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What the future of work means for productivity tools Sep 29, 2021

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For years, most productivity tools were the domain of power users and productivity whizzes, people willing to do the work to get more work done. (Or, in many cases, noodle endlessly in their to-do list app without ever actually accomplishing anything.) But over the past 18 months, those tools have become crucial to the work lives of people around the industry and the world. Colleagues can’t hash things out at lunch or around a computer, and bosses can’t check in on a project by walking down the hall. Everything had to be digital.

That transition forced people like Michael Pryor, the head of Trello at Atlassian, to rethink their tools. With new kinds of users coming into the system, Pryor said he and his team fundamentally re-imagined Trello’s place in the world — and built a framework for a new kind of productivity in a new era of work.

Pryor joined the Source Code podcast to talk about the new Trello, but also why work tools need to be more flexible, why too many collaboration apps fail, and why the future of work might involve VR headsets. Eventually.

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For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

Crypto crackdowns and fintech super apps Sep 26, 2021

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Ben Pimentel joins the show to discuss China’s aggressive moves against the crypto industry, Robinhood and Coinbase’s battle for crypto supremacy, and PayPal’s new financial super app. Then Tomio Geron explains what’s going on at Binance, and why the largest crypto exchange in the world is under so much regulatory scrutiny.

For more on the topics discussed in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

Facebook under fire Sep 21, 2021

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Issie Lapowsky, Ben Brody and Nick Statt join the show to discuss The Wall Street Journal’s five-part series of stories known as The Facebook Files. What have we learned about Facebook? How will Facebook respond? What should lawmakers make of it? What happens next?

Issie is ilapowsky@protocol.com, Ben is bbrody@protocol.com, Nick is nstatt@protocol.com, and David is dpierce@protocol.com.

For more on the topics discussed in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

Live: Creating the right culture for hybrid work Sep 19, 2021

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Bringing you another Protocol virtual event, hosted by Protocol's Alison Levitsky, diving into what it means to build a company and culture that's optimized for a hybrid future.

Is this the laptop of the future? Sep 15, 2021

Show notes

Nirav Patel spent a long time building cutting-edge hardware, both at Apple and at Oculus. But when he founded his own company, Framework, he picked a decidedly more mature (and maybe less exciting) product to focus on: PCs.

The Framework Laptop, the company’s first product, is a $999, 13.5-inch clamshell that looks and feels a lot like, well, every other laptop on the market. Except for the fact that you can take it apart, practically piece by piece, and repair or upgrade nearly everything inside. From the processor to the keyboard to the memory to the battery, Framework’s laptop is a vision for a future that gives users more control over their gadgets, and gives longer life to the gadgets themselves.

Patel joined the Source Code Podcast to discuss the journey of making the Framework Laptop, how the industry is changing thanks to right-to-repair laws and a societal turn toward conservation, the challenges faced by Framework and other companies making modular and upgradeable devices, and why the tech industry should be watching what’s happening in France.

For more on the topics discussed in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

The iPhone 13, AR, privacy and the future of Apple Sep 14, 2021

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It's Apple Day! Apple's September event is always its biggest and splashiest, so we grabbed Protocol's Nick Statt to talk about some of the biggest announcements, biggest surprises, and hottest takes on the future of Apple.

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Epic v. Apple, Facebook glasses and the Theranos trial Sep 12, 2021

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Ben Brody and Nick Statt join the show to talk about the ruling in Epic v. Apple, and what it means for the future of the app market. Then Janko Roettgers discusses the new Ray-Ban Stories, and what we should make of Facebook’s entry into the smart glasses world. Finally, Biz Carson talks about the first day of the Elizabeth Holmes trial, and what’s going to happen over the next 13 weeks.

For more on the topics discussed in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

Facebook’s crypto plans and crypto problems Sep 08, 2021

Show notes

In 2017, David Marcus wrote Mark Zuckerberg an email saying he thought Facebook should get involved in cryptocurrency. (He was on vacation at the time.) After a stint running PayPal and another as the head of Facebook Messenger, he thought that fixing payment infrastructure was the next big project he wanted to work on.

Zuckerberg liked the idea, which eventually became Libra, a cryptocurrency that Facebook announced in 2019 alongside a group of partners that would help it develop and govern Libra. Marcus and his new team, a group called Facebook Financial (F2 for short), was also set to work on a wallet called Calibra. The announcement went over like a lead balloon: Congressman Brad Sherman compared “Zuck Bucks” to 9/11, a number of members of the Libra Association quickly bailed on the project, and it seemed doomed before even launch. But Marcus and his team kept working.

Now, Libra is Diem and Calibra is Novi, and Marcus said both are nearly ready for public consumption. He joined the Source Code podcast to talk about how he has approached the cryptocurrency space, what it’ll take to get users to trust Facebook with their money, the merits of bitcoin and stablecoins, why NFTs are the start of something big, and much more.

For more on the topics in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

The low-code/no-code future of the internet Sep 01, 2021

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Zapier became a $5 billion company by finding ways to improve and integrate the rest of the trillion-dollar software industry. The service works with a plenitude of apps from Salesforce to Teams to Gmail to Zendesk to Stripe to Webflow to Quickbooks and hundreds of others, building bridges between them to make it easier to move data and automate workflows.

In the process, Zapier has also become one of the standard bearers of the low-code/no-code movement, one of a teeming new industry of companies offering tools to build apps and workflows without needing so much as a

tag. “I think there was a huge amount of power in tools like Zapier,” CEO Wade Foster said, “taking things only a single digit percentage of people could do, and giving that leverage to regular business users.”

Foster joined the Source Code podcast to talk about Zapier’s rise, the shift toward integration and unification taking over the SaaS world, what he likes and dislikes about the low-code/no-code industry, and what AI and voice assistants might mean for the future of software. He also offers a few wild tips on how to make the most of Zapier.

For more on the topics in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

Onlyfans chaos and Apple’s app store reversal Aug 29, 2021

Show notes

Anna Kramer joins the show to discuss a wild week for OnlyFans, where the platform goes from here, and whether creators will ever trust the company again. Then Ben Brody discusses Apple’s new policies for app developers, why anti-steering matters, and whether Apple’s teeny tiny olive branch will make legislators and litigators go easier on the company.

For more on the topics in this episode:

For all the links and stories, head to Source Code’s homepage.

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