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This time of year graduations are happening all around us. One graduation speech that has never left me after all these years is George Saunders’s convocation speech at Syracuse in 2013.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

As I mentioned in the prior newsletter, my daughter is graduating from high school. In fact, her graduation ceremony is this evening. It is wonderful to celebrate all that she’s accomplished. It is exciting to contemplate all that she will do in the future. Saunders provides great advice, not about ambition, but about leaning in to the youness of you.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

And most of all, if we take Saunders’s advice and “err in the direction of kindness,” I think we’ll find that life goes so much better for ourselves and those around us.

—Barry

2. Studio Update

A lot has happened here at Good Enough since our last letter. Particularly, time-sensitively, we are running a coupon promotion for Pika right now to celebrate our launch of background images. If you’ve been holding off on starting a blog, PIKACITIES gives you 15% off your first year of Pika Pro. Or maybe you have a friend who really needs to get blogging? In any case, act now because the coupon expires on June 13th.

Wait, there’s more!

• Jelly has added teammate assignment

• And pre-saved replies to speed up replying to frequently asked questions

• And teammate notifications

• Pika made its headings linkable

• The team also made a bunch of lovely performance improvements to Jelly

Oh, and something else is cooking in Pikaland:

3. Sharing is Caring

You’ve got links, we’ve got links:

• While not a huge fan of either artist, Patrick felt the roof was adequately blown off with this performance

• Another interesting place for us humans to curate the web: url.town

• It appears that none of us actually want to eat this abomination

• Bandcamp added playlists, with the fun wrinkle being that you have to own a track to add it to your playlist

• Cade watched the entire 4th Edition

• Big Gulps, huh?

4. In Conclusion

To all ends and all beginnings. May you find yourself thankful for what’s finishing and excited for what’s starting.

Congratulations to all 2025 graduates!

—Barry

This week I find myself looking back at the road. I have a(nother) child graduating high school in just over a month. The path to here has had many twists, turns, and bumps. Looking closer, though, a lot of the twists were more like lovely twirls where you find that you’re smiling when you stop spinning. A lot of the bumps were the kind that made you feel weightless and gave you a sort of exhilaration. Things are different when looking back.

I’ve also been reflecting on Good Enough’s path. The map we laid out at the beginning of the company was the sort of thing that you might draw in pencil on the back of a napkin. Nothing prescribed and nothing set in stone, but we had ideas, guesses, hopes, and dreams. Since then we have walked down the expected road at times, and we’ve also taken many forks along the way.

I think I’ve sufficiently tortured the metaphor.

As is usually the case, when I sit in a reflective mode I get thankful. Thankful for the opportunity to work the way I’m working. Thankful to have built so many interesting projects with a team of friends. Thankful to have been part of a beautiful human’s journey from childhood to adulthood.

And now I’m excited to see what comes next!

—Barry

2. Studio Update

The past week has been one of a lot of writing, along with a lot of doing of things. Check it:

• Jelly now has quoted replies!

• Guided walkthroughs were added to Jelly to help new users get the hang of things

• You can now sign up for, and log in to, Jelly directly with your Google account

• Pika added a reply by email feature

• Barry threw together a little utility to help make email headers more readable

• James shared how the London Ruby Users Group is using Jelly very effectively

• Barry wrote something that may seem obvious until you realize a lot of small businesses are doing it wrong: You Need Customers to Succeed in Small Business

Oh, yes, and we’ve got another Meet the Team blog post for you. Hello, James!

3. Sharing is Caring

Welcome to linkland, home of the links:

• Two of Lettini’s favorite things have united for one live podcast

• Maybe having stunted man-children at the levers of capitalism/the world isn’t the best idea?

• Piracy knows no bounds

• Barry almost put down a $50, no-strings preorder for the Slate truck, but the second bullet point above made him hesitate

4. In Conclusion

Take a seat right there
Consider not to forget
What you remember

—Barry

Are you staying reasonably happy? Taking care of yourself? If not, I hope you’re able to find a bit of hope and momentum soon.

We’re doing alright over here—grateful, energized, and yes, feeling the weight of the climb. As we continue pushing Good Enough toward Mount Business’s summit of sustainability, the trail is steep and sometimes unclear. We’re learning a lot, stretching ourselves, and staying grounded in the belief that our work matters.

We believe in what we’re building. We believe in each other. And even when the trail gets rocky, we’re still climbing.

As a little experiment, I’ve turned on comments for this issue. If you’ve found any helpful self-care strategies lately, we’d love to hear them. Let’s swap some encouragement. Thank you!

—Barry

2. Studio Update

We’re still on the lookout for the teams and small businesses that Jelly can really serve. Recently, we’ve been sharpening our approach to search ads (with some expert help!) and are exploring the idea of temporary marketing support (the cool kids call them “fractional CMOs”).

Also in startupland: spammers 👿 tried to party crash Jelly. James has been working hard to preserve Jelly’s good name and keep the bad actors at bay. It’s a rite of passage for growing SaaS apps, especially those in the email space. We’re navigating it with vigilance and some good-natured sighing.

Some other bright spots:

• Cade has been talking with everyone about getting the word out on Jelly

• Patrick is polishing the email editor (yes, it’s even smoother now)

• Lettini’s refining our outreach emails–we’re always interested in talking with customers about how Jelly is working for them

• Oh—and Pika now supports 🎵 Apple Music embedding 🎵

One last thing: we’ve resumed our Meet the Team blog series. Meet Barry!

3. Sharing is Caring

You get a link! You get a link!

• It’s fascinating to read about Craig Mod’s launch of the quirky, private social network, The Good Place

• Lettini does not recommend DMV websites, so I guess you don’t get a link to the New York DMV

• Maybe AI-based customer support is going down the wrong path? Who’s to say?!

• Get thee back to a website (try Pika!)

• To wit, Hypertext TV

• To wit, po.ta.to

4. In Conclusion

I hope some of the words or links herein contributed to the needle moving a little more to the positive side of your mood-gauge.

Don’t forget to cheer for the Timberwolves to beat the Lakers in the NBA playoffs. Nobody (except for all of the media companies) really wants the Lakers to win, do they? Timberwolves are seeded lower. Everyone likes an underdog, yes? Do the right thing!

—Barry

Step right up! Right this way! Get your Jelly right here! Fresh off the presses! Ice cold, steaming hot, deliciously room temperature Jelly!

As you can clearly see, in the past month, I've gotten really good at Marketing. I mean, just look at all those CTAs—that's what we in the biz refer to as a Call To Action—drawing you in.

Do you feel drawn in? Excellent.

I'm hoping, after some recent changes we've made to the Jelly home page and some focused attention on some new industries, a lot more folks will be drawn to give Jelly a try. Have we succeeded? Time will tell.

And speaking of time and telling and such, if you'll grant me a moment of reflection, I’ve been struck by one notable difference between marketing and programming: marketing defies my programmer’s thirst for instant gratification.

When I ship a feature, it's shipped. When I fix a bug, it's fixed. Dopamine. Yay!

When I try *waves hands at long list of marketing to-dos*, did any of it work? Did it help? Worse, did it hurt?

I don't know, we'll have to wait and see.

There's likely some wisdom to be had in there, but I'm going to get some more coffee. It's not dopamine, but at least it's caffeine.

