Friction Logs

Apparently, friction logs are a thing. And it is embarrassing, especially as someone who tests a lot of apps, that I did not know of this term.

So, ah, well, I do friction logs. And honestly, I do them pretty well. So well, that I also do friction logs as a service, look at Scratches and Scribbles – Friction Logs as a Service.

General Purpose Apps

My Month with Superlist - The Good, The Bad, and The Wishlist: Superlist is the new contender on the block that aims to merge Todoist+Notion, or create a linear for personal projects.

The Horse Browser: A new browser that allows you to delve into areas organizing them into a tree like structure as you browse normally through links.

Texts vs. Beeper: The (App)solute Winner Is?: Texts (and) Beeper, the only two “all-in-one” messaging apps out there.

My Annoyances With Notion: I use Notion so much, that my appreciation and complaints about Notion are spread out through out this website. But this is a dump of my tiny “annoyances” with Notion.

Using val.town for the first time: Val.town has now been my go to cloud function platform of choice, for all those functions that take mere milliseconds to run, but you want them to run often.

Link Previews in Chrome using MaxFocus: This isn’t as much of a friction log, as it is a tips and explainer once I did figure this extension out. The extension replicates everything I loved about Arc’s link previews.

I used Leaflet: A new document writing app, made for ephemeral documents that supports nesting, formatting and does not have visible markdown.

I used Monarch Launcher: A kind of new kid on the block as a replacement for a Raycast Launcher which is developed by a single person and aims to do things much more intuitively I guess.

AI Apps

Jun 18, 2024: I decided to do “AI apps” friction logs. There are a few differences that come with AI based apps - they change quickly, they are “expected” to have multiple hitches, and the problems inherent to LLMs are mixed with how they are perceived as a whole. Hence, these would be all timestamped on my blog.

Was I influenced by all the tweets wanting there to be an MKBHD of AI apps? Yes. Do I think there cannot be an MKBHD of AI apps? No (kinda!), especially because there are no clear versions to review, something is always in beta or coming, and their design problems are intermingled with LLM problems.

Impel AI: Expect to be Unimpressed Jun 19, 2024: Nothing about this app is a good deal.

Voicenotes: Hitting Half of the Right Notes: An audio notes + retrieval app, which is pretty good for what it is, but still not all the way there. The UX and design feels and works really well though, and the AI part is thoughtfully integrated, making it one of the better apps out there

Down the Rabbit Hole

Apparently, given friction logs are a thing, you should check out these too: