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AI may become your only app

June 20, 2025 by mickmel Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It’s hard to tell for sure where AI is heading, but one possibility is that it eventually becomes the only app that you use.

I mentioned in my Sunday Summary a few weeks ago how I’ve been using the new MCP protocol to connect more apps into Claude (and you can do the same with ChatGPT), and that type of configuration is expanding very rapidly.

As of right now, I have Claude connected to my email, calendar, Notion, Clickup and a few other tools, which makes it somewhat more useful. As these connections develop, though, the usefulness could potentially skyrocket.

In a recent episode of the “My First Million” podcast, the idea of “always-on AI” was brought up. There are a handful of new devices coming soon that will listen 24/7 (with optional muted times, of course) and then help keep everything in your life organized. The combination of devices like those with MCP could lead to some interesting things, as they shared in the show:

“We’re going to go from 20 minutes a day in ChatGPT to 24 hours a day in ChatGPT. And when we’re in ChatGPT 24 hours a day, we’re not going to pull up a CRM. We’re not going to use the interfaces. These interfaces are already dying.”

In their case, they talked about tools like Hubspot. Why would you go into Hubspot and dig around for reports if you could just ask ChatGPT “give me the stats on our last email campaign”?

For example, a query I’ve been playing with in Claude each morning is to ask it:

“Help me prepare for my day.

First, look in Help Scout and see if there are any open tickets that are assigned to me.

Next, let me know of any overdue tasks in ClickUp that are assigned to me.

Lastly, look at my calendar for today and let me know of any meetings I have. For anything you find, please dig into my email to provide me more context about the people that will be in each of them.”

The results are imperfect, but pretty great, and it’s only going to get better. At some point will I spend most of my time in Claude (or some other agent) versus bouncing around to 20 different apps?

It seems quite possible.

Filed Under: AI, Productivity, Technology

Single-focus AI tools are dead

May 30, 2025 by mickmel Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

It was pretty easy to see coming, and I think we’ve arrived — AI tools that are built for a single purpose are dead.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen thousands of very specific AI tools launch (mostly powered by ChatGPT behind the scenes), that really didn’t offer much.

There have been AI tools for social media posts, and AI tools for email marketing, and AI tools for organizing data, and the list goes on. As Dustin Stout shared, these were “nothing more than a preset prompt wrapped in a pretty interface.“

If you pay for an AI tool other than one of the big ones (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Gemini), I’d be very curious to hear about your use case. The only ones that might make sense today are tools that do heavier lifting (like video), but even those are in big trouble in the coming months.

It wasn’t theirs

I think a big part of the problem here is that the tools weren’t really owned by those that created them. Most of them pulled in ChatGPT and then just pointed it in a specific direction. That was mildly helpful for a little while, but as the AI platforms have becoming more advanced the need for that kind of tool has vanished.

Do you use any AI tools other than the major players right now?

Filed Under: AI, Technology

Elon Musk is William Shockley

April 12, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you’re familiar with the history of computing, you’ve probably heard the name William Shockley. Shockley was a brilliant man and helped make computing today possible, as shown with the Nobel prize for Physics that he won in 1956 for “research on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect“.

He was also a horrible human being. Among other things, he said:

“My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro’s intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment”

As a result of his behavior (detailed well on his Wikipedia page), he had a difficult time keeping talented people at his company and you can trace many of the largest companies in Silicon Valley back to employees that left his firm.

An article in the BBC from a few years ago offers a solid summary:

Only time will tell how Shockley is remembered by the annals of history: as a visionary, hero, Nobel Prize winner, and Silicon Valley pioneer – or as a fanatical racist who died a lonely man.

To me, this sounds a lot like Elon Musk. The man is brilliant, and has brought amazing scientific contributions to the world, but he’s also struggling to retain his reputation, keep his staff, and keep his companies running smoothly. I think it’s very possible that in 20 years we can look back at some of the great new companies that have sprung up and link many of them back to staff that used to work at Tesla or SpaceX.

