Today, I want to talk about the fuzzy art of book recommendations and how they relate to AI by posing a hypothetical: imagine you’re a lapsed reader and haven’t read fiction or followed books for a decade. You resolve to get back into reading and want to increase the chances that you become a fiction...

[[federico]] Bluetooth’s Auracast technology promises to revolutionize audio sharing by letting devices connect to broadcasts without pairing. I find this extremely fascinating. However, despite support from companies like JBL, Samsung, and LG, the feature remains largely unknown to consumers, which is too bad. (Link) Spotify is rolling out a beta feature called ‘Prompted Playlists’ in...

[[federico]] Shiuli Shiuli is a new utility for iPhone and iPad (from the creators of longtime favorite LookUp) that aims to solve a common problem: adding alt text descriptions to images shared online. In my experience, most people don’t add alt text to images on social media not because they don’t care about accessibility, but...

First, I want to go on record that I’m not a fan of the word “creator.” It’s not as bad as “influencer” as far as words go, but still, I don’t like it. However, since what I’m going to suggest applies to a wide range of people making videos and podcasts, writing, developing apps and...

[[federico]] Pocket Casts Pocket Casts has reached version 8.0, and it’s a big one. The popular podcast player (which has been my default for a few years at this point) is finally adding a feature many have been asking for: proper playlists. You can now build custom playlists with specific episodes you want to listen...

I’m an optimist about most tech, but when I think about “Smarter Siri,” the context-aware version of Apple’s voice assistant that can carry out multi-step requests, all I see is trouble. I hope I’m proven wrong, but what I see are the kinds of fundamental challenges that aren’t easily solved by throwing more engineers at...

Today, we’re introducing 20% off discounts for four great Mac apps: DeskMat, ScreenFloat, Transloader, and Yoink by Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad. I’ve been a long-time fan of Matthias’ work. ScreenFloat is one of my favorite screenshot utilities because it goes beyond the typical tools you find in other screenshot apps. Yoink is one of the original shelf...