Dear Santa - Eric’s “Good Boy” Holiday Wishlist for 2019
Eric Cook shares his favorite tech products and services for 2019, from Rocketbook reusable notebooks and Felix Gray glasses to Furbo pet cameras and Echo devices. He includes pricing tips for Black Friday and real uses like Rocketbook for GTD planning and Echo Auto in an RV.
Questions this video answers
Yes, they stay in place very well; they may occasionally be bumped by helmet straps when cycling, but generally remain secure and do not cause sweat buildup in the ears.
Yes, the Rocketbook Fusion includes a planner mode with two‑week layouts; you write dates manually, scan the pages into a digital folder (Google Drive, Evernote, etc.), then wipe clean for reuse. It’s not a permanent spiral‑bound planner but works well for a reusable digital workflow.
Chapters
Greetings everybody, welcome to the Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook over here at WSI Digital, helping our customers connect and engage with their clients online through digital technology and social media and all sorts of other fun online interactive ways to connect and engage. On today's show, I'm gonna bring back— I don't think we actually did a holiday gift guide for 2018. Jeff and I normally would do those, and I think we skipped it. So this is the resurgence of my wish list slash things that I use. Somebody on LinkedIn referred to it as Oprah's holiday gift guide. Full disclosure, nobody attending today's webinars get in the car and Apologize for that. So if you want to drop off the show now, you can do that. But I'm going to share with you some of the things that, that I use, that I love, that you might enjoy, that are on my list that I'd like to get. Although I have this uncanny tendency of just finding stuff that I would like to get, and I just go out and buy it. We don't have children and There's really no need to set things aside for like wishlists and stuff like that. So we typically just go out and grab whatever we want to a certain extent, of course, pricing-wise. Was looking at something just earlier today that was gonna be close to $800, and I'm like, nope, not gonna happen. Don't need that. Not gonna do it. But before we jump in, as a reminder, today's show and all shows Are recorded and made available at freewebinarwednesdays.com. So we'll get the recording out there. Uh, today's show also has a list of lots of things. Um, I'm going to update the Free Webinar Wednesday post and drop in links to all of the different things that I talk about today. Uh, full disclosure, some of the items that I'm going to share are what's referred to in the industry as affiliate links. So I have an affiliate account over at Amazon, and if you buy through the link that I provide you, Amazon appreciates the fact that I'm helping to spread the word on stuff that I enjoy, and they provide you with a little bit of reimbursement, compensation, whatever you wanna call it. But that has to be disclosed anytime you're using an affiliate link according to FCC guidelines. So I don't want anybody to be under the impression that that's not the case. Some of them aren't affiliate links, some of them are, but just know if you buy anything that I'm talking about, there may be the possibility that I'll get a little thank you in the mail from my friends at Amazon. So, so this post will get an update with links to all of the things, but you're certainly welcome to just go out and gobble them up as you see fit. So with that, actually, there was one other item that I just got to thinking about. That I don't think I put out here. Hold on just a second. Yeah, I gotta grab this guy. So hold on. Where is he? We'll talk about Furbo here in just a little bit. So I forgot to put that one on there. So let's dive in. My little Dear Santa list. So a couple of non-Amazon items. So one of the platforms that I like to visit, because one, Mashable oftentimes has really, really good articles that talk a lot about social media and digital technology and trends, doesn't really have any sort of a banking vertical focus, but they have a separate little subsite within the Mashable community called Mashable Shopping. And they'll find cool little gadgets and other sorts of things that they come across that they wanna make you aware of. And oftentimes you'll also get deals or discounts on these as well. And so first off, I would just encourage you to hop over to Mashable and take a look at their, you go to category Mashable Shopping. But again, this will be all included as far as the show notes, if you will. But there's a ton of really cool stuff that they push out. They're doing a lot of talk about all of the different Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that are coming out. To Amazon and other places. If you are going to be doing any shopping, it's a good idea to not just go to Amazon blindly. Double-check Best Buy, double-check Target, double-check Walmart. A lot of those places are offering even better deals. But this is a really cool little community with all sorts of things, and it's just kind of fun to browse around, and you might find something that jumps out at you and go, Oh, I don't want a gross smartphone. I want a nice, fresh, clean smartphone. So maybe I'm interested in snagging this ultraviolet cell phone cleaning device. I'm probably not gonna buy that, but it's just one of those things that you kind of come across as you're browsing through here. The other platform that I oftentimes will find some cool deals on, and this is a little bit on the geeky side, so those of you that are techies and like programs and other sorts of online tools. AppSumo is a platform that has pretty cool deals on different sorts of web-based tools, different things that, you know, you can get for like measuring social impact. So, you know, I don't even know how that's pronounced, SocialMonocles, but, you know, regularly priced at $1,700, You can get it for $49. So there's a lot of kind of web-based deals, little programs, different sorts of audio tools, other sorts of things. I would suggest if you're into this kind of stuff, which I am, just pop on, browse around through AppSumo and see what sorts of things are there. And you might find some cool stuff for some pretty significant discounts. They'll give you coupon codes typically that you can use to purchase, and then you you get the redemption and, you know, save an incredible percentage off of the retail cost of things. So AppSumo is a pretty cool place. And then the other platform that I just wanted to encourage you to take a look at is give yourself the gift of knowledge this holiday season, or maybe you could ask people to give that to you as well. I am a subscriber to the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which