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Don't look like a fool on Zoom

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. You don't wanna look like a fool on your next video conference.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven common Zoom mistakes that you can easily avoid, so you can look so much more professional in your next Zoom meeting.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen in here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

How to test your Zoom audio & video in advance

And let's start off with tip number one, and that is do a quick test in advance.

I'm just gonna stop sharing my screen here so we can go back into the menu.

And even if you started, you can still do this, but I would recommend you do this in advance.

On your desktop or laptop computer, you wanna open up the Zoom interface.

Now, if you're joining a Zoom meeting on your mobile device, you're probably going to get a prompt anyhow to test your video and to test your audio.

But here, what we wanna do is open up our Zoom meeting interface and click on the gear icon, click on settings.

And we're gonna look at two settings very quickly. No joke, I actually do this every single time.

Number one, I click on video. Hey, am I in frame? Is the lighting proper? Am I using the correct camera?

Because for many of us, we actually have more than one webcam. Your monitor or your laptop probably already has a webcam built in, but perhaps you're using a better or higher quality webcam that you attach via USB.

So make sure you come down here, make sure that you're viewing the correct webcam. Now that's a pretty quick and easy one.

We also wanna click on the Audio tab and take a look at two quick things here as well.

The first one is test speaker, making sure that you are hearing the meeting the way that you want to.

In this case, you may have a variety of different options as to how you can listen to that meeting.

For example, I typically take my Zoom calls using my Bluetooth earbuds, and because it's Bluetooth, these are often connected to a variety of other devices in my home.

So I wanna make sure they're connected properly. What I can also do is select the Test Speaker icon, and make sure that I can hear what is going on, making sure that I'm hearing that in the device that I want to.

I also want to come down to microphone and make sure I've got the correct microphone selected and I can test that mic as well.

Especially if you've invested some money in a better quality microphone, make sure you're using that microphone.

By default, it may just be choosing your system's microphone, so yeah, your audience can hear you, but perhaps they're not hearing you in the best of quality.

So make sure you do a quick test in advance.

How to use the spacebar to unmute yourself

Now let's jump back into our Zoom meeting, and tip number two has to do with muting yourself when you don't need to be heard.

Now you're probably already familiar with where the mute button is, and I can come down here and mute myself so that no one else in this meeting can hear me.

It even gives me a bit of a warning because it can hear that I'm talking at the moment.

But the tip I want to give you is that if you're involved in a Zoom meeting where you only need to interject or contribute once in a while, right? You're not the host, you're not the main presenter, I want you to make use of your Space bar.

The Space bar actually acts as a trigger. You can almost think of it like a walkie-talkie where you hold it down and you can speak.

So if I press down on my Space bar, I am temporarily unmuted, you can hear me, everyone else can hear me, but as soon as I release that Space bar, I automatically become muted.

Take a look here on the lower left-hand corner, you can see the red slash, I'm muted, but if I press down on the Space bar, now I can ask my question or I can give my comment and then release that Space bar and I am immediately muted again.

So no more worrying if people can hear me. Am I muted, am I unmuted? You can use that Space bar so you know when you're pressing it down, you can contribute to that meeting.

How to share sound when Zoom screen sharing

Tip number three, we're gonna stick with sound, and this has to do with sharing your screen, particularly sharing music or sharing video.

How often have you been in a Zoom call and someone has tried to share a YouTube video or something else with sound?

And everyone has to start pointing at the screen or using private messaging and saying, "We can't hear it. We can't hear it. None of us can hear it."

And the host looks a little puzzled because they can hear it. They can hear it just perfectly. Why can't everyone else hear it?

Well, when you share audio or share video, when you select share screen, before you select that file or before you select your browser, you wanna come down here and make sure you check, share sound.

That is the only way that the audio that you hear on your machine, what you're sharing is going to be shared with others.

And if you are sharing video, you may also want to select this other option here, optimize for video clip.

Meaning it's gonna try and smooth things over a bit, so it is a better video experience for those who are watching the video through Zoom.

But if you are sharing audio, make sure that you select share sound.

Now note, this is also gonna share other sounds on your machine. So if there is going to be an alert or a notification or other things that come up, people are going to hear that as well.

But this is in particular if you are sharing that content with other individuals.

All right, I'm just gonna select my browser here. And let's go into share mode and talk about something which again can really make a lot of us look foolish,

How to move or hide the Zoom control menu

but there's an easy fix for this mistake. Many times we are sharing our web browser or a web page.

So here I am on the Zoom website and let's say, I want to browse around to a bunch of different tabs, but by default, the Zoom floating bar, which has all of my controls, is anchored at the top of the screen.

And you know what, that makes it really difficult, because if I wanna get to... Oh, I'm trying to get to that tab. And if I wanna get to this tab, as soon as my cursor goes over there, it comes down.

And how many times have you stopped sharing or maybe hit something up here when you actually meant to select that tab?

Well, the good news is that you can move that floating bar.

If you come up here and hover over the green, "You are screen sharing" area, click and hold, you can actually drag this floating bar to wherever you want.

Now, I often like to drag it to the very bottom of the screen because I don't have any tabs down there.

It's not in the way of anything else. And I can still access it, right? If I come down here, I can hover over and access these controls down below, but now I have full access to all of my tabs in my browser.

Or if I'm opening a file and I wanna access all the menu and options up above, nothing is distracting me in that case.

I can always come back and drag it back to the top or drag it to wherever I want.

Now, another option that you have with the floating menu bar is if you come over here to More, you can actually hide these meeting controls altogether.

Now you can see they are completely gone. I can't see them at all. And if I press Escape, it will return to the screen.

Now, a bit of a warning because they're completely hidden, I may end up forgetting if I'm sharing my screen.

And maybe after my portion of the presentation, I believe I've handed it off to someone else and I'm not sharing my screen. And then I go to social media or maybe try to do something else off the side of my desk.

Meanwhile, I'm sharing to everyone else. I might forget it. So if I hit Escape again, that floating bar is going to return.

But I think one of the nice things of having this visible at least somewhere on your screen, is you're gonna see this green, "You are sharing," and this stop share. The green and the red makes it pretty apparent that you are sharing in that moment.

How to chat with everyone vs direct messaging

All right, so the next one on this list is something really, really important and it's actually changed in the past year.

I've had so many questions about this one. I wanted to make sure I included it in today's video.

What we're gonna do is come up here and open up the chat window.

In fact, why don't I just stop sharing for a moment? I'm gonna have the chat window here on the right-hand side.

Now, one common mistake that you want to try and avoid is make sure that you know the difference between messaging everyone and messaging someone privately or sending them a direct message.

How often have you, or have you seen someone else, send a message when they thought it was directly to an individual, but really it was stuck on everyone and everyone in the meeting saw that message?

So take a quick look at this dropdown menu. Make sure that you know the difference as to who you're sending that message to.

But here's the question that I got asked last year, when it comes to a direct message, and Zoom has changed the label of this. This used to say private, now they use the term direct message. Is it truly private? Can the host truly not see this?

Well, it's true in the meeting, the host cannot see this. The host cannot see any of these messages, but what also used to be true is that if the meeting host was recording that meeting, they would get a log of the full chat, including those private messages.

So they weren't private afterwards. The host actually could have access to them.

I wanna tell you that that has changed and private really does mean private. The host does not have access to those messages even if they are recording the meeting. So something that you should be aware of there.

The other thing I wanna point out when it comes to chat is that if you are the host, you have a lot more options available to you here.

So for example, by default, most Zoom meetings are set to everyone publicly and directly, meaning that everyone can message the entire group or they can pick and choose individuals at a time.

But you can disable the directly option and you can choose just everyone publicly.

Meaning that every single comment is gonna be to everyone. No one can reach out to someone on a one-to-one basis.

There's two other choices you should be aware of. Host only, meaning that participants can only contact you.

