adjust it for optimal viewing.
Now, a lot of people might not know what Qi2 brings to us. Qi2 allows us to have 15-watt charging, and it has nothing to do with Apple blessing you as MagSafe anymore because it's a standard, finally.
So that's got fast charging, and that's going to be a lot better for us, right? That's right. So we're hosting the party. We just need people to come.
Yeah. So come on, Android devices, you know, if everyone starts adopting the Chi-Chi module, then it's a party.
It's going to be great. All right. What's up next here? So lots of more Chi-Chi products.
We are in the Chi-Chi section of our table. This is a convertible pad to stand.
Okay. So I'm going to describe it. So it's an iPhone MagSafe kind of mount, and then it folds down into kind of a flattened puck sort of thing, right?
So you can take it with you on the go. Oh, nice. Nice.

[13:25] I like that. Very nice. Yep. Then we have a 2-in-1.
You have here a Qi2 module on one side of the device, and then a wireless charging surface that's good for wireless earbuds.
All right. Great. It's more flat. Okay. And then we have our family of Qi2 power banks.
We have a 10K, an 8K, and a 5K.
And are these MagSafe? And these are Qi2. Qi2. Qi2. So does Qi2 include magnetic mount?
So Qi2 is essentially wireless charging surrounded by magnets.
Oh, okay. I thought it was just a charging technology, but it's the magnets as well. It includes the magnets, yes. Okay, great. Yeah. Okay.
So you can charge and watch on your device horizontally or vertically.
Because it's got a little kickstand on the back. Very nice.
Very nice. And then it has additional two USB-C ports. so you can actually charge up to three devices at the same time. Oh, that's fantastic.
So obviously for the audio only audience, this is.

[14:25] Medium and thin based on how much charge you want to get.
International flight, heavy duty CES day, just a regular day running around doing air. There you go.
I like it. I like it. Okay. What's next in our lineup? We're moving over to the GAN section.
So that's gallium nitride. That's right. GAN stands for gallium nitride.
It allows us to create higher powered product in a smaller form factor.
So this first product here, it's about the size of an Apple TV, I would say.
Yeah. It's a six-in-one dock so it's half the size of other six-in-one docks it has six features it has HDMI Ethernet port for Internet it has two USB C ports and two USB a ports Wow and the way that it plugs in it's just a cable if there's no power brick because of the Gann technology so if you have a small workstation at home like I do this is perfect nice nice and I'm gonna stop you on price first.
What's the price expected on this particular 6-in-1 dock? $139.99.

[15:31] That's really inexpensive for, let's go over it again, 2 USB-A, 2 USB-C, and it's got HDMI.

[15:39] So you can hook up pretty much most of the stuff you need for, that is a really good price point. Yeah, I would agree. Most docks are about $300.
That's right. That's good. All right, what do we got next so the next GAN product is a 200 watt usbc four port charger so we have two ports that give you a combined 140 watts another two ports that gives you a combined 60 watts so we're talking power hungry laptops we're talking multiple tablets four phones um it's also like all of our new products made out of 72 post-consumer recycled plastics oh i did not I did not know that.
Excellent. This is a new Belkin initiative.
I wanted to especially point it out for this product because if you have recycled materials housing a 200-watt charger, that's potentially thousands of dollars of devices plugged into it. Oh, yeah.
You want to go with a brand that you can trust that's going to deliver the highest quality.
And again, it's a cable that you connect to the back. Oh, boy. 200 watts is heavy.
Yeah. but when you need all of the power, all right, that's very cool.
So this thing is a, that's a, that's a hefty brick, but man, that's going to get it done, right?
Okay. Wait a minute. Now she's got an iPhone that's, that's rotating.
Oh my gosh. This thing is flying around in circles. It's rotating up and down. What are we doing here?
All right. So this next product is the auto tracking stand pro.

[17:06] It uses face tracking technology from Apple called doc kit in order order to track your every move.
So what I want to do is come over to this other unit here and let's see if we can get it to work.

[17:21] So, we're looking at, we've got a tripod with the, what is the name of this device again? Auto-tracking stand.
The auto-tracking stand. So, she's got an articulated, it's got azimuth and elevation going on here.
It's on a tripod. She's going to stick her phone on it. So, you need an iPhone 12 or later because it attaches via a MagSafe module.
You need iOS 17 on your iPhone because that's what will activate the DockIt technology.