—Cade

2. Studio Update

Lately we’ve been doing a lot of marketing and spam protection, which is frankly pretty boring to talk about and share here. On the more fun technical side, the team finished some long-standing projects recently:

• Pika now supports syntax highlighting and Spotify embed.

• Jelly now integrates with Google, better supports attachments, and is days away from supporting quoted replies.

• Letterbird now supports pre-filling the name, email, subject, and body of your contact form when embedding.

🤩🤩🤩

Oh, and this is exciting. Cade and James talked about Good Enough on The Ruby on Rails Podcast. Thanks for graciously hosting them, Elise! Give it a listen!

🤩🤩🤩

Beyond work, James is finally in his new home, Barry just got back from a lovely trip to Italy, I bought a new car to head off the tariffs, and Patrick is trying to visit Cade but his body said, “Not so fast…”

Barry has suggested we pick up the pace on our newslettering again (were you a reader when we used to post weekly?!), so perhaps these studio updates will remain pretty short and quick?

—Lettini

3. Sharing is Caring

And now for the fun stuff: links!

• We’re all loving this new Pika blog: Everybody Clap Your Hands

• There’s been no shortage of depressing articles about AI, just in time for a new Black Mirror season.

• Barry is about to get into this new trading card game.

• Birder? Have we got the website for you: app.birdweather.com

• Patrick lost a day to IMG_0001

• Here’s a short story from James’s archives about quantum computing. If you enjoy it, maybe check out the TV show “DEVS”.

• When this was written – 13 years ago – QR codes were an amusing novelty, but now they are pretty commonplace. So why aren’t we seeing more Q-art codes?

4. In Conclusion

Who drank all my coffee? Should I make more?

I mean, we got some fancy Rwandan coffee recently, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, one of the brews tasted very strongly of asparagus. Like, I felt like I was drinking liquid asparagus. All the rest of the batches? Great. That cup? Asparagus.

I like asparagus as much as the next guy, but not in a mug at 7 in the morning.

You know what’s a lot better than asparagus in the morning though?

Toast — with Jelly. (☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞
—Cade

The Good Enough team is made up of people who love building software. Collectively, we have about a century of work experience — probably 90% in designing and developing software and 10% in everything else. That’s great for building products but less so for building businesses.

Not one of us would call ourselves a natural marketer, or even say we enjoy that type of work. But we’re at a stage where a much larger percentage of our time needs to be spent marketing the very nice things we’ve built. Too often, though, we’re easily pulled away by the siren song of product work. It’s taking a lot of effort for us to step outside our collective comfort zone, but Matthew and I did recently show off Jelly at a Brooklyn Tech Expo:

In recent weeks, Cade volunteered to put down his IDE and step up to lead our marketing efforts. He’s currently speed-running his way through learning how to be a marketer, absorbing every bit of information he can get his hands on. If you have any great tips or tricks for product marketing — especially fun things to sponsor — send them his way!

(He might have written this update, but he’s out for spring break this week. I expect he’ll have more to share in future issues. 🤞)

—Patrick

2. Studio Update

It’s been a minute since we’ve last newsletter’d — that comforting siren song is strong! The rest of us continue to be heads down improving our products this winter (and don’t expect that to stop even though we’re all quite excited about spring starting next week 🌸).

On the Jelly side, besides continuous improvements like Bookmarking and Blocking Contacts, we’re neck-deep into two big projects:

• We’re almost done changing Jelly’s text editor from Trix → Squire. This is a huge undertaking, as we have to rewrite how we handle attachments and @mentions and other niceties we’ve built into our current text editor. It’s worth it though since Squire can better handle how emails are coded, which unlocks a host of highly requested features like quoted replies, forwarding, and more. Stay tuned.

• We announced a limited beta for connecting Jelly to Google, and begun the approval process Google requires to get this integration, well, approved! This integration will not only simplify the steps involved for teams that use Gmail to set up their shared email with Jelly, but it will also sync their sent mail back to Gmail too.

On the Pika side, we’ve really upped our game with images. We’re excited to finally offer both a click-to-zoom image lightbox for all images you upload to your blog, and the ability to set the alt text for your images. 💪 Accessibility ftw! We also shipped a number of other smaller improvements (e.g. Vimeo and MP3 embeds) in the past few months, and started blogging about the even smaller things you probably don’t notice. Follow along on Building Pika Out Loud.

Speaking of “been a minute”: While our focus over the last year has really honed in on improving Jelly and Pika, we do still run a number of other products that new folks are regularly finding and using. If you’re a new reader of our newsletter and came via Letterbird, Album Whale, our Guestbook, or somewhere else, welcome! 👋

—Matthew

3. Sharing is Caring

There’s no amount of busy that will keep us from sharing links!

• Not only does MapQuest still exist, but they’re throwing punches!

• Matthew wants you to know that some fonts work harder than others.

• Barry’s looking to try a new recipe.

• Share your [Bracket City] score with us!

• Shawn doesn’t know what Pierre does, but thinks their website is 🔥🔥🔥

• Patrick thinks Be My Eyes is a very cool way to help a stranger.

4. In Conclusion

We may not be experts, but even we know the most effective kind of marketing is word of mouth. A friend telling you about something cool is way more powerful than any ad we could ever run.

Remember those chain emails that warned something bad would happen if you didn’t forward them to a certain number of people? Well, what if this newsletter worked the same way — except instead of bad luck, forwarding it brought you good luck!? It would definitely help Good Enough keep building nice things.

OR MAYBE if you don’t forward this you’ll stub your toe and it will feel really crappy and you’ll think “I should have forwarded that newsletter to my friends ouch this really hurts!”

(Just kidding, your toe will be fine. Tell a friend!)

—Patrick

1. New Year, New You?

There’s something about the calendar flipping years that makes people want to commit to doing something new (or at least better than before). We’ve supposedly been making New Year's resolutions since as far back as Babylonian times so maybe it’s just hard wired into our DNA now. We’re also especially bad at keeping them, so maybe it’s best to aim low!

And of course, Good Enough can help with those low goals!

• Want a low-friction place to write more or just a distraction from endless social scrolling? Get on the Pika train! 

• Need to bring a little order to your work life? Jelly is the easiest shared inbox platform on the planet—perfect for reducing email chaos.

• Curious to learn something new? Teach yourself a bit of HTML and create a site on Yay.Boo. In just seconds, you can share your work with the world.

As for me, my goal is to spend more time in real life with people. So far, that has manifested as working from a coworking space with my friends. Having a group of people to go out to lunch with a couple of times a week has absolutely got my year started off right.

—Patrick

2. Studio Update

We’re all just trying to stay warm, not sick, and survive a cold winter so far. Barry rearranged his office, finally. Cade is learning how to be a dog dad. James’ house renovations are going great, no problems or fuckups at all, 10/10 would renovate again. Patrick got a good night of sleep! Shawn escaped the winter in Asia (again). And I finally replaced my gaming PC potato, and the new one has sick LED fans.

We’re working on our products, too. We recently added emoji reactions to Jelly comments 💬🤪🎉, made replying more personalized, are in the midst of a Google Integration, are continuously (and always) pushing out smaller wins and bugs fixes, and we’re now getting out of our comfort zone with some actual marketing and advertising…

With Pika, we’ve released the Pulse publicly, added custom date formats, and added a feature that will give you a writing prompt when you have writer’s block.

