Category Archives: Audrey

Audrey Capital — angel investments, portfolio companies, and the startups I back.

Sunbird Security Isn’t Nothing

Apple, Audrey, Automattic

This might get lost in the OpenAI earthquake happening, but it’s important so I wanted to post about it. (And gosh! A Starship launch, which is amazing. We live in interesting times.) On Tuesday, Nothing, who makes the cleanest and most interesting Android phones (and whose earbuds sound great), announced via my favorite tech video channel, MKBHD, that the phones would support iMessage on Android, so you can be a blue bubble with your friends. This got a lot of pickup!

It got a little buried, though, because on Thursday Apple said it was going to support the RCS standard, which Google and others had been lobbying hard for. However, it’s doing the bare minimum: RCS isn’t actually encrypted, and Apple’s not doing the Google proprietary thing to encrypt it, and so non-Apple people still get green bubbles. (More on that later.)

iMessage on Android (and Windows!) is on the roadmap for Texts, the all-in-one messaging platform Automattic acquired last month. The Texts team is obsessed with security, and that’s part of why the platform is desktop-only right now—to keep everything 100% client-side and fully encrypted in a way that could never be accessed by the team, or have any compromise in the middle, they’ve been taking their time to get the engineering right on the mobile versions. So they poked around the Sunbird app that Nothing partnered with, and it wasn’t pretty. Here’s Texts founder Kishan Bagaria:

The BlueBubbles thing might be a mistake, but seeing the unencrypted data on the wire definitely wasn’t. Sunbird replied and doubled down on Twitter, citing some ISO standard and claiming it was “encrypted.”

Okay! Now you’re caught up to Friday. Texts says Sunbird isn’t secure, Sunbird says it is. He said, she said, right? Not quite—there are receipts. This blog post lays out even more than Kishan tweeted originally and shares code so you can confirm this yourself. tl; dr: Sunbird puts all your iMessages and attachments into Firebase.

What should you take away from this?

Nothing (the company) still makes amazing hardware that you should absolutely check out and use. It’s my favorite Android experience. I think the company got bamboozled by Sunbird, and unfortunately this went mainstream on MKBHD.

Sunbird appears either not to understand security or to lie about it, and probably misled Nothing. I would recommend double-checking what that team claims in the future.

Who should we actually be upset with?

Apple.

You shouldn’t need to jump through all these hoops to have a blue bubble on iMessage. Design can create great things; it can also harm. Apple’s design decisions to “magically” upgrade SMS or texts or RCS into iMessage, which is better and more secure, creates a green-bubble ghetto that’s also a terrible user experience for anyone not on an Apple-made device.

I’ve heard stories of teenagers being ostracized because they couldn’t afford an iPhone, of group chats rejecting people who turn the chat from blue to green. I know that sounds petty, but do you remember middle school? It’s about status, and Apple knows that. Everything they make bleeds status and signaling. They’re the best in the world at it, and I should know—I’m typing this post from a M3 Max black MacBook with 128GB of RAM. But while status signaling with amazing hardware and design touches is harmless, in software and social settings in can be harmful.

Regardless of how it started, today the green bubble indicates cheaper, lower-status, less secure. Apple’s half-hearted support of RCS just continues this. Sunbird (and others) shouldn’t need to jump through so many hoops around this stuff by reverse engineering. Apple should open up iMessage APIs so it can be natively supported just like every other 100M+ messaging platform is: Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, et al. Teens who can’t afford or don’t want an iPhone should be able to have an app that lets them connect with their friends as peers, securely and with all the features that are easy to support in messaging.

Tim Cook, Apple, we love you. Trillion-dollar company, and lots of room still to grow. Allowing iMessage/FaceTime to interoperate (like it used to!) might take .01% off your growth rate, but it’s the right thing for humanity. Yes, I know Google is shady too, and they’re locked in this smartphone death match with you. But take person-to-person communication out of the struggle, make it a DMZ, and be content to compete in all the other areas you’re currently crushing: design, silicon, Continuity, security, privacy, customer experience, retail stores, spatial audio, the list goes on.

I have no idea how to get in touch with YouTubers, but Marques, if you see this, I’m happy to chat about the future of technology, open source, freedom, and privacy.

Update: As I was writing this, the Nothing Chats app has been pulled from the Play store.

Update 2: From my colleague Batuhan:

I Love WordCamps!

Audrey, WordCamp, WordPress

One of the cooler things the WordPress community started doing in 2006 was putting on these events we called WordCamps. A big one is about to kick off in National Harbor, Maryland (which is basically Washington DC, but we’re calling it National Harbor for some reason).

You might be wondering where the name came from: Tim O’Reilly, of the O’Reilly books that so many of us learned from, hosted a hacker event called Foo Camp but it had limited capacity, and was therefore something of an exclusive invite (one time I eventually went I slept in a sleeping bag in an office). Tantek Çelik had been invited the year before, but not in 2005, and I had never been invited, so a group of us put together a more “open source” event in response called BarCamp. (The name was an allusion to the foo/bar concept in teaching programming, and the picture on that Wikipedia page was in the living room of my first apartment in San Francisco, as you can tell by the stand-up piano and Thelonious Monk poster.)

Foo had the idea of a conference created on-the-fly by its organizers, and also had a radical event where there wasn’t even lodging but all that mattered was getting people together. Bar took that format and opened up the invite list, and did it quickly with just a few weeks of planning. They also open sourced the format so BarCamps could be hosted anywhere in the world, and many were. The following year I riffed on that and made the first WordCamp in San Francisco, at the Swedish American Music Hall, the same place Stewart Brand hosted the first hackers conference in the 70s. (We didn’t know that at the time, it was just a coincidence.)