[17:46] I haven't even heard of DockIt. You're teaching me. Yeah, it's kind of flown under the radar a bit, so let's see if we can get it to work.
So she's holding the phone near the, we're in a very challenging networking environment.
Okay, so we're trying Steve's phone, and this looks much more promising.
It's got green bars around tracking your dock.
All right, connect, Belkin Stand Pro. So I've never seen this pop up before.
This is great, but I did see her doing this earlier, right before we walked up.
It was working great. It says it's 820, so it's like, I'm done.
Yeah, yeah. I was done 20 minutes ago. Done. You promised me a drink now, right? Yeah. All right. Exactly. It's coming.
Okay, so it says, configuring accessory for first time use. This may take a few minutes. Okay. Done? Okay. So now we put it on the MagSafe module.
I want you to keep your eyes trained right here.
Okay. And it's going to give us a signal when it's ready to go.
Okay, so it's gone up and down in elevation.
It gave it a nod. It gave us a nod. Gave us a nod of approval.
Okay. So now, I'm going to open a native app, I'm going to use the camera app, I'm going to turn it to face me, and a yellow box is going to appear on the screen, and now it's tracking me.
It has 360 degrees horizontal rotation, it has 90 degrees vertical rotation, as you can see here.
She's going up and down, she's doing deep knee bends here as the phone is just tracking her completely.
And I can use the rear view camera, it's going to look for me.

[19:14] It just spun around and now I've found her on the other side.
So lots of use cases here, teaching remotely, telehealth for physical therapy patients who can't get into the doctor's office, FaceTiming with your best friend while you're cooking and trying to move around the kitchen. Immediately I thought cooking.
Like I need to talk to my kids or I'm washing dishes, I'm running all over the kitchen, I could have this on the counter. Right.
And then obviously for content creation.
Yeah. So what is this device called one more time? Auto tracking stand Pro.
And when will that be available?
If you go to Belkin.com right now you can click a notify me button and it is coming very very very soon.
Very very very soon we can quote quote Jen here and what's the price point on this?
$179.99. Alright perfect I appreciate you sticking with us this is very very cool and it actually is a better proof that it worked with just Steve's phone right out of the box you didn't have to do anything special there There was nothing up your sleeves.
Thanks for meeting with us again. We'll see you next year, Jen.
Thank you so much, Allison.

[20:19] All right, that was so much fun. But the funny part is, after we were done with the interview and we had packed up our camera and audio gear for the night, we were about to leave the exhibit hall.
This guy comes running up after us to give Steve his phone back.

Heated Clothing from ORORO

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/03/ororo/

[20:36] I live in Southern California, so we have very temperate weather.
It doesn't get all that cold, or does it get all that hot, since I'm relatively close to the ocean.
However, if you've ever met someone who's lived here for any length of time, you'll know that most of us are just big babies when the temperature gets below, say, 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
You'll hear people say, it's literally freezing outside when it's like 66 degrees.

[20:59] I've actually seen people, not just once, all the time this happens, I've seen people walking along the pathway next to the ocean wearing UGG boots, down jackets, scarves, and knitted hats when it's 72 degrees outside.
This is when I'm running and I'm in shorts and a t-shirt.
Now, to be fair, many people are surprised that it's actually cool at night in Southern California, even in the warmer summer months.
I grew up in Michigan where if it's hot during the day, you also get these lovely hot summer nights.
They're lovely except for the swarms and mosquitoes, of course.
Where I live now, the temperature will drop a good 15 degrees at night, so it's always good to carry a sweater if you go out in the evenings.
Now, in general, I've adapted to the outdoor temperatures, but I'm often uncomfortably cold when inside my house.
We had a new heat pump put into our home with two zones, so we can separately change the temperature upstairs and downstairs with a fancy app, and we've got all kinds of automation and everything, but now we're constantly adjusting the temperature up and down.
I've also determined that temperature Temperature's not absolute.
I can be happy at 69 degrees inside in the morning and freezing at the same temperature at night.
I don't know, it's probably a humidity thing. I don't know.
So I'm an avid crocheter, so I have a good dozen blankets available, and Sandy made me a gorgeous quilt so I could layer up when I'm on the couch wearing a sweatshirt to combat this frigid 69 degrees air inside my house, but that doesn't help me when I'm sitting in the kitchen for a meal or working at my desk.

[22:25] One day, Barry Falk came to visit. We decided to go to a wine bar because Barry and wine bars go very well together.
We knew we might be seated outside, and I was shocked to see Barry just put on a hoodie sweatshirt while I was reaching for a down jacket, scarf, and gloves. It was March for crying out loud.
At first, I assumed it was because Barry is from Chicago originally, but that wasn't why he knew he'd be comfortable in a hoodie.

[22:50] It was because it was a heated hoodie. And that's why this whole story fits into a tech podcast.
His heated hoodie is from a company called Ororo, and that's spelled O-R-O-R-O, from OroroWear.com.
And they make not just hoodies. They make vests and jackets and parkas and pants and gloves and mittens.
I was intrigued by this idea of heated outerwear from Ororo, and I began perusing the Ororo website in pursuit of the perfect thing to buy.
I finally settled on a vest, which is something I haven't ever worn before.
I argued with myself for a long time about it, but I'm delighted with my choice, specifically because of my use case.
Before I tell you about the vest and how it works, I have to say that customer service on my purchase was fantastic.
I ended up buying and returning two of them because they didn't quite fit the way I wanted them to, and there were no questions asked and no cost to me to be so finicky.
The Aurora Vast uses a 4800 mAh battery they call the Mini 5K to power coils sewn into the fabric to heat the wearer.
The battery sits in a little zipper pocket that sits kinda on my left hip.
One of the reasons I exchanged the size was because the battery made the jacket fit a little snugly on my hips, and I like my clothing roomy anyway.

