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Coverage | Newsletter | Intel | Events
Coverage | Newsletter | Intel
It has been quite a week, so I'd suggest taking your mind off of things by reading about the wild and wonderful patents that Big Tech was awarded this week. Alphabet wants to suck your blood and inject you at the same time; Amazon wants to turn your living room into a light show; Apple is working on headphones; Facebook wants to finally give us links in Instagram comments (for a price!); and Microsoft wants our T-shirts to tell time. The future is going to be amazing.
And remember: The big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.
Alphabet
When a sports team wins a tournament, it only takes a few minutes before you start seeing ads for that team's merchandise, celebrating the win. Those tend to be made in advance with versions made for both teams winning. But what if they could be made in real time, for any event or outcome, like a movie winning an Oscar for best picture? Google is thinking about how templates, fed with live data from events, could be used to construct and sell ads the moment an event happens. Because heaven forbid you have to wait a bit after something happens to start selling against it.
One device to draw blood and inject medicine
This is a level of convenience I never knew I wanted. If you're like me and don't enjoy getting blood drawn or injections, and especially don't like doctor's appointments that require both, then this new concept from Verily might be for you. It's a device with a single needle that can extract blood and inject you in one go, using separate chambers inside the cartridge area for what's going in and what's coming out.
Amazon
Changing smart light colors through music
If you've ever seen Pink Floyd perform, you'll know that having a light show to go with the concert can be pretty neat. Amazon apparently wants to re-create that effect at home. Using information from what you're watching and listening to on your smart TV (or, presumably, your Fire device), a system could send signals to your smart lights to match their colors to what's on the screen. For example, if there are green trees and blue skies onscreen, the lights could change to match those colors in real time, turning your living room into a mini live venue. Who needs to go back outside?
Picking items up when the store is closed
With the world the way it is these days, you've probably done a fair amount of online shopping, either for delivery or pickup outside stores. And there have likely been times where you've left to go pick something up, thinking you had enough time to get there before the store closed, only to get stuck in traffic. Amazon wants to solve this by guessing your ETA based on when you leave. If its systems think you'll arrive after the store closes, it would offer you alternatives for getting your item, such as picking one up at another location that's still open, scheduling a delivery, or just canceling the thing if you really can't be bothered. This could definitely cut down on some wasted gas mileage.
Apple
Apple is hosting an event Tuesday, and one of the new devices we're expecting to see is a pair of Apple-branded over-the-ear headphones. The company bought Beats back in 2014 and has had its Apple AirPods line since 2016, but it hasn't had wireless headphones of its own. This patent seems to suggest that they're likely very nearly here.
The Apple Watch has a water-resistant mode that expels any water trapped in the watch when you turn off that mode. Two new patents from Apple this week suggest it's looking at ways to do more than just expel the water: These patents look at ways to heat up recesses in devices, like microphone and speaker holes, as well as surfaces like glass, to keep them as dry as possible in wet environments. It'd be like a tiny, built-in hand dryer, but for the internals of your Apple gadgets.
One of the single most annoying limitations of Instagram is that you can't put links in photo captions. If you're verified, or if you have at least 10,000 followers, you can add links to your Stories, though. There are workarounds for us normals, like writing "link in bio" or using URL shorteners (which I do on my amazing food blog), but none of them is as simple as a link in the caption would be. It seems that Instagram is toying around with adding that feature — for a price. This patent outlines a payments function where when you to put a URL in a caption, a pop-up appears asking if you'd like to pay $2 for the ability to activate the link. That sounds like it could get very costly if you'd want to add links to every post, but this is probably welcome news to Facebook investors.
Microsoft
Combining the best of the 21st century AD with the best of the 5th millennium BCE, Microsoft is apparently working on making yarn (which was, you guessed it, first invented thousands of years ago), by combining traditional fibers with electrical ones. The end result of eons of human technological evolution? Putting the time on your T-shirt:
If you've ever tried to watch an esports match where more than one thing is happening at once (like any multiplayer shooting game or strategy games like StarCraft), it can get a little … confusing. One solution Microsoft is looking into is using VR as a way to see the entire world of the game while it's happening. The patent outlines ways to overlay information on the game in real time, as well as live chat functions, which will definitely never be abused by 12-year-olds.
This is a patent about figuring out how to let trusted users join business meetings on the device of their choosing, which is not particularly world-changing. But I do like that one of the examples in the patent is to join using an Xbox. Given we're all stuck at home, it'd be pretty easy to sneak in a few rounds of Fortnite between your team status calls:
From Your Site Articles
- Fewer people are winning patents, and most of them are still men ... ›
- Microsoft envisions chatbots that rap - Protocol ›
- Apple wants to connect your shirts and rugs to the internet - Protocol ›
- Apple files patent for AirPods that won't stick out - Protocol ›
- Apple has an idea for wearables made entirely out of fabric - Protocol ›
- Microsoft wants you to live on as a digital chatbot - Protocol ›
- Apple wants to air-condition your VR headset - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech ›
These are all great initiatives to help foster work-life balance after a stressful year. But if you're worried about long-term burnout at your company, you should also look into ways to prioritize team well-being all year round. Just as with building a healthier lifestyle, enacting measures of support on the day-to-day level is where lasting change is made.