WordCamp took the everyone-is-welcome from Bar, mixed it with the attendees-create-the-conference from Foo, added a little more structure and planning so we ended up with these really groovy community-organized events all over the world where people come together to learn, contribute, get to know each other, and have fun. WordCamp San Francisco evolved into WordCamp US, our flagpole event for North America. (I like that US can mean “us” as well as United States.) There have been hundreds of WordCamps around the world, and when we were getting started I used to go to all of them; if someone put one together I’d cram into an economy seat and fly there. I can’t make it to all of them anymore, but I still go as many as I can, and they’re some of my favorite days of the entire year.

It’s so cool to see a group of people from the eclectic backgrounds come together because we love making the thing that allows people to make the thing. (WordPress.) You’ll see CEOs of multi-hundred million ARR companies brushing shoulders with techno-anarchists, all brought together by a common hope and belief in the four freedoms of open source and the mission of WordPress—to democratize publishing, put the best tools in the world in the hands of everyone, for free and for freedom.

This year’s WordCamp US is exciting to me for a bunch of reasons. One, I love spending time with other contributors to open source. Second, WordCamp organizers iterate and learn, and so every year I’m excited to see what’s being trialed and what’s improved, because they just keep getting better and better. Third, we’re doing a community summit beforehand for the first time in a while, which is why I’m already in Maryland. Finally, on the amazing schedule are two speakers I’ve invited to bring something new to our milieu.

Ken Liu is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and will be giving an amazing talk weaving together the history of narrative craft and modern publishing and technology. I’ve read almost everything he’s written or translated, and seen him talk once before, and couldn’t be more curious to hear what he’s bringing to the WordPress community.

Simon Willison is an engineer and blogger I’ve followed since the earliest days of WordPress, and recently he’s been one of the most interesting explorers in the new world of AI and LLMs. He’ll be sharing with us how to tap into this new alien intelligence, how it can accelerate our coding, security, and mission to democratize publishing.

So if you ever have a chance to go to a WordCamp, take it! It may be too late for this one, but you can follow the livestream (visit the site once the conference starts), and plan for next year. We also make sure all the talks accessible on WordPress.tv later.

Foo Camps still happen, by the way, and have branched into science and such, and who gets invited is a whole deal. They’re still awesome.

I hope what people see here is that creativity and doing generates more creativity and doing.

WP20 & Audrey Scholars

Audrey, WordPress

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first release of WordPress. None of us knew what we were getting into when it started, but we had a shared conviction that the four freedoms of the GPL combined with a mission to democratize publishing was something worth spending our time on. There will be celebrations in cities around the world, please join if there’s one happening near you.

Twenty years later, I am proud and humbled by what the community around WordPress has created, and jazzed about what we will create in the coming decades.

I’m also excited to mark this milestone by publicly launching the Audrey Scholars program. It is, like all things, an experiment, but I’m curious to see how it unfolds and perhaps one day an Audrey Scholar could even take the responsibility of leading WordPress, when my capacity to do so has passed.

Sonic Sphere and Empyrean Gate

Audrey, Personal

If I had to pick one reason why I’d suggest every person should attend Burning Man at least once, it would be the art. (Second reason would be seeing the principles in action.) This year I am particularly excited to support two pieces, the first being the Sonic Sphere which has this great video introducing it:

I got a chance to try out a smaller prototype of this and it was a great experience. You can read a bit about the history of the Kugel Auditorium that this is based on on Ed Cooke’s blog post Which is more memorable, a Bitcoin or a Spherical Concert Hall? The Sphere will be in Deep Playa (what3words).

Another exciting new project is the Empyrean Gate at the Entheos camp, which will be at 3 and Esplanade. Here are some renderings but I can’t wait to see how it turns out in person.

Autonomous and Beautiful Home Devices

Audrey, Personal

Of all the smart home upgrades I’ve made, replacing all my regular smoke detectors with Nest Protects (Google’s smoke detector) has been the one that I regret the most.

I don’t really need a smart smoke detector. It doesn’t need to talk, connect to wifi, and cost hundreds of dollars. I don’t need it integrated with my Google account which is impossible to share, so I need to be personally involved to replace one.

But other smoke detectors are just so unsightly, and the Nest is light years ahead of the competition from a design standpoint.

There’s such an opportunity for something that looks as good as the Nest, but doesn’t require two-factor authentication to replace. I didn’t want to call it dumb but beautiful, so let’s say “autonomous and beautiful” appliances and home devices. I still want it to be smart, but if you’re going to have the risk profile of a device that connects to the internet, it needs to be worth it, like Brilliant, Sonos, smart TVs, or connected cameras.

I’m becoming more wary of any hardware that requires an app, just because of the natural decay of non-SaaS and non-open source software. Van Moof bikes are beautiful, but will they still connect well when iOS 24 is out and Bluetooth has been removed from iPhones for security reasons?

Automattic’s Series D

Audrey, Automattic, WordPress

Today Automattic announced it has closed a new $300 million Series D, with Salesforce Ventures taking the entire round. This puts us at a post-round valuation of $3 billion, three times what it was after our last fundraising round in 2014. It’s a tremendous vote of confidence for Automattic and for the open web.

I met Marc Benioff earlier this year, and it became obvious to both of us that Salesforce and Automattic shared a lot of principles and philosophies. Marc is a mindful leader and his sensibilities and sense of purpose feel well aligned with our own mission to make the web a better place. He also helped open my eyes to the incredible traction WordPress and WP VIP has seen in the enterprise market, and how much potential there still is there. I’ve also loved re-connecting with Bret Taylor who is now Salesforce’s President and Chief Product Officer. Bret’s experience across Google Maps, Friendfeed, Facebook, Quip, and now transforming Salesforce makes him one of the singular product thinkers out there and our discussion of Automattic’s portfolio of services have been very helpful already.

For Automattic, the funding will allow us to accelerate our roadmap (perhaps by double) and scale up our existing products—including WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and (in a few days when it closes) Tumblr. It will also allow us to increase investing our time and energy into the future of the open source WordPress and Gutenberg.