—Matthew

3. Sharing is Caring

We resolve to share all the links, all the time.

• Neal.fun’s latest project is current best thing on the internet (be warned: it’ll eat your day)

• Have you ever wondered where Big Boys go to die?

• Patrick got a daily dad joke calendar and has been sharing them in our team Slack. Eye roll is right.

• Cade made a batch of pickled red onions so we’re all heading to Nashville for dinner. Join us?

• Who isn’t excited for the Switch 2!

• We’re obsessed with the way Mark Zuckerberg ate toast 8 years ago. Not cyborg-like in any way! 

4. In Conclusion

What do you call a fake noodle?

An Impasta.

—Patrick’s desk calendar

It’s a peaceful end to 2024. Well, aside from the music I’m blasting.

Speaking of music: the top album of 2024 on AlbumWhale was, predictably, BRAT by Charlie XCX, with The Smile, Tyler the Creator and Vampire Weekend all joint for second place.

Anyway, where was I? We wanted to send a sort of “end of year recap”, because it’s been a big one for us.

We left the Maelstrom and this Serious Business started to get serious about finding markets for some of our ideas.

Pika!

We launched Pika at the end of January, and just yesterday we welcomed our 200th subscriber!

The consistent love for Pika is real validation of Barry’s intuition that people will blog again if we give them a simple yet beautiful place to write.

We’ve dipped our toes into podcast advertising with Pika, which has been an interesting experience and overall seems to be working pretty well.

Some quotes about Pika:

I actually adore it. It makes my heart happy so that says it all

Everything about Pika is filling me with the joy of what I loved about blogging back in the day

I could never have predicted how much positive feedback Pika was going to get. It’s really wonderful to receive.

Turns out you are ready for that Jelly

Hot on the heels of Pika’s launch, we had already started work on Jelly, a better way to share an inbox.

Jelly is by far our most ambitious project yet, and our biggest bet: we believe there’s a huge market of small groups and teams that would benefit from a shared inbox but who are totally underserved by Support Behemoths trying to suck up every dollar on the table.

We started using Jelly internally in mid-Feburary, and had our first Beta teams join us in May. We launched properly in September, even receiving a viral welcome on Hacker News (you will never find a more wretched hive of snark and cynicism, typically).

Intermission: New additions

Is there any sweeter moment than getting that first paying customer? Well actually, yes. One of our team (me!) also welcomed his second kid and took some generous and much needed parental leave while all of this was happening. And that was pretty sweet too.

The other new addition to the Good Enough family was Cade! While I don’t love Cade as much as either of my children, I do like and respect him a lot, and Good Enough is certainly more Gooder-er with him around. Welcome, Cade! No, I will not change your diaper.

Jelly pt. 2

We’ve now had over 200 teams sign up to Jelly, and we’re hoping that only accelerates as we turn the corner into 2025. It’s a harder sell than Pika, because it’s a bigger ask to get a team to trust you with their communication lifeblood, but we are very optimistic.

Some Jelly quotes:

the shared inbox software we always hoped for

It’s lovely

simple, aesthetically pleasing and a joy to use

Yes, yes it is. And we’re only just getting started.

Odds and ends

We did our first podcast interview! We spoke with Jeremy and Jess about Good Enough, how we work, why we work, who we work (not much about where or when we work), and about Jelly too. As a group we tend to keep our heads down, but it was a nice breather, and it’s also important for us to take a bit of time to reflect on where we are, why we are, who we are (and some of what and when we are).

Speaking of which, it’s also so affirming to see our vision — a better internet filled with less crap software — resonating with the world

I really appreciate what you all are doing to make the internet a better and more human place.

holy hell I’m in love

That last quote might be from a famous blogger who’s site rhymes with “caring wirehall”. Might be.

See you next year 🥳

Good Enough is heading off on holiday break. We have so much planned for next year, but before we turn the page to 2025, we want to share a most important message:

Thank you.

We’re incredibly grateful for the time and attention you’ve shared with us this year. Whether you’ve used one of our tools, sent us a kind email, told a friend about us, or just lurked quietly, you’ve given us plenty of fuel to keep our corner of the internet going in 2025.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

Happy holidays. Happy new year. Peace on earth.

– Barry, Cade, James, Matthew, Patrick, and sometimes Shawn

We’ve had many and numerous requests from Pika peeps who want to be able to see what other Pika folks are writing (and who want others to be able to see what they are writing). Finally, for you and for us, we are introducing The Pika Pulse (Please note: For the moment you must be logged in to Pika in order to see The Pika Pulse).

Shawn and Barry started by building a manually-curated feed of Pika writing. Along the way we decided to put up a page for ourselves showing the latest Pika posts in a stream layout. It turns out the stream of posts really got us excited. There were some lovely posts being written on Pika every day!

We prefer a feed that helps you discover Pika blogs rather than just another tool that enables “consuming more content.” The Pika Pulse is not an endless stream of posts back to the beginning of Pika. It’s a recent, but limited, view. When you reach the end, you reach the end. Hug your partner and start making dinner. While we love it when folks read your Pika posts, we don’t want to provide one more endless stream of words on the internet.

We’re still playing with the layout, design (thanks Lettini!), and some playful tools to live alongside The Pulse. Certainly more to come, and a public release soon!

2. Our Voices, Revealed

Are you curious to hear more about Good Enough, how our little collective was formed, and why we build the things we build? Have you ever wanted to hear our voices through unprofessional microphones? Well you’re in luck, because Barry, James, and Matthew were recently invited to have a conversation about all that and more on the IndieRails podcast.

We are very thankful to Jeremy and Jess for this opportunity to talk about some of Good Enough’s short history, and how we got from then to now. And luckily for you, we hardly talk about Rails at all! Give it a listen, and then invite us to talk on your podcast next. Please and thanks.

3. Studio Update

With the year coming to an end, we’re all fighting the desire to start hibernation early, but we have managed to get at least some shit done. Specifically, we’ve been digging deep into Jelly code and fixing some memory issues (thanks Cade!).

We’re also excited to welcome some new paying Jelly customers! The early reception to our take on a shared inbox app has been encouraging, and we are now planning our next few months based on all the great early feedback (and Gmail forcing us to make some behind-the-scenes tweaks). One thing we heard is a desire for a more personal touch when conversing through Jelly, so we’re thinking about what that might look like…

Lastly, a new year brings new energy and often a time when people consider trying new tools. We are rethinking how we market and talk about our products, and are planning a light refresh for both Pika and Jelly. If you love these products: How would you market them, and to whom? What’s your elevator pitch? We want to know.

4. Sharing is Caring

Last links of the year, maybe?!

• Barry is really feeling Willow’s new album empathogen, but Cade not so much. Meanwhile, Patrick’s top artist this year was Caspar Babypants.

• Are you cod in the middle? We are cod in the middle. We are also delighted to learn why it’s sung like that now.

• We’re reading and digesting Facebook’s old Little Red Book, but taking it with many grains of salt.

• Patrick will be thinking twice now before asking someone to take his picture.

• Take a crash course in design principles through the lens of iconic Lego control panels.

• Matthew and Barry really want to fiddle with Orchid, the newly created instrument by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker.

• We encourage you to encourage someone else to Continue and Persist. We are not lawyers.