rolled in the Lynda online learning platform for online courses and other sorts of educational curriculum. But Udemy is a platform that I've also used, and you can see that they also offer some discounts. You've got some Black Friday sales going on, and if you want to up your game in 2020 and learn a little bit more about Facebook or developing a marketing strategy or how to take cool images and make them look nice on Instagram. There's a lot of cool courses that you can jump on and take. Browse around here. Doesn't have to be technology related. If you're looking for, you know, you want to use Excel a little bit better, I guess that is still somewhat technology related, isn't it? But there's a lot of different things you can take a look at. So personal development is one that, you know, may be kind of cool. Career development, personal finance. So there's a lot of different classes that you can take here, and the fact that you're taking an effort to make yourself smarter and to learn new things, that may result in an opportunity for you to maybe negotiate a raise or a bump or a promotion or something like that at the office in 2020. And, you know, investing in yourself is probably one of the best things that you can invest in. So there's a ton of different classes here through the Udemy platform that you can take a look at. And I'll oftentimes pull these down. You can save them. I believe you can save them locally, and I think they've even got a cool little app that you can use. I know that the LinkedIn Learning platform also allows you to download courses locally to like an iPad or a computer or something, and you can take them. So sometimes even when I'm traveling and on an airplane and I don't have a real good internet connection, because even though you can do email from a plane, they typically fry any sort of video streaming just due to bandwidth issues, but you can pull down those courses and have them locally. You can take a, take a peek at that. So that's, that's something that I think you should, you should take a look at. The next couple of items are items that I use every single day of my life, even on the weekends, because I'm always on the computer Organizing, doing things. So the next couple you probably have heard me talk about before if you've ever been on Free Webinar Wednesdays. I've not talked about Felix Gray in recent meeting— meetings— webinars, but the next one, Rocketbook, you're certainly gonna know some familiarity there. But Felix Gray, I think it was 2 years ago, Ellie from our office actually told me about this. Yeah. Staring at the computer all day long, which is pretty much what I do, and probably most of you as well, because computers and screens are just a reality of the life in which we live today. These are glasses that I can tell you, once I started using them and using them on a regular basis, the fatigued eyes, the tiredness, headaches every once in a while if I stare at the computer screen for too long. I've not had an issue since I've been wearing these, and they come in a lot of different styles, but essentially they specialize in filtering out the blue light that comes off of the screens and making looking at those screens, typing emails, browsing the internet, doing work on the computer, whatever you're doing, makes that a lot more enjoyable, a lot less stressful. I also did like the 1-5 bump for readers because, you know, I'm kind of approaching that 50 number. So I did have to move to some readers recently. And so nice, I use these both when I'm at the computer and when I'm not. These are pretty much the glasses that I wear. And every once in a while, even when I'm doing a conference, if I'm going back and forth between notes, and I'll just leave them on, and the reader correction isn't really as bad as big of a deal just to leave them on. But Felix Gray, can't say enough good things about them. I know Ellie's actually ordered multiple pairs from these folks, and she even had extra pairs on her Christmas list last year to be able to have some at home and to take with her in her computer bag. They're reasonably priced. Not to say that this is the only type of sunglasses or reading glasses or glasses that have blue light filtering, but I've been super, super impressed. With the quality of now, you know, almost lost them once, but luckily found them and that didn't happen. But if I do ever lose these, I'm going right back to Felix Gray and I'm going to buy another pair just because they're that good. So, if you're not doing something to help filter out blue light, this is a really great first step. Ellie from our office doesn't need the reader capability like I do because she's not anywhere near as old as I am. So, she just got regular blue light filtering and that's it. So, she just wears them when she's at the computer, but there's no visual enhancement associated with them. Super, super happy. I think I forgot to mention this when we kicked the show off, but if there's something that you absolutely love that you'd like to share and you're listening live and you want me to pull that up after I get through my list of things that you think are pretty awesome, feel free to toss whatever ideas you might have into the chat area. And I'd be happy to pull that up for you just to brag a little bit about it. You can type a little note into the chat room and we can maybe draw some attention to some of your favorite stuff too. Next on my list is the Rocketbook. This I've been using for almost 2 solid years now. I will tell you, I wish I had an Amazon affiliate link for this particular product. You can buy them on Amazon, but I wish I had an affiliate link years ago when I started using these because everybody that I told about the Rocketbooks have bought them, have loved them. They are, they are really, really cool. And if you're not familiar with the Rocketbook concept, I think it was a Kickstarter, Indiegogo initiative a few years ago. Their first generation called the Rocketbook Wave allowed for you to use these Pilot FriXion pens and You could write your notes, and then what you did is you stuck the entire notebook in the microwave oven with a little cup of coffee or water or whatever, and you nuked it. And the heat from the microwave actually erased all of the ink, and you could continue to use the, the book. You would scan the pages with a special little app, so all of the information that you had written into the books then got saved. And so you could continue to use that. The downside of the Wave. was it was only microwavable for a certain number of times, and then after that, the ink just wouldn't disappear very well and you just had to get a new one. They came out with shortly thereafter the Rocketbook Everlast, which is the book. I actually