You can contact everyone else, but only they can ask you questions or send you comments directly.

Now, this might be an interesting one to use if you are a teacher or a trainer and maybe you want to ensure your participants that they don't need to be embarrassed about their questions or to ask for help.

So in this mode, all of their questions or their comments go directly to you and no one else sees them.

And of course last but not least, you can just disable chat altogether.

You don't always have to have chat on, but I mean that sort of defeats the purpose of engagement and allowing people to interact in another way. Just wanna make sure that you're aware of those options there.

Speaking with participants

How to mute all participants

and speaking with having a little more control as the host, I also wanna make sure that you're familiar with muting everyone in your Zoom meeting.

How embarrassing is it that when you are trying to speak or give a presentation and then you hear someone's dog barking in the background or perhaps you hear someone speaking to a spouse off camera?

Well, don't forget as the host, you have control, that power to mute everyone.

If we come down here to the bottom, you can select Mute All. You're gonna get this pop-up window.

And just before you say Yes, I want you to look at this option as well, Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves.

If you're having a meeting with a fairly large audience or perhaps a group of people that you don't know very well, you may want to uncheck this option, meaning that they cannot unmute themselves unless you give them access to do so.

How to stop participants from doing things

You get to pick and choose. Now my seventh tip for you has to do with having full control, especially if you want to prevent your participants from annotating on your screen, prevent them from sharing their screen, unless you say so and other options.

If you're the host, you can come down here to Security and there is a section titled Allow participants too.

So by having share screen unchecked, no one else can share their screen right now, until I check this, no one else can do so without my permission.

I have chat turned on, but I could turn it off at this level as well.

I can choose to prevent them from renaming themselves. If I don't want them to rename themselves something that is already looking good or I can identify them, I can prevent that as well.

I can also, as we just saw another location where you can prevent them from unmuting themselves and if you don't want them to start their video, maybe there's no need depending on the type of meeting or what you're trying to host, you can also prevent that option as well.

Now, if you're looking for an even better way to engage your audience, you may be interested in learning how to use Zoom breakout rooms.

If so, I invite you to watch my video down here in the left-hand corner.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Why Web Accessibility is important

Did you know that 20 to 25% of the population has a disability? Why should you care?

Well, that could be 25% of the population who cannot access your website, cannot find your products, services, or whatever information you're sharing online.

So in today's video, I want to show you a tool so that you can help others get the information and get the products and services that they're seeking.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And in today's video, we're looking at helping others to get more done, people who are looking for your products, your services, or your information online, and giving them the ability to access that information.

Regardless if they have a visual impairment, maybe motor skills, or cognitive disabilities, or maybe just something as simple as poor eyesight, how can they access your information easily, without you having to do a lot of work?

Now, I think there are two key reasons why it's important for us to talk about web accessibility.

Number one, if your website is not ADA and WCAG compliant, you put yourself at risk of receiving lawsuits for not being accessible to other individuals.

But I think the second reason is so much more important, is so that everyone can enjoy the use of the web, including whatever it is that you have to offer.

How to know if your website is ADA & WCAG compliant

So how do you know if your website or websites are compliant? Well, a great place to go and check is Ace.accessiBe.com.

And when you get here, you can just enter in the name of any website, but probably your own, 'cause that's where you're most curious, and select get the results.

What accessiBe will do is a quick check of your website and evaluate it through the industry standards.

And in a matter of seconds, what it will spit out is a short report telling you if you are compliant or if you are not.

As we can see here on the website that I ran through the checker, it is not currently compliant.

And I can go through this report and see the different areas in which it is not accessible to those with a variety of disabilities.

How to make your website compliant with accessiBe

So what do you do if your website is not compliant? Well, it's not always an easy fix.

The thing is, you can't just change your font or use web-safe colors and instantly make it accessible to everyone.

There are simply too many and various disabilities. You have to make certain changes for their needs.

So instead, you can use a tool like accessiBe. Let me show you how it works.

Once you sign up and install accessiBe on your website, you will have the option to have this icon appear on your web pages.

By having this appear, your users can click it and now start to adjust your content, adjust the way that your website's information is displayed, so that they can more easily digest and find the information that they are looking for.

And accessiBe makes it really easy because it has a number of profiles ready-set, depending on that user's disability, to change your website.

But just before I show you how accessiBe is going to change your website for the better, let's take a look at a few things that we sometimes don't think about, in terms of the challenges that many users experience.

On this sample webpage, for example, we have a carousel that is rapidly moving here.

We've got a GIF image, which can be difficult for some people. It may even trigger a seizure for those who suffer from epilepsy.

We've got a number of bright colors, and the font is maybe not the easiest to read.

How accessiBe makes web content accessible

How could someone with a disability safely navigate and find the information that they are looking for? Well, by clicking on accessiBe, I can make a few changes.

So, let's start with the first one: Seizure Safe Profile. Immediately, you can see that the colors have been dialed back a little bit.

It's not exactly black and white, but it's a lot easier on the eyes. This GIF image, for example, has stopped moving, and the carousel has as well.

Again, the content is still there. It's all still clickable, it's all still accessible, but much easier and much safer for someone who suffers from epilepsy.

The second one down is the Visually Impaired Profile. So, by selecting this one, you can see that now the colors are much more distinct.

And I'm sure you saw that the text, the font itself, not only became a lot larger but became much easier to read.

As I scan down through this webpage now, there's a much sharper contrast between the images, and the text is that much easier for me to read.

How do website visitors know about accessiBe

Now, I'm sure some of you may be asking, how does someone with a disability identify that this is a button that is for them and it's gonna help them navigate your website?

Well, this symbol that you see here has become a universal symbol for web accessibility.

For those who use a screen reader, or those who perhaps need to navigate by keyboard alone, are used to and becoming more accustomed to finding this on the web.

So if you have this on your website, there's a good chance that they're going to find it immediately because it never goes away.

It's gonna be floating in either the bottom left or right-hand corner.

But for someone who is blind or visually impaired and needs a screen reader, no problem, by having accessiBe installed on your website, the screen reader will alert the visitor that this is an additional option to make their navigation so much easier.

Let's take a look at a quick example. So when I first visit this website with my screen reader.

• [Computer voice] Press alt plus one for screen reader mode. Stop this message with alt plus zero.

It's letting me know there's some enhanced functionality, just for me. If I press alt plus one.

• [Computer voice] Screen reader mode is on. Alt plus zero to cancel, button, heading three, a good looking, comfortable, traditional collection. Heading three, list item. Woman in gray denim jeans. Woman in black tank top with black tattoo on arm. List item.

What accessiBe is doing is enhancing my picture tags, my image tags, so that people who are wanting to view that information can see it.

Even if they can't view it with their own eyes, they can access it with their screen reader with the help of accessiBe.

Custom options and accessiBe features

Now, keep in mind that even though accessiBe has these six different profiles at the beginning of its menu, if you scroll down, you've got so much more available to you.

So, for example, a user could simply click the readable font and just change the text, the font on the page here.

Maybe you want to be able to align all the text on the page to the right-hand side so that's easier for the way that you like to read.

If we go down a little bit further, we can choose a higher contrast, which if I close this down for a second, here you can see, it's a much higher contrast between the lights and the darks.

And for those who may suffer from color blindness, again, color blindness is different for different color blind people.

So what is the proper text color, depending on your color blindness?

Now, as we continue down the accessiBe interface, we come to orientation adjustments, and again the user can tweak this and make adjustments depending on their needs.

Here's one, for example, is hide images. So if you just want to be able to focus in on the text and not be distracted by videos, GIFs, and other images, you can turn that off as well.

There's also the option to increase the size of your cursor. Maybe I want a big black cursor, which is going to help me navigate and follow along where I am and make sure I know what I'm clicking on and where it is.

Another feature that I find most helpful is where are the actual links? So here, under content adjustments, I can select highlight links.

