Chit Chat Across the Pond

This week we have a very different episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite. On the awesome Kilowatt podcast (a show all about electric vehicles), host Bodie Grimm asked me and my husband Steve to be his guests on the show. You really shouldn't be listening to it here, you should go subscribe to the Kilowatt podcast instead and listen to it there, but he _insisted_ that we should share the love and he let me broadcast it for you here as well. The Kilowatt Podcast is _not_ just about Teslas, it's about electric vehicles in general. You'll learn about all kinds of EVs from all different manufacturers. You'll get the latest news and breakthroughs in technologies in the EV space. I highly recommend subscribing to the Kilowatt Podcast if you're at all interested in electric vehicles. Bodie asked us to come on the Kilowatt Podcast to talk about what we _don't_ like about our Teslas, the fiddly bits if you will. You know we love our Model 3 and Model Y but there are definitely things we wish were different. I know a lot of you out there are big fans of Steve so this is a rare opportunity to hear him in front of a microphone. Steve and I had a blast recording with Bodie and we hope you'll enjoy it as well.

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Mikah Sargent joins us to explain why he's so excited about what the new technology called Thread is going to bring to the Internet of Things, or IoT. You may know Mikah from the awesome show Clockwise with Dan Moren, or perhaps iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard or Smart Tech Today with Matthew Cassinelli on the TWiT network. Mikah starts with the problem to be solved – slow Bluetooth devices vs. heavy WiFi devices and troublesome network connectivity. He explains how Thread will solve these problems, both at an overarching vision level as well as getting down into the nerdy bits of how Thread does its magic. We'll learn about sleepy Thread devices, Thread Border routers, and what it means when you see "Works with Matter." If you want to follow Mikah online, you can go to chihuahua.coffee and find him on all social media @mikahsargent.

This week's guest is Christophe Zajek-Denek. Christophe worked as a TV producer while touring in a rock band, he’s a drummer, an actor and stuntman, a surfer, a journalist, a podcaster, and public speaker. He's also 4’4” tall and has a rare form of dwarfism. Christophe hosts an amazing podcast entitled "I'm Kind of a Big Deal" in which he interviews amazing little people doing really cool things. From actors to professional surfboarders, he learns about their lives, their professions and has a good laugh with every one. He's also done several shows describing the surgeries he's had to endure and how grateful he is to his parents for having them done. We talked about how to stand when talking to little people, how people stare at little people, his surgeries, little people in acting, and pedal extenders so he can drive. We laughed a lot but the conversation gets deep and introspective as well. I had a blast and I think Christophe did too. You can follow Christophe on Twitter @BigDealPod and Instagram @BigDealPod

This week's guest is Doc Rock to talk about the Apple Spring Loaded Event. Doc's background in all things Apple as well as high end live video makes him the perfect person to talk about this event. He explains to me how this color calibration of our TVs using our iPhones and an Apple TV will work, we talk about whether the cool colors of the iMacs might be a distraction to photographers, how the coolest thing that got nearly zero air time was having Ethernet over a MagSafe connector, how much we'll all want the new keyboard with Touch ID but how it will only work with M1 Macs, and Doc tries to convince me that I need a 1TB 12.9" iPad Pro. The discussion is not a linear walk through the event, but more of a meandering talk about what interested us and to tell stories to each other. I had an absolute blast, and I can prove Doc had fun too because he suggested we get together after the next two Apple events this year. I think you'll get a big kick out of this conversation. Everything good starts with docrock.live! * YouTube: docrock.live/YouTube * Facebook: docrock.live/group * LinkedIn: docrock.live/linkedin * Instagram: docrock.live/insta * Twitter: docrock.live/twt During the conversation when we talked about the Mini LEDs of the new iPad Pro, I said I'd put a link in the shownotes to Tom Merritt's Know a Little More episode about Mini LEDs.

