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Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two - Ep 105
173 Plays6 years ago
Today Chris and Paul talk about a fairly well-known concept in technology circles called, “Good, Fast, Cheap, Pick 2.” What it means is that often you don’t get all three in something you’re using. One of those is always sacrificed to make the other two work. Well, is that true? Are things that violate this principle? Let’s talk about it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Saying Discussion
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, Episode 105. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today we discuss the saying, good, cheap, fast. Pick two. It's a common complaint about design and programming, but how well does it apply to archaeology? Let's get to it.
00:00:26
Speaker
All right. Hey, Paul, how's it going? Pretty good, Chris. How are you doing today? Ah, you know, not too bad. Not too bad as we're recording this. It's starting to become sort of spring here in Reno. You know, we got a little bit nice weather, but all that means is massive snow mountain flooding. So, you know,
00:00:41
Speaker
Stay out of the arroyos or whatever. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. Actually, it might provide for some future fodder for this podcast because I'm in the civil air patrol, as I've mentioned many times. And one of the things we've done in years past is we do baseline and condition assessments for bridges and levies and things like that from our aircraft. And we take photographs
00:01:01
Speaker
And now we might be starting to apply our new drones that we have in this squadron to these sorties. And we're stitching them together with a photo scan or a metashape, if you want to call it a new one. And so that could be a source of some tech discussions because I'm going to be teaching basically people who have never flown drones before how to fly high-end drones and do photogrammetry.
00:01:25
Speaker
So, should be a good time. These people are all pilots already, right? Not all of them, no. Only a few of them are pilots. It's a common misconception with civil air patrols, you need to be a pilot. Most of our positions are actually non-flying because there's lots of support to get that one plane in the air. So, we have ground teams, the drone teams, you don't actually need to be a pilot, you need to be a part 107.
00:01:46
Speaker
FAA, drone pilot, of course. But you can be 16 years old and do that. I mean, our cadets can do that. They can't fly our planes, but they can fly our drones if they get their part 107. And we have the training for that as well. So yeah, it's not too bad. So if you're interested in drone flying, all Civil Air Patrol squadrons are mandated by national to start ramping that up this year.
00:02:07
Speaker
and to have it by the end of the fiscal year to have at least five teams for each wing. And a wing is the state. So if you're interested in that, go check out your nearest Civil Air Patrol squadron and you might be able to get into it. So, okay. Well, Paul, what are we talking about today?
Successful Project Examples with Edward Gonzalez Tenet
00:02:22
Speaker
Okay, well what we're talking about today is something that's been on my mind since I recorded last a couple weeks ago. Right now it is late April and a couple weeks ago you were out in the field and so I had a nice interview with Edward Gonzalez Tenet and at the end of it he was talking about some different projects that he was working on after we got off air.
00:02:42
Speaker
We were having a little chat and he was bragging, rightfully so I think, about something they had just done with QGIS for his students on a field trip. He was happy about how quickly he was able to put together something he felt was quality. I said, that's something that I think about a lot with regards to computerizing our data collection and our data analysis in particular is that
00:03:08
Speaker
By making things faster, which we often can do with computers and various kinds of digital and technological methods that we use, we can actually make things better and that kind of seems sort of to violate what I've been equipping about for a long time.
Balancing Quality, Speed, and Cost in Archaeology
00:03:23
Speaker
You can find a million memes on this and a million discussions online. Good, fast, cheap, pick two.
00:03:30
Speaker
And he agreed with me, and then we left it at that. Well, as a side note, we have been in discussions, you and I, with Edward to have him come back and discuss that particular QGIS project and give us a little more nuts and bolts, maybe even a cookbook kind of approach to how he came about, what he was happy to work with for his students, and how other people might be able to then do something similar for their own projects.
00:03:57
Speaker
But that's on the side. So a couple days after that discussion, on Twitter, as I am way too frequently, I saw Sean Graham, who must be on Twitter far more than I am, had kind of an open question mulling about basically the same sort of thing. I don't know if he used that good, fast, cheap pic too, but it was questioned about how using the right tools can actually improve your projects in multiple ways at once. Good, fast, and cheap being three different ones.
00:04:27
Speaker
And it seemed to me that maybe this is something that's in the air right now, that there are probably other archaeologists out there that are thinking along the same sort of lines. And so I would just want to have a discussion with you, Chris, because we've not had much time to talk in the last few weeks about what you think about this idea and how really applicable is it to archaeology
00:04:49
Speaker
Or is it variable applicability in various kinds of archaeology or different kinds of deliverables and all above? So I don't know if you have any opinions on the matter straight off the bat. Yeah, Paul, I've got a lot of opinions on this. And the biggest reason that you have to consider is that
00:05:07
Speaker
Nothing is actually ever made for archaeology. And that's the biggest reason why you won't get all three of those. Because if somebody was actually creating some piece of tech specifically for use in archaeology, well, we might be able to actually accomplish all that. Although the cheap part, if you're making it just for archaeology, probably not going to happen because the scale is just not there. That's why
00:05:28
Speaker
you often have to pick and choose. Even Wild Note, something I talk about frequently on here, was not developed for archaeology. It was originally developed for biology and wetlands use because that was the initial clients that kind of brought this whole thing around about three years ago. And then I showed up a little over a year ago, as I've mentioned, and started creating stuff for archaeology based on that platform. Now we've made it work and it works really well, but again, not designed for archaeology.
00:05:55
Speaker
You look at all the other tech we have out there, from drones to GPSs to total stations to the software on your GPS and things like that. Again, not made for archaeology. Look at QGIS, as you were talking about with Edward Gonzalez-Tennett and Esri products. Again, not made for archaeology. I'm floored at the price that the money people pay for Esri. When really what they're paying for a full suite of products,
00:06:21
Speaker
and yet they're using 5% of it for archaeology. They're making maps with it. They're not doing very much stuff with it, and yet they're paying for $6,000 worth of development, and they're only getting a small fraction of that. So yeah, I could talk about this a lot.
00:06:40
Speaker
What I'm kind of thinking along the lines, and I suspect that as we discussed, we're looking at this from slightly different angles. What I'm wondering about is, and I brought this up again
Adaptation of Technologies for Archaeology
00:06:51
Speaker
on the last interview. I brought it up somewhat with Sebastian Heath earlier this year on this podcast as we were discussing.
00:07:00
Speaker
is that some of the tools allow us to experiment in a way that allows us to do a lot of different tests in a way that we couldn't in the past. I mean, I guess it's kind of the same sort of thing. Like a calculator, you can do your math much more quickly than you can do longhand unless you're one of those whizzes that they used to bring out on late night TV.