And now this is going to tell me what is clickable and what is not.

You can see the little orange around these buttons here, I can see that there's orange around these images, I can clearly see what is clickable and what is not as I scour and browse this website.

So if you want to make sure that your website is accessible to all, be sure to check out accessiBe at accessiBe.com.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity Channel, and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Why a writing editor app is important

There is a very good chance that you spend more time communicating via text than by any other format. And no, I'm not talking about text messaging.

I'm talking about things like email, social media, or perhaps your website. It's important for us to be able to convey ourselves in a clear and concise manner so we can get our message across.

So in today's video, I want to show you why it's important to use a writing editing app and how I've been using a particular one over the last few weeks to help improve my online messaging.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. A few weeks ago, I was on my own website, and I was reviewing some of the content that I had included on my About Me page, and something really stood out to me.

As I was reviewing my existing text, I identified a spelling mistake, a spelling mistake which has probably existed on this page for the past two years.

But beyond just that small mistake, I also realized and discovered, with the aid of a tool, that I could really improve my communication. I could be a lot more specific and get my message across to my potential clients.

So what I've been using is a tool called ProWritingAid, and it's so much more than just a grammar and spell checker. It's actually helping me improve my readability and it can help improve yours as well.

How to use the ProWritingAid browser extension

I want to show you three different ways in which you can use ProWritingAid, and let's start with the first one, and that is right within your browser. Now, this is probably the easiest one, especially when we are crafting our email messages or perhaps our social media posts.

As you're writing, as I'm showing you here in this example, it's gonna highlight certain errors but also suggestions here as well. You can see there's three different colors it's highlighting here in front of me.

I've got a yellow, a couple of blues, and a red. The red is probably the most obvious—it's a spelling mistake here.

Yeah, "forgotten" does not have a zed at the end, but I've got a few other suggestions here as well. My readability may be enhanced if I removed "that."

When I read the sentence, yeah, "that" is just a filler word. I don't need to include that here.

And then, the blues in this particular case have a little more to do with grammar and some punctuation here as well. So yes, that's not the proper form of "know."

There should be an S on the end, and "details" in this particular example should have a comma at the end. However, there's a good chance that you may be writing longer form content, such as a blog article or perhaps your own website, like in my own example.

How to use the ProWritingAid web editor

That's where the online editor comes into play. So here we are. I haven't downloaded anything.

I'm just within the ProWritingAid site, and here I can either copy and paste content, I can upload a document, or I can just write right within this window. In this particular case, I've chosen to use a blog article that I wrote a few years back to see if I can improve on it with ProWritingAid.

Now, when you first input your text, your realtime editor may be off, but let's turn that on and see what it has found. And I've got about nine different suggestions waiting for me here.

So we see some of the same colors that we saw on the extension version when I was writing my email. In this case, there's a few different things that I should be looking to improve upon.

But you'll also notice up here, at the top of the menu, I have a large number of different reports where I can dive into in a lot more detail.

So let's take a look at a couple of my favorites. One of the ones that I've been using a lot is called Sticky.

Now what Sticky is referring to are sentences which may trip up some of my readers. Perhaps I'm using words or language that is just not as smooth for someone to digest as they're reading this content.

Think of how important that is when you're trying to convey your message. Maybe you're creating a sales page and you're trying to sell a service or a product.

Or maybe it's just the landing page of your website, and you know that you only have a few seconds to get your message across before they move on to something else.

So the last thing you want is to trip them up by including a confusing sentence or maybe too many filler words where you don't need to here. So here, I've got a few different things highlighted.

If I go over here to the left and click on this, I've got some examples here, such as "When I," "I don't," "It allows," "So select." These are things that I could maybe tighten up a little bit, use different words or fewer words, so it's easier for people to understand.

The other one that I use a lot here within ProWritingAid is Readability. So in this case, it looks like I'm pretty good.

If I hover over these different paragraphs, it says that, hey, great, this has a Flesch Reading Ease score of 84.9. However, if I come down to the bottom of the screen here, this is my last sentence or my last two sentences, and it may be a little bit difficult for some of my readers to wrap their heads around or understand me correctly.

And keep in mind, you don't always know your audience and their background. You don't know what their reading level is.

You don't know what their native language is, or perhaps what country they are coming from. So it's so important that you have clear and concise language so that they're not confused and they understand the message that you're trying to get across.

How to use the ProWritingAid Microsoft Office add-on

Now, the third way in which you can use ProWritingAid is with your favorite word processor, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word. So in this case, I've downloaded and installed the ProWritingAid extension from Microsoft Office.

So I can use this within my own desktop setup here. Here, I've got a different article that I've been working on, and you can see that Microsoft tries to help us out with a few simple suggestions here.

You may see some of these blue underlines and red for a spelling mistake, but here in the top right-hand corner, I've got my ProWritingAid icon. And if I select this to turn on Realtime checking, it's gonna take a look and give me a variety of different suggestions.

Here again, we see those blues, some yellows, and some reds as to where we can improve upon. But if we want to go even further, at the very top of the menu, I can click on ProWritingAid, and now I've got all of these reporting options available to me again.

Helpful reports to improve your writing

So let's take a look at two more that I think you might find helpful as well. The first one is called Echoes.

If I click on Echoes, it's gonna take a second to analyze my text. What Echoes does is it highlights any words or phrases that I may have repeated within a short timeframe.

Maybe I've repeated it one after another in a few different sentences or short paragraphs. So if I open up this option here, the first one is "exercise."

Now in this case, this article is about exercise, so that's probably okay. But the second one here is "first thing," and let's take a look at that.

In this paragraph, I've got "first thing" right after one another, then I've got "first thing" in the following paragraph, and "first thing." It doesn't need to be that way.

I might be boring my audience by using that same phrase, that combination of words, time and time again. So it's highlighting where I can improve my writing, not just the readability but make me a stronger writer over time as well.

The other one that I think is most helpful, regardless of what type of thing that you're writing, whether it's email, social media, or otherwise, is sentence length. Sometimes, if you write too long of a sentence, it is very difficult for someone to follow your train of thought and what you're trying to convey to your audience.

So in this case, I'm pretty good. Most of my sentences have received a blue here, but I've got a couple of reds which are highlighting sentences that are perhaps a little too long.

Maybe I can shorten them up. Maybe I can break them into two to make it that much easier for those people who will be reading this content.

Now, if you'd like to learn more and try ProWritingAid for yourself, be sure to click the link in the description below. And I'd love to know from you, what type of writing are you involved with on a day-to-day basis?

Are you producing articles? Are you revising sales copy, or is most of your writing related to email or social media? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Where to find the Google Side Panel

- Have you ever been using Gmail or Google Calendar and then wandered over to the right-hand side and wondered what this side panel is all about? Or perhaps you have opened it up yourself and said to yourself, "Okay, that's nice, "I can see those things, but can it do "anything else for me?" Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about the Google side panel, including how you can make connections between different apps.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you're wanting to get more out of your technology and your applications, I invite you to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

So, first and foremost, what is the Google side panel? Well, it's available in three different Google apps, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. Specifically, within Drive, Sheets, Docs, and Slides. And you should see this panel by default whenever you're within one of those apps.

How to view the Google Side Panel

But just in case you don't see this panel, come all the way down to the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. It may look something like this, where you have nothing here. All you need to do is come down here and say, Show Side Panel, and then you should see this little sliver on the right hand side.

Now, in most cases, you're gonna see either keep tasks or maybe something like your calendar on the right-hand side, but it does depend on what you're viewing at the moment.

So here I am within Google Calendar and the great thing here is that I can take notes, I can search through my notes, for example, I can go to my tasks and I can check things off all within the same screen. I don't have to go back and forth between different apps.

I find what's really helpful, if you do use Google Tasks is that you don't have to crowd up your Google Calendar with the tasks up here at the top, you can uncheck that calendar view and just manage your tasks over here on the right-hand side.