Like Elon Musk, not everyone hated Shockley. He put himself on the ticket for Senator in 1982 and while he didn’t do well, he picked up a few thousand votes in the primary.

Elon will continue to have his supporters, but I suspect history will show more similarities to Shockley than most would like to see.

Filed Under: Technology

Cold outreach is a form of the tragedy of the commons

April 10, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

The tragedy of the commons is the concept that if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. This is generally applied to things like farmland, but I think it can apply to the internet as well, with the “finite, valuable resource” being our attention.

If everyone behaves properly, the resource stays useful for all. If a few people misbehave to take “just a bit more” for themselves, it can encourage everyone to try to take a bit more and destroys the value for everyone.

This is cold outreach in a nutshell. We have an amazing tool with the internet, but as more people try to do shady things to steal a bit of attention, it encourages others to do the same to try to keep up. As I’ve shared from Seth Godin a few times:

“People are smart enough to see that once spam becomes professionally and socially acceptable, all open systems fall apart.“

Techniques like cold calls and spam are tempting, for sure. The cost is essentially zero, and you can potentially make 10 more sales if you just bug 24,990 other people in the meantime.

The internet is unbelievably massive, but the attention of humans is a scare resource and should be respected by everyone or we risk ruining the entire system.

Filed Under: Encouragement, Technology

What kind of work should be done on mobile?

April 9, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Over the years, I’ve gone through times where I really wanted to optimize the use of my mobile devices. I don’t mean “optimize” in terms of removing things, but the opposite — seeing how much work could be done on mobile-only.

We had a client a few years ago that shared a Powerpoint presentation with us, and he was proud of the fact that he did it entirely on his phone during breaks in his day. It was impressive, but it sounded like an awful task to try to do on there!

These days I’m a bit more focused on keeping things specifically for “computer” use versus “mobile” use. For example, every word of blog post that I write (including this one) is written a computer. While I add quick notes from my phone, I don’t even start a draft on there. It’s a computer task. I still keep most apps on my phone just in case I need them, but I’m trying to limit use on there to do the “real” work on my computer.

This means I’m old.

A hot topic lately is the idea of where you are willing to make big ticket purchases. This article on Thrillist sums it up well with things like this tweet:

How about you?

Do you separate tasks for phone versus computer? Do you ever make big purchases on your phone, or is that “laptop activity”?

Filed Under: Technology

Friction for you is more friction for the bad guys

April 4, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Technical security is making all of our lives a bit more difficult. Between two-factor authentication, passkeys, and other technical hurdles, things are getting a bit more complex all the time. However, those little bits of inconvenience for you are much larger inconveniences for those that are trying to hack you.

At a recent event, I heard Woodstock mayor Michael Caldwell sum this up very nicely, saying:

“Friction for you is more friction for the bad guys”

Adding more steps to your login can be a bit of a pain, but it only adds a few seconds worth of effort. However, those few seconds to you mean that the bad guys will have a much more difficult (or hopefully impossible) time trying to crack your accounts.

Appreciate the friction for the value it’s bringing to your life.

Filed Under: Technology

Why is Signal problematic for the government?

April 1, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Signal is a fantastic app that you should probably be using for much of your communication with your friends and colleagues, as I shared a few months ago. However, it’s been in the news recently for some misuse by the government. If Signal is a solid, secure app, then what’s the problem?

There are really two issues at play here:

  • If you’re a government official, you shouldn’t be using standard devices like the rest of us use, which seems to be the case here. Even though Signal is secure, the use of an off-the-shelf phone in the hands of high-level government officials is not wise.
  • The stuff that makes Signal really good, like their full encryption and ability to auto-delete messages, is not good for government record-keeping.

This was explained very well by Sanjay Parekh on a recent episode of the Tech Talk Y’all podcast, and I encourage you to check it out.

Hillary’s emails

For many, this brings back memories of the email scandal that Hillary Clinton found herself in a few years back. She had done something somewhat similar, using a private email server rather than the official government setup. There’s really no taking sides here, as both parties broke the rules: what she did was wrong, just as what our leaders did in the Signal case was wrong.