Set healthy communication boundaries — and model them
According to a 2020 report by Aviva, 44% of employees say they feel like they "never switch off from work," while 70% of all workers say they regularly check emails and messages outside of work hours. And these habits have consequences: More than half of employees feel like their mental and physical health have suffered due to work pressures.
When employees may not feel like they can draw a line in the sand between their work and personal lives, it's up to leadership to clearly share communication expectations and model healthy boundaries. Encourage employees to turn off all email, Slack and work app notifications outside of working hours, and ensure that managers aren't reaching out to team members after-hours with requests.
Make sure that your company's leaders aren't just paying lip service to employees' right to disconnect, either. That means everyone in leadership — from the CEO down to team managers — should avoid sending emails during off-hours or reaching out to team members during their paid time off. By living the guidelines, leadership can help employees feel psychologically safe to stick to the recommended boundaries.
Just as with building a healthier lifestyle, enacting measures of support on the day-to-day level is where lasting change is made.
Eliminate unnecessary meetings
"Well, that meeting could have been an email." A recent joint study from Harvard Business School and New York University found that the average number of meetings increased 12.9% during the pandemic, while the size of each meeting grew by 13.5%. Meetings are the first and fastest way for your company to free up valuable team time.
Some companies have decided to implement "No-Meeting Wednesdays" to help employees recover. At Trello, employees will take regular "Maker time," where they forego any meetings to focus on creative work. But another option includes taking a closer look at each meeting on an employee's calendar and asking, "Does this meeting really need to exist?"
While some events should happen in real time — such as one-on-ones or difficult conversations — many other meetings can be carried out asynchronously. A project update is a great example of this. Rather than meet every Monday to discuss everyone's progress on a new project, team members can simply add their weekly updates to a list on Trello and respond to one another asynchronously. Everyone's kept in the loop, and no one has to sacrifice an additional hour of their time.
Companywide meetings announcing a new feature are another example. Rather than ask everyone at the company to spend half an hour in a meeting, consider typing the update in an email, sharing on Slack or adding the recap to your company's knowledge base on Trello. The example above takes advantage of Trello's integration with Loom to record and attach a video update for those looking to save time typing.
Cut down on context-switching
According to Blissfully's 2019 SaaS Trends Report, the average employee uses at least eight apps a day to get their work done. It's no wonder 40% of employees are frustrated by the collaboration and communication tools they're expected to use at work. Because they're constantly switching between email, chat, video, documents and more, employees find it harder than ever to focus on the actual work they need to carry out, which stretches out working hours, wastes time and leads to burnout.
To lower the amount of context-switching team members have to do, decrease the number of tools they need to monitor throughout the day. Make it clear that emails and chat messages aren't emergencies and that notifications can be muted while deep work is being carried out. (This is something Trello employees do by setting their "Slack off" hours.) Most of the time, work won't suffer if employees only check their inboxes or Slack messages every couple of hours.
You can also help employees reduce their context-switching by keeping information organized on one platform. According to a 2019 survey by 8x8, nearly 50% of employees say they spend up to two hours a day looking for the information they need to do their jobs. This cuts into valuable time that employees could be spending doing work that matters to them.
Cut back on the amount of time employees need to spend hunting down information by centralizing as much work as possible in a tool stack that is accessible for everyone. For example, if a project is being tracked in Trello, ask the team to keep all progress updates, questions and feedback within the project board, where everyone can see the same timeline view of the work.
Work from other apps in our tool stack is enhanced through integrations, so documentation from Confluence or tickets from Jira are linked and visible to our projects.
Whichever toolset you choose, consider the "single pane of glass" concept: Your teams operate in a busy workplace, so making information visible and discoverable in as few locations as possible goes a long way in reducing frustration and busywork.
Check in on employees regularly
Saving the most important tip for last, invest in manager coaching and resources for recognizing and addressing the warning signs of burnout in employees. Have them check in on employees' stress levels during one-on-one meetings and encourage everyone at the company to take regular vacation and sick days when needed.
Managers should also keep a close eye on how much work employees are taking on. Star employees will often over-commit to work — without complaints — and burn themselves out, which helps no one. Managers need to step in and stop employees from taking on Herculean workloads because, even if someone can do a lot of extra tasks, it doesn't mean they should.
Fortunately, managers who use Trello can see exactly how much work their team members are taking on using the Dashboard view:
With data on task distribution and due-date management, managers can see who is taking on (and completing) a reasonable amount of work and who might be overextending or falling behind. We use data for every other business decision; why not see how it can empower more equitable team management?
Stop the slow burn
The pandemic may have exacerbated employee burnout, but it was an issue long before COVID-19. Unfortunately, there's no single solution that can extinguish burnout, either. Support your employees' ability to focus and work-life balance by focusing on their day-to-day experiences — and you'll stop burnout from smoldering on for too long.