But let's go back to keep, because I wanna show you

How to connect Keep Notes to Calendar Events

how you can actually make a connection between these things. So, for example, let's say I'm gonna open up this HR interview and maybe there's some questions that I have for this meeting, but they're specific to me.

I don't wanna add them here on the description of the meeting, 'cause I don't want everyone else to see it. If I come over here and say, Take a Note, even before I start writing that note, look what happens. I've created a link to this particular event.

So I'm just gonna type in just a few pieces of sample text. I'm just gonna say New Note, and I'm gonna say, Done. Here at the top, you can say it is now related, New Note. I thought I said, note, new note is related here

at the top of the screen. So even when I go to close this, you can see it's added that note and I can go to a different event and so to speak, but when I opened this one up, once again, here, you can see the related note.

No matter when I've created this note, it's gonna jump the top and show me that note, whenever I have selected this particular event. So this is fantastic for creating your own agenda or even taking meeting notes when the meeting is in progress.

How to use Maps Side Panel with Google Calendar

Now there's another side panel app, which I find very helpful here within Google Calendar, and that's the Maps View. So if I come over here to Maps, I can do many of the same things that I would do in a new tab. I can search for a place and I can see this miniature view of the map, but it gets better. Let's look at this event over here,

which is titled Walk with Kevin. Let's say, for example, I have forgotten exactly where we were walking and how to get there. If I click on this event and then click on the location, it's going to immediately show me that location here in the side panel view.

So, no, I don't have to go to a new tab, it's not gonna launch anything new for me, I can read about it, I can view this location here. I can even click Directions and get those directions brought up in front of me and remind me, "Oh yeah, it's only gonna take me about 12 or 15 minutes "to drive to that location."

So again, I don't have to go anywhere if you have any event or appointment, which has an address on it, you can pull it up and view it right here within the map view on the side panel.

How to use Tasks Side View with Gmail Messages

But let's jump into our Gmail because I'm sure you wanna get the most out of this when you're dealing with your email as well. So, as we said before, the same functionality exists with Google Keep, you can create a note and attach it to a specific event here, or a specific message within Gmail.

I'm not gonna show you how to do that again, but what I do wanna show you is how you can take advantage

of Tasks here within the email view. So let's say for example, I'm gonna open up this email and I wanna create a task around this message, but I wanna come back to this message, right? I don't wanna just create the task, I wanna be able to come back to this message and make an identification, be able to link it together.

Now, what we don't wanna do is actually come up here and say, Add a Task. If we add a task up here, it is not gonna have a connection with this email. And that's fine, not all of your tasks need to have that connection, but if you do want that connection to be made,

you need to come up here to the top of the email and say, Add To Tasks. And what's gonna happen here is down here under No Date, because we haven't given it a date yet, you can see that it has brought in the subject line of this email and it has created that link.

So now I can come in here and I can edit this name, right? I can say that this is a new task for me to accomplish here. I've given it a different name here, but I've created that link to this email. And you can see I've got a few other examples here as well.

If I wanna go directly to this task and say, "Oh, what was that all about?" I can click on that and it's gonna bring me to that email. Can we meet on Thursday?

What was that task all about? I can click on that and it's gonna bring me directly to that email. Let's go back to that one that we just created, I can click on it, and here we go. Now I remember now I know what I need to do with accomplishing that task.

So not only can you view your task list on the same screen as your email, but you can create those connections as well.

How to create Events in Side View from Gmail

If we open up the calendar view, this is also very helpful if you're about to set up an appointment and say to yourself, "Oh, I don't know if I'm busy. "You know what, today might not work, "let's look at tomorrow, tomorrow is a lot more free."

I could probably create a meeting for this individual here, but it gets better. If I say that I want to create this meeting, let's say at 2:00 p.m, I'm gonna click on 2:00 p.m. on my little calendar here.

Again, it's gonna bring over the name of that email, the subject of that email, which I can edit if I want to, but this is what I find really handy is if I come down here to Add Guests, I can add anyone I want, but the very first option it says Based On Your Email.

Well, yeah, I want this meeting to be with myself and the person I'm talking to here. So I'm just gonna say, yeah, add that person. Here we are, I'm the organizer, here's the other individual. I can edit all of my other changes, all of my other options as I would, if I was in Google Calendar and then hit Save.

I'm going to say, Don't Send it This Time and there's my calendar appointment created directly

from within Gmail, including some of the information that I have here with this particular message. But maybe the best tip or the best option here

How to view Contacts in Gmail Side Panel

with the side panel within Gmail is the contact form. So here you can see I'm still within this email and it's showing people in this thread. Now I could always go back to all of my contacts and I could hit the search bar and search for a particular contact.

But by default, when you open up an email, it's gonna bring up the contacts that are related or are a part of this message. So if I click on this person here, now, I've got

all of their contact information at my fingertips. I've got their email address, work number, I've even got notes here at the bottom. If I want to use this as sort of a mini

or a simple CRM system. But here's the one that I find most useful, is Recent Interactions. I'm going to click on the More here, and you can see, I've got a couple of calendar events that are coming up.

I can click on those and it's gonna launch the calendar right away, but I can also see some of the messages that we've been involved with as well. So if I go here to let's get the team together, it's gonna immediately pull up that message.

Oh, September 2nd, did we have an email on that day? I can click on it, and immediately it's gonna bring up that message as well.

So you can see, you can quickly go through your history and review other calendar events and other messages right here on the right hand side.

How to send Drive Text to Google Keep

Now let's jump over to Google Drive. And in this example, we're gonna look at a document at a Google Doc, but again, these same features and functionality are gonna be available in Sheets and also in Slides.

So if we come over here, we can view our calendar if we want to, but I think keep is the real winner when you are using Docs or something within Google Drive. So for example, let's say that I want to get some of this bit of text from the document and I want to inject it or bring it into Google Keep.

Maybe this is a lengthy document, but there's some really good nuggets in there, that I wanna keep, or I want to review for later. All I need to do is come over to my document and highlight the piece of text that I want to bring over.

I'm gonna right click, and I'm gonna say, Save to Keep. Now, you don't actually have to have the Google side panel open for this to work, but it just a, this is a really great example of how we can see this in real time.

So I'm gonna say, Save to Keep, and here you can see on the right hand side, it's brought all of this text directly into my Google Keep.

And so now I can go and review it later, I can edit it, I don't have to be here within Google Documents. I can go over here and change that text and do whatever I want with it outside of Google Docs.

How to bring Keep Notes into Drive Docs

But the other nice thing is that it works both ways. In that example, we saw how we could take information from the Doc and send it to Keep, what about the other way around? Let's say I come down here to my team meeting notes and maybe these are things that I want to add to an agenda, or I want to add to my document.

Well, all I need to do is select that note, come up here to the menu and I'm gonna say, Add to Document, and immediately it is brought into my document. So I could have a large collection of notes, I could even have images over here in Google Keep,

and now I can bring it directly into my document. So another great way in which you can sync those two things together. Now, the other thing that I wanna

How to add more Side Panel Apps

point out when it comes to the Google side panel is that you can add more apps

than just these standard Google ones that you see here. You'll see at the bottom of the Google side panel, there is a plus button which says, Get Add On. So if I'm here within Google Docs and I add that or open it up, you're gonna see that there's a large collection of additional extensions that I can add to this.

Now, keep in mind, these are unique depending on where you launch this. As you can see in this case, I've got things like charts and Doc to Form and Easy Bibliography, things that are pertaining to a document, right? Things that are gonna help me here within my document.

But if I go back to Gmail and I hit that plus icon, I'm gonna see a completely different set of extensions. Here I've got things like Zoom, right? If I wanna create a Zoom meeting really quickly and add that link here, I've got like a Trello extension, If I wanna quickly convert an email into a Trello card.