The Salesforce funding is also a vote of confidence for the future of work. Automattic has grown to more than 950 employees working from 71 countries, with no central office for several years now. Distributed work is going to reshape how we spread opportunity more equitably around the world. There continue to be new heights shown of what can be achieved in a distributed fashion, with Gitlab announcing a round at $2.75B earlier this week.

Next year Automattic celebrates 15 years as a company! The timing is fortuitous as we’ve all just returned from Automattic’s annual Grand Meetup, where more than 800 of us got together in person to share our experiences, explore new ideas, and have some fun. I am giddy to work alongside these wonderful people for another 15 years and beyond.

If you’re curious my previous posts on our fundraising, here’s our 2006 Series A, 2008 Series B, 2013 secondary, and 2014 Series C. As before, happy to answer questions in the comments here. I also did an exclusive interview with Romain Dillet on (WP-powered) Techcrunch.

What’s in My Bag, 2018 Edition

Audrey, In My Bag, Personal
  1. SDR Kashmir Travel Folio, made with this super-cool material called Dyneema, which is twice as strong as Kevlar and 15 times as strong as steel, but virtually weightless.
  2. Garmin Forerunner 935 which is a triathlon watch, so it can tell me how much I don’t run, how much I don’t bike, and how much I don’t swim. Crazy sensors on it, and it’s lighter than an Apple Watch, which I tried again to use this year but wasn’t able to handle another device in my life that I had to charge daily. It has a weird charger, pictured next to it, but only needs charging once every few weeks so I don’t mind at all.
  3. This is the latest 15” grey touchbar MacBook Pro, customized by Uncover to have the Jetpack logo on it. I like the keyboard quietness and performance improvements of latest generation.
  4. Fit Pack 2 from Aer is the same I wrote a whole blog post about last year, and I still love and adore it every day. They have a few bigger and smaller packs, but the quality is just fantastic and I love all the pockets. Mine is starting to tear a little bit by one of the shoulder straps, but I do keep ~18lbs in it regularly.
  5. This is a grey wool buff, which works as a scarf, a hat, or an eye cover if I’m trying to sleep. I tried this out because of one of Tynan’s also-great gear posts.
  6. Passport, because you never know when you’ll need to leave the country.
  7. Kindle Oasis with this random case on it. I dig that this one is apparently waterproof — which I’ve never tested — but doesn’t feel like we’ve found the perfect size and weight balance yet. Reading is my favorite activity right now so this is my most-loved item.
  8. Imazing 10k charger. Great capacity, charges via USB-C. (2nd year)
  9. I’ve started carrying around some stationery so I can write notes to people when I’m on the road. Now I just need better handwriting…
  10. Delfonics is a funky-cool Japanese stationery, and this 3”x4” Rollbahn notebook is tops, and actually fits in my pocket. The Amazon one linked might be larger, I found it at Paper-Ya on Granville Island.
  11. A small leather bracelet I got in Seoul, Korea.
  12. Two things here: a rolled-up chamois cloth for cleaning glasses, inspired by my late friend Dean, and a WordPress ring I wear sometimes.
  13. Three pens here: A cool customized one we did for Automatticians; a Lamy Accent 4pen which has red, blue, black, and a mechanical pencil built in; a Sharpie for signing stuff.
  14. Have gone away from the carbon fiber clip and now using this small Paul Smith card wallet.
  15. Apple Magic Mouse 2. When this one breaks I’ll switch it out for a black one.
  16. Charger for the MacBook Pro.
  17. A super small international adapter, which is also nice for converting the 3-prong in the next item into a 2-prong. It’s Lenmar but I’m not going to link Amazon because they’re charging too much, just picked up in an airport store.
  18. Probably my favorite new item of the year: I have given Native Union a hard time in the past but super love this combo extension cord and USB charger. It is an 8-foot extension cord, which is remarkably handy, has two AC outlets, 3 USB ports, and one USB-C. Total life-saver.
  19. A dyneema accessory pouch, retaW aoyama / tokyo fragrance lipcream, Aveda Peppymint breath refresher, Aesop Ginger Flight Therapy roller, a spray hand cleanser, and Mintia COLDSMASH.
  20. District Vision makes these these running sunglasses in Japan, which I found at the Snow Peak store in NYC.
  21. These sunglasses are a collaboration between Salt and Aether.
  22. A single-use packet of Sriracha. Hot sauce in your bag? Swag.
  23. A palo santo smudge stick, smells great when you burn it. I’m turning into a hippie.
  24. Hermes business card holder.
  25. iPhone XS with a Jetpack Popsocket.
  26. Pixel 2, now replaced by a Pixel 3 XL.
  27. This is a bag with some small opals I gave as a Burning Man gift.
  28. iPad Pro 10.5 and Apple sleeve with Pencil holder, which is still one of my favorite gadgets of the year. Everything about this device just works and is a pleasure to use, and I’ve already ordered the new 11″ Pro and related accessories.
  29. Half meter (the perfect size) lightning cable.
  30. Apple USB-C dongle.
  31. Cool multi-function USB cable with lightning, two micro-USBs, and USB-C. I give these away all the time now and it’s nice to pair with the battery in #8 because I know I can charge anybody with this thing.
  32. Short USB-C.
  33. Combo micro-USB and Lightning.
  34. Short lightning cable, just like 29.
  35. Velcro cable ties, great for tidying pretty much anything. I just take a few out of the big pack and roll them up to travel with.
  36. Retractable USB-C, don’t love these as they break but it’s the best of what’s out there.
  37. USB-C to Lightning, great for super-fast charging.
  38. My favorite USB-C hub so far, the Satechi Aluminum Type-C Multimedia Adapter with 4K HDMI, Mini DP, USB-C PD, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, Micro/SD Card Slots. Pretty much everything you could possibly need.
  39. A pretty handy Ventev dashport car port charger that’s small and light. (2nd year)
  40. A few spare SIM cards, some SD cards, thingy to poke SIM card holder, and combo USB-C / USB-A 64gb stick.
  41. Lockpick set. (4th year)
  42. Bragi Pro custom earphones. For many years I had custom in-ear monitors, but the convenience of wireless overcame that, even before they started taking headphone jacks out of phones. Bragi now allows you to send in ear molds from an audiologist and they’ll make these custom true wireless headphones that fit and sound great, but I have trouble recommending because the case is so heavy and once got so jammed I almost thought I’d have to throw the whole thing away, and the app has never been able to “connect” for me because it gets stuck on turning on some fitness sensors. If it could connect I think I could turn off the other feature that is annoying, which is the touch controls that I find get triggered by my hat or when my head is against a chair. So, a qualified “maybe try this.”
  43. Sennheiser Culture Series Wideband Headset, which I use for podcasts, Skype, Facetime, Zoom, and Google Hangout calls with external folks and teams inside of Automattic. Light, comfortable, great sound quality, and great at blocking out background noise so you don’t annoy other people on the call. I’d love to replace this with something wireless but haven’t found one with as high fidelity audio.
  44. GL.iNet GL-AR750 Travel AC Router which I use to create wifi networks different places I go, which is often faster than hotel/etc wifi, and I can also VPN encrypt all my traffic through it. Pretty handy! But not user-friendly. Often keep it in my suitcase and not my backpack. I have a retractable Ethernet and micro-USB attached to it.
  45. Matte black Airpods. I love Airpods and these look super cool, I think these were from BlackPods which looks shut down now but Colorware has some alternatives. (2nd year)
  46. Westone ES49 custom earplugs, for if I go to concerts or anyplace overly loud. (4th year)
  47. An ultralight running jacket I think I got at Lululemon Lab in Vancouver. They don’t have anything like it available online right now but it folds up ultra-tiny, weighs nothing, and is a nice layer for on an airplane. My only complaint (as with all Lululemon products) is the low quality of the zipper. (2nd year)