own 2 of these plus an executive size plus the smaller little handheld. And so, the Everlast is just simply a book. The pages are just a little micro dot. So, it gives you the ability— let me just kind of show you this. So, you can see they're very, very subtle, but if you needed to do a drawing or any sort of, you know, kind of artwork, you've got the dots that kind of help keep you in alignment. But, What they've done starting with this version, and then we'll talk a little bit about their new version that they just released, is it comes with a little microfiber cloth. So at the bottom of the page, you can kind of get the sense— you can see there's a little QR code there, and then at the bottom you've also got these little icons that you can check with your pen, just draw X on them, and each of those icons is associated to a different function that you program. So if I check the apple, that'll automatically email it to me. If I check the shamrock, that'll save it to a notebook in Evernote, which is one of the note-taking tools. If I check something else, it goes ahead and it throws it into a Google Drive, or I can have it automatically email notes to my wife if I wanted to. So there's all sorts of different little functions that you can use by checking these and tying them in. You just simply take your phone, open up the free app that's available on Apple and Android devices, you hover over it and it automatically recognizes the corners of the page and scans it. It is slick, super duper slick. So, um, you, uh, essentially fill up the book when it's filled up. You wipe it clean with your little microfiber cloth, and then that's it. Hop out to YouTube and do a search for Rocketbook. There's a ton of reviews out there, people that have talked about how they've used it. It's pretty awesome. They came out with the Fusion this year because there were a number of people that were taking their Rocketbooks and they would create their own little grids. So they wanted to have something with a little bit more structure. So the Fusion actually comes with, uh, I think 7 different layouts that are printed on the page. So you've got your to-do list, you've got a calendar layout, you've got kind of a monthly layout, note papers. So all sorts of different things that you can use. And then you can basically put whatever you need in those areas and then wipe it clean still. So it still has the wipeout capability. It still has the pretty much unlimited usability. It synchronizes with the app, so it goes wherever you want to send it. So you can see when you first create your account over at Rocketbook, it gives you the ability to select all of these different items that you can determine different functions for where you want the document to be saved or emailed or whatever the case is. A couple of other things that I think are pretty cool depending on your penmanship If you start a note and you encapsulate a title, for example, in double hashtags, that will recognize that as a title for your notes. And when you do the scan, instead of having to replace what's the default, which is like the date Rocketbook scan and then a version number, it'll automatically put— so if I did hashtag hashtag Free Webinar Wednesdays November 27, comma, 2019, Hashtag hashtag. It would go ahead, and when I scan that, automatically assign that as the title. Make it a little bit easier for me to find. The other thing that it does is when you scan, you have the ability to turn on optical character recognition. So when you scan that and it saves it, let's say it saves it as a PDF, or one of the things that I like about saving and putting it into Evernote is Evernote has a pretty nice scan and search engine built within it as well. But if I'm going ahead and I'm putting stuff in. Here and I, I make a note about something and I mention someone or mention a company or mention a particular topic. Let's say I'm talking about web accessibility or ADA. I can go in and I can do a search for ADA and it'll scan through all of my notes and find where I actually wrote ADA. And I picked that because usually if you're writing something in all capital letters, you're probably gonna make it pretty legible. Sometimes when I get writing fast, it's, it's hard for the OCR to pick that up, but it can even convert it into a text file for you to be able to pull that down. And then if you wanna do something else with it, like move it into a Google Doc or, you know, copy and paste and put it over into a Word document, you could certainly do that as well. So, so the, the Everlast here at Fusion is gonna give you some capabilities. As it relates to different, and you can see here's the Wave, the first version. The thing that I don't have, which is going to be going on my Christmas list, are these cool little beacons. And so in my office, I've got a whiteboard that's sitting directly here to my left that has a bunch of stuff written on it. And every once in a while, when we're collaborating with the team, I'll actually turn on my webcam and I'll angle my monitor towards the whiteboard and I'll say, okay, here's what I'm thinking. What do you guys think about this? And I'll draw stuff and kind of organize things. Well, if you put these at the 4 corners of a whiteboard, what happens is this gives you the ability to take any whiteboard, or if you're using like an easel with the sticky note, the paper pads, if you put those at the 4 corners, when you use your Rocketbook app, it'll recognize that this is an item that you also want to scan. It picks up those 4 orange corners and it'll automatically pull it into your app for you as well, which I think is pretty freaking awesome because now you've got this gigantic whiteboard that becomes an electronic capture device where you can think about different things and maybe do some bigger drawings and whatnot. So, so this is one of the things that is definitely gonna go on my Dear Santa list if I don't just go out and buy them myself beforehand. But the beacons are pretty cool. So big fan of the Rocketbook family. There'll be links that you can use. You can certainly hop over here and snag them directly as well. But big fan. The other thing that they've done recently is they have provided you the ability— and you may have noticed when we were going in and taking a look at some of these, they now come in different colors. So you can get different layouts— or not layouts, you can get different colors to the actual cover itself. But the layout of the COVID can be modified, and you can drop a logo, you can do You know, some personalization where you can actually buy these if you wanted to give these out as a client gift. A lot of the folks that I've talked to said, oh, this would be really cool if we could do these and then