Trello moves teamwork forward by bringing productivity, collaboration and team spirit together in one place. Get a free trial of Business Class to try out Views, including Dashboard and Timeline. And if you want to see how Trello can be implemented across organizations, check out our best practices for setting up a shared toolstack like Trello Enterprise at scale.
Is this tech? Or is it just a bike with a screen?
Image: Peloton and Protocol
Even our executive editor weighed in.
Karyne Levy: is PELOTON tech?
Megan Rose Dickey: are we doing these every week or what's the deal?
Karyne: yes! it is a weekly series
Megan: yes, i knew that lol
Kate Cox: Anything you can control remotely with DRM and a subscription fee has to qualify, yes?
Karyne: i will go first: peloton is for sure tech. without the technology that runs peloton (leader boards, streaming, the big tablet on the bike, the app) it is just a bike.
Tom Krazit: never saw this one coming
Kate Cox: Yeah, its whole thing is the connected software, that's what they're selling. With an expensive bike.
Karyne: right. i mean really they're selling a LIFESTYLE but it's a tech lifestyle 😎
Karyne: obviously i'm obsessed with peloton, i'm an evangelist
Tomio Geron: Yes it is a lifestyle because you can hook your bike up to zwift or other software for much less
Kate: I am the opposite of obsessed with Peloton, and I am deeply antisocial in my working out, but I agree that its whole deal is aspirational and techy
Karyne: oh i don't talk to anyone
Amber Burton: I would like to venture that it is just a bike with tech attached
Karyne: amber no
Amber: yes
Meg Morrone: Is my treadmill that is not connected to the internet tech?
Amber: im sorry lol
Karyne: please explain further
Amber: it's a bike with bad tech attached
Karyne: no @Meg, your treadmill is just a treadmill, i'm so sorry
Karyne: BAD TECH????
Karyne: AMBER
Megan: ahahah
Amber: yes
Meg: But it has a chip in it.
Megan: you tell em, amber!!!
Karyne: a chip does not a tech product make
Karyne: or something
Kate: What pushes me over to Peloton being tech is the way they retroactively turned off features for treadmill users when they added a subscription fee
Kate: That's Internet of Things behavior right there, which is tech
Karyne: lol killed by google vibe
Sarah Roach: If I fasten my phone to my bike, did I make my bike tech? Or did I just decide to use tech while riding my bike
Amber: I have a schwinn and it's basically the same. But I guess my point is that Peloton is bad tech. Is that fair?
Amber: Sarah, that's exactly it!
Kate: does your bike still work if you disable the software or stop using your phone? (yes)
Tim Grieve: I feel that I am the elephant in the room.
Sarah: Or is the bike tech too? Are bikes tech?
Amber: I'm waiting to hear Tim's take
Kate: tim's hot bike take
Tim: I say it's tech. I mean, the pedals go around if you turn off all the tech, but Peloton isn't selling a pedaling product. It's selling the whole package – bikes and classes, and readouts on the bike that tell you whether you're doing the things you're supposed to be doing.
Karyne: you can connect an ipad to any bike and attend the classes, but then you're using peloton's app, in which case that, too, is tech
Tim: My kid spent weeks hacking a bricked Flywheel bike so it would work with Peloton classes. That feels like tech!
Kate: Peloton is the software product, right? That's what really matters. Where something like Tesla is both software (updating your car) and hardware (the literal four wheeled car), Peloton is, as you say, something you can make work on any bike if you're determined but the experience is all the software bits
Amber: Ugh ok maybeeeee
Tim: A meeting isn't tech, but Zoom is. A spin class isn't tech, but Peloton is.
Karyne: right. and when you do a peloton ride on a peloton, you can see your cadence and resistance on the screen
Karyne: that's tech, it's using a sensor!
Biz Carson: Can we now talk about how Cody Rigsby is our favorite Peloton instructor and I will accept no substitutes?
Is Cody Rigsby tech?Image: Peloton and Protocol
Kate: Peloton is as much tech as my Fitbit is, I think
Sarah: 🤔
Tim: I hope we're tagging all the instructors so we get the traffic.
Karyne: you know i will. SEO 4 eva
Tim: What time is Emma Lovewell's Peloton class?
Karyne: that's our headline
Biz: for the internet records, i do believe peloton is tech and will go a step further and say it is also a media company
Karyne: omg
Amber: oh man that hurts my soul
Karyne: Peloton is tech and media and hurts Amber's soul
Tom: well, soul-destroying = tech
Amber: The takeaway for the day
Tim: Also, who's up for Soul Cycle in Marin tonight at 5:15?
Megan: big yikes
Megan: i mean, no thanks lol
Megan: those classes seem so intense
Karyne: perfect. if something is soul-destroying, kills features without warning, has a sensor and an app and DRM and cody rigsby, then it is tech.
Karyne: i'm going to make t-shirts
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