  

• And finally:

In an era when “cultivated” people purport to care so much about the origins of the stuff they put into their mouths, will they be as cautious with the stuff they put into their minds? Will they be able to resist the information sausage meat that AI is about to serve them?

—Brian Eno

5. In Conclusion

We have every intention of writing you one more newsletter this year. At 2024’s newsletter pace, that will be quite an achievement for us. Stay subscribed to find out if we make good on our promise. Either you will not notice the non-arriving email or you will get a wonderful reflection on the Good Enough (?) year that was 2024. There is no in-between. THERE IS NO GRAY AREA.

Not wishing you a happy holiday now because we will for sure, definitely, 100% speak again before then. Yay!

1. Process Your Thoughts On Pika

Recently there was an election in the United States. People have had all sorts of feelings about the results, and many have taken to social media to air their hot takes. This event has been a catalyst for a great shift in the social-media landscape, with many people moving to new networks in the hopes that a new location will somehow be better than the old. That’s a fool’s errand in my opinion.

There is also a not-insignificant minority of folks that are choosing to step away from social media, at least for a little while. To my mind this is the best move and I highly encourage it! The thing is, if you were an active participant in any of these social networking sites, eventually you will be lured by their siren call again in the coming months. You’ll be back to share your “quick thoughts.” Unless…

Unless you choose to share your ideas another way: by blogging! For many of us writing is very helpful when it comes to processing our thoughts. Writing on social media, well, I’m not sure that it’s writing at all. Crafting a hot take is definitely more of a class-clown activity than it is the action of a thoughtful adult. Dunking on socials is kind of like popping a candy: a very temporary satisfaction. Writing with unlimited space on your own site at Pika is something that sticks to the bones. It nourishes. It lasts.

Perhaps it’s a good moment to start sharing your considered thoughts rather than your hot takes?

—Barry

2. Studio Update

Hi, I’m Cade. 👋 I’m very, very excited to be joining as the newest member of Good Enough! I enjoy elaborate weekend cooking projects, playing Rocket League, and Oxford commas. I’m based in Nashville with my wife, two kids, and soon-to-be dog (don’t tell the kids though — it’s a surprise). Also, I changed a flat tire this morning. I hope your day is off to a better start than mine!

They told me to write the Studio Update, so here I go:

Most of us have been focused on telling the good word about Jelly, getting it in front of more teams it could help, honing our marketing and onboarding strategies, and the like. It’s an exciting and nerve-wracking time, but notably Jelly was #1 on Hacker News for a few hours last week! Clearly, people understand the frustrations with trying to handle email as a team, and a refreshing take on a simple shared inbox resonates:

Pika has been on fire as of late (a good fire, not the image above), and we have some exciting stuff coming up in the next few months. We don’t want to give too much away today 👀 so stay tuned to Building Pika Out Loud to be the first to hear about it.

As a small business trying to grow an audience, we tend to cast a wide net and see what works. If you really can’t bear to delete your socials as Barry suggested above, we’re now also posting studio news and updates to Bluesky and LinkedIn. If you’re there, say hello!

—Cade

3. Sharing is Caring

And now for the fun stuff: links!

• Patrick is digging That Festival Site for helping him follow music festival lineups and for its lovely design.

• Patrick wants someone to buy him this Pulped Fiction book for Christmas, while Lettini wants someone to buy him a pair of Goggins Goggles. You can find our address on our website. Tribute Gifts encouraged.

• The 1001 Albums John Mastodon Says You Must Hear Before You Die (Or Like, Don’t, But Trust Them, The Albums Are All Actually Really Good).

• Leaflet.pub is an interesting take on a quick document publisher in the browser. It has a similar-but-different vibe to the Quack markdown editor we built last year.

• We’re all fascinated by this lovely Leaving And Waving photography exhibit.

• Shawn is fascinated by this story about Celine Dion destroying your Mac.

• Barry shared this album cover and quite a few of us quite dig it:

4. In Conclusion

Did you watch that Mike Tyson fight? So that’s what boxing is?

We’ve got one, maybe two more newsletters in us before the end of the year. Maybe we’ll even have time for an end-of-year recap? Maybe not. Who’s to say? Certainly not us, we don’t know what the future holds. If you do, might we suggest Pika for your next omniscient blog? 🔮

1. Jelly is open for business!

We’ve swept the dusty floor and taken the paper down from the windows. The waitlist is closed for good and we are ready to welcome the masses. Yes, it’s true: anyone who wants to can now sign up for a Jelly account! 👈 🥳 

Jelly is an awesome way for a team of people to share an email address (or several addresses). It helps keep everyone on the same page by making it clear who’s replied to a conversation, or who’s intending to reply. There’s also a private discussion feature for sharing relevant details and context with your teammates, and an activity stream so you can quickly catch up on who did what.

If you and your team are still sharing a single login to an email account, Jelly will feel like a revelation. We switched from a shared Fastmail account to Jelly months ago and we’re never going back. There’s no more stepping on toes, conversations slipping through the cracks, or passing of links and subject lines back and forth in Slack. 

Check it out:

Jelly is simple, intuitive, and affordable — we opted for per team pricing so your whole crew can come along. (Who wants to pay per person anyways!?) It's going to save you some serious $$$ compared to the more expensive and wildly more complex options out there.

Not to mention we’ve got the best mascot in the game!

We hope you’ll come check Jelly out. And if you’re not part of a team or group who needs to share an inbox, start one! Or at least tell your friends about us.

(Speaking of telling your friends: We’ve also launched Jelly on Product Hunt and would appreciate your reviews and upvotes 🙏)

––Patrick

2. People like Pika

Pika has not gotten lost under all that Jelly. In fact, October saw the most new monthly subscribers in our history! (It certainly doesn’t hurt that some blogging alternatives have gotten, well, weird.) New features galore:

• Password-protected Pika

• Aliases

• Image Grids

• Site footer

—Barry

3. Sharing is caring

Do you like links? We do, too.

• Trust us that Cabel Sasser’s XOXO talk is worth 19 minutes of your life.

• HTML for the People believes HTML is useful for anyone and we couldn’t agree more! (especially since we built a place for you to host your HTML-based projects) 

• We couldn’t stop dancing to this lovely D&D animatic from Eva Figueroa.

• Lettini thinks you should really see The Substance and it should win all the awards. Trigger warning for both gross-ness and real-ness.

4. In Conclusion

We are really excited to launch Jelly and hear what you have to say. One of Good Enough’s primary aims is to build simple, delightful, affordable software for folks who haven’t really had any great options before. Jelly is perhaps our biggest embodiment of that ideal yet.

We’ve got lots of great ideas for ways we can make Jelly even more delicious in the future, too. Stay tuned!

1. Studio Update

The past few weeks of Jelly have been all about responding to feedback from our lovely beta customers. We’ve been rounding over those rough edges and generally preparing for a near-future where teams of the world just mosey on over to the Jelly site and sign up. James has especially been putting in yeoman’s work dotting all of our billing lower-case ‘j’s. (To the software developers out there: billing, amiright?!)

In Pika land there have been some behind-the-scenes improvements as well as one big public feature. You can now update your site navigation to link to any URL anywhere. This moves Pika one step further along the path of being the most drop-dead easy way to quickly get your lovely personal website on the internet. —Barry

2. Some People Are Good Enough: Ben Tsai

Our interview series continues with Ben Tsai graciously answering our questions. We are interviewing people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter–write us! Take it away, Ben!