[24:06] The battery charges via USB-C and can be used as a charger for other devices using its USB-A port.
The one thing I wish was different is that it connects to the jacket using a proprietary circular cable, so you can't just use any old battery to power your clothing from Ororo.
Since it's proprietary, it will cost you $80 for a replacement.
That's pretty steep for a battery, but in addition to the black one that came with my vest, they do come in red, pink, purple, or orange, so that's fun.

[24:35] The wires in the vest are in two places, the upper back across the shoulder blades and on the front across your stomach.
There are even more heated wires across the back of the collar.
This placement of heating is really well thought out. By heating your collar, you don't feel the need for a scarf.
By heating the belly area, when your hands are in the pockets, they get heated too, and the heat across the shoulders warms your upper body.
The vest all by itself is pretty warm, especially since my primary use case is to be cozier inside my own house.
I know that sounds goofy, but how much does it cost in energy to heat a big house versus just heating little oh me?
If you want to use the heated function of the Aurora, there's a button on the left side high up on the chest.
If you press and hold it for a second or so, it'll glow red, indicating it's on its highest heat setting.
If you press it again, it'll turn white, indicating medium heat, and a third press will turn it blue for the least amount of heating.
I usually start with the red setting because, remember, I'm freezing in my house at 69 degrees.
After a while, I realize I'm feeling much better, and I'll look at the button and it will have changed from red down to white.
I'm assuming that's intentional and it's not some kind of bug.
If I'm still cold, I can always press it again to go back up to red.

[25:48] The Aurora site says the mini 5k 4800 milliamp hour battery will last for 10 hours of runtime for all Aurora heated vests, heated jackets, and heated hoodies.
Now that's on the low setting, they say 6 hours for medium and 3 hours on high.
I haven't timed it, but I've definitely worn it from early afternoon to late in the evening and not run out of juice.
I suspect the way it steps itself down when I heat it up pretty well contributes to the long battery life.
Now, they say it takes 4 hours to charge the battery with a 5-volt 3-amp charger.
The battery has a button that lights up 1 to 4 indicator lights to show you how charged it is, but there's no accessible way to determine the battery level.

[26:29] The indicator light is a fun conversation piece, the one on the upper chest.
No one can miss that you're wearing an unusual piece of clothing.
Even my three-year-old granddaughter notices it. She likes to push the button to see the colors change.
If you don't like attention to your clothing, this might be a downside.
But as a chatty nerd, I like to tell people about my jacket.
I said early on I hadn't worn a vest before, and it turned out to be the perfect thing for my indoor needs.
I can wash dishes or eat without getting my sleeves all messy, and paired with a long-sleeve shirt, it's pretty cute if I do say so myself.

[27:02] I am always, always, always cold on planes.
I mean, like when we go to Hawaii, I wear a long-sleeve shirt and a coat and pants.
It's really annoying when I get off the plane, but I'm just always cold on planes.
We went to Texas a few weeks ago and I decided to see how it would be to travel with my heated vest from Aurora over a long-sleeve shirt.
I gotta got to tell you, I was quite comfortable on the plane without having to carry a terribly bulky jacket.
Carrying it was a little bit tricky because it's slippery like all down vests, but it's also weighted down on one side by the battery.
I soon figured out that carrying it with my arm through both arm holes balanced it nicely.
On our flight out, my jacket did give the TSA inspectors pause.
I had told the agent before I put it on the conveyor belt that it was heated, but I still got the extra bomb wiped down just in case.
The guy said, well, look at all those wires. I didn't think about that.
Anyway, it didn't take that long, but if I'd been in a hurry, it might have been a problem.
On my way back, I was much more explicit. I showed the agent the battery and explained that the jacket was full of wires to heat it. That time, I sailed right through.

[28:10] I asked Barry, who's a very frequent traveler, if he has a strategy for getting through TSA, you know, a stock phrase he's found that always works.
His answer was funny. He said, they've never questioned it, but they do look askance at his corkscrew on occasion.
If the Aurora line of heated warm weather gear sounds interesting to you, keep your eye out for sale opportunities on the website.
Every time I've been to the site, something's on sale.
Maybe the exact jacket you would see first isn't, but a different color maybe, or a slightly different style might be.
The women's classic heated vest in off-white that I bought is $169, but it's 25% off right now because of their end-of-season sale.
Note that, let's see, they do sell the battery separately.
I thought you had to always buy it separately, but Sandy bought one of the vests just like mine, and she said it did come with the battery.
But if you want to buy one of the cute ones, the purple one or the pink one, they're on sale for 25% off right now too.
As I sit cozy in my house, saving on my electric bill, I'm reminded of the saying that that sage expert on weather, Bart Buschatz, always says.
He says, there's no such thing as bad weather, there's just the wrong clothes.