00:07:19
Speaker
And that kind of that ability to do things quickly then permits the researcher to to do more in a certain amount of time.
00:07:30
Speaker
And that to me, that bit kind of starts to violate this good fast cheat because you can get good quality results, you can get them fairly inexpensively if you're already using a particular tool set and you can then the speed goes back into it, kind of a feedback loop, right? So you can test something, tweak it a little bit, test it again, tweak it a little bit, test it again in the same amount of time that you otherwise would have just done one iteration
00:07:57
Speaker
You know, and that improves the quality. And so that's the kind of, that's the angle I'm looking at it for. And yeah, I don't want to be all utopian. I don't think that, uh, that just throwing computers at something is going to make it better, faster, cheaper. I think that's really dangerous, uh, to believe that, but I do think that it opens up an opportunity, uh, for a researcher either doing data collection or data analysis of some kind to, uh, to actually do more of one or the other.
00:08:26
Speaker
Well, I think along those lines, then it really comes down to another phrase we've said on this podcast, which is not an uncommon phrase, but it's basically using the right tool for the right job. And I'm a huge digital proponent, obviously, and I try to find ways to make what we do more efficient. And often what that means is using some sort of application or other tool that
00:08:52
Speaker
That will do that, but sometimes that's just not the case. You know, I've had conversations with people at conferences where, you know, they're like, Hey, I'm interested in doing this. And I end up telling them like, listen,
00:09:03
Speaker
You're working in these conditions. You don't have the ability to bring in extra batteries. You don't have the ability to charge for some reason. I think your best solution is paper. That's just all there is to it. If you're doing XYZ, then you dot, dot, dot paper for you. And that's just a fact. And other people want to use drones for certain things, but I'm like,
00:09:25
Speaker
because of where you're at and the regulations and the things like that, you might want to consider a kite. You might want to consider a tall ladder, climb a tree, something, but a drone is probably not going to work for you. I mean, people think that when I talk about this stuff, I think it is, I'm just trying to jam the solution into whatever it belongs in, but it's about understanding the capabilities of what you're doing and then figuring out, okay, I have the capabilities of all these tools down. Where do they cross for what I need to do?
00:09:54
Speaker
and in the cheapest way possible, in the most efficient way possible, and produce the best data.
Digital Tools: Suitability and Comparisons
00:10:00
Speaker
So I still don't know if I'm answering your question, but I like where it's going. No, again, this question is very open-ended, and I think that's kind of the way that Sean Graham posted on Twitter was just like,
00:10:11
Speaker
There feels like there's a nub of an idea here and I'm trying to flesh it out a bit. I like to use the word efficiency because that's something I haven't seen brought up specifically with regards to archaeology as I'm sure it has been and I just missed it. Efficiency gets brought up all the time with workers in general in the workforce at large.
00:10:33
Speaker
And it's widely recognized that computers at everybody's desks has allowed for certain kinds of increases of efficiency, especially for a lot of desk types of jobs. That efficiency might be games of Minesweeper played per hour.
00:10:51
Speaker
But I think that's really probably what I'm trying to get at is efficiency, how efficiently one can do one's work using the right tool set, the right tool for the job. And then because we, especially on the academic side, and this is probably where we have a bit of a difference in how we're looking at it,
00:11:11
Speaker
On the academic side, time isn't so much the constraint. That means that you can increase quality by doing more within this boundless time. With CRM, I would think time is almost certainly going to be a constraint. Maybe it's not a one answer fits all archaeologists. It might be very contextual by the kinds of work that we're doing.
00:11:31
Speaker
I don't even know. Again, I'm rambling and I know I'm rambling and I intended this to be kind of a rambly discussion because I still want to believe
00:11:42
Speaker
that there is a chance that we can start to bend these. Here's an example. Photography, we've talked about digital photography quite a bit. When you did film photography, it was quite expensive. Each shot has a price tag attached to it because it's going to cost film and it's going to cost processing.
00:12:03
Speaker
in order to end up with a usable image at the end. And so, you know, if you're in the field, there's kind of a push-pull. Do I take another picture of this object? Do I take another picture of this trench? What if this one wasn't good enough? Maybe I do need a second one. I don't know. I can't check it. I won't be able to check it for, you know, a week and a half for now. Well, maybe I should take a second one and, you know, maybe adjust my aperture a little bit, see if it works a bit better if I get a better photograph out of this. I don't know. It's cost me film. I only have a set amount of film.
00:12:32
Speaker
With digital photography, most of that goes right by the wayside. And so you can take in a given amount of time without increasing your cost
00:12:41
Speaker
whole lot. I mean, there's probably a marginal cost of having then later to go through and call the images, but you can go take quite a bit of pictures of an object of a trench or whatever it is you're taking a picture of and increase the likelihood of getting a very good image in at least one of those, right? So you've increased speed, quality without increasing the price. And that's through a particular tool that has now become adopted by all of us. And that I think is a good example of what I'm trying to get at
00:13:10
Speaker
about this violation of this good, fast, cheap principle.
00:13:14
Speaker
Well, and I think, I think when you're looking at good, fast and cheap too, it depends on the evolution of the technology as well, because I think, I think most things start at probably fast. And then, you know, then as we work out the kinks, they also pick up good. And then as greater adoption happens, they might also pick up cheap, you know, I mean, looking at digital cameras, I mean, I mean, $20,000 for a high end SLR, you know, just 20 years ago. I mean, maybe not 20,000, but you know, with lenses and stuff, it could be.
00:13:44
Speaker
And now, you can pick up a pretty decent SLR with lenses for under $1,000, to be honest. I mean, maybe not a super high quality one, maybe not a professional grade, but good enough for archeology. And that level just wasn't achievable back that long ago.
00:14:02
Speaker
Well, back to the digital photography. Back in 95 or 96, the first time I shot a digital camera was a friend of mine had apples. It was this funny rounded off looking digital camera. It cost a few hundred dollars. He got some steep rebate for some reason because he knew somebody and not a five-finger discount.
00:14:27
Speaker
And, you know, I took some pictures with it and it was a fun toy, but they were really grainy and it was 640 by 480. So it was not cheap. It was not good. And frankly, it wasn't any faster than taking film pictures because, you know, then you'd have to take it and hook the thing up to your Mac and download it there. And hopefully you had some image editing software, like an old version of Photoshop.
00:14:54
Speaker
It wouldn't have been old back then, I guess, but you know what I mean? And then could do something with it. What that something was, was kind of undefined because maybe you were just learning how to do some HTML programming, but there wasn't a whole lot else to do with it.