give them out to our customers as just kind of a thoughtful little gift. And so you now have the ability to do that where you can customize them. And if you wanted to drop an inspirational message on there or thank you note or put your company logo, The trick with this is you have to make sure that you're using the FriXion pens. That's a special kind of ink that's erasable. And so if you use a different kind of pen, you're gonna completely void the capability of you being able to erase it. But I will tell you, I've used a number of different writing capture technologies over the years, and this is by far the most comfortable, natural, just usable experience that I have come across. So Take your note-taking to the next level. Write your notes. Sometimes I still type, but a lot of times now I'm switching over to notes and then scanning and sending those over, and my team's just having to get familiar with my goofy little penmanship quirks every once in a while. Next on my list, last year I purchased the Pixelbook from Google and have added that to my technology repertoire. Google released I want to say lower grade, but in some instances the tech specs are even a little bit better than the Pixelbook. But the Pixelbook Go is a less expensive version than the full-blown Pixelbook. It doesn't have the 360-degree hinge and pen support like the Pixelbook does, but the Go is pretty affordable. It's not necessarily something that you're just going to go out on a whim and pick up because it's $600 or $700, but Keep an eye out for bargains and deals over Good Friday. I know Best Buy and some of the others are going to have some discounts on them. The cool part about this is if you're looking for a computer and all that you really do is like email and browse the web, you're not really power-using things like, you know, Excel or the Office suite. And even if you do, you can still get apps to do a lot of that stuff. But the nice part about this is you've got tremendous battery life. It supports the Android ecosystem, and it's less expensive than like the iPad Pro tablet. It boots super, super fast. It— I don't want to say is impervious, but it's a very, very low threat as it relates to viruses and malware and all that other kinds of stuff that you typically have to have antivirus and whatnot for. But it's just a really cool little processing device where you can pick it up, you can take it, you can use it for the entire day if you wanted to. I know I take my Pixelbook with me when I go to conferences now, and if I'm at an event and it's not as easy for me to maybe write in my Rocketbook, I'll type notes directly into the Pixelbook, and that has a battery life that lasts close to 8 hours. I can run the entire day. Shut it when I'm in between sessions. It easily gets me through an entire day of conference, and I can sync it up with my phone. I can sync it up with a hotspot. Gives me access to all of my Google stuff. So, but big, big fan of what the Pixelbook and the Chrome OS platform is doing for computing, and I think would be something worth taking a look at. I'm gonna shift into my furry little four-legged fur baby mode here. This is something that friends of mine from Seattle— I've known about BarkBox for a while, but they've got 3 rotties and they are BarkBox subscribers and just rave about when the box shows up. The dogs know what's in it, they get all excited. But this is essentially a subscription-based service For your four-legged family members. And the cool part about this is you, you, you get this, it shows up, they're high-quality products. You can, I think, do a little bit of selection and what you'd like to have in them. This is something that I think the Cook Dogs might be getting for 2020. Not gonna promise anything in case they watch the show. I don't want to ruin the surprise. 'Cause, you know, golden retrievers just love watching webinars, right? But this is kind of cool if you've got a friend, a family member with a, with a dog or dogs in the family. This might be kind of a cool little gift that you could give that just kind of keeps on giving. So you can see you can give it as a gift and they can claim the offer and put in a code. And I think you can do it for like 3 or 6 months. You don't have to commit to the full year, but Just something kind of fun, kind of interesting. It's a little bit of a surprise when the box shows up. You have no idea what's in there. There's a lot of fun BarkBox unboxing videos out there on YouTube where people have gotten their boxes and their dogs are going nuts, excited about the treats and the toys and whatnot. So you all know that we're a big dog family here at the Cookhouse, and Winnie and Lily just might end up getting a BarkBox subscription in their in their mailbox coming next year. The other item that is also one of the ones that I wish I had an affiliate link for, but you can see I've actually bought— I bought this back in December of 2018 and treated myself last year to this as a gift. This I've told also to folks because I run into people at conferences and events around the country and And invariably the conversation comes up around kids. No, I don't have kids. We've got dogs. Oh my God, what kind of dog do you have? And we talk about dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs. And then I roll into the, are you using a Furbo? And people are like, what's that? So I pull up my phone, I turn on the camera, and I connect, and I throw my dogs a treat from wherever I am. And if the person has a pet themselves, they immediately go nuts, whether it's a dog or a cat. So from all of that, what this basically does is it's a Wi-Fi enabled treat jar with a webcam on it that allows for you, through the free app that you can use through Furbo, is you create an account, you can connect to this remotely from any internet connection, you connect it and synchronize it to your home Wi-Fi, you take the little wooden top off and load it up with treats, and then when you hop on your phone and connect, you have the ability to talk, you can turn on and you can listen. So if your dogs are barking, it'll trigger your camera and it'll tell you, hey, your dogs are barking or they miss you. So it does little things to pull you into the app and make you want to use it. But this, this gives you the ability to, to speak to your dogs or your cats. I would suspect your dogs would probably pay more attention than your cats would. But you can turn on the speaker and you can, you know, who wants a treat, and give them a little excited Kind of feel, and then they'll flock to this. And then that little, the little treat that's there right off of the little guy's tongue, you just basically flick that with your finger and that sends a signal to your Furbo, and magically