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RIP iThoughts - Choosing a New Mind Mapping Tool

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/03/ithoughts-replacement/

[29:53] This week I read in the Tidbits newsletter the awful news that my favorite mind mapping tool, iThoughts from Toketaware, was being discontinued.
If you've had a beloved tool shut down before, you know it's like losing touch with a dear old friend.
The developer, Craig Scott, has been a favorite of mine as well.
I was worried about how sudden this was and that maybe he wasn't okay, but I chatted up with him and he explained it was just an opportune time to shut his business down after 11 years of serving the community.
The good news is that iThoughts will continue to work for the time being, but at some point in the future, he points out an OS update will inevitably break it.
Well, a while back, Dan Morin said on the Clockwise podcast that he likes to quit apps before they quit him, and I agree with that philosophy.
I've got breathing room, but I immediately went on the hunt for a replacement mind map.

[30:45] Before I go any further, I should at least briefly explain how mind mapping programs work and what problems they solve.
Mind mapping is a way to visually just kind of plop all of your thoughts about a project or idea onto the screen in little connected nodes.
You can drag the nodes around to sort things out, to make sub nodes, to help it make more sense once you get your ideas into the app.
For example, let's say you're packing for a trip to Hawaii. You could start by just brainstorming everything you could think of from your toothbrush to a bathing suit to sunscreen screen to flip-flops.
After you have enough nodes added to the mind map, you'll start to find patterns to the disorganized mess.
You make major nodes for clothes, sundry, and toys, and then you can drag the other nodes under the appropriate category nodes to organize your packing.
I use mind mapping for my ScreenCastsOnline tutorial videos when I'm learning a new app.
As I'm poking every button on the new app, I plop into the mind map what I'm learning as I'm learning it.
Well, Well, this is always a very disorganized pile of thoughts, but after I have enough content, I start to see how to rearrange the nodes and make subnodes to tell a coherent story about how to use the app.

[31:52] Now who can forget when in a moment of madness, I thought it would be fun to try to map all of the iOS 11 settings.
Took me over a month to do that, but my mind map of Doom is really something to see.
Based on the capabilities of some mind mapping apps out there, it appeared that people use mind maps to schedule tasks as well.
I've never gotten into that myself, so it's not one of my criteria, but some people must do it.
Before going on my hunt for a new mind mapping tool, I documented what would make an acceptable alternative to iThoughts for me.
Here's my list. Must have native Mac, iOS, and iPadOS apps.
Must allow some sort of syncing between devices. It can be via iCloud or Dropbox, or I might accept a hosted syncing system.
It's got to have lots of keystrokes to get things done. It can't be ugly.
And, you know, I'm not a style snob, but the app can't look like it was designed in the Cold War era.
It needs to have reasonable pricing, and I'm willing to pay a subscription if I have to, but I'd prefer a one-time fee.
For a subscription, probably $60 a year or less would be good for me.
It must be in active development. It must have a privacy policy that does not include sucking up all my personal information.
It has to have the ability to import or even natively open my nearly 300 iThoughts mind maps. And finally, it needs the standard export capability to OPML for outlining and opening in other tools.

[33:20] Now there's a website called Alternative2 at alternative.to where you can look for alternatives to a specific app.
You can filter it to see just free apps, open source apps, or apps by platform such as maybe you want just Windows only.
I use this tool to search for mind mapping tools to replace iThoughts.
I also use the Mac App Store, figuring that would narrow down my results.
I did a search and setup just in case I already had an app that would meet my needs, and of course I did some plain old googling.

[33:49] In my search it became obvious that the playing field was pretty limited and as a result many of these search results included a lot of apps that had nothing to do with mind mapping.
Many were notes annotation tools for working with existing documents.
I was able to find four mind mapping apps that sounded like good contenders.
We'll start with the free and open source Freeplane from freeplane.org.
The first thing that surprised me was that it was Java-based.
I cannot remember the last time I installed a Java app.
Freeplane is pretty capable, and it looks like it could get the job done.
It has the classic look of open source with overly bold icons for buttons, which I don't put in the category of pretty.
I gave it a quick spin with voiceover, and while the buttons were labeled nicely and were functional, the mind map area itself was inaccessible.
I started noticing more non-standard design elements.
For example, it doesn't use the standard save as dialog boxes for macOS.
That disturbed me, not just because it wasn't what I was used to, because it actually reduces the functionality of the tool.