That’s it for this year. As a bonus I’ll link some of my favorite other-bag items including toiletries: Muji dopp kit bag, these amazing travel bottles for creams, travel atomizer, Elysium Basis, Muji q-tips, Aesop Two Minds Facial Hydrator, Sunleya Sun Care SPF 15, folding brush / comb, Philips Sonicare Brush, Aesop toothpaste, Tom’s SLS-free toothpaste, Orabrush cleaner.

If you’re curious, here are the previous years: 2014, 2016, 2017.

If you have any questions please leave them in the comments!

What’s in My Bag, 2017 edition

Audrey, In My Bag

I am a road warrior who has racked up several million miles over the past decade, and since I’m also working more-than-full-time running Automattic (a totally distributed company) and leading WordPress I need the ability to be productive wherever I can find a comfortable place to sit. I carry a backpack with me almost all the time and obsessively tweak and iterate what’s in it, which led to posts in 2014 and 2016. This is the latest edition, and I hope you enjoy it.

  1. This is a grey wool buff, which works as a scarf, a hat, or an eye cover if I’m trying to sleep. I tried this out because of one of Tynan’s also-great gear posts.
  2. Theraband resistance band, which I aspirationally carry around to help stretch in the morning. Hat tip: Jesse Schwartzman of this blog post fame.
  3. Some generic Maui Jim polarized sunglasses with rubber nose pads, which I like for running or hiking because they don’t move around or slip even when you’re hot.
  4. Tzukuri “Ford” + charger, a super-cool Audrey company that is like a combination of a Tile and cool sunglasses. They connect via bluetooth to your phone and can notify you when you leave them behind, or use the app to locate them. A charge lasts 30 days. I think this is only available in Australia right now, but should be coming to other countries soon. (Or just buy them on vacation in Australia.) These replaced my fancy Maison Bonnet sunglasses.
  5. Westone ES49 custom earplugs, for if I go to concerts or anyplace overly loud. (3rd year)
  6. A Tile, which was a gift from my sister. I keep this in a pocket in my backpack and it helps me locate it if I lose it, or if I can’t find my phone I can press the button and it’ll make it beep. Surprisingly handy. Hat tip: Charleen.
  7. Hermes business card holder. (3rd year)
  8. A cut-out of a chamois cloth, which I use for cleaning smudges and such off glasses and screens. Mine is from Amazon but you can get at any car place or Walmart, use this guide to prepare, and then cut pieces off. Hat tip: Dean.
  9. Airpods. These are just fantastic, and I highly recommend them. I use them for calls, podcasts, audiobooks, meditating, Duolingo… they’ve become an essential daily product for me. A cool trick is to use one ear while the other is charging in the “floss” case. Hat tip: Jony.
  10. Bose QuietComfort 35, wireless bluetooth headphones. I misplaced my cool WordPress Sennheisers and picked these up in an airport before a long flight. They’re extremely comfortable, great battery life, and I keep an audio splitter and Lightning audio adapter in the case. I’ve hated on Bose many times in the past, but these are decent and I get why people like them, especially the comfort aspect. I am listening to them as I write this. I used Audeze EL-8 Titanium for a while, which obviously sound better, but the lightning cable was unwieldy and it was annoying (and ridiculous) I couldn’t plug them into my laptop. Hat tip: Every airport electronics store.
  11. Jabra Sport Pace bluetooth earbuds, which replaced my Powerbeats for running and working out. They have been way sturdier. Pretty inexpensive, too, right now about $60. I know in theory you can run with Airpods, but I’d be too scared of one going down a street drain.
  12. Cool carbon fiber money clip, which I use to hold a little cash for places like street vendors that don’t take credit cards, or if I’m in another country and need to carry around currency. The site is a little sketchy, they should upgrade to WooCommerce. Also pictured: The EasyPay XPress NYC Metro Card, which is super handy in New York as it auto-refills. Only downside is it doesn’t work on the PATH trains. Hat tip: Tynan and Rose.
  13. Vapur Shades roll-up water bottle. Can hold a full liter, and rolls up to be small like this. Kind of new so I don’t have a strong opinion yet. Hat tip: Lululemon Lab in Vancouver.
  14. Fidget spinner, I think this one is from Amazon. Try one of these if you haven’t yet, they’re surprisingly addictive. If you go over to 14 on the left you’ll see a custom metal one a friend made for me. Hat tips: Zach and Xa.
  15. Apple Magic Mouse 2. A classic. (3rd year)
  16. This is the latest Lululemon Para backpack, and unlike last year’s Cruiser it’s currently available in stores and online. I dig this iteration: it has a little less padding on the shoulders, but the big front zipper pocket is super handy and in general it’s a lot more streamlined and water resistant. Om clued me in to a similar one from Aer, I don’t know who designed it first. Hat tip: Rose.
  17. So… there are two laptops, a custom prototype 13″ Automattic-logo Macbook touchbar, and the stickered 15″. I generally only travel with one of these, the 13″ for shorter trips or the 15″ if I’m going to be on the road for more than a few weeks. The performance is just better on the 15″. My favorite things about both are the 4 USB-C ports, that you can charge on any of them, and the Touch ID. (Automatticians after 4 years of tenure can get a custom Macbook, which we now offer with the WordPress, Automattic, or Jetpack logo. I usually get the test ones to make sure the quality is up to snuff.) I carry around the larger 87W brick from the 15″, and keep the extension cable now so it’s easier to plug in on those weak plugs on planes.