a treat or a handful of them fly out of the hole into the room and your dogs go nuts. Now Winnie, our youngest, has figured out That, that's what this does. So oftentimes when I connect to the Furbo, it's actually been turned sideways because she's been trying to figure out why she can't get any treats out of it. And I can't see anything because now I'm looking at the fireplace grates instead of out into the room because we keep it like on the fireplace hearth. But it's, it's pretty awesome. You can take snapshots, you can record video. You can even, you know, if you're trying to call your wife and she's not answering the phone, that sometimes happens in my world, you can turn it on and give your wife a little nudge while she's watching Netflix on the couch and politely ask her to answer her phone because there's something that you'd like to talk to her about. But the Furbo is one of my favorite little techie tools that I've got around the house. And if I bet, I've sold probably a dozen of these at conferences and conventions talking to people, because you all know we're there and we're just the freaky people that love our pets and will spend, you know, pretty much any amount of money to do cool stuff for our four-legged family members. So Furbo is something definitely to get, or if you know of somebody that that has got dogs or cats and they're kind of an animal freak like we are, this is a really fun one to get. So enjoy your Furbo, love it. All right, so now we've entered the wonderful world of Amazon. So last year my wife ended up purchasing some instant cameras and I was like, why are we using instant cameras? We've got cell phones, those take pictures just fine. I will tell you that these have been an awful lot of fun. We even were part of a wedding this summer, and there were a couple of these cameras floating around and pictures, and people were using these pictures as part of the guest book where they would take pictures of themselves at the wedding and then sign the picture or put the picture in and sign around the picture. So it was really pretty cool. This is the full-blown, like, accessory bundle. You don't have to go all in. Like on this one, but it is kind of fun where you've got this Fujifilm, it goes into a camera, it's just like the good old-fashioned Polaroids that I remember when I was a kid. You take a picture, it pops out, you grab it, then kind of fan it to make it dry a little faster. And now instead of it just being photos that everybody has on their cameras and in virtual photo albums that never really see the light of day, you've got a number of these floating around that if you wanted to do something fun with them, put them in a frame or, you know, do something to display them, you've actually now got something tangible that other people can enjoy. You could use the Google Photo app, which allows for you to take pictures of photos and position them at 4 corners, and it merges everything together. If you wanted to digitize these and pull them into your camera So that you've actually got a digital version. But this is kind of a fun thing to do if you're getting into the holidays and everybody's over at the house getting goofy with Christmas time. You can have this with a handful of these boxes of film, just take some cool pictures and, you know, create some memories and preserve them and kind of have them to look at. Because if they're physically present and displayed somewhere in your home, it's going to be Probably a whole lot easier to appreciate them and think of the fun times that you had with your family and friends over the holidays. I can't believe a digital guy just told you about an instant camera that prints out a picture, but I did it. I did it. Keep an eye on some of the Echo stuff. So we've got a bunch of the first-generation Echos that are out there, and the newer Echos— this is a cool one because it's got actually a clock. You can put it in your bedroom. It doesn't have a camera, so it's okay to put in your bedroom, but there are Echo devices out there with cameras on them. But this has got a clock, it's got a better speaker, it's a little bit more attractive. It is on sale right now, but I've heard rumors that on, on like Good Friday or Cyber Monday, it's even going to be down in like the $29 range. So you don't have to pull the trigger today. We'll probably be picking up a couple of extra ones just to put in some of the other rooms that we have around the house. It makes it nice for music. I think the speaker on this one is a little bit more improved than some of the older Dots that we've got. So you can— it's not going to be like a Sonos-type whole-house sound system, but it certainly is going to be a little bit nicer than what we've got right now. So the Echo Dots Kind of cool. Take a look at those. They're incorporating a lot of other stuff that didn't exist in the others where you can tie into Ring doorbell and the Philips lights and you know the different hub technologies. One of the things that I do on a on a pretty regular occurrence in the morning, I go down and get coffee ready, and then I'll ask my Echo device. I'm not saying her name. Well, I guess I can because she's on mute. I'll ask Alexa to play my news brief, and so she just kind of walks through my news brief every morning. Hear what's going on in technology. And through NPR and other sorts of news sources. So it's nice to be able to have that while you're getting ready, drop one in the bathroom or wherever it is that you primp. If you've ever seen a picture of me, you know that I spend a tremendous amount of time doing my hair in the morning, which is a huge joke because I'm pretty much bald as a cue ball, by choice of course. But shifting on, the next item that I'm excited to take a look at, and it's now finally been released, You can see that this is on sale pretty significantly, called the Echo Auto. What I figured out a way to do while we took our little Class C motorhome down to Florida last year is I took one of my Echo Dots and I connected it to my hotspot, and then I Bluetoothed the Echo Dot— stay with me here— into the radio for the RV. And created my own little Echo Auto. Now this probably is gonna do the exact same thing. I'm not exactly sure if there's gonna be any other perks from an Auto perspective versus just doing it with a Dot. But if you spend time on the road, you're doing any sort of traveling, the nice part about the Echo ecosystem is a lot of the radio stations— I know SiriusXM has an app, or a skill I should say, That you can pull in. So if your Sirius subscription is on one device or one auto or one vehicle, if you get something like this and you have the app, you could still listen to SiriusXM on multiple vehicles even though you've only got