00:15:11
Speaker
And since then, the prices have dropped dramatically and the quality has improved dramatically. And now it's, again, I keep on referring to these devices we're all carrying in our pocket all day long, but you've got a much better camera, much, much better camera on that phone that you're carrying around all day. And taking those pictures just becomes an afterthought. Here's a picture, you send it to a friend, you airdrop it to your computer, you do whatever you need with it, but it's reduced on all those fronts.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, two thoughts on that related to photography, because I think that's our biggest example of this whole thing is, one, I just noticed on Facebook, a friend, well, kind of a Facebook friend. I don't know personally, but.
00:15:51
Speaker
his wife took pictures. They go to these like heavy metal concerts all the time. And his wife took these pictures and they're, they're, they're pretty much in the front row and off to the side, but they're, they're not where the professional photographers are because they're on the other side of the fence and even closer to the stage. And so her pictures are just a little farther back with nobody in the front and she takes really good photos and she's doing it all on an iPhone. And she posted these on Instagram, tagged the band in it.
00:16:15
Speaker
And the band asked her if they could use her photos in some promo shots because they were so good. Yeah. And she's like, yeah, absolutely. And then another thing that I was just thinking about when you're saying that a new camera technology, I mean, it was new. I remember first seeing it, so I don't know when it was actually new, but I remember first seeing it maybe three or four years ago, those shifting focus cameras where you can take a picture and then move the focus around after you took the picture.
00:16:42
Speaker
my god that would be invaluable for archaeology because I mean how many people just don't know or this bright sunlight or something like that and they take a picture that's out of focus I don't get to use in a tablet or camera whatever but you always end up taking something that's out of focus and if you didn't take enough photos well now you're screwed because you're 10 hours from the field site you got to go back or you just lose that photo entirely
00:17:02
Speaker
But the new, and I'm sure there's Samsung Android devices, so please call in and let me know or email in, but the new iPhones that came out last September now have that shifting focus capability. So you can take a picture with it and go in and refactor what it's focusing on, which I think is just phenomenal. I mean, I don't know how many times I've looked down at a photo board,
00:17:24
Speaker
and you're taking a picture of a tin can or something like that. And the last second, you know, the tin cans raised up off the board and the last second, the damn thing focuses on the, on the board. And then you're so close that it's just, everything's out of focus now. And it's like, my God. So anyway, that's a good example from camera technology. Let's take a break real quick and come back for segment two and, uh, and keep talking about this. Cause I'm sure we have a lot more to say on this subject back in a second.
00:17:51
Speaker
Hey everybody here, Chris Webster with one of our sponsors, WildNote, and this is your WildNote Tip of the Month. So, when you're using WildNote, you can add to any one of the forms that you create a location-based field. That means you can drop a point, you don't need any service, all your tablets have GPS on them, if you have a cell card in there, but the cell card does not need to be enabled, but if you drop that point, you'll get a latitude and longitude, and if you have connectivity, you can sync that, and people in the office can actually keep track of what's been accomplished for the day.
00:18:19
Speaker
For example, you can drop a point at the beginning and end of a transect or on a shovel test or something like that. And you can literally put them anywhere and all over your forms. And then they could see that in a gallery view or wait till you upload at the end of the day and then see that progress as you're doing it. So head on over to wildnoteapp.com to start your free 30-day trial. That's wildnoteapp.com.
00:18:49
Speaker
Hey everybody, if you're listening to this podcast, you're interested in education, you're interested in archaeology, and we got something that combines both. Head on over to patreon.com forward slash team black, and you'll see the team black Patreon page. We have lots of areas and ways that you can support us anywhere from $1 a month at a team supporter.
00:19:07
Speaker
all the way up to $25 a month at Team Black Master. At each one of these tiers, you get videos, videos that were produced by Team Black, videos that were produced by other experts in the field. We've got everything from rock art to getting a job in cultural resource management, to field tech basics, to Coso rock art, all kinds of different things. Check it all out, we're always adding new videos and you can join for one month.
00:19:31
Speaker
watch everything and then cancel if you want. But we're looking for people who want to support us, they want this education, they want to watch these videos on their own time and learn something in the process. So patreon.com forward slash team black. That's patreon.com slash team black.
00:19:48
Speaker
All right, welcome back to the Architect Podcast, episode 105. I can't believe it's episode 105. Anyway, this is probably just as a quick aside here. This is the second longest-running podcast on the Archeology Podcast Network. The first one is the CRM Archeology Podcast. We're up to 160-something. But 105 is pretty great for a podcast that's only every two weeks. So this has been pretty awesome. And I think, Paul, you've crossed the threshold. I think you've been on more episodes than you haven't. Wow.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah, because you started around the 40s. Yeah, so Yeah, we had all those stats a few episodes ago at episode 100 I have to look back and see but I think you've definitely been on for a long time I think I'm still below the the 50% mark, but I think at this point. I might be the the top co-host Or got a recording probably not the top. I don't Know you're the top the top of the bottom Best of the rest
00:20:46
Speaker
Anyway, back to good, fast, and cheap, pick two. What other kind of discussions have we had on this? I finished off talking about photography last time, but I don't know if you had any thoughts on that. No, none that I hadn't already said. I'm sure there's going to be something else popping up. Another aspect of this, I think that I can probably speak to data collection better than data analysis, but there's certainly a lot that we can say about data analysis.
00:21:13
Speaker
data presentation, which is what started off this whole conversation with Edward Gonzalez-Tenet and me off mic. With the data collection that you've been a big proponent of, the tablet-based data collection things like WildNote, but do you think that allows people to increase one, two, or three of this good, fast, cheap triangle? I would expect that it can increase good and fast pretty easily
00:21:38
Speaker
And cheap depends really on the particular set of software that's being used, the hardware platform that's being used on, how much training is involved in all those sorts of things. So maybe that kind of data collection really does strongly fit into this model. But since you work more closely with it, do you have any opinions?
Software Cost-Benefit Analysis
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah. And the, the cheap part is actually the thing I struggle with doing sales for wild known because you know, I, if I'm selling say 50 licenses to a company, I mean, depending on what kind of package you're getting, you know, that's upwards of $20,000 and that's not cheap. Right. And, but
00:22:18
Speaker
I even said it. I just said what I don't like to say. I never say that on a sales call that that's not cheap because that actually is cheap. When you're looking at cost effectiveness on especially software, something that's usually a one-time purchase or at least a recurring annual, but it's still one time for that year, maybe in that fiscal year, depending on how you're doing your billing.