So each one has its own set of extensions really useful so that you can be more efficient with your Google apps.

Now, if you're wanting even more tips on how to get the most out of Gmail, I invite you to watch the video down below where I show you seven settings you need to know and maybe change, to get the most out of your email.

Thanks so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Why a database can help you

- Sometimes a project management tool, or a task manager is overkill. Sometimes all that you need is a good list, table, or simple database. So in today's video, I wanna show you an app which is going to allow you to customize anything that you want,

no matter if you're using it for business, or maybe even for personal use. I wanna introduce you to Memento Database. So, let's look at this on my mobile phone. Now, Memento is also available for desktop, but I think I have found it more convenient

using it on my mobile app, especially when I'm taking pictures of inventory, and other things that I wanna keep track of.

Overview of Memento Database

So let's launch Memento here, and right off the bat, you can see the libraries,

or otherwise known as databases here. And I've got a few different examples here that I'm gonna show you here today. The first one here is Office Inventory, because I'm setting up a new office, and I wanna keep track of my expenses, I wanna keep track of everything that I'm adding, and also maybe when it comes to things like maintenance, I wanna see how long I've had something as well.

So if I open up Office Inventory here you can see my simple list so far. A few different items, which I've purchased over the last few weeks. Now, the great thing about Memento is that you can add as many, or as few fields as you like.

And as your lists, or as your inventory grows, you can go grow with it, and you can add more complex features, you can add relationships between different tables or different libraries.

One of the things that I love the best here is that I can sum up certain fields as well. So, even before I dive into one of my entries here at the very bottom you can see I've got three entries,

and it's a total of $965 dollars. So for example, maybe I want to set a particular budget, and I don't wanna exceed that budget, I can always see that running total here.

Editing Fields in Memento

So let's take a look at an example here. I'm gonna open, put up my standing desk for example, and I can categorize it by furniture type, I can input the cost here. And what I really love is you can even take a photo of these things on the fly.

So let's say you are keeping track of inventory. Maybe you have a small warehouse, or maybe you have something else that you're wanting to keep track of, you can quickly and easily add that photo here as well.

But I can add other fields. I don't have to always be looking at them at the same time. If I hit the Edit button here, here you can see I can add a serial number, I can add a barcode so I can actually scan the barcode directly in here if I like, I can add other information that I want at any particular time.

Let's open up another one here on my list here. It's my mechanical keyboard. So again, similar to what we saw before, I've got a picture and some basic information, but let's say I wanna add the purchase date 'cause I wanna know when I purchased this item.

So I'm gonna open things up, and if I scroll down to the bottom, I've already added this earlier. It's a purchase date. So I'm gonna open up my calendar, and I purchased that last Tuesday, so I'm gonna hit Next. If I want to, I can select a particular time,

or you can just leave it at the default there, and then save that particular entry. Now, you'll notice that it actually didn't allow me to save that's because there's a required field on this page.

It's something that I added not too long ago, and that is the cost of that device. So again, every single aspect of Memento is customizable. I can go in and actually edit that and say, no, no, no, I don't need to make that a required field, but if I'm using this for budgeting purposes, yeah. I wanna make sure that I add the cost.

Creating a new database in Memento

So in this case, I think this keyboard was about $65. In this case, I'm gonna enter in 65 and hit Enter. So now that is added, if I go back to my entries, yeah, now I've just exceeded a little over a thousand dollars just on these three items.

Most of them were that standing desk. Okay, let's take a look at a few other examples here as well, and how quickly and easily we can create our own libraries from scratch. So Memento actually gives us a number of different templates so that we can get started off with them.

So here you can see they've been categorized in a few different places. I'm actually gonna click on Personal here for a second, and I'm gonna come down and I'm going to say, maybe I want to keep track of all the restaurants that either I've eaten at recently, or that I would like to start eating at.

So I'm gonna select Restaurants, I'm gonna select Next, and here I already have my table, or my library ready for me to enter. If I click on it, you can see that I have no entries yet, but because we're basing this off of a template, I'm going to assume it's got some great information there ready for me already.

I'm gonna hit the plus button. And let's just say, I ate at a place called, Macks the other night, what type of cuisine? Again, this is all pre-populated. So I can go in here, and edit this or change it as I like.

It was a cafe, I'm gonna give it a four star rating. I said it was last night. So I'm gonna say it was last night and average price. Now this is kind of interesting, you know, what was the price of my meal, for example? I also like this feature that when it comes to adding in certain numerical fields, you actually get a calculator, built right into the application.

So let's say, I do have to figure out either the tax, or I need to break it out of a receipt

or something like that, I can do that. I can say, well, the, you know, the total bill was $67, but then I have to subtract the other person's entrée. And then we shared an appetizer, for example. So let's take out another $8 there. And so, okay, it's 36, and it inputs it right there in that numerical field. So I'm gonna hit Enter there.

Adding new fields to Memento Database

There's my first entry there. But let's say I wanna change things up a little bit. Let's say that there, that was a little limiting the number of fields that we added there, maybe I want to say quality of service, not just the food.

Maybe I wanna break out the difference between the food and the service. So in the top right-hand corner, I can go in here and edit my library. So here you can see the number of fields, you see the about the five different fields that we already have in there, but let's add a new field ourselves.

So I'm gonna hit that plus button here, I'm gonna select Field, and now, here are all of the different field types that I have to choose from. And we've got everything from color, to a map,

a barcode, hyperlinks, a variety of different things here that we can add to this particular entry. I like that star rating. So I'm gonna choose a star rating in this case.

And when it comes to service, maybe I want more than five stars. Maybe I wanna go all the way up to 10 stars. It's also gonna help me maybe differentiate between the food and the service when I go to rate it, I can select default stars. I can say required.

There's that required field. I'm gonna leave it off in this case, but everything from my display options, to the font size, all of these great things here. Now, before I create this, remember I've got to give it a field name.

So, I'm gonna say, Service. I'm just gonna call this one Service just alone. So you can rename any of these fields, customize them the way that you like. I'm gonna hit Enter on this case.

And the last thing that I'm gonna do here, is that I wanna move it up, right? Because here it's gonna be the last one here. I think I'm gonna put it under Ratings. I'm gonna drag this up here to under Rating, and then I'm gonna hit that check mark again. So this time when I go into Macks, you can see there's that service rating, but now, I need to go in,

and actually give us a service rating. So I can say, you know what? It was a, it was pretty good, I've had better. So I'm gonna give it about seven stars out of 10 there.

Now what I can do going forward, like you saw in my office inventory, is I can calculate that data. So if I want to average out the quality of the service, or that my food rating amongst these different items I can do so as well. Memento is going to give me that power, it's going to give me that ability.

Viewing relationships between database tables

Let me show you how you can create relationships between these different tables as well. So for example, you'll see here that I've got a library called Team, and maybe where, this is where I've kept a collection of all of my team members.

I want to keep their either addresses, or maybe I wanna know what inventory they have, at their home office as well. If I'm a business owner, I wanna keep tabs on who has a laptop?

Who has other pieces of equipment, as a part of working remotely, for example?

So here, if I click on my own name, for example, you'll see, I've got my role as the owner. I've got my photo and down below, you can see that I have my Yeti microphone, and the dollar amount as well. Now, where did we see that before?

We saw that in the office inventory. So if I select that, it's actually gonna open up

that entry and now you can see I'm actually in that inventory library at the moment

down below, you can see that I'm the owner. So, I can and make these custom relationships between these tables within these databases.

Pulling in data from the web into your database

Again, another great feature, you can make it as complex or as simple as you like. Now, the last thing that I wanna show you here within Memento database is how you can actually pull in information directly from the web, if you like.

And this is particularly useful if you're wanting to use things such as product information, or maybe if you are collecting a personal list of data or a personal collection.