the subscription for one car. So that's what we do. The Sirius is actually registered to our Jeep, but we can go ahead and leverage the Echo device. And I'm sure there's going to be driving directions and other sorts of things that this platform will do, but this is kind of a cool little enhancement to the Echo, and it's really designed to be deployed within a vehicle. I don't have one of these. I tend to be more of an audiobook kind of guy, but I will tell you, Mark from our office got one of these Paperwhites and absolutely loves it. And it could be, you know, typically I'll read on like my phone or I'll read on my iPad, which has got a pretty glary screen. He swears that the reading experience on this is second to none. It's very pleasing to the eye. It's easy to see in sunlight. The battery lasts forever. You can see they've made it waterproof. So if you take it to the beach or to the pool, you don't have to worry about it getting wet. This is something that I might actually take a look at. Not totally sure yet. yet. I think I'll probably kick the tires with his a little bit just to see exactly how it looks and how it works. You can certainly get the Kindle app and put it on any of your devices, and that does the same thing. But I think for those of you that like to read, I think the reading experience in a Paperwhite environment is a little bit better and a little bit less fatiguing on the eyes. You can probably still wear your Felix Gray blue light filtering glasses if you would like to, but I almost get the impression this doesn't kick out the blue light traditional computer screens do. So, so this may end up on my list as well. I'll keep you posted on that. The next one, I went ahead and I pulled the trigger. I was gonna put this on, and you can see that I did purchase this recently. I was gonna put this on my wish list. I do a lot of traveling. I've tried a bunch of different headphones while I'm on the airplane and have just been reading about This versus the Bose versus the Beats, and which ones are better, and in-ear versus over-the-ear. This one continues to get the best ratings. And again, Mark from our team bought these for a pretty long trip that he recently had and said it was amazing. Put them on, there were crying kids just a couple rows behind him, didn't hear them at all. I have not been on a flight with these yet, although I have been using them Around the house and been using them for phone calls and other sorts of things. And they're very comfortable. They're not cheap, but they're not things, you know, you're not going to buy a new one of these, you know, every year or 2 years. This is something if you get it, you should be able to hang on to these for quite some time. So I'm pretty excited about taking these on my first flight, but they integrate. They've got active noise canceling. It'll detect your environment. So, If I'm in my office talking, it'll detect what type of an environment and ambient sound exists, and it'll recalibrate the microphones. And then if I go downstairs or I go outside, it'll detect that there's an environmental change, and it'll recalibrate the microphones and give you a different listening experience. Sometimes that can be a little bit annoying because if I'm on a call with somebody and for whatever reason the headphones detect a change, it'll kind of put the microphone out for a little bit and then bring it back. And it almost sounds like there was, you know, caller waiting or something like that happening. So if I'm just going to be in my office and I'm not going to be moving around, I'll go ahead and I'll just turn that off. It does synchronize and you can connect your— you can connect an Alexa service or you can connect your Google Assistant. So you can, you know, ask Google for information or you can ask Alexa for information. It'll answer you that way. As well, which is kind of cool. So if you're looking for something to splurge on over the holidays and you like listening to music and you do a little bit of traveling, this is at this point in time, from what I've read, probably the, the top of the heap as far as noise-canceling headphones go. The unit that I use as my daily driver for— and what I'm talking to you on right now, actually, Is this Plantronics Voyager. And this item is one that has some pretty powerful noise-canceling capability within it. I've been outside walking up my gravel driveway, pulling my garbage container, talking on the phone, and the person on the other end has no idea that I'm doing any of that. Completely noise-cancelled all that out. Battery lasts quite a long time. You can see that it's got some Alexa technology built within it as well, so you can synchronize it. It's got a little app that you can put on your phone. You can control some of the functionality. But this is a really, really nice headphone to use if you're somebody that likes to talk in the car or while you're traveling. It's probably not what you're going to want to use if you're going to be interested in listening to music because it is just the one-ear device. But when you are talking and having conversations with folks, I've used a bunch of different ones in the past, kind of the around-the-neck Plantronics ones and some of the others that are good. But this has got by far the best noise-canceling capability of any of the ones that I've used. So people don't even know that you're in a busy place. Just makes it a whole lot easier for you to carry on a conversation. So, toss that one on your list. When I go out, so I guess I've got like 3 different audio things here right in a row. If I go out for a run or a bike ride, or I'm someplace where I kind of want to know what's going on in and around me, but want to still enjoy music or listen to a podcast or something along those lines, I was using some headphones that plug right into the ear that seal out noise really well, and they were awesome, but it was hard to hear what's going on. And if I'm on a bike or someplace where, you know, I probably need to be paying attention to my surroundings, but I still want something other than just listening to me breathing heavy while I'm running down the road, I needed something a little bit better. And so, the cool part about these are they're bone induction. They don't go in your ear, so you still can hear what's going on. Around you. So when I'm riding, I can hear cars just like normal. But the bone induction actually sits right in front of your ear, and it sends the actual audio signal through the bone connectivity. So you can still interpret what's going on. It's not as good of a sound as if I had my Sonys on, but it gives me plenty of information, and I can totally hear everything. I can listen to my music. I can completely understand any of the