Writing
All types
Articles
Posts
Notes
All topics
AI
Product
Tech
Marketing
Personal
381
pieces since 2009
2009
2026
2026
Aug
Why Claude can’t write
What 20 teams built in an afternoon at the Claude Impact Lab
May
Anthropic and the sum of its parts
Mar
CCC Cutting Edge: Building Agents at Scale
Feb
Make Agents Fight: a CCC2 Summary
Jan
Building with AI — one year later
Orbit
Notes from Claude Code Curious
Interview: This year AI disappears into interface
2025
Nov
Claude Code (is really Claude Work)
3 years since ChatGPT: what really mattered?
Aug
Writing is the only way for AI to get to know you
Orbit
Building an agentic business with Claude Code
AI building is for everyone (not BY everyone)
How I built this site (with AI)
Orbit
The AI product flywheel (according to OpenAI)
Orbit
Products are made of language, not code
Jun
Simulated Intelligence
Orbit
May
Don't be afraid of Claude Code
Apr
Lessons in building product with AI
Orbit
Mar
Adolescence: growing pains
Say HI: the growing blindspot in AI-driven startups
Orbit
Feb
No news is good news
The multiplier: Abundance reveals AI's true potential
Jan
The Best of 2024
2024 work retro
Re-Vision: revisiting the Vision Pro
2024
Nov
Product/ Market Strategy
Sep
Three Priorities for AI Products
Jul
Not just pivots: Unfair Vantage
🍃
Evergreen
Mar
Vision Pro + Family: Attention/ intention
The human interface of Vision Pro: Personas and EyeSight
Vision Pro-fessional: day one at work
A Provisional view of Vision Pro
Feb
Quest vs Apple Vision will be won by trajectory
2023
Oct
15 years -- what is working?
Jun
Prototyping my first product
HouseHeld: designing features
Human computing
What's Apple's Vision for the rest of us?
May
HouseHeld - the story so far
The only successful consumer app is Entertainment
🔥
Hot Take
Against our own interests
🔥
Hot Take
My product journey
Jan
The power of Rewriting
How analogue do we need to go to escape the digital dirge?
So far with... Arc browser
2022
Oct
Dynamic Island? Watch it.
Jun
Star Wars, we have a problem
VanMoof X3 review
🤡
Way Off
May
Trying Ghost for blogging
2021
Jul
What journalists don’t want you to know about “how to pitch them”
The myth of media relations
🔥
Hot Take
“Paying a whole List would be great Twitter monetisation”
Jan
We Are the Weather: imperfection can save the world
Max’s best of 2020
2020
Oct
A journalism/ social media clash (and what we should do next)
Sep
Calmer business
Balance is key to accurate startup stories
2019
Oct
What to look for in a PR agency
Jun
Wishlists are like buying but better
How to do PR for an early-stage startup
Mar
Being sexist.
✍️
Best Writing
Jan
Oral History of Silicon Roundabout
✍️
Best Writing
A tale of Comms, Content & Context (and 6x months at Forward Partners)
The problem with growth? It's a vicious circle
2018
Nov
So far with... new iPad Pro 11” and 12.9”
Aug
The lie of social sharing and its playful truth
May
The point of the Pencil
Mar
Returning to iMessage from Facebook Messenger
Jan
The Last Jedi brings Balance to the Force
2017
Nov
What would you pay to skip a year?
So far with... iPhone X
Oct
Why would I read in my Inbox?
Mental health, every day
🍃
Evergreen
Sep
So far with... a Cellular Apple Watch
Jul
Game of Thrones and writing the inevitable
✍️
Best Writing
Jun
So far with... iPad Pro 10.5” and iOS 11
🤡
Way Off
May
Writing feels like flossing my brain
🍃
Evergreen
Apr
“See also our own Augur Edits, whereby we will help any company with a great story get it out there.”
Mar
Stacking
🍃
Evergreen
How we talk about terror
“Show fewer stories like this”
🍃
Evergreen
Feb
Augur updates operating system to suit tech scaleup needs
2016
Dec
Grown up gaming
The story opp that Rogue One missed
So Far, with... Apple AirPods
Politics vs poetics and fact vs truth
📡
Early Signal
“I wonder if a lot of the “tech trends” we see young people going into today are similarly things we...”
Nov
The tension of muting Twitter to make it useful
An idea for Truth as metadata
🤡
Way Off
Oct
“Twitter is constantly going Back to the Future”
“To celebrate my wife coming back from a trip, we decided to do a bit of a “no screens” weekend, so...”
The weird satisfaction of mini-milestones
Issue 2.2 – Twitter hits the stock market.
Sep
“I go back and forth on this one.”
Issue 2.1 — Twitter as broadcaster, Apple privacy and more
“I don’t know what they are putting in the water at Mic right now but it’s not good for Apples.”