So for example, here for example, I've got a list of movies to see, for example, and I've put a few different things here on this list. Now I didn't go in and grab the year that the movie was released. I didn't go in and grab that screenshot of the poster. No, I let Memento do the work for me. It's pulling in that information all at the same time.

So for example, if I hit the plus button here, let's say I'm gonna add a new movie

that I would like to watch. So in this case, I'm just gonna start in typing in the name of that movie. And in this case, I'm gonna type in "Vertigo", for example, and when I typed that in immediately, it's bringing up the one that I want, the Hitchcock classic "Vertigo".

So as you can see now here, it's not only brought in the poster, it's brought in a link, to some ratings, it's given me a tagline, it's told me the genre, it's given me a description where it was made, the duration.

All of that information is just brought in directly. In fact, if I go to the cast, it's gonna show me the cast as well. I'm just gonna hit Enter here. Here you can see that it's been added to my list, but now I've got all of that information at my fingertips.

So I can go and use this whenever I like, I can keep track of things and give my own personal rating as a part of my list. So, if you're looking for a quick, easy, and customizable way to keep track of your inventory, or your own personal list, I would encourage you to check out Memento Database.

You can find out more information in the description below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. Be sure to subscribe and give this video a like, and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

What you will learn

- If you wanna get the most out of your Zoom meetings, you need to know how to annotate, and use the whiteboard feature, whether you're a teacher, a trainer, or you just wanna make your presentations that much more engaging.

I'm gonna show you everything that you need to know, about annotating and using the whiteboard right here in Zoom. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

How to launch the Zoom whiteboard

And let's get started with how, we launch annotation or a whiteboard here within Zoom. So down below, we need to start by selecting Share Screen, and here you have to make a decision.

Do you want a plain canvas that's for that purpose, we would choose the whiteboard, or do you wanna share your screen and maybe share a file or a website, and start to mock up things or allow your participants to contribute as well? Let's start with the basic version first.

We're gonna click on Whiteboard and then select Share. And essentially this is going to give us a complete blank canvas.

Annotation tools and how to use them

It's pure white, we can do a number of different things here. We can use the Text feature here, and start entering things. Maybe we want people to enter in their name on the screen or tell them how they are feeling today. Something along those lines,

we can use the drawing tool here to, maybe choose a different color here, and we can start to draw silly little things,

or highlight certain things on the screen as well. I'm not gonna go into the details of every single tool here. Most of them are self-explanatory, but I imagine one of the things that's on the top of your mind is,

How to enable or disable participants from annotating

how do I enable others or prevent others from participating, from sharing on my screen? In order to do so, you need to come up to your toolbar and select Security.

And here's a section called Allow participants to. Now there's a long list of things here,

and you can see currently, anyone who has joined my meeting, can annotate on my shared screen. But if I want to prevent them, all I need to do is to click this option,

and now they don't have that option. They can not contribute to this whiteboard sharing.

But I'm gonna go back here, I'm gonna enable it, And I'm gonna just grab my phone as my fake participant here, and let's see, let me grab a different color here, and I'm just gonna do a little squiggly line so you can see, that I didn't use it with my cursor here on my main computer.

I actually used it as a participant. Now, as a host, what you can do is actually hover over, and see who has contributed to what? Now this is maybe not the best example, 'cause I'm using the same user name, on both of my devices.

But even if someone else has shared content on your whiteboard or your shared screen, you can click and drag and move things around. I find that this is most helpful when you're asking people to contribute text, maybe like a brainstorming session, and you can take their texts just like this, and drag it and group it together and put them in a different order.

This is much more effective than using the chat window, which is just linear, and if you have a number of people contributing, it might just get lost, this is a great way to group things together.

Now, note, if you do come back here to Security and say disabled shared content for others to annotate on your shared content, it will not remove what they shared already.

How to clear Zoom annotations

In order to do that, you wanna come over here to the Clear option. Now you've got three choices here. You can Clear All Drawings, meaning you're gonna return,

to a 100% clear canvas. You can say Clear My Drawings, to the things that I have contributed, or you can say Clear Viewers' Drawing. So if I choose this last option here, you can see it's gonna remove that blue squiggly line, because that was from a participant.

So you've got quite a bit of flexibility here, when it comes to controlling annotations here within Zoom. But you know what? The whiteboard is not always as useful, as you may think it is.

How to annotate a shared Zoom screen

So I'm gonna actually start a New Share. In this case I'm gonna share my screen, and I'm gonna open up a file here on my computer, because maybe you have something

That you wanna share with others, and you wanna highlight a few different things, or you want others to participate as well. I find this is often even more useful.

So here I'm gonna come up here in my toolbar, and I'm gonna select Annotate, which is gonna give me the exact same menu, the same thing that we saw on the whiteboard option. So now what I can do is I can use things like this, a Spotlight function, and I can say, well, his shirt is a different color over here. The rocket boosters or thrusters

are a little bit different than over here. The Tesla deco is different over here. I can use that same spotlight feature and use these arrows to click into certain areas. I find that that's a very helpful one as well.

Again, when you're sharing your content, you can allow others to annotate as well. So all of the same rules apply, as what we just saw on the whiteboard side of things as well.

How to undo, redo, or erase annotations

Now don't forget as you're drawing and as you're adding and contributing different things here to your screen you can always use Undo or Redo as well, right? If you wanna go back just a few different steps. The other thing that you can do, of course,

which is very crucial, is that you can come and use the Eraser function. So maybe there's just a few specific things, that you wanna get rid of,

How to save Zoom annotations

you can do so as well. Now, when everything is finished,

when you are done contributing or adding or brainstorming, maybe you'll want to actually save your annotations and everything that's been mocked up here on the screen. So your final option just to the right of Clear is Saved.

And you can choose to either save it as a PNG file, right? That's an image file, or you can choose to save it as a PDF, if you want to use it for later. So a lot of powerful things that you can do with annotation, and using a whiteboard right here within Zoom.

Now I'd love to hear from you next. If you're already using the annotation features, I'd love to know what you're using it for. And I'm sure many other viewers, would love to learn from you as well. Be sure to share your Zoom experiences, in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you give this video a like and subscribe,

right here to these Simpletivity channel. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Website criteria for this list

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

In today's video, I wanna share with you seven helpful websites to help you be more productive, help you save time.

In some cases, they can even help you save money.

So today we're not looking at applications; we're looking at websites that require no sign in, no email address, nothing for you to install.

These are places where you can just get in, get out, and get on with the rest of your day.

Time and Date Calculations

So let's get started with website number one, and that is TimeAndDate.com.

TimeAndDate.com obviously is going to give you the accurate time and time zones across virtually every area on the earth.

But there are two particular areas that I use this website for, on a regular basis.

Number one is their calculators section.

For example, there is a date-to-date calculator.

Let’s say I'm managing a project, and I want to know how many days are left between now and the end of that project.

All I need to do is come here and select today, or I can select any other date from this calendar if I want to.

Then over here, let's say that I know that I need this project to be finished by February 19th.

I could give an estimate in terms of the number of weeks or the number of days between these two, but if I want to be more precise, I just need to hit this calculate duration.

Now I know it's exactly 79 days from today until this date, February 19th.

It also gives me a few alternate time units here, such as 11 weeks and two days if I need to know how many weeks are out as well.

Another calculator I use quite often is the add and subtract calculator.

For example, I’ll hit today, and in this case, maybe I want to know exactly how many days it is, maybe not 120, right?

These are maybe some more common values, but let’s say 67 days from now.

I’m going to hit calculate and, oh, perfect, it's Sunday, February 7th.

I can get very, very precise with those calculations.

Easy Polls

Let's move on to website number two, which has to do with polling.

How often have you wanted to quickly ask a question to either a small group of people, such as your family, or friends, or your work team?

Maybe you want to share something on social media but don't want to restrict it to just a particular platform.