[34:54] Freeplane doesn't work on iOS, which is a deal breaker for me.
It was unable to open my iThoughts mind maps natively, so I would have to open all 300 or so of them and export to OPML to be able to go back into them with Freeplane.
Freeplane isn't a bad app at all, and if you're looking for a way to dip your toes into the water of mind mapping for free, check it out at freeplane.org.
I continued my search.

[35:19] In the Mac App Store, I found a mind mapping app called eDrawMind, but then I noticed that it was an iPad OS app being allowed to run on an Apple Silicon mat.
I followed the link to the developer's website at eDrawMind, let's see, edrawmind.wondershare.com, and found that not only do they have a native Mac app, it also runs on Android and Linux, and there's even a web app version.

[35:42] EDrawMind met my My pricing criteria with both a subscription price of $59 per year.
How did they know I said under $60? Anyway, $59 per year or a perpetual price of $118.
You get one gigabyte of free cloud storage with the annual subscription and 10 gigabytes with a perpetual plan along with some other perks.
The iPadOS app was in active development with very recent updates.
But three things tripped me up with eDrawMind. To test it out on iPadOS, I had to create a login. in.
I literally could not do it. When I pasted in my long, strong, memorable password created by beta.xkpasswd.net, it said it was too long.
Ah, you know, that happens. Not a big deal, that kind of thing does happen, but the screen slid halfway down when it errored out and I could not bring it back up to change the password.
I'm sure with enough effort, I probably could have beat it into submission.
But the real thing that stopped me from investigating eDrawMind further was the privacy policy from the App Store.
Datalink2 said, purchases, contact info, identifiers, diagnostics, financial info, user content, and usage data.
So that would be no thank you.
At this point, I was already out, but when I tried to download for macOS, it said it worked on macOS 10 and 11.
Well, we're on 14 here, kids, with macOS Sonoma.
While there were recent updates to the iPad app, it sure didn't look like they were keeping the desktop version up to date.

[37:12] Now, the third app for consideration is a real top contender.
It's called Mindomo from mindomo.com.
I found it via alternative.to that I mentioned earlier.
It's cross-platform with apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and it even has a web-based cloud version.
But which of those platforms you can use is dependent on your pricing plan.
For example, you get just the the desktop versions, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux with a free plan.
But if you do the $5.50 per month plan, you also get Android, iOS, and cloud.
If you buy it for a one-time fee of $69, you don't get the mobile platforms.
Looks like they really want you to do the subscription plan.
At $66 per year, it's $6 over my threshold, but I think we'll allow it.
The free plan is a great way to test out Mindomo, but it limits you to 40 topics per mind map, and it nags you pretty relentlessly to pay for syncing.
If you like Mindomo, you'll probably want the subscription plan, which allows you to sync your mind maps between desktop, cloud, and mobile.

[38:16] After downloading on my Mac, where they have both Apple, Silicon, and Intel versions, I downloaded Mindomo onto my iPad.
The privacy policy brought a smile to my face. No data is collected at all.
Mindomo is probably the most flexible and powerful of the mind mapping apps I tested.
Normal mind maps have a primary node in the middle, with subnodes hanging off on either side and ever-descending spidery legs. legs.
Apps often let you format so they all hang down off the center node, more like a family tree for example, but that's pretty much the end of the variability.
In contrast, Mindomo has so many layout options, it would take me hours to describe them all.
One of the template options looks like a bunch of grapes complete with grape leaves at the top. One looks like a cork board with pins on each side.
One was a striped-colored pyramid.
One was a pentagon with another many-sided set of nodes encircling that.
There's so many options for templates, it's actually hard to decide which one to use.

[39:16] If you want inspiration on how to plan your work or maybe display it in interesting ways, Mindomo is the place to start.
When I'm making a mind map, I often want to change the color or shape of a node.
For example, I use a mind map to plan out my new compave process.
As I install apps, I change the color of the app from red to green to to show my progress.
With Mindomo, when you hover over any node, you get a downward chevron that, when selected, gives you quick access to change everything about the way that particular node looks.
No hunting around for formatting palace, the options are always right there.

[39:51] Hovering near a parent node gives you an obvious minus button, which will fold up all of its child nodes.
Mindomo is the only mind mapping app I've seen that subsequently tells you how many nodes nodes are now hidden. I really like that.
Mindomo has lots of useful keystrokes, and they seem natural to use, such as double-enter after naming a node gives you a sibling node, and a tab creates a child node.
Option and arrow keys will move a node up and down the hierarchy as needed.
Now iThoughts allowed you to select a node and then type the number of child node levels you'd like to see.
For example, if you selected the central node and typed 0, all levels would would collapse.
Then typing 1 would reveal the first level below the main node, and on and on.
Mindomo allows the same thing, but it's limited to 1 to 4 levels.
I remember on my iOS 11 mind map that it was really fun to show how complicated it was by starting at 0 and going up to 9 to reveal more and more levels.
That one was so big I could have used more than 9 levels.