00:22:39
Speaker
You got to look at the long haul on that. For example, if you buy a truck, let's say you bought it brand new for $45,000. Let's say you can rent a truck for $150 a day. So now you have to look and say, well, if I work 200 days this year, how many years do I have to work before I'm no longer paying for a truck? That truck is paid off.
00:23:03
Speaker
in the sense that I'm not renting anymore. So it's the same thing with software. You got to look out and say, or even hardware, you might buy a $5,000 total station, but the other option is renting one or doing something else. So it's always to me either renting versus not renting.
00:23:21
Speaker
owning, or it's time savings. So when it comes down to software being good and fast, the cheap comes in and how often are you using it? And what does it cost you to do the alternative? What does the alternative cost you? Maybe it's different software. Maybe it's paper. Maybe it's transcription. Maybe it's something else. But if you're spending $10,000 every three months on transcribing your notes,
00:23:47
Speaker
but you can buy $20,000 software for one year, well, you've paid for that software in six months and the other six months is gravy because you saved all that time not having to do transcription. So you have to look far enough out and say, am I doing enough work and am I making enough money and am I saving enough time to actually make this down into the cheap category? Because right off the top, it might not look like it's cheap. And I think that's how Esri sells this stuff too. You know, you might buy a license for $6,000 a year, but they're going to say,
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah, but hey, we can do stuff that no one else can. And if you try to use one of those knockoff, one-off kind of things, you're going to have to use six pieces of software to do what we can do in one piece of software. And by doing that, we're going to save you time because we can integrate with your whole system. And that's how they sell their products. And that's how they sell people on $6,000 a year.
00:24:34
Speaker
or whatever you're paying for your license. That I think is where the cheap comes in. It might not be the price tag, but you got to look at the long game on that and any good project manager or PI or accounts manager is going to be able to do that. The cheap part, that's I think probably the hardest part to assess. You'd think maybe good is because that's a value judgment.
00:24:57
Speaker
I think that within our own fields, we have a good sense of what good is and what good isn't. But cheap, especially if you're not time constrained, your time, you might be producing a whole bunch of different tests and a whole bunch of different results or collecting a whole bunch of different kinds of data quickly.
00:25:14
Speaker
And feeding that right back into your system is increasing the quality, but the time then gets pulled out in a certain way that you might not be accounting for it, especially if you're working on your own, if it's done something as a hobby, or the cost of doing it is kind of buried in your salary.
00:25:37
Speaker
The cheap part becomes really hard to assess because the cost of it is buried someplace, but I was also thinking too that you know this We started out saying that it's a the good fast cheap triangle is often complaint about programming or design, you know things were there particular deliverables and
00:25:57
Speaker
dawned on me while you were talking about the use is that when I'm thinking about with archaeology, I'm not really necessarily thinking about it like creating a program. I'm thinking about it using a program or sets of programs in order to work. And so maybe that's a fault line here that I have to explore a little more to understand if
00:26:18
Speaker
if this construction is a little more amenable to one kind of, you know, to making something as opposed to using something.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's another thing too. I always think of making something. Whenever somebody says that, I think of screens, not software, because everybody wants to build their own screens. It's like a rite of passage almost. It's like constructing your own lightsaber. They want to build their own screens. Do you have a lightsaber? I know. I mean, you don't. Come on now.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah. Get with it, Padawan learner. So anyway, wow, we're totally geeking out now. So anyway, yeah, it's like constructing your own screens. I don't know how much time I have spent at companies repairing screens and repairing screens is almost as bad as constructing screens because sure, while somebody may be able to get out their tools and build a decent screen, is that what they're being paid to do? Is that their skill set? You know, would you hire a plumber to fix your electrical?
00:27:21
Speaker
No and maybe if you own your own company and you have those those carpentry skills and you're not actually charging yourself by the hour to build those screens then sure that's another story but when you're looking at a bigger company and you're having one of your archaeologists because they're the ones that use it build screens because they said hey I know how to cut wood and nail stuff then they can build screens.
00:27:43
Speaker
then that's one thing. I built my own screens for a really short shovel testing thing I had to do on a project just last year. But that's because I don't use screens very often. So I built some clunky, heavy screens that I didn't have to cart around. They just pulled them out of the truck. We literally dug four shovel tests, and that's all the screens were used for. And that's probably all they'll ever be used for. I still have them. But if I had to carry screens off through the countryside, like I did in Vermont or anywhere on the East Coast,
00:28:09
Speaker
I'm going to buy screens. I'm going to buy lightweight, really well put together screens with inserts that you can buy the replacement inserts. I might pay $40, $50 for an insert, but I'm also paying $50 or $60 an hour for someone to do that for me. That works for me. That's their billable rate. That's what it cost me. It's not the $20 an hour they're getting as a salary. It's the $60 that they're billing out at.
00:28:36
Speaker
People never factor that stuff in because hourly wages have really gone by the wayside as far as thinking about them as actual costs. It's like, oh, I'm working eight hours a day. Now the factor that that's a cost has been shoved to the side and now I'm just trying to fill up that time, right?
DIY Projects vs. Efficiency
00:28:52
Speaker
We have too many people that weren't trained in business that say, well, I just have to get my people eight hours. No, think about each minute, each fragment of an hour that they are working and what that actually costs your company. And when you start thinking that way,
00:29:04
Speaker
Well, now you can start seeing the cost savings and actually spending money and what spending money does for you in the future. So somebody might be able to build you a decent screen, but I've seen people build screens and they screw it all together and now it's a real pain in the ass to get that screen off of there when it inevitably breaks and you have to put new screen on there.
00:29:27
Speaker
I mean it takes hours and hours and hours and oh my god another good example of this I don't know if we're getting off track or not but uh is straightening pin flags oh my god do you know how many people I've seen given the task of straightening and organizing pin flags when
00:29:45
Speaker
If you just buy a couple PVC tubes and put a cap on them, you can organize your pin flags in the back of the truck rather than people just throwing them in at the end of the day. And then straightening pin flags, they usually get bent because they're thrown in the back of the truck and they're no good when they're bent. I mean, they're really not. But honestly, if you throw away the bent ones or throw away the rusty ones or the ones that people rode all over,
00:30:07
Speaker
and just buy new ones. They're not that expensive. Yeah. It's phenomenal what archeologists don't see as costs anymore in their head because they're not in charge of the budget. They're not in charge of anything else. And this, and this just floats right on down to software and hardware. And yeah, I don't know. I could go for hours on that. Yeah. I'm going to cut you off for you. Please do. But you know, uh,
00:30:33
Speaker
Those are interesting examples, actually. I mean, physical, we're not even talking about software and technological tools there. But it does make me think of two kind of stereotypes of archaeologists. One is that we are do-it-yourselfers.