That's where Polls.io comes in.

As soon as you get to the polls.io website, you can immediately start creating your quiz or your question here.

So I'm gonna say, what is your favorite app?

I asked that one earlier, and down below, I can add some options here, maybe Trello, Asana.

It’s remembered some of the things that I put in just a few moments ago.

Here I've got my very simple poll.

I’m going to say, create this poll, and it’s going to bring me to this page.

All I need to do is copy this link.

I can either copy it up here in the URL, or I can hit the share button and copy this link as well.

I can choose to embed it or share it directly to some popular social media platforms.

But in most cases, what I find is most helpful is just to copy that link.

I can copy it to the clipboard, and now people can start to vote on this poll.

I could send it in a text message.

I can send it anywhere that I like, and I don't have to come back here and log in anywhere to see the results.

All I need to do is remember this URL or copy this URL and remember it for later.

If I say vote, I'm gonna say maybe monday.com is my favorite at the moment.

I’m going to hit submit, and immediately I can start to see those results come in.

Background Sound & White Noise

Now, the next one on our list has to do with productive focus.

Perhaps you are working in a very noisy environment and want to be able to drown out the other noises around you.

Whether that's a noisy office or perhaps you're working remotely from home, and you don't want to hear your kids, or the pet, or maybe your partner who is very loud on their zoom call in the room next door.

That's where Noises.online comes into play.

A very, very simple website.

You can see a variety of different icons here, which represent soundscapes you can enable just with a click.

You can also combine various ones together as well.

For example, if I click on brook, you can hear a little rumbling brook going by.

You can almost envision that you're camping or maybe fishing by a small river.

If I want to combine that, I can combine it with a bonfire.

Here, we get some crackling.

It sounds like a pretty large fire.

Yeah, that is certainly a bonfire.

If I want less fire, all I need to do is click this a few times, and each click should reduce the level or the sound of that.

As I'm combining these noises, I can really customize what I want.

You'll also notice in the top right-hand corner, they always have a pick of the week, and this one is called cafeteria.

If I select that, it sounds a little bit like a noisy cafeteria or maybe a coffee shop.

You see they've actually combined a coffee house with cocktail voices.

So you've got some of that banter in the background combined with that coffee shop ambience.

If you really enjoy these sounds, all you need to do to favorite yours is hit this pin.

What it’s going to do is give you a unique URL.

You can bookmark it into your browser.

If there’s a particular sound or sound combination that you like, you don't even have to come back to the website necessarily and create it again.

You can just copy this, save it somewhere, or bookmark it to your browser, and use it in the future.

Focused Writing

Now, the next website on our list is something that is very, very dangerous.

So proceed with caution.

It's actually called The Most Dangerous Writing App.

And I think that is very true.

This is an app that I've actually used quite frequently over the last several years.

Let me explain how it works.

Sometimes we get into a bit of a writer's block or a writer's funk.

I know for myself, I'm very much a perfectionist.

So when I need to write something that's more of a long format, something that's gonna be several paragraphs in length, like a blog post, for example, I can start by writing the first one or two sentences.

Then I stare at those two sentences and I overanalyze.

I say, how could I say this differently?

Meanwhile, I should really just be dumping out all of my thoughts and try to write as much as I can, 'cause I can always come back and edit, and rearrange that.

So if you ever have those problems or that type of difficulty, then The Most Dangerous Writing App may be for you.

Yes, don't stop writing, or all progress will be lost.

Here’s how it works.

You can either choose to do it with a prompt or without.

The prompt is gonna give you a sort of a beginning sentence.

This is really more designed for someone who is writing fiction.

So in most cases, you're gonna wanna use this if you're writing anything business-related, a blog post, maybe marketing content, or maybe you just want to use this for brainstorming ideas.

But before we get started, make sure you choose if you want to look at the amount of time that you are writing or the amount of words.

If we click on this little link, we can either choose the number of minutes that we would like to continually write, or we can choose the number of words.

In this example, I'll just use something very simple, like 75 words.

Now that I've chosen my session length, I'm gonna click this button, start writing without prompt.

The nice thing is that it gives me a nice big blank canvas.

I don't have ads, I don't have distractions.

Like I said before, I don't have to even sign in to use this app.

As I start writing, everything is looking good.

But if I pause, you'll see what's going to happen.

It’s gonna start to fade a little bit.

Eventually, if I don't keep writing, it's all going to vanish.

There's about a five-second timeframe between when you stop typing and when everything is going to go away.

And yes, when I click this box, nothing is there.

I can start again, but everything that I just wrote is gone.

So, if I start again, if I start again and I pause, and I pause and I see the fading, I can, no, no, I'm not done.

I'm not done.

I want to keep writing again.

But if I pause for too long, once again, everything is going to vanish and it is all gone.

Once you've hit that limit, whether it's a minute length or whether it's a number of words, then it’s there for good.

You can go and copy and paste this into a word processor or wherever else that you would like to do it.

But this has actually been very, very helpful, both from a brainstorming point of view and also when I just need to get my thoughts out and not worry about it, right?

You can always come back and edit it later.

A great tool if you ever get stuck with your writing.

Amazon Deal Finder

Now, next up on our list is not only going to save you time, but it's designed to help save you money.

This is called CamelCamelCamel.

Yeah, it's probably a name of a website that you're not going to forget anytime soon.

What it has to do with is following and tracking prices on Amazon to make sure that you are getting the best deal, or at least be confident that you're getting a very good deal as you are shopping online.

So here in the search bar, you can either type in or copy and paste a URL from Amazon.

But I'm just gonna click on this popular products for this quick example.

Here, it's gonna show me a list of products that are popular on Amazon right now.

Let's take a look at these Sony noise-canceling headphones.

It's telling me that it's a good deal.

Well, why is that the case?

Right now they're on for $229.

But below I can see that the list price is $349.

The average price of these headphones on Amazon has been $304, so yeah, that's a pretty good discount.

If that's the average price that this has been listed, and now I can get them for $229, that does seem like a good deal.

You can click on these products and go into even more deeper history.

For anyone who loves charts like myself, here you can see the full price history of these particular headphones.

Yeah, you can see that for much of its time, it’s hovered around that $350 mark.

But you can see all these dips, right?

All these peaks where the sale prices have gone on, where maybe there's been a black Friday or a special sale.

In fact, you can see Black Friday was just a few days before this particular recording.

That was probably the lowest price ever at $221.

If I get it today at $229, I'm pretty confident that I am getting a very good deal.

Better yet, without signing up, you can enter in any email address and choose what price drop you are looking for.

If I click on this, it gives me a couple of helpful presets.

If I want to wait until it's closer to $218 or any price drop from now, or I can just type in any number into this field and hit track.

It will send me an email alert as soon as that price gets to that point.

Not only helping you to save time, but helping you to save money as well.

Remove Image Background

Then the next website I wanna share with you today has to do with images, and in particular with removing a background.

This one’s really easy to remember.

It's Remove.bg.

Yes, the B-G stands for background.

How many times have you had a picture of yourself or someone else, or maybe a product, but you didn’t like the background image?

You wanted to put something else in the background, or maybe you just wanted to keep it plain, just like you see here in this particular example.

With Remove.bg, you don't have to log in, you don't have to sign up.

You can quickly and easily do this for yourself in just seconds.

All you need to do is select this upload image button, and I'm gonna go and select my headshot here, which you can see, I've got a dark background here from the studio where I took this picture.

All it's gonna do is remove that background in a matter of seconds.

I didn't have to select the area.

I didn't have to trace anything, and look at the results.

I think that's pretty fantastic.

I'm sure you've come across some programs where there's some ugly shadowing or some things that are clipped between maybe the face and the clothing or something funny going on around the hair.

But if I toggle between the original and removing the background, it's almost seamless.

This is almost perfect.

Now I can go and take this and put this where I want.