[40:52] Mindomo has one of the simplest interfaces I've ever seen.
Other than the two icons to add a child or sibling node with a click, and a few zoom buttons, a search and share button, there's no other controls in the interface.
The tools menu has a few fun features. You can have Mindomo auto-number your nodes, which I thought would translate to the outline view, but oddly it didn't.
I'm not quite sure why I'd want just the graphical interface to be numbered.
I've had occasion to use Mindmap as part of a presentation, presentation, and Mindomo makes that super easy and slick.
In Mindomo, you choose Presenter from the Tools menu, and from there you hit the plus button and drag across the section you want on each slide.
The nodes you selected get translucent boxes over them, and then they're numbered for the order of the slides.
Looks kind of messy when you see it, but it's really intuitive to set it up this way.
The movement between nodes in the slideshow is very elegant.
It's easy to reorder to the slides, and the slideshow itself is preserved when you back out of presenter mode.
I think it's a lovely implementation of the concept.

[41:57] If you store your mind maps locally, rather than using their cloud syncing services, when you save a map, it creates three separate files.
The mind map itself with .mom as the file extension, a .mom.lock file, and a folder containing any images you might have embedded into your mind map.
Having your images in an external folder is actually a good thing, as sometimes a lot of embedded images can really slow down an application.
I had one showstopper problem with Mindomo, but Tiberiu from the support staff was able to replicate the problem I'd found and find a workaround while they fix it.
Not only that, they got back to me really fast.
So the problem I had was with the iPad app when used with the physical keyboard, in my case, the Magic Keyboard.
I would use the keyboard to create new nodes, and then use the standard double-enter would-not-work-to-create-siblings.
I found that control-enter would work, but right after naming my new node, it would disappear.
And by disappear, I mean into thin air, vaporized. No amount of command zing to undo would bring them back.
What the support staff figured out was the on-screen autocorrect keyboard thingy, you know, that little thing that shows you that you can tap to put in words.
Anyway, that was interfering with the physical keyboard. They also figured out that if you just minimize the on-screen autocorrect keyboard thingy, all normal keyboard shortcuts work with the physical keyboard.
They work just dandy.

[43:21] I mention this bug because it may trip you up, but I also laud Mindomo for amazing and fast support. So let's get back to features.
There's a paintbrush at the top that lets me do a lot of nifty reformatting and changing of shapes and layout, so I really like that.
You can also view and create slideshows just like the desktop app.
I'm afraid Mindomo isn't accessible with VoiceOver either.
Most of the buttons are unlabeled. I was able to navigate into the Mindmap, and it told me what note I was on and even said I could start typing to append text, but typing did the weirdest thing.
Every character slowly zoomed in on the map.
So yeah, not for the voiceover users.

[43:59] Mindomo won't open iThoughts maps natively, so if you're an iThoughts refugee like me, you'll have to export them to OPML before iThoughts stops working.
I think Mindomo is a fantastic choice for a mind mapping replacement for iThoughts.
The free version will give you the flavor of how it works, and if you like it, $66 a year is just around my threshold.
$69 one time if you don't need to use it on mobile is another good option with Mindomo from bindomo.com.
And don't forget, this one is cross-platform across everything I can think of.
11 years ago, when I chose iThoughts, my second choice, and one I actually also bought, was MindNode from MindNode.com.
I had a feeling it was where I might end up this time, but I first wanted to give the rest of the playing field a good test to make sure there wasn't something new that would turn my head.
I'm glad I did because I was able to find Mindomo as a result.
The pricing model for MindNode is flexible. On macOS, they have a free version they call Free Editor, which gives you most of the simpler capabilities that I use, so it's a great option for the casual desktop-only user of MindMaps.
While there's a free 14-day trial of MindNode on iOS and iPadOS, you can't use it on those platforms for free indefinitely.
I'm glad to say that of the paid-for MindMapping apps, MindNode is very reasonably priced at $3 per month or $25 per year.
This gives you MindNode+, which gives you all of the features.

[45:24] MindNode Plus is also included in Setapp, so you may already have access to it.
MindNode's privacy policy is reasonably good. They link data about purchases, identifiers, and contact info to you, and while they collect diagnostics, they don't link those to you.
It became obvious to me that MindNode would be my choice in the end when I realized that as I was learning about MindNode, I created a MindNode mind map, and it was really, really detailed.
In all of the other apps when I I was playing around. I just kind of experimented.
I put in nodes like blah and another node and here's another, another node.
But with my node, I very quickly used it to get real work done.

[46:04] Starting with themes, my node does provide a few, but I wasn't super fond of most of them.
I found one that I liked reasonably well, and I found I was able to easily tweak the colors and shapes to save a new theme of my own.
It's nowhere near as flexible as my Domo, but it had the ones that I needed.
Keyboard shortcuts are another important feature for me. I was glad to see I could hide children with option dot, but I haven't found yet a way to hide a specific number of levels like I could use 0 to 9 in iThoughts.
It'll be a bit more tedious to simplify the view of a mind map using MindNode.
Maybe I'll just suggest that as a feature request.