podcasts, but this allows for me to know what's going on around me and in my surroundings. So if I were to go to the gym, I probably would do something that's a little bit more in the ear because that— you really don't need to know what's going on around you. You kind of want to zone out. But I don't go to the gym. We've got, you know, a couple things in our basement that I use. So when I go outside, if I need to be listening to what's going on, this is typically the the device that I go with. So bone induction, kind of a cool technology. If you get to like a Best Buy, they oftentimes will have these on display if you just want to kind of see how it works. Some people have tried it and they're like, oh, that freaks me out, there's no way I could do that. So it's probably not for everybody, but if you want to at least listen to something while you're exercising or taking the dogs for a walk or doing yard work, whatever the case is, these are pretty cool and they help make sure that your surroundings are, are there for you. The last item that I got for today, I typically talk about the Chromecast and how I love that, and I, and I do, which is by Google. But I will tell you that the Roku Streaming Stick with the remote control, you can control the volume, you can turn your TV on and off, it works with a variety of different apps. We pretty much use this on a regular basis, and it's either we're on Netflix or we're over in Amazon Video. We haven't totally cut the cord and ditched satellite, but I know people that have, that have subscriptions to Hulu and some of these others, and this is pretty much their daily driver, and that's what they use. But this is a great little streaming stick that you can plug into the back of your TV to the HDMI port, synchronizes up with your wireless, and you can then basically stream a variety of content. You can connect it directly to your phone if you want to, and you can stream. So if you want to watch Netflix on your phone and stream it there, you could, although I don't know why you would do that. What— well, so you could, you could pull up a computer kind of a browser on your phone, and you could stream your phone to this, and then you could browse the internet if there was something that you wanted to show somebody. Anyway, lots of different things that you could do with it. But the reality is, this is one— I think we've got this on maybe 2 or 3 of our televisions now. I don't think we've got the Streaming Stick Plus. I think we've got this on one TV, and that's it. We've got other versions of the Roku, and even like the Roku, like the little pucks that you used to be able to get, which I still think are available. But the nice part about this is it's tiny. It just plugs in. You've got to connect it to a power source, but most of the time you can just jump that into a USB connector off the back of your TV and it's powered and you're good to go. But this gives you a really nice viewing experience. The remote control is pretty easy to use. And like I said, this new version, you can turn the TV on and off and you can do volume control, which is kind of nice because on the older ones you had to have both of your remotes available. To be able to do all that stuff. And so if you have cut the cord and this is kind of your primary way of watching television, you know, this device with this remote could really kind of be it. And it's priced pretty aggressively. You can see it's $30 off right now. So pretty impressive pricing. So that wraps up all of my little gift ideas. I will kind of just mention generalities. If you're looking for stuff to get people, probably portable battery packs, not a bad idea with the amount of technology that we all have. Even if somebody's already got one, get them an extra battery pack, you know, 10,000, 20,000 milliamps, something along those lines, just so they can keep an extra one in a computer bag or You know, next to the nightstand, whatever the case might be. But certainly battery chargers. I will tell you, if you're going to be buying any sort of a battery charger, take a look at the reviews and the ratings. And don't be afraid if one's a little bit more expensive to go with the more expensive one. I've heard horror stories of people that have bought knockoffs. You know, I can buy an Anker for $32, or I can buy this one from China for $12, I'm gonna buy the one from China for $12. That might overcharge, that might ruin your device, it might cause some problems. And then last thing that you want is to, you know, fry your device because you've, you know, supplied it too much power. And if that happens, you know, good luck getting support from any of those knockoff aftermarkets. So if you're gonna be buying a battery pack, make sure that you read the reviews and, you know, be willing to spend just a little bit more since you're going to be connecting to that device stuff that you use on a regular basis. So, you know, it's your phone, it's probably one of the most personal electronic devices or personal devices period that you own. Don't risk that for, you know, $5 or $10 difference. But that concludes— let me see here, looks like there is a question. Hold on one moment, please. Let's see. So question regarding the bone induction headphones. So let's go back to those guys. So the question is, do they stay in place well? Does it bounce around and feel awkward around your head and neck area? They stay in place very well. Sometimes when I wear them cycling, they'll get bumped by my helmet straps because I always wear a helmet when I bike. So sometimes they'll interfere with the helmet straps. The thing that I really like about these though is I tend to be a little bit of a sweater, especially in the summertime. I don't have a problem working up a sweat pretty darn quick, and when I was using headphones that actually went into the ears, the sweat would roll down, it would capture in my ear, then it would follow the headphone into my ear, and then it would start distorting my music. And that became very annoying. This, I don't have that problem either because your ears don't have anything in them. So you might still sweat, you might still get stuff in your ear, but if they do You just, you know, stick your pinky in your ear and do a little wiggle and boom, you've taken the sweat out. So no big deal. But these do stay and you don't even really notice that the thing around the back of your neck is even there, to be honest with you. But it, you know, again, try it on. If you can get to a Best Buy, give it a shot and take a look, you know, how it feels. You know, walk around a little bit. They're usually pretty cool about that. So, um, next question on the Rocketbook. Yes, can it be used as a planner? Absolutely. Um, so the thing that