Who are you?

I'm a software engineer living in Pittsburgh, PA, with my wife and three kids. Professionally, I have a passion for human-centered design and helping organizations better collaborate. I've been on the internet since the late 90s, and trying to establish a blogging habit since the early 00s. I enjoy coffee, classical music, and staying active. 

What’s been your role on the product team?

Currently I work on the firewall product at Cisco. I lead a team of engineers that generally covers the usability issues in the product. Recently, we implemented a new design system shared across our entire security organization. I've been finding that the non-coding parts of my job energize me. Especially at a big company where there are a lot of processes and teams, there tends to be challenges with communication, and I've found a lot of value in tackling those challenges.

What led you to advocate for engineers to be more involved with design?

When I began my career, I worked for a design consultancy that pioneered an interdisciplinary approach to solving problems. That experience planted a seed in me that keeping the human at the center in the midst of technology was critical. Fast forward a few years, and I was working in healthcare IT, and after multiple visits to hospitals, I realized that the software I was designing and building was directly connected to doctors' ability to save lives. I embraced this by taking a UX course and learning what I could from the designers and researchers around me. When I joined Cisco and entered the cybersecurity industry, I continued to advocate for the importance of human-centered design. The work we do has existential consequences for the companies and institutions we help protect. I find the work so rewarding when it is put in the context of humanity rather than focusing solely on the cool things I can build.

What are some simple, everyday things that bring you joy?

I got into coffee about 15 years ago when I read a blog post about the AeroPress and proceeded to purchase it. That coincided with the rise of specialty coffee. My brother-in-law recently gifted me a manual espresso machine. I enjoy the ritual of making coffee for my wife and myself. I appreciate the culture around coffee being an activity around which we socialize and meet others. Whenever we explore a new city, I try to find local coffee shops and speak with the baristas there. It's a great way to get the vibe of the community in general.

Thanks, Ben! You can learn more about Ben on his website!

3. Sharing Is Caring

We come across links. Maybe you want to see these links?

• Call us out when we start working on a Good Enough Cuckoo Clock

• Illustrated bands were on our mind when Lettini reminded us of the intro to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters

• Barry is not sure what Disney is up to over there, but there’s A Whole New Sound

• Patrick wonders if Our Cow Angus is the weirdest thing MSCHF has done yet?

• Did you forget Good Enough TV? Check out this unexpected 12-string master class by Glen Campbell and the indescribable Tailor Swif

4. In Conclusion

That was a pretty decent newsletter, don’t you think? Product updates, an interview, several lovely links, no outright lies…and it’s Friday! Happy vibes, happy vibes. We don’t think that any recent media event in the U.S. could outpace today’s Good Enough newsletter.

No pets or jelly or pet jelly were consumed, or allegedly consumed, in the making of today’s Good Enough newsletter. After reading A Good Enough Newsletter, wash your hands before returning to work. Share with your friends for more happy vibes.

1. Studio Update

Jelly is now in Beta! The feature set is rounding well into shape, and over the past two weeks we’ve added:

• User permissions

• Conversation subject editing

• Speed to real-time conversation updates

• Vastly improved search results

• Activity in-line with conversation discussion

• Comment editing and deletion

• And lots more, including much bug fixing

We’ve also been having many conversations with potential customers and receiving a lot of great feedback. (If you’re in need for a better shared inbox, sign up for the Jelly waitlist!)

Thank you, Richard, and forward is coming soon! 🤓 ––Barry

2. Jelly Donut Fish

While the team was busy building Jelly, I've been drawing potential Jelly logo and mascot (while watching the Olympics and cheering for Steph, KD, and LeBron). Since we don't have much to report in this newsletter, I thought I'd share some work-in-progress.

My first attempt was to merge the jelly donut with a jellyfish. I really love this weird little thing, but some people on the team found the tentacles a bit off-putting. 🥲

(Don't fret, my fellow jellyfish fans—I'll find a way to work these variant mascots into the product.)

Moving on from the jelly-donut-fish, I've started drawing strawberries with eyes and limbs. I’m not sure where this is heading, but I'm thinking that the sunglasses should stay.

Right from the start, we wanted a logo type that’s round and fluid, and I think (I hope!) I'm getting close:

If you have any feedback, ideas, jelly jokes, or Steph Curry highlights you’d like to share, feel free to reach me via Letterbird. 🐦 ––Shawn

3. Sharing is Caring

I was in Tokyo for a few days in July when I saw this watermelon. I still think about it occasionally:

Six links to share this week:

1. Matthew learned about printer tracking dots, and apparently it’s fascinating.

2. Public Work lets you search across 100,000+ public domain images, featuring a gorgeos UI. Brought you by Cosmos, which also seems impressive.

3. Have you ever dreamed of starting your own movie theatre? You might be interested in this extensive guide.

4. The latest addition to Good Enough TV is a video about game theory.

5. During my research for the Jelly logo, I came across this massive collection of amateur QSL cards on Pinterest. My goodness. Do you know anything about QSL calling cards?? Please tell me more!

6. In case you missed Team USA’s insane comeback against Serbia, here’s their entire fourth-quarter run. (Respect to Jokić, Bogdanović, and the entire Serbian basketball team. What a game!)

4. In Conclusion

Today I learned that the world record for the most jelly donuts eaten in three minutes is 10, set by Leah Shutkever from the UK. Now I don’t mean to disrespect Shutkever’s effort, but if Joey Chestnut can eat 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes, you’d think someone can eat more than 10 donuts in 3 minutes?

(Please don’t attempt to eat 10 jelly donuts in a row—but if you were inspired by this newsletter and end up breaking the world record, would you please give Jelly a plug?)

We wish you a most wonderful weekend. Please avoid using phones while walking, be cautious of wet paint, and stay out of the Seine river.

1. Studio Update

Firstly, newsletter crew, please let us introduce you to our answer to “why is it so hard for teams to share email?” – Jelly.

You can read more about it on the homepage, or on our blog.

We’ve been building this since January, and using it ourselves for almost as long. For our team, it’s a game-changer for how we interact with our shared email. We use it for customer support but also for all the other conversations Good Enough has with the world.

We’ve also been talking to a lot of teams interested in joining our alpha. It seems like every team has managed to lash together a different set of tools and techniques to manage their shared email, which is both a tribute to their ingenuity, and proof positive that we all deserve something better. 

If you’re looking for a way to collaborate on email, do yourself a favour and sign up for our waitlist. We are improving Jelly every day.

Pika has had some updates as well!

1. Tags!

2. Your browser helping to avoid accidentally losing your writing

3. Letterbird integration improvements and better smart quotes

2. Sharing Is Caring

Steve Albini had a food blog: What I made Heather for dinner.

Fried stuff is great, so long as you get it while it's piping hot. Since our place is small, I can get food from the kitchen to Heather in a heartbeat, so I fry stuff all the time. Usually I make little croquettes or other doughy things and fry them, but I thought they might be getting a little heavy after repetition and have laid off the fried things for a bit.

Indeed!

This day in capybara news…

“Everyone knows that capybaras are pacifists. What’s next? A pika assassin?”