00:30:47
Speaker
You know, we are generally a pretty handy lot, and so for us to fix something rather than buy a new one is just kind of second nature. That's what we've been doing. Most of us, most of our lives, it's how we think about the world. And the other is that a lot of us are also cheapskates, and maybe there's an intersection between those two. But, you know, a cost that doesn't bear an explicit price tag is easier to justify than one that does, or at least justify to one's self, maybe not to one's employer.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah. And to bring it back to the tech, one of my complaints, and I certainly have been guilty of this, is that archaeologists starting out on a project, how often have you seen people go and design their own database for their particular project?
00:31:34
Speaker
Oh yeah, almost every time. Almost every time. And it is usually a huge waste, a huge sunk cost because the person who's doing it or a group of people who are doing it may or may not be especially good archaeologists, they may or may not be especially good programmers, but the chance of being both of those and having the time
00:31:53
Speaker
to be able to put something together properly is really generally pretty unlikely. The problem is that everybody sees their own data sets and what their research design is a little different from the next one over, even from the previous one they did. It leads to that impulse to redesign everything all the time.
00:32:14
Speaker
But I think that's interesting that you mentioned it because it seems very, very familiar to me what you're saying about fixing screens and what I've seen about creating a database. It seems like it's the same exact impulse.
00:32:26
Speaker
Well, archaeologists are the kings and queens of reinventing the wheel every single time because my wheel has characteristics that your wheel does not. I'll tell you what, they both roll, right? So I've never bought an RV. And I always go back to an RV as an example, though, because I think from what I heard, and I've actually done some research on buying an RV, if you buy a brand new RV right from the factory, right?
00:32:51
Speaker
Unless you go to one of those sales on the fairgrounds lot or something like that, but if you buy it right from the factory, they're typically built from what I understand to about 70% because the base frame of an RV, what it looks like on top, probably the interior components of the driver's area and things like that, the stairs, all that stuff is going to be the same no matter what you get.
00:33:13
Speaker
But this person might want this kind of paneling on the inside. This person might want carpet over here. This person might want these kind of countertops, whatever. That extra 30% is customizable. And a lot of things that are high end are like that. And it's the same way as if somebody came up with
00:33:30
Speaker
database and actually decided to sell that and monetize what they've come up with, but stripped down their unique features and say, listen, I've put together something that works for probably 75% of archeology sites around the world.
Standardizing Database Templates
00:33:43
Speaker
And you buy this from me for, I don't know, $500 and for an extra, you know,
00:33:49
Speaker
you get three hours worth of development time. You tell me what your particulars are. I'll change the drop-down menus. I'll add this module. I'll take away this module. But chances are, you're going to be able to build something that works for nearly everyone right out of the gate without even talking to them and then just tweak it a little bit to work for their project or to work for their situation. That's what we've done with WildNote, not to bring it back to that purposely.
00:34:11
Speaker
But I've created a bunch of what I call the archaeology standard forms. And from shovel testing to artifact identification, my thought is having worked in half the states in this country, that I've nailed down what almost everyone can use. And all you should have to do is go through and make a few minor tweaks, and you can go to town. For example, we've got a client using the shovel testing form today. They walked in, they made a couple changes, and boom, they're out the door working. Five minutes worth of changes,
00:34:38
Speaker
and they're out the door working. They didn't have to spend three hours building a shovel testing form because this one works. That's what people don't understand, especially grad students. They really are trying to fill up their time sometimes and say, hey, I want to do this. Maybe they want to learn how to do databases, which is another conversation. If you're a grad student, maybe you should learn how to build a database. Maybe the best way to do that is to build your own database. But if you're working for a company,
00:35:03
Speaker
And you've just got to get it done. I mean, shop it around and say, hey, has anybody done this? And can I pay you for the architecture that used to create that? Yeah, I don't know. It's so many inefficiencies in archaeology. And that's how I got into the digital game to begin with, because that's the easiest way to cure a lot of efficiencies. But there's so many more.
00:35:23
Speaker
inefficiencies that we have to deal with. And most of it is just mindset. It's just getting over the fact that you're going to have to pay to have somebody else do something. And in the end, save you a lot more time, energy, and money. So I don't know. Yeah.
00:35:37
Speaker
I feel like we did go off the rails a little bit on this podcast, but, uh, I think we have a good, I was kind of hoping we would. I wanted to see again, I wanted to see where this one, because I, you know, I still, part of me, I mean, I don't know that I'm any closer to any kind of an answer about what I think about, uh, this, this triangle. I mean, I've, I've loved this, this saying for a long time too. Uh, and I've used it, you know, like in meetings and things, uh, good, fast, cheap, which are you going to pick two, which is it going to be? Yeah.
00:36:03
Speaker
You know, I work with perfectionists and we always feel like we can do the good and fast. Cheap, well, yeah, somebody's paying our salary, but to us, it's cheap.
00:36:15
Speaker
But then there's always a question in the back of the mind, is this really the best use of our time that we're building out this custom software? We're right now in the middle of high school registration. So instead of using an off the shelf package, we have a very heavily built up web app that we put together here. And it's very customized to the way that we do things and it'll never, maybe not never, but it's pretty unlikely it would work anywhere else.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah. That's not cheap. It's very good. Fast now because we can't even measure it because it's been iterated over years and modified. But part of me still wants to go back to what Edward was saying when we were discussing where he just took some off-the-shelf pieces, QGIS, some publicly available, some public domain maps,
00:37:05
Speaker
and layer together something that he could make a quick little web app for his students to go out on the field. And he said it only took a few minutes to do. And I thought, well, that's really interesting because he did it fast.
00:37:16
Speaker
And he did it cheap, and it's pretty good, certainly within that it met the needs of what they wanted to do. And it's something that he wouldn't have been able to do a few years prior. Certainly not as quickly and as inexpensively. And that's a bit, and maybe that gets to the thing, to the example of the digital cameras, and getting better and cheaper with time. But I do feel like it's not as inviolable of a rule as I have often thought it to be.
00:37:47
Speaker
But he was also able to do that because just like I said in the first segment, he understood what the capabilities were of these things that he
Experience and Expertise in Tool Assessment
00:37:56
Speaker
was already doing. And he was able to take these components, put them together and make something that works together. And he was able to do it relatively quickly because he had familiarity with that stuff. So that familiarity is that's not fast.
00:38:08
Speaker
No. Sometimes that's what you're paying for, too. You're paying for that familiarity. I heard something a few months ago on one of the – I do professional podcast editing outside of the APN as well. I'm in these podcast editing groups on Facebook. One thing somebody said was, you're not paying me $50 an hour.