  18. Kindle Oasis. I still love the Kindle. I’ve started listening to audiobooks this year and the integration with Audible is cool. The Oasis is great because of the real buttons and the fact that you can flip it to hold in either hand, but it’s been the most annoying model in a few generations because the screen brightness isn’t adaptive, and it gives “low battery” warnings when the extra battery cover is low but the actual device is not, which seems to defeat the purpose. Great form factor and ergonomics though.
  19. Passport, because you never know when you’ll need to leave the country.
  20. A pocket-sized Baron Fig notebook, which I use in meetings to avoid my phone. Hat tip: Rose.
  21. Google Pixel. Best Android phone I’ve used, uses USB-C which I love, I love the size. I use this mostly for testing and staying current on Android, or as a backup. I use Google Fi for service on this one.
  22. Forerunner 735, charger, and heart rate strap. I actually switched to the 935 since this picture was taken, but my notes apply to both. (Here’s a great review of the new 935.) Garmin makes the best fitness smartwatches in the world right now. Aspects are clunky: the app is not the most elegant, the add-on watch faces and such leave something to be desired, the sleep tracking is way worse than Fitbit, and there is no fine-grained control over notifications. That said, the battery life goes 8-10 days (!) so I often don’t even bring the charger when I travel. The stats are unparalleled especially for running. It’s waterproof and can also track swimming and biking. Finally my favorite feature: the screen is always on. I know that sounds basic, but I have been driven crazy by years of Fitbit and Apple Watch require tapping or wrist gesticulations just to see the time. (Extra awkward in a meeting.) My hardcore fitness friends love this one too. Hat tip: Aaron.
  23. Three little fun personal care items: a great chapstick from Japan I don’t know what it’s called, but it says retaW aoyama / tokyo fragrance lipcream on it, Aveda Peppymint breath refresher, and an Aesop Ginger Flight Therapy roller similar to the Blue Oil one from last year. Hat tip Esther, Naoko, and my mom.
  24. Belkin car mount, really handy when renting a car and navigating around. (3rd year)
  25. This is a more-expensive but not-better version of what I had last year, which I’ll quote and actually recommend: “This is probably the least-travel-friendly thing I travel with, but the utility is so great I put up with it. It’s the Sennheiser Culture Series Wideband Headset, which I use for podcasts, Skype, Facetime, Zoom, and Google Hangout calls with external folks and teams inside of Automattic. Light, comfortable, great sound quality, and great at blocking out background noise so you don’t annoy other people on the call. Worth the hassle.” I leave the USB-C adapter attached to this. Cable still annoys me.
  26. iPhone 7 Plus, on Verizon, with a Bellroy 3-card case. If you’re a guy I highly recommend trying out a phone wallet case, it’s a game-changer to only have one thing to keep track of and not having a wallet in your back pocket is good to avoid getting misaligned. I have three cards in it, an Amex, a Visa, and my drivers license. In NYC I also squeeze in the Metrocard. Hat tip: Craig (a previous Bellroy model).
  27. The Japanese company Maruman makes this awesome grid-paper lie-flat notebook, which I fill and occasionally draw in. I love this thing, and having a work area where I can have my laptop, mouse, iPad, and this notebook all set up next to each other is my happy place. The paper is soft. Hat tip: Brian.
  28. 9.7″ iPad Pro + smart keyboard cover on AT&T. I didn’t expect to, but I really love this device. It gives me way more joy than my phone or my laptops. Gorgeous screen, long battery life, always connect, I can tether to it, write on it with the pen in 32, the keyboard is fast and silent, split screen is handy… I don’t know how to describe it. Like the Airpods, this product just excels in every area. I still have and need to use a laptop, but it’s less of my day and mostly because of some internal tools and security stuff we have.
  29. I ended up with this beast Cable Matters USB-c mega-dongle to cover ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and old USB. Warning! To use the ethernet on MacOS you need weird drivers. Hat tip: Amy.
  30. I’m not sure why I started using this Plantronics Voyager bluetooth headset, but it’s really good. This might not make the cut next year as the Airpods are pretty good, but if I’m going to be on a regular (non-Facetime) phone or conference call for a few hours, this is what I turn to. Hat tip: An Uber driver.
  31. Lockpick set. (3rd year)
  32. An awesome Hobonichi Techo pen (they have cool notebooks too), a sharpie (for signing fans’ items), and Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro.
  33. Two rings: one Margiela one which has my lucky number 11 circled (for a long reason related to their numbering system), and one with the WordPress logo that was also a swag prototype for a ten-year tenure gift. I might wear these to remind me of something I’m trying to remember or focus on during a day.
  34. I’m digging this Imazing 10k charger: it’s a cool color, smaller and lighter than last year’s, has a USB-C port, and outputs well. I found I never needed the 20k capacity of last year’s, hence the downsize to 10k.
  35. This Aukey 30W / 6A travel wall charger I wish was all USB-C ports. I sometimes trickle-charge the laptop off this overnight.
  36. A really mediocre Native Union two-port USB I got from TED. Not going to link since it’s not very good because of the way it plugs in. Since the photo I replaced it with the much-more-useful Aukey 2-port, which I highly recommend and give away all the time.
  37. A pretty handy Ventev dashport car port charger that’s small and light. I found myself rarely using the USB-C on last year’s so I opted for smaller size and less weight in this one.
  38. Mintia mints from Japan, yum. (I buy these there or ask friends to bring them back, they are much cheaper there than the cost on Amazon.)
  39. This rat’s nest of cables and adapters is embarrassing, and I will further apologize and rant in the epilogue.
  40. A random used mystery book I picked up at the Paper Hound Bookshop in Vancouver.

