The Aboard Newsletter

Meet the Aboard Extension

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

All Aboard!

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

Tags, You’re It!

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

Cards Get Smarter

You can now add images and PDFs to cards.

Happy Eid Al Adha + July 4th!

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

Ducks & Decks

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

Everything Got Better

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

A Little Thing on Value

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

We Launched!

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

There Are Many More of You Than Before, Welcome!

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

You Should Never Feel Good About Statistics

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

Right-Clicking—Sometimes the Answer!

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

Nouns!

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

What About Pricing?

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

Smash That Subscribe Button

Launching our YouTube channel with a snazzy intro video.

Install the Aboard Extension for Safari

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

Meet the Aboard Podcast!

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

Getting to Know Aboard, Video Edition

Showing off our key features in a brisk seven minutes.

Ways of Seeing

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

Sweep Your Tabs Away!

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

In Praise of Inauthenticity

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

Don’t Let the Robots Get You Down

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

Our Promise: We Won’t Try to Empower You

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

Let’s Be Less Confused About AI Together

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

Know Your Competition!

There’s always another alligator pit.

What Makes Software Resilient?

A rundown of resilience indicators, from trustworthiness to scale.

Accepting AI’s Weirdness

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

We’re Killing Chat and It’s Your Fault

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

Is the Web Dying? (No.)

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

The Eternal Dream of Instant Software

Why does it always end up so complicated?

Beeps of Yore

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

In Software, Slow Is Exciting

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

Defining “Success” On Your Own Terms

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

Hanging Out in the Software Hallway

On the liminal space between current and new versions.

Aboard Is Brighter, Shinier, AI-Powered, and Much More Useful

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

Learning in Little Steps

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

Software Can Be Temporary

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

Unlocking Key Fields

Keep the most important bits of data on top.

Aboard and the Zombie Apocalypse

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

Take Your Data Anywhere

Introducing…drum roll…export-to-CSV!

Fields of Dreams

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

A Hug from Godzilla

Apple’s AI moves resurface a surprisingly old debate.

Cutting-Edge Research Roundup

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

In Defense of Corporate Cocktails

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

Introducing Reqless

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

Why So Bad, AI Ads?

AI marketing should show enhancement, not replacement.

Crashes Can Be Motivating

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

The Infinite Command Line

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

Kill Boredom with Robots

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

What We’ve Learned Building Climate Tools

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

How to Skip the Boring Bits of Coding

Finishing your weird little projects with AI programming tools.

Hedging Our Bets

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

Introducing Aboard Climate (Beta)

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

Four Terror-Free Ways to Talk About AI

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

Building Is Better Than Chatting

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

Three Quick, Useful AI Links

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

A Comforting Software Mess

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

Crunching the AI Numbers

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

AI Links, Now With Commentary

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

A Few Quick AI Links Before Thanksgiving

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

Nobody Knows Anything (Still)

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

The Eternal Thrift Store

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

Software Theater

The secret, as always, is rehearsal.

Where’s the Dragon?

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

Use Worse Tools

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

Desperately Seeking DeepSeek

There goes the economy! Whoops it’s back!

DeepSeek Threatened With WhaleJail

AI keeps getting weirder, plus some great bonus links.

God Gets Involved

Notes on the Catholic response to AI.

Hegel on the Death Star

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

The $15 Volvo

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

Accepting All the AI Opinions

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

The Zeno Effect

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

Bad Vibes Coding

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

The More Things Change

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

The Spiders Versus the Web

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

The Prophets and the Giants

Reading between the lines of the AI industry in 2025.

Using AI to Redirect Yourself—and Save Money!

Better behavior, on demand.

Is “Specification Repair” the AI Endgame?

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

The Funnel of the Future is Upside Down

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

MS Blurred: Microsoft’s AI Path Gets Slippery

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

Will AI Eat Tech, or Will Tech Eat AI?

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

The Extremely Human Last Mile

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

Apple Takes Its Bite

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

How Aboard Works: An Illustrated Guide

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

Four Billion Years of Vibe Coding

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

20 Percent Slower Is a Good Start!

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

Language (and Code) Without Thought

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

AI’s Hot, Hot Mess

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

Desperately Seeking Software

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

Fast Company on Aboard: It’s a Vibe Product! And It Works!

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

AI Is a Power Tool for Bureaucracy Freaks

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

The Three Sacred Guardrails of AI

Solving all of your LLM problems with just nine words.

Some Useful Links: AI Data Licensing, Vibe-Coding Cleanup, and More

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

Paywalls Victorious

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

This Conversation Is Over

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

Checking In on the Magic

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

Good Bot, Bad Bot

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

The AI Behemoths Go Horizontal

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

In My Skills Era

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

Claude Code for Web Ruined My Brain

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

I Broke Claude Code’s Will to Live

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

Don’t Waste a Miracle

Getting determined about AI and determinism.

Fun Things to Read

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

Triple-A Vibe Coding

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

Four AI Coding Horsemen of the Apocalypse

What are the risks when everyone can produce code?