“Pika: chaotic good thief”

“There is an Assassin Rogue subclass, and chaotic good is often the right alignment to play it.”

Look for a D&D cast of Good Enough characters soon. 😂 

Meanwhile, people have been writing on Pika!

• Video game fashion? Phil’s got you with Hot Napoleonic Summer.

• Ever nervous to talk to strangers? Maybe Odin can help.

• How do you bring yourself to your work? Benedict considers this while preparing for a barista competition.

• Wish you traveled more? MacPsych provides some travel inspiration.

One Million Checkboxes. Enjoy!

Also, Math Notes is bananas.

3. In Conclusion

On top of all the good work we’ve been doing this summer, we’ve also taken some much needed vacation. This allowed us time with friends and family. And time to see some beautiful scenery as well.

We hope you’ve been able to take some time this summer to recharge and reconnect. If you took an amazing picture during your time off, feel free to share it with us and maybe we’ll feature it in a future newsletter. (Even better, write a blog post about it and drop us a link.)

So long, until we write again.

1. Studio Update

Our shared inbox software is now alpha ready! This means that imminently, inevitably, indubitably, the software will be used by Other People™. Excite!

If you have a team that’s looking for a shared inbox (and don’t care to pay the insane price tag of those bloated help desk software), get in touch, yeah?

Two weeks ago we launched Pika’s new Guestbook feature, and it’s gratifying to see the many cool drawings and messages on different people’s guestbooks.

Some recent updates to our beloved lil’ Pika:

1. Add your own web analytics

2. Verify your site on Mastodon

3. And we’ve made some fixes to the RSS feed (here’s a TIL for those of you Rails folks)

Lastly, Barry wrote a thoughtful blog post about web curation that’s been getting some attention lately. A quote:

We are the human beings that are meant to curate the web. We should continue to spread the word about how we use the web, which is very personal and as active participants. We should make clear our desire for technologies that are accessible for non-technical people to be able to join us in controlling their own web presence. We build our websites and share our thoughts and link our links. Over time the web becomes surfable to more and more people.

Hear, hear!

2. Some People are Good Enough: Fei of Village One

We are interviewing people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter—write us! Now let’s meet Fei!

1. Who are you?

Hi, I’m Fei, a backend engineer and co-owner of Village One, a cooperative studio for ethical design and technology based in Berlin, Germany. Village One was founded in 2022 by a small multidisciplinary group of people with the goal of democratising work and supporting projects that have positive impacts on our society and environment.

2. How do you avoid the pitfalls of design by committee while staying true to the democratic values of a co-op?

I think we rarely design anything by committee. When a task arises, one or two people usually take ownership of it quickly, and everyone else trusts that they will execute it well or to ask for support/feedback if needed.

This trust comes from our shared values, therefore we are not afraid to give everyone the same autonomy to make decisions and represent us. The cooperative structure allows us to formalise this trust and autonomy.

Establishing these shared values, though, has been a process that has required time and discussions. However, being a team of six rather pragmatic individuals with minimal egos has helped keep these discussions short and productive. Personally, I am very curious about what kind of processes we will introduce in the future as we grow larger.

3. Do you have a good recipe to share with our readers? :)

I've recently learned about fermentation and have been fermenting all kinds of things. It's such an easy way to preserve food. So here's a simple recipe for fermenting radishes:

Place radishes (cut into chunks or slices) into a jar, add 1 bay leaf and 4-5 juniper berries. Dissolve 30g of salt in 1 litre of water and pour it into the jar until everything is fully immersed (you might need to use a weight or toothpicks to keep the radishes submerged).

Close the jar and leave it at room temperature for four to seven days. Afterwards, you can enjoy it right away or move the jar to the fridge where the fermented radishes will stay good for at least a month.

Thanks, Fei! You can learn more about Fei on her website!

3. Sharing Is Caring

Bebop is a lightweight, super fast iPhone app that lets you quickly jot down notes. This wonderful app was made by our friend and world-famous author, Jack Cheng. Jack also wrote a fantastic blog post about how he designed and built the app all on his own.

Fig is a drawing app where each pixel has a lifespan. Yes, you read that right, and you’ll have to try it to understand it. This beautiful, poetic app was built by our super-talented friend, Rafał. Be sure to read his blog post on the inspiration, design process, and technical details behind Fig.

Adam Fuhrer has been making some beautiful pen plots. I have one of his prints here on my desk and it’s mesmerizing. Each print is 5x7” and costs $40 CAD.

Pouch magazine is ready for pre-order. I’ve been following Victoria’s (aka vrk) journey of starting a magazine, which she chronicles in her fascinating newsletter. Vrk used to be a programmer at Google and Arc, and it seems she’s decided to make a career switch to follow her love for paper and stationery. Respect!

And here are some great, recent blog posts on Pika:

• Why do you blog? Robert wants to know.

• Our very first font analysis blog post on Pika. Thank you, Ben.

• Did you know that Kindle has a large version that you can write on? Richard shares his thoughts on the Kindle Scribe.

• Jon wants you to make an /interests page. Interested?

• Here’s an interesting blog of reviews on non-alcoholic beverages.

4. In Conclusion

1. If what Kendrick said were true, shouldn’t there be a lawsuit or two against your favorite Canadian hip hop artist?

2. Go Wolves! Go Knicks!

3. A very short Lettini Screeni review of Bird Box: it was fine.

4. If the new Billie Eilish album isn’t moving you, maybe look for your next favorite album on Album Whale.

5. Have a wonderful weekend, you beautiful people, whoever and wherever you are. Did you know that octopuses have three hearts? Neither did I and I didn’t verify that fact. You can’t go home but you can’t stay here. 👋✌🏼

1. Do You Like Drawings?

Since we first built our Good Enough Guestbook, many have wished for one of their own. Truth be told, when we dream of our best selves at night, our best selves have made an easy-to-use printer hardware that allows you to receive drawings from others all the day long. Dreams are great, but in the meanwhile we decided to build the next best thing. That’s right, we’ve built…

Coming soon to a Pika blog near you: Guestbooks! We’ve recreated the drawing interface from the Good Enough Guestbook in Pika, and now visitors to your blog can draw you a picture. (And if they’d rather just write you a note, they can do that as well.) You can give it a try right on the Pika blog (or Barry’s blog if you prefer).

We’ve been cookin’ on this for a few weeks now and we’re very excited to get it into your hot little hands. See, this newsletter does come with benefits! If you’d like your Pika blog to have early access to this Guestbook beta, just write us a note and we’ll get you access next week.

2. Some People are Good Enough: Michael Margio

Our interview series continues with interview number two. We are interviewing people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter—write us! Now let’s meet Michael Margio!

Who are you?

My name is Michael Margio. I'm a video producer based out of Orlando, FL. I've had the pleasure of working on a variety of video projects from documentaries to TV commercials to corporate testimonials. All kinds of stuff. And in my spare time, my family and I go to Disney World (we're in Orlando--why not?) And I'm a musician at heart.

As a professional video editor & cinematographer, what do you notice when you're watching movies or TV shows that most of us don't see?

The first two things that jump out to me are lighting and emotion. When I see a scene in a film, my eyes are instantly drawn to the lighting. Probably too much. I often wonder, "How did they light that?" or "That doesn't look realistic. why did they do that?" That's the cinematographer mindset at work. As an editor, I see emotion a lot in a scene. Do I really care about the people? Do I believe in them? Does the scene help me feel for this character's predicament?

