Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Data comes in, gets cleaned up, and becomes actionable.

So you made it into the Beta! What’s Aboard all about?

One cat can have 50 tags: Whiskers, Friendly, Good With Kids, Perfect Angel, etc.

You can now add images and PDFs to cards.

We’re doing a ton of work to take things away and simplify the product.

“This is different than what they said they were going to launch a year ago.”

The Aboard extension, Kanban view, zoom in and out on card size, and more.

How long does it take for someone to find utility with our software?

Off we go, to help as many people as we can.

Over the weekend the number of Aboard users crossed the threshold from hundreds into thousands.

In a good analytics meeting, there can be absolutely no good news.

An end run around cut-and-paste to make things go faster for you—and lets us make better-looking cards.

This week we rolled out…places! Starting with Lodging (hotels).

Let’s be honest about software in 2023: Coupons.

Launching our YouTube channel with a snazzy intro video.

Once it’s installed, it works just like you’d expect: Click, and links turn into cards.

Please add it to the other 10,000 podcasts you keep meaning to listen to.

Showing off our key features in a brisk seven minutes.

How to use Kanban view, and other data-visualizing methods.

Introducing Tab Sweep, a ridiculously easy way to manage your tabs.

Everyone tries to get authentic too fast. Can’t we build the relationship first?

Will AI replace us? The human connection is still in the work itself.

On learning to help users be whatever they want—and get out of the way.

My goal is simply to understand what the hell is happening with these nerds.

There’s always another alligator pit.

A rundown of resilience indicators, from trustworthiness to scale.

You just have to acknowledge that the intern is extremely high.

You can’t tell people what to want. They will tell you what they want.

It may be a huge messy database, but it’s our huge messy database.

Why does it always end up so complicated?

Learning from messy tech pasts via the history of the synthesizer industry.

Things that are fast to build tend to be disposable—it’s the complex stuff that has the most impact.

You are probably not a hugely powerful and dominant silverback technology gorilla.

On the liminal space between current and new versions.

Almost everyone needs to manage data, but few people want to define how data should work.

Thinking about Aboard’s AI capabilities like a scientific middle-schooler, by balancing knowledge and practice.

The superpower of programming is hacking crap together really fast to see what breaks.

Keep the most important bits of data on top.

Helping small groups of people communicate more effectively—and take action more decisively.

Introducing…drum roll…export-to-CSV!

Four new field types will give your cards ridiculous levels of pure raw card power.

Apple’s AI moves resurface a surprisingly old debate.

Perusing the academic repository Arxiv.org to look for the future of AI.

It’s just really nice to talk about something besides politics for a couple hours.

We keep coming back to one big question: What does AI mean for the software industry? Our new podcast tries to answer it.

AI marketing should show enhancement, not replacement.

In tech downturns, there’s a thrill in seeing what people build with less.

What would the world look like if there were dozens of AI-ish things happening at once?

The function of AI is not simply to generate stuff, but to make things more fun—and more useful.

Our future is going to involve spiky, unpredictable changes that could cut us off from our software.

Finishing your weird little projects with AI programming tools.

How much change will AI bring to the software industry? We see a wide range of outcomes.

A new climate-change integration—plus other exciting updates about where we’re headed in the coming months.

New technologies are hard for humans to grasp in the best of times, and the tail of 2024 is not the best of times.

GenAI works best when you can combine its outputs with problem-solving code.

An AI tutorial from Ethan Mollick, a helpful tool from Google, and more.

Claude’s new “computer use” feature is reassuringly janky—you can see all the pieces clanking noisily along.

The computer gives us information we can process and use—and then we decide what gets written down.

AI and the career ladder, big tech’s training data struggles, and more.

Teaching robots, brutalist architecture, saving squirrels, and more.

Some thoughts on AI at the end of 2024—and one great link about the beauty of non-AI tech.

Like thrift stores, the new AI systems are chaotic, weird—and ultimately human.

The secret, as always, is rehearsal.

I bet you think you know what the dragon is, but you’ll be surprised.

I can’t really understand LLMs unless I keep taking steps backwards.

There goes the economy! Whoops it’s back!

AI keeps getting weirder, plus some great bonus links.

Notes on the Catholic response to AI.

I don’t know what the “AI center” looks like, but I hope we eventually can find it.

The huge challenge in talking about AI that no one is talking about.

No matter where people are on the spectrum of beliefs, most of them seem to agree: This matters.

These good ideas will seem trivial to accomplish using AI—and then you’ll be living through the back half of Goodfellas.

You have to choose which steps to skip, and when to slow down.

In tech, the money is in innovation, but the careers are in predictability.

AI’s relationship to the web is complicated—but I’m placing a bet on who will win.

Reading between the lines of the AI industry in 2025.

Better behavior, on demand.

Let’s stop trying to make computers human and get back to making them awesome.

With AI, the SaaS funnel can start with custom product delivery—and then you sell the relationship.

Is AI replacing programmers or not? Should coders learn to write poems? What’s really going on?

“Model Context Protocol” brokers peace between old tech and new. It’s a good thing the AI giants are embracing it.

Is AI a big scam, or will our jobs be on the chopping block by 2026?

They’ve been taking their time with AI, but at WWDC this week, Apple laid out their vision of the future.

A simple step-by-step breakdown of how we build software—first in minutes, then in weeks.

Success may come when the bot is prompting the human, not the other way around.

The key thing missing from most AI conversations is a hyper-specific focus on what these tools do well.

Using AI to code is like looking into a mirror-world: The LLM generates meaninglessness that you turn into something useful.

Karen Hao’s Empire of AI is less about computers becoming human—and more about humans being very human.

A review of OpenAI’s latest big release, ChatGPT 5.

“Lumbering, unsexy, but essential.” There’s no higher praise.

When it comes to the vast behemoths of business and government, this technology is a grease for the world’s biggest gears.

Solving all of your LLM problems with just nine words.

Plus: A breakdown of AI-related things tech giants are currently building.

On Cloudflare’s very surprising ideas about AI and the future of web publishing—and what we should do instead.

When it comes to AI-powered shopping, dialogue only gets in the way.

Last year, Eric Schmidt made some dramatic claims about what AI could build. Have his predictions come true?

With AI, a rule of thumb is emerging: More to less? Then you’re blessed. Less to more? Shut the door.

OpenAI and Anthropic are broadening their offerings—and coming for the companies building on top of their APIs.

AI can be transformative, but you’ve got to put the work in.

I built five projects in a weekend…but at what cost? ($150)

How the power of my pure nerdery vanquished the mighty AI.

Getting determined about AI and determinism.

Stories that caught our eye at the end of the year.

AI is your general contractor, and you are the architect.

What are the risks when everyone can produce code?