00:38:28
Speaker
to get it done in 30 minutes or what did he say? It's not costing me, it's not the cost to get it done in 30 minutes, it's the 10 years it took me to get this down to 30 minutes. That's what you're paying for. That's why it costs $50 an hour or $70 an hour or whatever to do this because I spent all this time perfecting that process and that's actually what you're paying for, not the actual 30 minutes of time. It's like you're not paying the lawyer $200 an hour because
00:38:55
Speaker
each hour of his time is worth $200. It's all that schooling that he went through. You're paying his student loans, let's be honest. Exactly. If you see a lawyer and they're under 35, you're definitely paying their student loans.
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for this segment. Good topic, Paul. I like when we can kind of get into these theoretical things. Send us your thoughts on this. Chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com, where you can find both Paul and I's Twitter handles on the show notes, archpodnet.com forward slash archaeotech and give us your thoughts. Yeah. I would love to hear if anybody else has an example, something that they're really proud of that they think might be a violations principle.
00:39:38
Speaker
or conversely, something that they're proud of or ashamed of that failed on one of the three and would maybe hold it up. It'd be just interesting to see what people think about this whole notion and how they work with, through, or around it. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, that's it for this. We'll be back in just a second with our App of the Day segment.
00:40:02
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Chris Webster here with the Our Country Podcast Network. And if you like what you're hearing, considering becoming a member and supporting us, go over to arkpodnet.com forward slash members and support us at the supporting member level, standard member, or professional member. You can do five, 10, or $20 a month, and you can do those yearly at 42, 84, or $168 per year. Again, that's arkpodnet.com forward slash members. For more information, get early downloads of show stickers and a whole bunch of other swag.
00:40:32
Speaker
Chris Webster here to talk about one of our affiliates with the Archeology Podcast Network. Affiliates help you and they help us. So head on over to archepodnet.com forward slash side hustle. If you want to do something extra with your time or maybe you even want a different career for a little while, maybe you need something to hold you over for the winter.
00:40:48
Speaker
then check out arcpodnet.com forward slash side hustle. A friend of mine has a website called indemandcareer.com because that's what it is. It's digital marketing. You'll learn everything about social media, all the trends, how to get clients and how to help them increase their social media and marketing efforts online. You can do all that from your hotel room. So check it out at arcpodnet.com forward slash side hustle.
00:41:14
Speaker
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the archaeotech podcast episode one of five. And this is the app of the day segment. And I'm going to head this off with an app that I started using about a month ago, a little over a month ago, I think. And I heard about it because as I mentioned in the last segment, I do all kinds of podcast editing and I'm part of all these podcasting groups. And somebody mentioned an app called chirp and it was all about micro podcasting. I was like, what are you talking about? And so I went over and checked it out and
00:41:43
Speaker
they've already made some improvements since I got this. So I won't mention the things that were wrong because they've actually fixed them. But what Chirp is, it's really interesting. I'm going to go ahead and call it social media platform, but it's a social media platform based around a 10 second to three minute long
00:41:59
Speaker
audiograms or they're calling a micro podcast, but I don't know if I really even see it that way. Although the people that are on here are kind of using it in that way. And right now, most of the people that are on Chirp that I've seen are coaches and entrepreneurs and people that are trying to essentially use Chirp as a funnel for their services. They're not really promoting it that way, but that's exactly what they're doing. So I'm looking at my digest right here, the people I'm following, and I can see all the chirps in date order.
00:42:28
Speaker
how many listens they had. I can comment on them. And again, these are short things. Now I'm mentioning this because I typed in archaeology and me and former host of this show, Chris Sims and his Go Dig a Whole podcast are the only things that show up when you type in archaeology.
Introduction to the Chirp App
00:42:42
Speaker
And I just did that again today just to see if that's an updated. Nope, still there. So not a lot of content for archaeologists over there. However,
00:42:50
Speaker
And one of the things I requested, because I actually had a phone call with one of the co-founders, because I guess there's such a new platform that anybody that signs up, I don't know how they found me, but they sent me an email and said, hey, do you want to have a quick call and go over what you like and don't like about the platform? I was like, yeah, okay, that sounds good.
00:43:07
Speaker
But one of the comments I had was being able to switch accounts easily. Because otherwise, I've got to sign out of the app here and then sign back in with a different account. And instead of doing that, I'm just muddling everything together. I just started a new Adobe Audition training.
00:43:22
Speaker
training session once a month. And I put up a chirp about that today. And it's just, I think it's like a minute and a half long. And the cool thing is though, is this is an all in one platform. And if you hit the little microphone button down on the bottom and you have a lot of music that you can choose from if you want background music, but you have background music and you kind of play that as you're recording it, you don't add it on later, which is kind of a weird thing.
00:43:48
Speaker
And they've got a weird interface that takes a minute to figure out how to actually get their music. It'll auto duck, which means when you start it, once you start talking, it'll actually come down automatically. But then when you hit stop or you stop talking,
00:44:00
Speaker
And then you want the music to go and you have to hit record again and then increase the music and so it takes a little while to kind of get your head wrapped around that. But then a couple things that they've improved just in the month that I've started using this is they allow you to import a file. So today for the first time I actually recorded something at my desk in Adobe Audition using my mixer and my SM58 microphone. So it sounds really good layered some music under it.
00:44:23
Speaker
And it was only, like I said, a minute and a half. I didn't even edit the thing. I just spoke for like a minute and a half. I had the web page up that I was talking about. No audio processing on this. Well, I did the audio processing, but no editing on this.
00:44:35
Speaker
And then I mastered it real quick, did the mastering techniques, exported it to my iCloud drive. And then I forgot to mention this, it's iOS only. So sorry about that. I didn't even plan that. But because of that, you can import now from your iCloud drive. So I saved it to my iMac and then immediately went to my phone. And since it's such a small file, it was already there in the iCloud drive on my phone and I was able to import straight in.
00:44:59
Speaker
And then they added a couple more things, because they, you cannot just, not only just look at this in Chirp, they've got a really nice interface. If you go over to Twitter, at Archia Webby, you'll probably be able to see this, or on my Facebook page. And they, two new things that they've developed. One, you can save this audio file over and it brings in the text, like it's a 140 character text that you can put attached to this with hashtags and things like that. That went right over to Twitter and Facebook. And then they also had this new thing where you can create a video.