This week our guest is Gregg Vanderheiden, Professor and Director Trace R&D Center at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Listen to Gregg talk about Morphic at 19:40 on the NosillaCast You can find more about the Trace Institute at trace.umd.edu/... The Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure at gpii.net/... His work on the Morphic project (coming into beta in just two weeks) at morphic.org/... You can follow Morphic on Twitter @mymorphic or Gregg's very infrequent tweets at @Greggvan. allison@podfeet.com Tesla Affiliate Link podfeet.com/patreon podfeet.com/slack podfeet.com/facebook podfeet.com/paypal

Matt Campbell is a blind software developer who has specialized in making computers more accessible to blind people for over 20 years. He was the lead developer for Serotek for 15 years, where he developed several affordable and easy-to-use products, including a Windows screen reader and an online community for blind people. More recently, he was a developer on the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft, where he contributed to Narrator, the screen reader built into Windows. Now he’s the co-founder and chief technology officer of Pneuma Solutions, which is working to make online meetings and documents fully accessible. Matt wanted to be on the show to talk about two things: Accessibility Overlays and Cloudflare's Remote Browser Isolation project. Accessibility Overlays are intended to help companies pass accessibility standard tests, but according to Matt, they often actually make websites _less_ accessible. He's written an open source browser extension for Chrome and Edge called Accessibyebye that will disable these overlays if they make your web browsing problematic. In the conversation he references a blog post about the problems at adrianroselli.com/... He's also trying to raise awareness about a huge problem with a product from Cloudflare called Remote Browser Isolation. This technology is designed to help companies protect their employees from browser-based attacks, replacing VPNs. But the way it accomplishes this is problematic for accessibility. The idea is that your employees browse to a website but the URL request goes to Cloudflare instead, where it navigates to the site. Cloudflare renders the site, and then sends only JavaScript draw commands to your browser. This means the original elements are not sent to your web browser, which means screenreaders have nothing to read, and mobility tools have nothing to connect with. Matt is in the beta and has tested it himself, and I've signed up for the beta so I can see this for myself. You can find Matt on Twitter at @mw_campbell

This week our guest is Jill McKinley, aka Jill from the North Woods. I’ve been using a Mac since 1984, and other than a 3-year stint using Windows Vista at work, I’ve been heads down in the Mac operating system all that time. Jill has recently bought her first Mac, which as is usually the case turned into a second Mac purchase. She is still straddling both operating systems and honestly not using macOS too much yet. I thought it would be fun to have her come on and chat about what it’s been like to learn macOS and the differences and challenges she’s finding. If you'd like to chat with Jill, the best place is in the Podfeet Slack. Join us at podfeet.com/slack.

In the last Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite, Lindsay Tondee made her debut appearance where we talked about working from home. After the show published, Allister Jenks wrote to me and told me that halfway through listening he had to stop and start writing down notes for a recording he would have to make talking about his views on the same subject. I forwarded Allister's message to Lindsay and then I connected the two of them and before I knew what was happening they had decided that we were going to do a three-way Chit Chat Across the Pond! Allister comes from a completely different perspective as someone who has worked far from his team for many years. We talk about what works and what doesn't for him in his capacity doing IT support, from a technology perspective and even from a "how to stop people from asking you questions they could find answers for on their own" perspective. You can follow Lindsay on Twitter @idahomonkees and you can find Allister at zkarj.me and on Twitter at @zkarj. allison@podfeet.com Tesla Affiliate Link podfeet.com/patreon podfeet.com/slack podfeet.com/facebook podfeet.com/paypal

Bart Busschots joins us for Chit Chat Across the Pond in an episode of what he calls "Programming Adjacent". It's not about programming, it's actually about cooking and not wasting food. But Bart, being a programmer, approaches the problem like a programmer. I guarantee you that no one else on earth approaches cooking and food inventory in the same way as Bart. It was great fun to learn how he does it and to contrast it to how in my house, two engineers have come up with a completely different systems.

Lindsay Tondee, Senior Manager in Quality Assurance at a global pharmaceutical company, joins us to talk about whether it's a good or a bad thing that companies are thinking about having their workforce continue to work from home indefinitely. I originally thought this would be a great thing because we'll have fewer cars on the road, less traffic and pollution, office buildings won't be needed and people gain hours of their life back because they're not spending it commuting in their cars. Lindsay explains what is missed when you work from home and the benefits of a blended model where people work only partly from home. She talks about the issues surrounding building relationships at work that help people get things done, and how the fun activities of her office have been transformed into safe-distance fun. She also talks about how much more challenging it becomes if two people are working from home in the same small house. We don't come up with all the answers but I found it to be fascinating to throw these ideas around with someone who is currently in the middle of figuring this out for herself and for her employees. And one more thing, Lindsay Tondee is a frequent attendee of the live NosillaCast - known as "Lindsay (the daughter)". If you want to chat with her, the best way is through the live chat on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific time podfeet.com/live and you can follow her on Twitter at @idahomonkees. allison@podfeet.com Tesla Affiliate Link podfeet.com/patreon podfeet.com/slack podfeet.com/facebook podfeet.com/paypal