Who's your favorite cartoon character and why?

Favorite cartoon character. This is a hard one. So many great characters. This is probably an odd choice, but I kind of love Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. The reason is he's a ridiculous character--a caricature of a character, in fact. Every line is over the top. Every one of his characteristics is exaggerated in all the best ways. He's easy to hate.

Thanks, Michael! You can learn more about Michael on his website!

3. Sharing Is Caring

A few links for ya!

• Symbol.wtf. No more googling for symbols.

• Spurious Correlations. Correlation ≠ causation. (symbol.wtf did not have ≠!)

• The tale of Papyrus continues. Not a huge improvement, but…

• Shel Silverstein wrote “A Boy Named Sue”!? Also, Shel Silverstein can’t sing.

Don’t forget Pika!

• Stardew Valley Impression. I’m jealous that Jason is experiencing Stardew for the first time.

• Pink Lines Mean Good Times. A lovely reflection on the little things in life.

• Time is Not Running Out. Cole reminds us that there’s still time.

• Everyday Dad Carry. Phil takes us on a transitional journey from EDC to…EDDC.

4. In Conclusion

We continue to be thankful for all the folks supporting Good Enough and our products. And we’re excited to unleash some big new things on the world soon. While this is all wonderful, we are reminded that in the world of giant companies and giant money, it’s hard for small businesses like ours to gain a foothold. This is why recently Barry wrote about our continued need for fans of our work to talk about what they enjoy. Read more to follow where Barry’s mind can lead.

To all the creators out there, we hope you are finding inspiration and motivation in this lovely spring (or southern hemisphere fall). Share your work. Share the work of others. Let’s be louder than the algorithms!

What other exciting natural phenomenon will happen next week? 😅

1. Team Inbox

If you’ve emailed us in the past month, you’re among the first people on Earth to have received an email from our new shared inbox software.

That might not mean a lot to you, but it’s incredibly exciting for us. The product is functioning and we’re using it daily! We’re improving it based on our own real-world usage, and each day we see it inching closer to a Good Enough Product™.

Our next goal is to bring the software to the point where we feel comfortable inviting a few early alpha testers. (Adding a few more quality-of-life features, smoothing out some UX rough edges. We have high standards for what is good enough for others. 😎)

If you’re interested in being an early alpha tester of a super simple & friendly shared inbox software, please email us!

2. Some People Are Good Enough: Jessamyn West

A while ago, a kind reader emailed us and suggested that we interview people in our community and feature them in this newsletter. We love the idea! So, here’s the beginning of a new interview column: Some People Are Good Enough. We’d like to interview people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter—write us!

Our very first interviewee is Jessamyn West who left a fun drawing of moss on our Guestbook.

Who are you?

I'm a Vermont librarian and technologist who also exists in some extremely online spaces. I own MetaFilter and help run MLTSHP.

What’s one thing about libraries that most of us don’t know, that you wish we’d know about?

We're a huge distributed mutual aid network of information, technology and, most importantly, the people who can help you navigate those things. There are a lot of archives of stuff out there and a lot of inaccessible technology; that's not us. The public library (in the US anyhow) is for everyone.

Why moss? (And do you really collect moss!?)

I'm not sure why exactly. I used to not really be able to grow houseplants (since COVID I've improved) and moss was a thing that was readily available, could be easily taken care of, and brought some green into my wintertime. I even have a web page that tells you how to make moss terrariums (please excuse my http).

Thanks, Jessamyn! You can learn more about Jessamyn from her website and blog, or follow her on Mastodon!

3. Sharing is Caring

Cool links for you cool people:

• xkcd machine. Barry was amazed by this game: “You can play with it and then if you complete one…you submit it, name it, and get into an entirely different space to look at.”

• Revolutionary pizza invention. James took a break from his paternal leave to share this with us.

• In B Flat is a lovely, simple site. Only works on laptop / desktop tho!

• The Flipbook Experiment by The Pudding: 13,489 frames drawn as of this writing!

• Albums from Reservation Dogs. Great list for a great TV show!

And some great, recent blog posts on your favorite blog software, Pika:

• An incredible, cosmic story by Phil B. ❤️ I love everything about this story.

• Instead of investing in the S&P 500, invest in the "S&Me 500”. Mike Karnj urges you to invest in yourself.

• Ben Tsai went looking for a knee scooter and ended up discovering a Don Norman wisdom. I still don’t know what a knee scooter is! But what a great reminder that, yes to usability and accessibility, but also: aesthetics, pleasure, and fashion, please!

• Brendon Bigley was shook by the recent earthquake and thought about Twitter and Threads. A trip down the social media memory lane.

• Foofaraw shares how they come up with their new banners. I’ve been following the adventure of this new indie media startup and thoroughly enjoyed these illustrations!

4. In Conclusion

Barry recently re-published a blog post about his very first computer program, which was written for this amazing looking machine:

Do you remember your first computer program? If you do, please share your story with us!

Please remember to hydrate yourself and don’t forget to water the plants. See you in a week or two (or three). ✌🏼🌸

Studio Update

In the time since we sent our last newsletter, the Good Enough team has been busy building a prototype shared email tool. Our work has gotten far along enough that, as of last week, every email sent to one of our team-wide addresses at Good Enough lands in the new prototype’s inbox.

If you’re curious, James wrote a blog post that shares some of the reasons & philosophy behind that project. Our collective estimate was that it would take us a month to build a functioning prototype and we’re pleasantly surprised to have gotten that guess right. The tool is already proving to be a great platform for trying and testing new ideas about how a team might collectively converse with the outside world through email.

Want to help fill our new inbox up? Write us a message (or email hello (at) goodenough.us) and tell us something you’re excited about! —Patrick

Pika Pika

Pika’s first month has exceeded our expectations. We haven’t spent a penny on advertising, and frankly, Good Enough isn’t famous—and yet the word has gotten out and there’s been a steady flow of new sign-ups.

Thank you all for trying out and sharing Pika. And a special thank you to those who have upgraded. Your support means a great deal to us, and we do not take any of it for granted!

Starting this week, Barry has shifted his focus back to Pika, and we are excited to bring some improvements to our humble blogging app soon. 😎

The Wonders of the Internets

• Have you heard of John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem? If not, read about it here. And please give it a try! It still works (though with a different number): 641.793.8122. (Note: I’m not sure if it works from outside of the U.S.)

• Explore NYC in the 1940s on this wonderful site by Julian Boilen.

• I find this Ai-pet adorable and irresistible. (Original thread)

• If you’re into cats and indieweb—Nekoweb might be the thing for you! It’s like Yay.Boo but with cats, you know what I mean? 😸

• Patrick sez, “This video about building a drone to follow F1 cars around the track is pretty awesome and I don’t even like F1. They built a drone that can go 0-300kmph in 4 seconds and it can do tight turns. Skip to 8:58 to watch the footage if you don’t care about the rest … it’s worth it.”

Are you (or someone you know) working on something interesting? Maybe you wrote a blog post or composed a song, or maybe you have a podcast or a video game. Email us and we'll feature your project in this very newsletter!