00:45:26
Speaker
That's basically the text that you use. It's not very good right now But it's basically the text that you used over a gradient color background with the audio right there and that's good for Instagram so Instagram and some other things so Anyway, it's a it's a new platform. Like I said, you can search different hashtags I started doing when I got down on that project a few weeks ago these daily safety chirps So I would talk about stuff that
00:45:50
Speaker
i was concerned with that day and i was actually recording it in my truck on the way into the meet the crew at the hotel which probably was the safest thing to do but with no editing right with no editing like between stoplights i was able to just you know record it and then you know get posted and you know i did one on rattlesnakes and heat safety and sunscreen and you know clothing and other stuff like that
00:46:13
Speaker
And then since nobody's on chirp that's in archeology, I was actually saving these out to Facebook. And I think the, I think the arc pod net Facebook page as well. And then like a week and a half into the project, I came down with pretty severe sore throat and like bronchitis that I'm still getting over right now. So actually stopped doing it. Cause I would wake up in the morning and I couldn't even talk for a little while, which my wife wishes I was home when that happened, but I wasn't. So she, she didn't get the benefit of me not talking in the morning. So
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, I know, right? I know. This is a rough life. Anyway, check out this platform. It's free. I don't know how they're making any money. There's no ads. There's no anything, which means it probably won't be around for long because usually that free model means they're not monetizing. They might have a lot of investment capital, which is why they're not monetizing. But if they don't figure that out soon, that money's going to run out and they're going to have to figure out a way to monetize. So head over there while there's no ads.
00:47:09
Speaker
Well, there's no in audio ads like Facebook does or or SoundCloud. And and there's like I said, there's there's literally no ads. So check me out. I'm just Chris Webster. You can find my I don't even know if I have like a like a screen name because it doesn't show me that anywhere. Just says Chris Webster. But if you look up archaeology, then you'll find me and then Chris Sims created one for his go dig a whole podcast, but also one for himself. And it looked like he just did that as a mistake because there's no chirps over there.
00:47:37
Speaker
And then he created the other one. So you'll find those two. I've got 12 chirps up there, 22 followers as of the recording of this show here. So yeah, it's just one more thing. It might go nowhere, who knows? But I kind of like the idea of being able to quickly record my thoughts about something and then get it out into the world in an audio format because it's just a little more engaging in an audio format than say a bunch of written text. And there's still applicability to that.
00:48:05
Speaker
But the nice thing about this is I can go to my, my home screen here and the people that I'm following, I can just hit play all on my feed. And it's like a bunch of micro podcasts right in a row. It's like the Alexa skills people are doing in the morning. You know, it's like you wake up and you have Alexa do your, do your things and it'll give you the quick news. Um, some podcasts have a shortened version of their podcast. It's just like 30 seconds or a minute long. It's kind of like that, you know, almost getting a morning briefing or whenever you want to do it, I can come in here and just get,
00:48:34
Speaker
you know, a bunch of micro podcasts from a bunch of people I'm following and just start my day with a bunch of neat little information. I have a 20 minute walk here and it's a good way to do that. So check it out, Chirp. You can find their app at chirpapp.com and it's chirpapp.com. There's literally nothing on their website. It just takes you to the iTunes store. So you don't even need to go there. Just look for it on your iOS device and you'll pick it up there. Again, free.
00:49:03
Speaker
No ads. Check it out. All right. Well, if you do go onto the app store to it, um, and you type in chirp to find it, the first thing that you're going to get is called chirp books. Don't do like what I just did and download that. Um, and then if you scroll scroll on down, you'll see other things about birds and so on until you get to chirp short podcasts. So, um, just a, you know, heads up that, uh, don't be an idiot like I just was.
00:49:29
Speaker
There you go. I didn't even search for it because I think I clicked on a link of wherever I saw it and it just took me right there. I didn't even know that. The icon is yellow with a black C and then a white C inside of it. Look for that. Don't get the one that's a white icon with a black C and a yellow band at the bottom because that's not the same one that Chris was just talking about.
00:49:51
Speaker
And the other thing that couldn't help but think especially with giving its name It sounds like chirp is trying to be to podcast what Twitter is to blogs Yes, I think that's exactly right
00:50:04
Speaker
I think I'm going to have to check it out. It could be fun. One thing I'm noticing on their website too here, and I don't know if this is a precursor of things to come or if they got rid of it, but one of their images on their website has the record screen and it looks exactly the same except for one thing. There's a button below the background music that says voice filters. So I don't know if you can have fun and change your voice and do like a robot or something like that, but there's no voice filters on mine.
00:50:30
Speaker
doesn't say that at all. So I don't know if they got rid of it or if it's a feature they're going to come out with and they just haven't rolled out yet. But if you use something like Adobe Audition or GarageBand or Audacity to record your chirps on the desktop, you can alter your voice there. And if you don't know how, take my Adobe Audition editing class at propodcastnow.com.
00:50:51
Speaker
Just one other comment, too. Scrolling on the actual correct page here on the app store, it's got 4.9 out of 5 stars with 684 reviews. It's not too bad. The longevity, the reach of the platform being up in the air, it looks like the people who actually started using it are enjoying it quite a bit. And I guess it's probably not too buggy or crashy. So that's hopeful.
00:51:17
Speaker
Yeah, the one thing I will say that it does that's really strange is again, I was using this while I was driving and I was in a spotty service area at one point and I just had to get something out and I started recording and then I couldn't send it because I started recording when I had service and then I went out of service for like two hours and there was no option to save that recording as a draft. That's another thing I requested is to be able to just save it as a draft because
00:51:43
Speaker
If you're using the microphone on your iPhone, and I don't know how Android works on this, but if you're using it on your microphone and you go out of the application while you're in the recording mode, then your time in the upper left-hand corner has got this red bubble around it because the microphone is still active. So it's still burning your battery. And since I couldn't save it as a draft, and it wouldn't let me out of the recording, it physically wouldn't let me out without exporting it. And I was like, what the hell? And I don't want to lose this. So I ended up losing it because I
00:52:12
Speaker
It wouldn't let me do anything else like on my phone, anything that used a microphone or anything like that because it was locked into it. So I actually had to kill the app, lose my recording, and then do that. So all the way through the recording process, all the way through sharing, that little icon is red and the time is and which means the microphone is active. So that's something they got to work out from a software standpoint, but the developers seem to be pretty hot on this and they seem like they've got a lot of good
00:52:37
Speaker
a lot of good people there. And I'm just looking here, one of my chirps has 141 listens, which, you know, yeah, that's not terrible. Oh, this one has a hot, uh, no, it's the one where I talked about going live on the, on the radio, but one,
00:52:51
Speaker
Oh, hey, Paul, when I mentioned a new APN episode, Archaeotech Podcast 101, Digital Humanities with Sebastian Heath, I was just talking about it. That one got 160 listens. Nice. Yeah, only 16 likes, so most of the people did not actually like it, but whatever. Now, you know what I wonder? I shared all that to Twitter and Facebook. I wonder, since that's through their embedded player, I bet the listen counts over there, but they don't have the ability to like it unless they come over to the Chirp app.