[46:41] Using Command with the arrow keys to move nodes up and down and change them from children to sibling to parents works extremely well.
In experimenting with this feature, I learned a curiosity about MindNode's layout.
If you start with a primary node and you add a subnode, it it will go to the right.
If you create a sibling to that node, it will go below the node.
As you add more siblings, it will continue to go below.
So far, this is just like the way I thought's worked.
But let's say you want to balance your mind map. So there are sub nodes on the right and left of the central node.
As soon as you start working on the left nodes, any new siblings will be created above that rather than below.
I realized that my node creates nodes in clockwise wise order.
Nothing wrong with this idea, and it actually makes moving nodes around with command in conjunction with the arrow keys more efficient, but it did catch me by surprise.
It's a little bit harder to pick up a node and change its parent node than it was with iThoughts. The parent node you're trying to attach to has a tendency to kind of squirt out of the way to make room for the incoming node.
If you get the node you're moving into the right place, you'll see the word attach patch pop up on screen indicating you let go.
But the fact that you can do it with keystrokes, I think I might do that anyway.

[47:55] In general, I pick a theme and stick with it, but for some types of mind maps, I like to change individual node colors or shapes.
I mentioned this earlier when talking about my Nuke and Pave process.
Changing colors indicates completion.
With MindNode, there's a right sidebar pane that allows you to change everything about a given node or set of nodes.
Shape, color, border, how the lines attach to it, and more.
The side pane allows a cleaner interface than having the control right on the node like Mindomo.
In this formatting pane, I found one of my favorite visual changes.
The branches between nodes can be rounded or angular, like in most mind mapping apps.
While rounded is swoopy and cute, it looks a little too adorable for my taste, and it puts the nodes pretty far apart.
But sharp right angles in most mind mapping apps look a little too rigid for my taste.
With MindNode's angular branch style, you get right angles, but they have a slightly rounded corner, which I find quite pleasing.
I know that's a tiny thing, but I I immediately changed my theme to adopt it because it makes me happy.
With that right pane still open, I discovered that you can add and view notes for nodes, and you can also add notes to a node in a right-click menu.
Notes can even link to external files, which is super useful.
It's not uncommon to want to reference other information outside of a mind map, and having it as a link is much better than dragging all that content into the mind map.

[49:15] You can create tags in the sidebar, but I'm not sure I'd ever use them.
Once you create some tags you can select nodes and hit the plus button next to the tag name in the sidebar and it puts a tiny little colored dot in the node indicating which tag was applied.
Once you've tagged some nodes if you hover over given tag in the sidebar you can hit a little eyeball and the entire map will turn gray leaving just the nodes with that tag visible.
But those visible nodes will have lost all their native colors so they barely stand out from the the background.
I'm not a big old tagger, but maybe you'll find this useful.

[49:50] If you open the left sidebar, it reveals the outline while still viewing the graphical mind map.
If you select a node, the outline scrolls to the node.
If you fold or unfold a line in the outline, the mind map changes folding at the same time.
You can switch to view just the outline, and in all view modes, you can edit the content from the outline view.
It's pretty slick to be able to do all that in the same interface.
IThoughts only had an export option to OPML where I can open in an outline application, so this is an upgrade for me.
The interface to MindNode is clean, but more feature-rich than Mindomo.
The menu bar also holds very useful options.

[50:30] One of them adds a checkbox to a node, so you can use MindNode as a simple task manager.
I assumed this would just add a graphical element, but it does something magical.
I'll walk through an example. For example, if you select a node that has four subnodes, and you click the checkbox icon on the main node, that top node gets a light gray hollow circle on it, and the four subnodes get circles too.
When you check the circle on one of the four subnodes, the upper node's circle turns black around one quarter of the circle, indicating your overall progress on that task. task.
When you've checked off all four subnodes, the upper node circle is a solid black circle.
My node intelligently deals with nested subnodes, where every node that has children gets that progress circle and then adds progress to the top-level node. It's brilliant!
I'm not sure, but it might be able to take the place of my changing color method for my nuke and pave process.

[51:30] I ran my usual test for accessibility with voiceover, and I'm afraid that on both macOS and iPadOS, the graphical nodes aren't accessible.
However, the outline view is accessible. And that got me to thinking, would a blind user want to use a graphical view like a mind map, or would an outline view give them everything they need?
And if that's true, wouldn't they want an app dedicated to outlining rather than paying the price for all these slick graphics that have no benefit for them? them.
I wish I had an accessible outlining tool suggestion for them, but the one I use, Cloud Outliner, doesn't appear to be accessible.
While it does let you navigate all around without issue, in my limited testing, I couldn't get it to read me any of the actual content of an outline.
All right, moving on to more features about MindNode. It supports something called connectors, and I've never found this feature useful in a mind map.
These are arrowed lines that let you point from one node to another.
In my experience, they seem to get tangled up and make things way too messy for my taste, but if you like those, MindNode has them.
I never thought I'd say this, but I love the stickers in MindNode.
Using the little image button in the toolbar, you can add full-size images, stickers, or emoji.
The stickers are generally pastel graphics, so they're not as blaring and loud as emoji.
They can fill a node or be added to a node with text.
They add a playful and yet useful way to let you see at a glance what a node and its children might be about.