If I want to go further, I can click this edit button and choose other backgrounds to put behind it.

It has a few defaults, but of course, you can select your own photo to put in the background.

Or maybe you want to keep it simple and just add a particular color to it.

In this case, I'm gonna select yellow, nice and bright.

Maybe I'm promoting something in particular.

This is the branding for the client that I'm working with.

I can add that to the background of my photo as well.

So quick and easy, nothing to download, nothing to install.

Remove.bg and sticking with pictures.

Professional Stock Images

I wanna share with you where I get many of my stock photos absolutely free.

For me, I like to go to pexels.com.

Now there's an awful lot of places that you can go online to get free stock images.

But what I love about pexels.com is that I just find that the quality of these pictures is so much better.

I'm gonna click on tech here, just to show you some examples of some of their technology photos.

I’m sure that you've come across some free stock image websites, and many of the pictures just look like they're coming from amateurs, right?

Like they don’t look very professional.

These are great photos that you can use for social media.

You can use them for your marketing.

You can use them for your branding.

Keep in mind, some of these images may have been used hundreds, if not thousands of times by other users.

You may have come across that already, but let's say I kind of like what this is doing.

If I click on it, on top of that, if I scroll down now, I'm getting a bunch of other images, either from the same photographer, or things that are similar or related to this particular image.

Great quality images and things that you can start to use right away.

Now I'd love to know which websites help you on a daily basis.

Be sure to share them with me and with others in the comments down below.

If you would like to know the 10 apps that I use every single day, be sure to click on the video here to the left.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

Make sure you subscribe right here to this Simpletivity channel.

Remember being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

What is Spike?

[Narrator] Email really hasn't changed that much over the last 25 years.

Yeah, there's been some minor improvements, but for the most part, email looks very similar to what it did in the mid-'90s until now.

In today's video, I want to introduce you to Spike.

Spike is doing email completely differently, and the great thing is, you don't need a new address.

More than that, it allows you to communicate in a much more natural way—in a way that you're probably already used to using through things like instant messaging and Slack.

But it also brings everything else together, including notes, tasks, and calendar.

So in today's video, I want to give you a full tour of Spike.

What email looks like in Spike

And at first glance, you probably think that I am dealing with an instant messaging app here on the right-hand side of my screen.

But here's the surprise: this is actually an email thread.

I am going back and forth with someone via email, both using my Gmail address, and they, in this case, are using their Hotmail or Outlook address.

I haven't invited anyone to use Spike with me.

I don't have to make sure that they have an account or anything of the sort, but I have a much cleaner view of what's going on—a much more concise view of what's going on.

So I want to give you a full tour of what Spike is doing.

Spike inbox and email view

Right here on the left-hand side, it may look like this is just my inbox, but it's actually so much more.

It's got a combination of my emails—here's an email, for example, something that someone sent me here, and I've just replied here on the right-hand side.

But as you can see, it's gotten rid of all the fluff; it's gotten rid of all the extra stuff that we're used to seeing when it comes to email.

Let's just get to the messaging and get on with the rest of our day.

But more than that, if I scroll up, take a look at what else it has included here.

It's got everything else I've communicated with this individual.

I don't have to do a search, I don't have to do a filter, I don't have to come over here and type in a search for their email address—it automatically brings all of those conversations together.

And again, this person here is not a Spike user.

In fact, they don't even know that I'm using Spike on my end; it's coming from my Gmail address.

In fact, whether you use Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or almost any other email service, you can use Spike, and you don't need to sign up for anything new, such as a new email address.

If I want to reply and just say, "I'd like an update soon, please," I can do so very much like a text message.

I can send it off, and then on the other end, it's just going to look like it's coming from my email, but it keeps everything here nice and tight together.

Spike calendar view and sync

Now, Spike is so much more than just email communication—it also syncs with your calendar.

So here, you can see I've got an agenda view of what's going on for my day.

I can see upcoming meetings that I have to attend to here, and I can create new meetings right here from within Spike as well.

I don't need to open up a new window, and I don't need to go back and forth between a variety of different areas—I can do so right here.

And don't be fooled—these are not Spike events; these are actual Google events because I'm using my Gmail account in this case.

So whether I want to use my traditional Google Calendar interface or if I want to manage my meetings in here...

Spike groups and team chat

I can do so as well.

The next thing I wanna show you here is fantastic for keeping your group or your team all on the same page.

Now you're probably familiar with instant messaging tools like Slack or perhaps WhatsApp where you need to create a channel or a thread and invite your team members to join as well.

But of course they have to have a Slack account or they have to download a certain app in order to be involved in that group discussion.

Well in this case you don't have to invite anyone to anything.

You add the members, just add their email addresses here and you have them all here within your group.

So although this looks a lot more text based or maybe Slack based, everyone here just using their email addresses.

In fact they have no idea that they're a part of a Spike group so to speak here as we're conversing back and forth.

Let me show you how this looks like on the end user who's conversing with me in this case.

So I'm gonna switch over to this Outlook account and in this second one here you can see this Re-Design Project Team.

So if I open this up, it just looks like a pretty traditional email, right?

This is just an email thread we're having our conversations as you can see on the previous screen but it's just an email to the person who is receiving this.

Remember that reply that I sent to that other email December Online Conference.

If I open this up, it just looks like a regular email.

Yes, there's a little addition here just letting them know that I happen to have written it within Spike but for them, they don't have to sign up for anything, they don't have to do anything special they're just receiving those messages.

Let's go look at some of the other benefits.

Read receipts and visibility in Spike

Of the tools here within Spike.

You'll notice here on the right hand side I've got this little green eyeball content.

That means that I know that this individual has seen these messages.

So for example, if I wanna add something to this message, do you have a minute to talk about this project?

So here you can see I've got a different icon I've got this little check mark it has been sent, but I know that they have not read it yet they haven't laid eyes on it in this case.

So this can be really helpful right?

We're used to this when it comes to our text-based messaging especially on our phones to see when someone has read it.

Well, this is built in even within an email interface.

If we go back to Outlook here, here is that project discussion, it's a new message here.

I'm gonna open it up remember I'm the other person or acting as the other person.

Now I have read it let's go back to Spike and see what happens.

Yeah, Spike knows they've laid eyes on it, they have read it, so now I can follow up with another question if I want to there.

Spike contacts and message history

The other great thing here is if we manage our messages within Spike and let me open up this email again, is at the very top, not only can I scroll through all of our messages, all of our conversations over history but I can also click here on contact info and on the right-hand side I've got a summary of all of the files and attachments

which we shared with one another. I've also seen all of the threads here down below

so I can quickly and easily click on one of those messages and go directly to them.

And again, I'm just replying or forwarding these messages as I would a regular email.

Spike notes and task manager

Now beyond scheduling group messaging and managing our emails, you can also manage your notes and tasks.

If I click on my profile picture here you can see there is a notes section.

So if I wanna go through here and record some HTML notes and do some proper editing down here below I can do so and well.

And yes, I can share this with other people as well so I don't have to go to another application to manage all of my notes.

Spike also includes a relatively simple task manager as well.

So if I wanna keep track of my tasks and add additional information I can do so here as well.

Spike priority inbox

But in order to be a true all in one solution you wanna be able to see everything on the same screen and that's exactly why here are my priority inbox you can see I've got a combination of things.

At the top we have this group message that I've been managing here with myself and two members, I've got this individual email that I'm going back and forth with this person here and then I've got a couple of tasks listed here and including some meeting notes.

Why? Because I created these today, these were the last things that I interacted with or where I updated something so why not have it at my fingertips rather than going back and forth always having to come back up here.

No Spike makes it nice and easy so we can come here and review our most important work.

So if you are looking for an easier way to manage all of your communication and do so in a much more versatile and easy to use interface I would encourage you to check out Spike.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember to subscribe for more tips and tricks to help you with your day.

Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.