00:53:19
Speaker
Quite possible. Yeah, I have no idea so well anyway with that find out I know I know so Alright, so that's chirp. What do you got Paul?
00:53:29
Speaker
OK, as opposed to you having used that app for a couple of months, the app that I'm going to talk about today, I have not used at all.
Exploring the AnyList App
00:53:38
Speaker
Solid review. It's going to be a great review. So this is an informational one. And I'm reviewing it, actually. I'm bringing it up today because this is one that one of my coworkers was raving about to me. And it's not something that I think I have any particular need for. But I wanted to bring it up because it's one of these quality of life kinds of things that I think
00:53:58
Speaker
A lot of our listeners might like and it could be very helpful for the shovelbumps out there who are trying to live in hotel rooms. The app that I'm talking about is called AnyList and the website is AnyList.com and it's available on iOS and on Android.
00:54:16
Speaker
And when you first hear it, you're like, okay, great, yet another list app. And I'm sure I passed right by it because that's what I thought. But no, it's not just yet another list app, though you can use it for lists. It starts out, it looks like it's a grocery list specific list app. But what it does is it allows you to enter recipes and then generate your grocery lists from those recipes.
00:54:42
Speaker
And it has some cool features like it's it's a freemium app. Okay, so let me get into the pricing quickly So it's it's a subscription. It costs $9.99 for one year for one seat or $14.99 per year for a family plan
00:54:59
Speaker
No, it's not bad, especially if you if you're gonna find this useful and I know again my co-worker he paid for it because he found it very useful so you can bring in different recipes ones that you like ones that are standards whatever and Generate your your grocery list directly from there. You can also there's a calendar view. This is one of the
00:55:20
Speaker
premium paid features where you can plan out the next week of meals, for example, and break it all down into what you have to get at the grocery store when you're there. The recipes, you can import directly from websites. So it has hooks that will go to Epicurious or all recipes or whatever. You find one that you like and
00:55:46
Speaker
right there in mobile Safari. I'm not sure what you would do it in on Android, but Chrome, I hope. I don't know if it works with other browsers is what I mean. And you can just import your recipes directly into the app and have it all nicely organized. Now, again, it doesn't solve any particular need for me because I hardly ever cook with a recipe. I cook very frequently. I cook a few times a week at least.
00:56:16
Speaker
But there's a grocery store. When we're in the city, there's a grocery store right in the corner. So I don't have to plan to go to the grocery store. And when I'm in the country, there's a very good grocery store just a short distance away that I'm always at because they have the world's best beer selection.
00:56:33
Speaker
And I go into a grocery store with a vague idea of what I want to cook for dinner. And I come out with whatever the ingredients are that I might need for that. So I don't pre-plan. It doesn't really fit the way that I like cooking. And that's why this particular program, this particular app, wouldn't have a whole lot of appeal to me. But it's really nicely laid out. And it's interesting to see a list app, again, that's very targeted to doing this one thing and apparently doing this one thing really well. Let me just mention a few of the features that it gives you for the freemium.
00:57:03
Speaker
So the paid features, this one's nice, is you can then use it on a web app.
00:57:11
Speaker
So if you don't have your phone, you can share recipes and lists back and forth with family members. That's built into it on the free version. For paid, also there's an Apple Watch app for it. Like I said, the recipe web import. For free, it gives you five that you can do. And if you want to do more than five, you have to pay for it. That makes sense. That's the way they try to get you hooked. The calendar, again, that's a paid feature.
00:57:37
Speaker
Photos, recipe photos, recipe scaling. That's a really cool one, right? So you get a recipe for two people, but you're cooking for five. Stop doing math. Let the computer do it for you, right?
00:57:53
Speaker
Wait, I want to do two-thirds times nine and a half. Yes. That sounds great. Item prices, stores, and, you know, so anyhow, I'm just bringing this up because this seems like something that, again, my coworker really likes it. I think that it would be useful for a lot of people and it really seems to be a well thought out, well integrated application that, you know, if I had to use for it, I'm sure I'd love it. Yeah.
00:58:22
Speaker
When I first pulled the page up, I was like, add items to Siri, create a list. I was like, well, you can do that on Apple with our notes app and share. I've overlooked it. And you can share the note with anybody you want and you can both add to it. You can add items with Siri. However, I literally just sent this to my wife because I'm sure she's going to buy it. And she's always doing meal planning. She was just doing meal planning last night and she finds recipes
00:58:48
Speaker
And then she goes in the kitchen, what do we have, and then creates a list. We used to use something, I don't think we use it much, I think she still does use it a little bit, called Grocery Gadget. And basically, that was exactly the same thing as creating grocery lists. And you could part out your list by store, so if you're going to several different stores or something like that, it would actually learn your behaviors for how you moved around the store. If you always walked in and went to the left, and that was produce, and then around, it would actually organize everything in that way.
00:59:17
Speaker
Now the difference with this is, is really the meal planning and adding recipes and then being able to quickly tap on those ingredients and bring them over. I think that's the game changer for this one. Um, which is why I think she's probably going to be really loving it for that reason. And then the meal planning. I mean, I just watched calendar appointments come over my calendar. She puts it on our shared calendar.
00:59:36
Speaker
what we're having for dinner every night. I was like, I don't have the brain power for it. Just go ahead and do that. I'll eat whatever you say we're eating. She does that meal planning and it works out really well. I think this would be a good addition to that. Pretty cool. Well, why don't you let her see it and then let me know sometime in the future if she likes it because
00:59:59
Speaker
You know, it's one of these ones that a lot of people like. Have her come on and do a guest review. That'd be good. Yeah. Say, OK, Paul doesn't know what he's talking about. This is how you actually use it. This is what you can do. These are the ins and outs. Right. Right. All right. Well, let us know if you use either of those applications and also let us know what your favorite apps
Listener Engagement: Favorite Apps and Tools
01:00:19
Speaker
are. You know, what are you using just to live your life or what are you using in the field, even desktop applications? You know, what's what's going on out there? Let us know. And we might talk about it on the show.
01:00:29
Speaker
All right. Well, thanks a lot, Paul. Thanks, Chris. And we'll see you guys next time around. Bye bye.
01:00:39
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
01:01:05
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
01:01:26
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to arcpotnet.com slash members for more info.