At the end of the day, though, this is proving how valuable Signal can be for you and me. Text messages are very insecure, so using Signal for most of your daily communication is a good thing (and you can find me on there if you’d like to reach out). Signal is free and you can find it here for Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you work for the government, though, maybe stick to the approved channels instead.

Filed Under: Technology

Two more big steps in de-Googling

March 11, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Over the last year I’ve taken a lot of little steps to de-Google my life. I won’t be able to escape Google completely for a long time, but some little shifts have been helpful. So far, it’s been three main things:

  • Shifted my main browser from Chrome to Brave
  • Started using ProtonMail for some of my email
  • Shifted my default search engine away from Google and onto Perplexity and DuckDuckGo

In the past few weeks, I’ve just made two more big shifts.

Google TV –> Roku

This was a pretty easy change to make. I’ve been needing to update our Google TV (Chromecast) devices for a while now, so instead of getting newer devices from Google we purchased some Roku Ultra players to use in the house.

Setting them up is always a bit of a pain (logging in to all of those streaming apps again), but they’ve ultimately worked out great!

Android –> iPhone

The biggest shift for me was moving back to iPhone again. While Apple is still a huge company that shouldn’t be trusted too much, they are much more privacy and user-focused than the other big tech firms (Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta). In recent weeks, two things happened that pushed me a bit more toward Apple and it was finally time to make the leap.

  • Google snuck an app onto everyone’s phone.
  • Apple’s shareholders voted not to scrap their DEI efforts.

Google’s isn’t as bad as it seems, and Apple’s isn’t as good as it seems, but both are nudges to push me further from Google and more toward Apple, so I made the move.

I won’t bore you with all of the pros and cons of Android versus iPhone, but here is a bit of what I’ve found.

  • The Apple Messages app is fine, but without a Macbook (I’m still using Windows), it’s not as helpful. In fact, it’s a bit worse for me because I can no longer get my text messages inside of Beeper (though Beeper is still an amazing app).
  • The Pixel Watch was great, but the Apple Watch is far superior. Better experience, more features, smoother performance.
  • The lack of a folding device is a bummer (I’ve had the last two Pixel Fold devices), but it’s not a huge deal. The ability to unfold was nice for reading if I didn’t have my Kindle and for browsing large photos, but there wasn’t a whole lot beyond that.
  • The AirPods Pro aren’t as good as the Pixel Buds Pro, largely for the ability to tap them. Apple’s require a more focused and firm touch to change songs, pause, adjust volume, etc, whereas Google’s would respond to any glancing touch as if by magic.
  • iPhone’s homescreen use, particularly for badges and widgets, is much smoother than Android.
  • In the car, Android Auto has a notable better user experience than Apple CarPlay, though they’re quite similar.
  • Everything else it the same. App parity is real, and 99% of my apps are indistinguishable from their Android counterparts.

All in all, I’m pleased with both moves and I feel good about giving Google a bit less money and personal information. Neither Roku or iPhone is perfect, but they’re at least as good as what I had before.

I’ll continue to work to whittle out Google services from my life. Next on the chopping block is likely YouTube TV, but other tools (such as Google Workspace for our business) are unlikely to get touched for years. We’ll see.

Have you de-Googled much lately? What moves have you made?

Filed Under: Entertainment, Mobile, Technology

The BOOX Note Air4 C

March 5, 2025 by greenmellen 2 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

As time has gone on, my wife and I have felt a stronger and stronger pull to distance ourselves from Amazon. There is a huge list of troubling things about their company (how they treat their employees and vendors, how they steal ideas, various political concerns, etc). They make things very easy to buy, making them hard to completely separate from, but we’re giving it a shot.

Not buying products from Amazon is easy enough. It’s a bit more work, but buying local has many advantages and we enjoy helping out local businesses. The trickier one is the Kindle; I’ve been using one for about 15 years (most recently with the Kindle Scribe), and my wife has one a few years longer than that.