What blows me away making this list is that since last year almost every single item has changed, unusually high churn. I see now why y’all were tweeting me to update this post.

Two bonus items: Even in the summer I’ll often have something like this light Lululemon running jacket stuffed in a pocket for over air conditioned places or at the end of a flight when it gets chilly. I’m also currently testing out the assisted meditation device The Muse, but it hasn’t really stuck yet and I usually just turn to Calm.

Ensuring network continuity: One thing you’ll notice is the iPhone is on Verizon, which has the best network in the US, the iPad is on AT&T, and the Pixel is on Google Fi. This allows me to have a diversity of network access which is occasionally handy in the US and has saved my butt a few times when overseas. Whichever device has the best connection I’ll just tether the others to it. I almost never join coffee shop or hotel wifi these days, a good LTE connection is usually better.

USB-C Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Oh, USB-C, I love you. You’re reversible, fast, and work for everything, like I can charge my laptop with almost anything, and many new devices like Google Wifi use you for power. The dangerous cable on Amazon thing seems to have worked itself out, and having 4 ports on the laptop is amazing, I can charge everything I need off it. But as you can see from the mess of cables and how many other legacy USB things I’m carrying around, we’re (still!) in this really awkward in-between phase for computing. First, there are no good retractable cables, especially ones that have USB-C on one end and Lightning or Micro-USB on the other. I wish my headset, headphones, sunglasses, and Kindle didn’t need Micro-USB, and I wish the Airpods, iPhone, iPad Pro, Magic Mouse would just give up on Lightning and support USB-C instead. But we’re in this liminal space, and the number one thing I hope is better by next year’s post is that the USB-C accessory world has flourished and I just have a couple of neat retractable USB-C cables and things like the battery, wall charger, and car charger in 34, 35, and 37 just have all USB-C ports. A boy can dream, right?

In Closing

Partly because the backpack is a little smaller, I’ve really tried to streamline and a lot of things from last year, like a small digital camera, the Chromecasts, travel router, etc I don’t bother carrying around in my backpack anymore. I hope these can get simpler and shorter every year. I tagged these with an affiliate ID for Amazon this year but mostly just to see if anyone actually buys stuff from these posts. I walk millions of steps a year with my backpack and wouldn’t carry something around unless I really believed in it, which is also why I’m always testing and trying new things. As you can tell a lot of this kit has evolved from recommendations, so if you have any please leave a note in the comments. I’ve also considered doing something similar for shoes, clothes, apps, suitcases, or toiletries, so holler if you’d like any of those. Alrighty, that’s it until next year!

What’s in My Bag, 2016 edition

Audrey, In My Bag

Many people have been requesting an update to my what’s in my bag post from last year. Almost every single item in the bag has changed, this year has had particularly high turnover. We’re still in a weird teenage period of USB-C adoption, and I hope by next year to have many fewer non-USB-C or Lightning cables. Things with a asterisk * are the same from last year. Without further ado:

  1. This is my favorite item of the new year, a Lululemon Cruiser backpack that has a million pockets both inside and outside, and allows me to carry more stuff, more comfortably, and access it faster. Lululemon updates their products and designs every few months, but if you ever spot something like this online or in the store check it out. Hat tip on this one to Rose.
  2. A short Lightning + micro USB cable, which is great for pairing with a battery pack. I sometimes carry a few of these around and give them away all the time, as “do you have a light?” has evolved to “do you have a charge?” in the new millenium.
  3. Short regular USB to USB-C cable.
  4. Belkin Retractable Ethernet. *
  5. Anker USB-C to USB-C cable. Make sure to read the reviews when you buy these to get the ones that do the proper voltage. I can charge a Macbook with this, and the new Nexus 5x, directly from the battery pack or the #43 wall charger.
  6. Mini-USB cable, which I use for the odd older device (like a Nikon camera) that still does mini-USB (that older big one). Would love to get rid of this one.
  7. A charge cable for #45, the Fitbit Charge HR. You can buy these cheap on Amazon, and if you lose it you’re out of luck, so I usually keep a few at home and one in my bag.
  8. This is my goldilocks regular lightning cable, not too long and not too short, 0.5m.
  9. A retractable micro-USB.
  10. Apple Magic Mouse 2, the new one that charges via Lightning, natch.
  11. Way over to the right, a small Muji notebook.
  12. This is a weird but cool cable, basically bridges USB to Norelco shavers. I use a Norelco beard trimmer and for some reason all of these companies think we want to carry around proprietary chargers, this is a slightly unwieldy cable but better than carrying around the big Norelco power brick.
  13. Lockpick set. *
  14. Lavender mint organic lip balm from Honest Co, which I think I got for free somewhere.
  15. Aesop rosehip seed lip cream, which I bought mostly for the smell, when it’s done I’ll probably switch to their lip balm. (I should do a cosmetics version of this for my dopp kit, it’s had lots of trial and error as well.) I love Aesop, especially their Resurrection line.
  16. Aveda Blue Oil that I find relaxing. *
  17. Short thunderbolt to thunderbolt cable, which is great for transferring between computers. *
  18. Muji international power adapter, much simpler, lighter, and cooler than what I used before.
  19. Way on the top right, this is probably the least-travel-friendly thing I travel with, but the utility is so great I put up with it. It’s the Sennheiser Culture Series Wideband Headset, which I use for podcasts, Skype, Facetime, Zoom, and Google Hangout calls with external folks and teams inside of Automattic. Light, comfortable, great sound quality, and great at blocking out background noise so you don’t annoy other people on the call. Worth the hassle.
  20. A customized Macbook Pro 15″, in space grey, with the WordPress logo that shines through.
  21. Belkin car mount, which is great for rentals. *
  22. A USB 3.0 SD / CompactFlash / etc reader.
  23. microSD to SD adapter, with a 64gb micro SD in it. Good for cameras, phones, and occasionally transferring files. Can be paired with the card reader if the computer has a USB port but not a SD reader. When you get a microSD card it usually comes with this.
  24. One of my new favorite things: DxO One camera. It’s a SLR-quality camera that plugs in directly to the lightning port on your iPhone, and can store the photos directly on your phone. Photo quality is surprisingly good, the only problem I’ve had with it is the lightning port pop-up will no longer close. The other similar device I tried but wasn’t as good was the Olympus Air A01, so I just carry around the DxO now.
  25. TP-LINK TL-WR702N Wireless N150 Travel Router, which works so-so. Not sure why I still carry this, haven’t used it in a while. *
  26. Aukey car 49.5W 3-port USB adapter, which has two high-powered USB ports and a Quick Charge 3.0 USB-C port.
  27. My favorite external battery right now, the RAVPower 20100mAh Portable Charger, also with Quick Charge 3.0 and a USB-C port. This thing is a beast, can charge a USB-C Macbook too.
  28. Kindle Voyage with the brown leather cover. *
  29. Macbook power adapter.
  30. Very cool Sennheiser Momentum Wireless headphones in ivory,customized with the WordPress logo. I’m testing this out as a possible gift for Automatticians when they reach a certain number of years at the company. For a fuller review, see this post.
  31. Cotopaxi water bottle that I got for free at the Summit at Sea conference. The backpack has a handy area to carry a water bottle, and I’ve become a guy who refills water bottles at the airport instead of always buying disposable ones.
  32. Special cord for the #30 Momentum headphones.
  33. Retractable 1/8th inch audio cable. *
  34. Powerbeats 2 Wireless headphones that I use for running, working out, or just going around the city.
  35. Belkin headphone splitter, for sharing audio when watching a movie on a plane. *
  36. Chromecast audio, which I’ve never used but it’s so small and light I carry it around just in case.
  37. Chromecast TV, which I’ve also never used but also small and light and I’m sure it’ll come in handy one of these days.
  38. Verizon iPhone 6s+, which is normal, but the new thing here is I’ve stopped carrying a wallet, and a separate phone case, and now carry this big ‘ol Sena Heritage Wallet Book. At first I felt utterly ridiculous doing this as it feels GINORMOUS at first, but after it wore in a little bit, and I got used to it, it’s so freeing to only have one thing to keep track of, and it’s also forced me to carry a lot less than I used to in my wallet.
  39. Maison Bonnet sunglasses. Hat tip to Tony.
  40. Stickers! Wapuu and Slack.
  41. Bucky eye shades, like an eye mask but has a curve so it doesn’t touch your eyes. I don’t use this often but when I do it’s a life-saver. *
  42. My favorite USB wall plug, after trying dozens, is this Aukey 30W / 6A travel wall charger. I love the foldable plug, and it’s really fast.
  43. I generally only have one wall charger, but temporarily carrying around this Tronsmart 33W USB-C + USB charger with Quick Charge 3.0, which can very quickly charge the battery or the Nexus, and a Macbook in a pinch. Hopefully will combine this and #42 sometime this year. One thing I really dislike about this item is the bright light on it, which I need to cover with tape.
  44. The only pill / vitamin / anything I take every day: Elysium Health Basis. I’m not an expert or a doctor, but read up on them and the research around it, pretty interesting stuff.
  45. Fitbit Charge HR. I gave up on my Apple Watch. I’ll probably try the Fitbit watch when it comes out. My favorite feature is the sleep tracking. Least favorite is the retro screen, and that it doesn’t always show the time.
  46. Double-sided sharpie (thick and thin point) and a Muji pen.
  47. Westone ES49 custom earplugs, for if I go to concerts or anyplace overly loud. *
  48. Some index cards, good for brainstorming.
  49. Passport. * As Mia Farrow said about Frank Sinatra, “I learned to bring my passport to dinner.”
  50. Jetpack notebook, I like to have a paper notebook to take notes, especially in group or product meetings, because there isn’t the distraction of a screen.
  51. Nexus 5x, which is definitely one of the better Android devices I’ve had, paired with Google Project Fi phone / data service, which has saved me thousands of dollars with its $10/gb overseas data pricing. Since my iPhone is so huge, I tried to go for a smaller Android device. I always travel with both in case something happens to one phone, for network diversity, and as I said this has better international data pricing than Verizon.
  52. Business card holder. *
  53. Post-it notes.