In Conclusion

The first book I fell in love with was a bootleg copy of Dragon Ball I bought from a street vendor in Taipei. Back then I had to wait a month for each new issue, and I remember making up future plotlines and sharing them with my fellow fifth graders. But I could never have predicted where Toriyama would take the story—and I nearly pissed my pants when Vegeta arrived on earth (and shat myself when Frieza changed into its final form).

Like many others, I fell in love with comics because of Akira Toriyama. And I learned to draw because I wanted to draw like him (still can’t even come close though, dammit).

Rest in peace to the legend.

We launched Pika! We think it’s a pretty great way to start writing on the web, and you should try it if you haven’t yet. Customers have started rolling in, which is always very exciting and encouraging—we want people to use our stuff! We assume some of you are reading this right now. Thanks for being here. Tell your friends. Blog about it.

We’ve been launching products back-to-back recently—Yay.Boo then Letterbird then Pika—and while we’re eager to get our hard work into the world, we’ve quickly been faced with an interesting new challenge: We’ve received more emails as a team in the last couple of months than we have in the past year!

Now we’re wondering how we, Good Enough LLC, collaborate as a six person team on these emails, which are mostly from customers. We want to offer great customer support, because that’s what we expect and value, but how? We’re just using a shared login for an inbox, and it’s no longer good enough. Who is answering what? Did they see it already or not yet? When one of us has a question, how and where do we ask each other? Is the reply I would write for an email the same as you would write, or am I missing context? How do we visualize if we are offering good customer support?

We’re quite intrigued by this problem! We have some thoughts, between new workflows and/or products to help us on this front, but we’re most curious to hear from you: In your small teams and groups, how do you collaborate on emails together?

(Reply to our question here: https://goodenough.us/contact 🙏 plzkthx)

2. Studio Update

Now that Pika is launched, we’re once again diving into the wider, scary world of marketing our products. It’d be great if everyone in the world just knew about our products right away, like it was immediately downloaded into their brain a la The Matrix and kung fu. Alas, we (Good Enough) haven’t built that tech yet. Maybe one day. You’ll hear it here first if we do.

Specifically, our resident blogger Barry has been leading the Pika charge, singing its praises all over the web. We’re experimenting with ad networks, cold outreach, tip hotlines, Reddit, social media connections, recording video walkthroughs, sharing it on Product Hunt and HackerNews, and have more ideas in the wings. If you have a good marketing suggestion, we’re all ears!

In the meantime, Arun, James, and Patrick have started deeper thinking on this simpler-team-collaboration-on-emails idea. It’s the earliest, messiest of days in the product idea → napkin → development life cycle, which is always exciting. Stay tuned…

Shawn and Lettini ignored all the above and went to an NBA basketball game instead (it wasn’t very good though).

3. Sharing Is Caring

• Speaking of pikas, Arun shared how cute a baby pika sounds!! ^‿^

• Lettini is excited for the new Made By Mutant collective, which he says was born from the ashes of the Mondo fallout last year. Pretty posters.

• Be careful out there. Patrick shared a post where Cory Doctorow explained how even he fell victim to scamming. It can happen to anyone!

• We just learned you can italicize emoji 🙀.

• Some of us have been watching videos about Vision Pro with great interest. Lettini shared Casey Neistat’s testing around NYC, and Barry shared Rafa developing a brilliant “Spatialty Coffee” idea. And here we are just making silly websites still…

4. In Conclusion

When you create something, you want people to use/view/enjoy it. Often your creation is put out into the world to the sound of crickets 🦗. Pika is a product built from the heart, and we are very thankful that it has struck a chord with a handful of people already. As an organization of six people, we have to balance that act of happy creation with the business side, and boy is it a trick. We’ll keep trying to find our Pika people—we’re thankful that many of you have helped spread the word already!

It’s been a more than good enough start to the year, and we’re excited to meet the challenge of getting this crazy idea for a company further down the road toward sustainability.

We hope you have a great February!

Good Enough makes simple, useful, well-made software, like these fine products:

• Pika – Simple, easy, happy blogging.

• Letterbird – Simple, easy, embeddable contact forms.

• Yay.Boo – Simple, easy, stupid website hosting.

• Album Whale – Simple, easy, beautiful lists of albums.

Our new year has been a bit choppy. Several of us have been dealing with influenza and other illnesses, one had a burst pipe at home, and another one has been complaining about not getting enough sleep because of his baby child. But the six of us are here today and I have a newsletter for you.

First, some not-so-great news: this newsletter will no longer go out on a weekly cadence. The high quality of this newsletter is the result of considerable time and effort, which we can no longer provide for at least the next few months. Our focus, instead, will be on: 1) completing and launching Pika, 2) developing our next product, which will be more ambitious and complex than any we’ve attempted so far.

I understand that for some of you, A Good Enough Newsletter is the highlight of your week. To you I say: thank you, but may I implore you to explore a broader array of interests? —Shawn

1. Studio Update

The most notable thing that happened in the past two weeks was Dr. James Adam’s visit to New York City! I was the only one on our team who had never met him in person, and it was a truly joyous occasion. I smiled. He smiled. We hugged (twice).

[Correction: Barry hasn’t met James yet. Oops.]

The mostly decent people at Good Enough have been diligently working on Pika. The plan is to launch next week. That means: a better theme selector, several improvements to the editor, and billing—so we can take your money thank you very much. There will also be other small delights, such as this little pika:

Pika might not be the world’s best blogging software, but it will have the cutest mascot.

(Actually, what even is the best blogging software? Blogging software is like a notebook. We all have our preferences, and what’s good for me might not be for you. The only way to find out is to try and use the software yourself. For us, Pika is the shit, and it’s not really comparable.)

2. SO MANY ALBUMS ON THE WHALE

Holy moly people have been busy making album lists on Album Whale. 

And speaking of music, Patrick has started a blog (on Pika, of course) about listening to music. So far he’s written about two albums: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Guts. I may not agree with his music taste, but I do enjoy his writing. Give his blog a chance, will ya?

3. Sharing is caring

• Matthew put Letterbird on Product Hunt. If you’re on Product Hunt, give it a vote?

• Patrick shared a video about these identical twins and urged us to watch it. (I haven’t seen it yet, don’t tell him.)

• Barry came across this CSS framework inspired by the old Nintendo Entertainment System.

• Patrick pinged me about this ingenious art project: Prompt Brush 1.0. It’s so clever and the drawings are 👨🏼‍🍳😘.

• Matthew likes this delicious font named Cosmica Mono. Me too!

One more thing! Have you heard of Be My Eyes? It’s a fascinating volunteer service that lets people with vision impairments to call someone for help. Patrick has volunteered for them in the past, and he shared his experience:

In my experience, it’s been people asking to differentiate between things in their house. One guy called and wanted to know which shirt in his closet was white because he was playing a saxophone gig that night and that was the required color.

The calls usually get right down to business since they’re looking for help, not a friend. And they usually only last a minute or two. My shortest was like 20 seconds.

I’ve identified money, shirt colors, cheeses, soup, and whose lunch was whose.

I love it and wish it rang me more, but they have too many volunteers

4. See you in a couple of weeks?

I wish I had something wise to conclude this email with, but I just ate two pieces of bread with peanut butter and jam and I’m feeling sleepy. So I’ll just end with a screenshot I took this morning:

Have a splendid weekend now, yeah? Mhm.