[52:58] I thought I hit a real showstopper with MindNode right as I was completing my testing.
On iPadOS, I tried to open the mind map I'd created on my Mac with MindNode, and I was treated to an error. It said, opening failed.
There was an error extracting this document. The contents.xml file seems to be missing or corrupt. Oh no!

[53:19] I did a bit of searching, and I found a support article over at MindNode.com that explained what was going on.
They said, Instead, unfortunately, third-party storage providers like Dropbox or OneDrive do not support our file format, as MindNode files are package files.
On iOS, MindNode will automatically save your files in a format compatible with the default storage location you selected.
I've always kept my MindMaps in Dropbox because I can get to them from my personal account on all of my devices and also critically from my ScreenCastsOnline user account.
Luckily, they also provided a solution. In My Notes settings on macOS, you can change the default document format from Package to Single File that will let all new documents be stored in third-party cloud services and openable on iOS and macOS.
They don't mention whether there's any downside to changing this file format.
To change existing documents to single file format, with the document open, select the File menu and pull down to Advanced and you'll see the option to toggle file type from Package to Single File.
I tested that option, and my MyNode mind maps now open from Dropbox on my iPad.
And one very important note, they also say, Sadly, Google Drive doesn't work at all with MyNode files at the moment.
We contacted their developers and hope it'll change in the future. So keep that in mind.

[54:44] After I was done testing these four good options and documenting my findings, I was in the app store looking for a link to one of them when I stumbled across a lot more mind mapping apps to choose from.
Some of them weren't good choices, like a couple of them had all of the screenshots were in Chinese or they had terrible reviews, but a few looked promising like SimpleMind from simplemind.eu.
It's 27 euros for macOS and another 11 euros for iPadOS, so around 40 bucks total.
It might be good, might even be great, but I had to draw the line somewhere, so I have not given it a good pod feed shakedown.
I'm going to interrupt myself here, and I'm going to read a comment by Bart Vanderpot.
I had told Brett Terpstra about looking for a replacement for iThoughts because I knew he was a big fan.
And Bart writes, Hi Allison, Brett informed me about your pod feed.
Okay. I had the same feeling when I heard about iThoughts. It took me a couple of days to get through this message, like losing an old friend.
I definitely have the same feeling.

[55:47] I knew SimpleMind, that's the one I just mentioned that I haven't tested yet.
He said, I knew SimpleMind already for a lot of years, also because I've met the vendors. They were living in my hometown.
I was surprised by the flexibility of this mind map tool, the wide variety of features, and its power to work on the same mind map on several devices and without a subscription.
Nevertheless, the outstanding features of iThoughts, like conditional formatting and calculations, I don't think it has it, is what he means.
Means, SimpleMind gives us a very good mind mapping tool for a relatively small price.
I would like to encourage you to dive into the possibility of this tool.

[56:24] Okay, so I don't know if I will or not, but don't be surprised if there isn't more to this mind mapping story.
But for right now, I'm going to read you my bottom line before I heard from Bart.
I'm glad I took the time to look at several different mind mapping tools before just defaulting to MindNode since I'd heard of it already.
I learned more about what I found important, and it caused me to give them all a better, deeper dive.
You may have figured out by now that MindNode is the app I've chosen to replace iThoughts.
It's pretty, it has keyboard shortcuts, it's cross-platform with my iOS devices and my Mac devices, it has a few nifty features I didn't have before, and it's even very reasonably priced.
I had hoped to find a mind mapping alternative that could natively open my 300 existing mind maps created with iThoughts, and to my utter joy, MindNode can even do that.
I don't have to go through the tedious process of exporting every mind map I've made in 11 years to OPML on the off chance I might want to open it again someday.
If I just open the ones I end up needing in MindNode, I can immediately save as to native MindNode files.
Perhaps after hearing my analysis, you'll choose the open source free plane because it gets the job done for free.
Or maybe you'd like the enhanced functionality and templates of Mindomo and its ability to do slideshows and works on all platforms.
I'll be going with MindNode from MindNode.com for my mind mapping needs, unless SimpleNode turns out to be really cool.

[57:50] Well, after all that, it's going to wind us up for this week.
Did you know you can email me?
If you have a mind mapping tool you've always wanted to tell me about, you can email me at alison at podfeed.com, or maybe just have a question or a suggestion, you can send it on over.
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[58:39] Music.