you want to keep in mind on the Rocketbook, and if I go over to the Fusion here real quick, the Fusion has a planner component to it. And so if I go in and we take a look at some of the pictures here. Um, It's not like a full-blown planner where when you write stuff out you can flip to it and you've got everything that's always there. So let me go to the plan. So here's like your planner mode. So let's zoom in on this a little bit. So let's go back here. So here's your planner mode. So you can see it just says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It doesn't have any dates on it. So the intent is you've got 2 weeks worth of activity So you would write in whatever date today is for, you know, Wednesday, and then kind of go through the next 2 weeks. You're going to write everything down, but then at the end of those 2 weeks, the intent is to use the app to scan it, to pull it into something that's digital, and then you wipe it clean and you do it again. And if you want something that's more permanent in an actual giant spiral-bound where you can go back to it and you can see all of your days in one spot, this is probably not gonna do it for you. But if you change your thinking and say, well, I've always got 2 weeks, you can create like a special folder in Google Drive, or you can create a special notebook in Evernote, and you can go in and you can save these. So you could say, you know, week of November 24th Week of, you know, December 2nd, week of, and then you just, instead of going to a planner, you just go into Evernote or OneNote or your Google Drive or wherever you're saving those. And then that gives you the ability to actually take a look at all of those in one spot. So you can see this has also got, you know, if this is kind of like your meeting is what they call it. So like your objectives, Keep my mouse is moving around on me here a little bit, but you've got your little meeting. So you'd say, well, today's meeting is about the big objectives is to share all the cool ideas that I've got. Key results answers a bunch of questions. Action plan need to put this out on free webinar Wednesdays and reflections. You know, I thought the meeting went really well, and hopefully everybody got some really good ideas. On what I had to share. So then you capture all of that. Once it's captured and in your digital whatever capture, then you just wipe it clean, you're good to go. So hopefully that helped as it relates to using the Rocketbook system as a planner. The other cool part about Rocketbook is they have, in addition just the regular good old-fashioned black pens, they've got colored pens that you can use. They've actually got erasable highlighters that are friction-based so you can highlight things I'll oftentimes do that where I'll put together a list of things, active projects, prospects that I'm talking to, to-do items, and then I'll write those up. And then like the next week I'll come back and I'll review the list, I'll add more to it, and then I'll get out a highlighter and I'll say, okay, what are the things that I didn't get a chance to do yet that I really need to make sure that I do? And I'll highlight those and draw those out. You may have heard me talk in probably 4 or 5 webinars ago, starting to use the Getting Things Done by David Allen, the GTD organization system. One of the things that's part of that process is doing a brain dump of all of the things that are in your head. Now, he recommends doing one piece of paper per item so that you end up with a bunch of individual items. I've not done that. What I've started to do and continue to do is I take all the things that I think I need to be doing and I write them down in here, and then I digitize them and save them up to Rocket or to Evernote I keep getting Everlast and Evernote and Rocketbook mixed up. They're 2 totally different platforms. But then I'll write those down and then I save those up into my Evernote system so that I've got a record of those so that they're there and available for me. But this is something that I've been using as part of that GTD process as well. So, checking to see if there's any other questions from the audience. If not, that kind of wraps up today's show. I'm gonna be taking a couple of weeks off. Next week I'm actually gonna be headed to Utah. I'm gonna be doing a session for the Utah Bankers Association in Salt Lake at their senior management conference. I'm pretty excited about that. It's been a few years since I've done anything out in Utah with the bankers. And then the week after that, I'm gonna be down in Illinois doing some stuff for the Community Bankers Association of Illinois at their marketing forum. So I've got 3 full days, but coming back on December 17th, I believe, is the day we're gonna continue with our Digital Minds discussion. If you missed the show last week with my good friend Ryan Kelly, we kicked off our Digital Minds book review with his chapter on mobile— or on video marketing. He does a lot of that while he's mobile with his SEO on the Go show, but we're going to bring in Francois Moscat from South Africa, who is also a dear friend and fellow WSI colleague, who wrote his chapter on competitive assessments and understanding your market, your competition, and your product, and how creating a competitive assessment as part of your digital marketing strategy will help you set the stage and increase the likelihood of success. So that'll be coming back as our last show for 2019 on December 17th. So a couple weeks off, back in December with Francois, and then we'll bid everybody a Happy New Year, and we'll kick off 2020 with some more Digital Minds book chapter guest presentations and all sorts of other cool stuff. So thanks for joining me on today's show. Hopefully you got some good ideas and are able to come up with some cool— either you're just gonna go out and buy it yourself on Good Friday and look for some sweet deals, or you might be able to surprise some folks with some cool stuff that they're like, oh, that's a really great idea, how'd you ever think of that? And you can take total and complete credit, you don't even need to mention me. So those of you that are here in the States, have an awesome Thanksgiving and enjoy time with friends and family and give thanks to Everything that we have very good reason to give thanks for here in this great country. But for those of you that, that aren't in the States, but we do have some international visitors, think of us on Thursday testing the limits of our stretchy pants and the ability to consume turkey. So with that, thanks for everybody joining, and we'll see you at freewebinarwednesdays.com and again later in December for our show with Francois. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.