Boox, Kobo, Nook, Supernote, reMarkable…

While leaving Kindle may be tough, there is no shortage of options on the market today. You have dedicated readers from Kobo and Nook, and other e-ink devices from Boox, Supernote, reMarkable and many others. Which to choose?

We were able to narrow it down quite quickly. The reMarkable is great for notes, but not for reading. Kobo and Nook have great devices, but they’re tied to their individual stores. That essentially left the Supernote and Boox devices, as they allow you load multiple apps on them, and Boox seems to have a better focus on reading.

The Boox tablets run a version of Android, so you can load various apps on the tablet. I’ll likely be purchasing most of my books going forward from Kobo, but the fact that I can also run the Nook app (as well as Libby, BookShop, and many others) is fantastic. Plus, I can load the Kindle app on there to still have access to all of the books I’ve purchased over the years.

Which Boox tablet?

Once we decided on Boox, we had to choose the devices that we wanted most. They have a lot of options! I knew I wanted a large tablet with a pen and a backlight, and my wife wanted one similar to her smaller Kindle Paperwhite. I ultimately went with Note Air4 C the and my wife with the Go 6.

There are a lot of videos to walk through the Note Air4 C, but this one is a fairly short (yet comprehensive) overview:

After a few weeks of use, my hunches on the good and the bad (when compared to the Kindle Scribe) were pretty accurate.

  • The Boox has a lot of great apps to choose from. I’ve loaded up the Kindle, Kobo and Nook apps, as well as apps like Readwise, Shortform, and Blinkist. It really is the ultimate reading device!
  • Perhaps too many apps? I need to be careful not to load distractions on there (like social media), because I certainly can.
  • It’s a bit trickier to use. The Kindle just reads books, and now I need to deal with apps and settings and such.
  • The reading experience in the Kindle app on the Boox is about 90% as good as on an actual Kindle device. I knew it wouldn’t be 100%, but I’m quite pleased with how well it works.
  • The battery life is not nearly as good. With heavy use, the Boox will last a few days whereas a Kindle would last weeks. This is a consequence of a more robust operating system.

All in all it’s been a good move! We can support smaller book publishers and now I’m using a more capable device.

If you use an e-ink tablet other than a Kindle, what are you using?

Filed Under: Learning, Technology

Go download all of your Kindle books today

February 25, 2025 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Amazon is making a big change to Kindle that probably won’t impact you directly yet, but it may impact you in the future — and the solution needs to happen today.

For years, you’ve been able to download your Kindle books for use on other devices. I never really have, as the Kindle ecosystem is quite smooth, but the option as been there. As of tomorrow (Feb 26, 2025) that option is going away. As a result, whether you think you need to or not, I strongly suggest that you download all of your books and tuck them away for safekeeping in case you want them later.

Downloading them is simple, but a bit time-consuming. To start, go to your Content Library on Amazon by clicking “Accounts & Lists” > Content Library > Books” (this link should take you directly there). To the right of each book is a “more actions” button, and in that list is “Download and transfer via USB”. Don’t let that scare you, as you’re really just downloading it to your computer.

Now the fun begins — go one at a time and download each book. Fortunately, they’re very small files (average of 1-2MB each) so it’s super quick downloads. Drop them in a folder, and then just save that folder in Dropbox or Google Drive or somewhere for later use.

There are three things to know about this:

  • These are your books, and this is the way to actually own them. If you don’t do this today, you’ll never be able to in the future.
  • The format that you download the books in isn’t particularly helpful, but it gives you control. If you want to read your books elsewhere in the future, you can use a tool like Calibre to convert them into other file formats.
  • This gives you the ability to share books with friends (which is likely why Amazon is cutting it off), but I encourage you not to do that. I believe in rewarding authors for their work, so let’s not steal from them. I’m simply doing this so that I can read the books that I purchased on any device that I want in the future.

If you get stuck, this article from PC Magazine should help a bit. Happy reading!

Filed Under: Technology

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