All in all 13 items stayed the same, the other 40 are new to this edition.

That’s a wrap, folks! If you have any questions or suggestions please drop them in the comments. Once my no-buying-things moratorium for Lent is over I can start trying new things out again.

Update 2016-03-26: A few people have asked how much the bag weighs with all of this stuff in it. I didn’t weigh it at the time of the photo, but at the airport the other day I put it on the luggage scale and it came in at 16 pounds, which is probably close enough. The pockets on the Lululemon backpack distribute the “stuff” pretty well and it doesn’t feel heavy at all, and doesn’t stick out too far on my back.

Mobile web and mobile in-app behaviour are not binary. When users are in the facebook app, they spend a tremendous amount of time accessing the mobile web through facebook’s own in-app browser. The same for twitter and others. We enter social apps for discovery and then access the mobile web while still in-app. It is a mistake to conflate time spent on the mobile web with time spent in a traditional browser.

Amen. Tony Haile of Chartbeat: A correction around the death of the mobile web.

When Kara Goldin started putting fruit in her water 10 years ago, she had no idea that she had stumbled upon a business idea that would eventually lead to the creation of a new category in the beverage industry, grow to a 40 million dollar company, and help her lose over 25 pounds in the process.

Cool interview with Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint Water, which I drink 3-4 of a day and is also an Audrey company.

Merchbar is an iPhone app that makes it easy to buy merchandise from your favorite artists. It also was the first investment I made through my Angellist Syndicate, and I’m excited for the team on its launch. (Although it’s good to remember that launching is a halfway point — you should expect to spend at least as much time as you did leading up to launch to get to something you’re happy with. Something I’m thinking about a lot in Automattic these days.)

SmartThings & Samsung

Audrey, Tech, , ,

SmartThings announced (on their WP-powered blog) that they’re joining forces with Samsung to continue working on their mission of becoming an operating system for your home. I’m both an investor and a fan of the company, which I even let take over my home in SF earlier this year for CNN. As a tinkerer most of what I do with SmartThings so far is relatively basic, I feel like it’s still the very early days of the platform and what’s going to come down the line. Samsung makes so much technology (and appliances, and TVs, and…) I can’t wait to see how they open it up and connect. I also wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate other Audrey companies Divide which joined Google and Creative Market which joined Autodesk earlier in 2014. I wasn’t as good about blogging before and didn’t get a chance to publicly congratulate those teams.

Exploring Ubiquiti

Audrey, Essays

I was looking for something else when I stumbled across a little $95 router that claimed it could do 1M packets per second, multi-WAN, was tiny, and had 80 5-star reviews. Huh? The reviews had some left-handed compliments (“for advanced users only”) but one mentioned getting hooked on the company’s other products as well. Next thing I know I’m looking at a $67 access point that has everyone raving about its range and extensibility. These things were too cheap — my assumption was it was a Chinese OEM like Zyxel that makes novel but ultimately not the best quality products.

At this point I should confess I’m a bit of a consumer networking geek — it’s a hobby of mine. I really enjoy upgrading people’s routers so they have better range in parts of the house they didn’t before, getting them a DOCSIS 3.0 modem so their connection is faster (and buying it so they don’t pay an exorbitant rental fee to their cable company), everything about Sonos, hooking up an Airport Express to Sonos so you can Airplay things, showing how you can set up two APs with the same SSID and clients will just connect to whatever they’re closest to, you don’t need each one to have a unique SSID, you can give the 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks the same SSID, Time Machine for backups, setting up failover internet with multiple connections or a USB LTE stick… I redo all my home stuff about once every 18 months, and then take the best of what I’ve learned and set up friends. I’m constantly updating firmware. My current best practice setup is Sonos for all audio, usually streaming from Spotify or SiriusXM, a Peplink Balance One router, Netgear Nighthawk R9000 access points (though I liked the ASUS AC66U just as much), if I need a switch I’ll go for a higher-end managed one that support spanning tree protocol (STP) properly because otherwise the way the Sonos does bridging can spaz out and overload your network, Nest themostat and smoke detectors, Smartthings for everything else. I’m waiting for August for smart locks.

At the Automattic office we run Meraki, which was pretty solid until we upgraded to the MR34 to get 802.11AC, but it’s expensive, and you need to subscribe to a per-device yearly license fee for everything to work. They also have a great WP-powered blog, and generally the cleanest site of anyone out there. That said, they’re impossible to buy without going through a terrible reseller, so I’ve never been able to justify using it at home.

Back to Ubiquiti. First I come across their forums/community sites, which are ugly and sprawling and full of amazing info from people who do wireless deployments across all of the top companies like Aruba, Ruckus, Aerohive, Xirrus, Meraki. You see people making builds for alternative UPNP packages and that going into their core release months later. (Everything is Debian based, from what I can tell.) The company is based in San Jose that went public a few years ago, and is now worth about 3.7B, and the founder (formerly of Apple) bought the Memphis Grizzlies. They seem to have gotten their start with long-haul point-to-point wireless radios that can go dozens of kilometers, which makes sense why their APs would be known for their range. You can buy direct from them, or like I mentioned most of their stuff is available on Amazon. And it’s inexpensive! Even Ubiquiti’s AC product, which is $300, is much, much cheaper than the Meraki MR34 which costs $1,400 and requires a yearly license or it stops working.

Plus they make these wonderfully cheesy product promo videos:

Normally I wouldn’t post about something until I’ve tried it in-person, but I was excited to find this whole new (to me) world of high-performance, reasonable-cost devices. John Pozazidides, long-time WP community member, did an overview of the Unifi devices on Youtube. At Automattic our once-a-year grand meetup is coming up in Utah, and every year wireless is an issue, especially the first day or two. I ordered some of the Ubiquiti equipment to test when I’m in Houston next week, looking forward to playing around with it.

Any Ma.tt readers with experience with any of these or big WLAN deployments?