Bluetooth earphones are like early smartphone cameras
“Reporting on Apple: Strategic vs tactical view”
Aug
“Stop quoting Woz”
“Choosing the reward for your ideas”
“I think there’s a fine line between charity and patronage.”
When non-PRs write press releases, it shows how bad traditional PR has become
“Bobbing for Apple (predictions)”
Being underwater
✍️
Best Writing
Jul
Truth in trolling
May
The Lookback, Issue 3
The LookBack, Issue 2
“Really like this way of looking at Apple Watch and comparing to Windows Mobile.”
Great PRs and marketers “resist PR” as much as journalists
Getting better at what’s now vs what’s next
The Lookback, Issue 1
A really enjoyable read and compelling argument, if it turns out to be true.
iPad Pro improves my work/play
Useful Little Things
Apr
So Far, with... iPad Pro + Pencil
How paid journalism must work online, and why Blendle can't
Mar
Who do we have to thank for Twitter?
“Agencies have a funny habit of priding themselves on a connection to media.”
The outreach imposters: SEO, content, digital and more
Feb
“Twitter’s missing manual / fuzzy notepad eev.ee (via John Gruber)”
Beyond a certain point, “saving time” is wasting time.
Old PR sold editorial just like ad space
What If The Press Release Exists For A Reason?
Jan
PR will eat itself without stakeholders' help
2015
Dec
“This is what has attracted me to “iPad afternoons”.”
“Stealthy London Startup Curve Raises $2M From Notable Fintech Backers Steve O’Hear, techcrunch.com”
“This element of Medium reminds me of the earlier days of Twitter.”
“I think this is one of those things that is obvious in retrospect but counterintuitive to our...”
“I really feel what Adrian has described here.”
Institution/identity clash is at the heart of PR spam frustration – and here’s my solution.
Nov
#PRCAtech – the narrative beats the statement
“It takes time to build a trend”
“Twitter’s strategy squanders its audience’s true value.”
Linkbait, Reputation and the “Mental Unsubscribe”
Content: What's in a name?
Oct
“A really good point.”
“One of the catches: no single org has a big enough incentive to push it though.”
“I can’t help but contrast with The Social Network, where I think it’s the same case.”
“What do you stand for?”
What are we playing at?
“Braver men than this have tried to kill the press release.”
“Ad People Say the Funniest Things”
What Has Us Interested at Homebrew...
The interview: a simple solution to your content nightmares
🍃
Evergreen
“from: “Rethinking How We Structure Content Marketing Teams: The Pod Approach – Sorry for Marketing””
Press releases are the selfies of the marketing world
Death to content: long live the Editor
🍃
Evergreen
“How do we fix Headline Hell?”
““Unicorn” was never meant to be such a commonly used term – the whole point was that they were...”
Cut the B — , let’s embrace the Log.
Content: What’s in a name?
Sep
Twitter's action+caption marches on
Aug
Future technologies must be designed to free us from our screen addiction
Jul
Whatch’s it like?
We must take more pride in analysing how stories are made
Cadence, consistency and PR excellence
May
Apple Watch reveals the paradox of tech innovation
Press releases are the selfies of the marketing world
✍️
Best Writing
BioIsChanged.com shows social network actions speak louder than words
Apr
Apple watch expectations
Mar
It’s time to go post-Elizabethan on our Smartwatch assumptions
Inside DataSift: A one-stop shop to build on social data?
Product Hunt, PR tools and my advice for startups
Feb
The iPod effect: how near-limitless storage made content worthless
Jan
Twitter can fix journalism's painful paywall problem
2014
Nov
PR for PR
Simple Twitter experiments to restore that boxfresh feeling
Oct
A peek inside Shazam, and why its endgame is important to all European startups
Sep
The journo who replied to every PR email missed the most important point
Inside GoCardless: Meet the quiet Londoners who want to help you get paid faster
The perfect media pitch as voted by 25k journos
Likes labours lost: You get the Facebook you deserve
Google Authorship is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of search
Google Authorship is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of search
The people who ruined search are coming to ruin content
Jun
“A good read on the uncomfortable benefits of buying followers”
I'm generally quite relaxed about privacy but this whole presentation is great
May
Downstream: Living with Pebble
Your phone battery will never last a day. Deal with it
Apr
“Listen up Apple: build a smart EarPod or someone else will (Wired UK)”
“Twitter Cards are becoming the smallest unit of 'web'”
“The diversity of life experience fuelling development of games today is great”
Mar
Apple should make smart EarPods
“A thought on"What the Fox Knows"”
Twitter is changing your profile to make money
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Blue sky thinking to popularise the Year of Code with today’s youth
Google's strange hunt for an Apple-killer
Feb
“The One Quality Every Startup Needs to Survive”
“Like it or not, Dungeon Keeper is the future of LCD gaming”
Like it or not, Dungeon Keeper is the future of LCD gaming
“Quantum Dots: Band name or display technology?”
Sainsbury's versus Google: who deserves your data?
Jan
“It's a great time to be a techy”
“HARDWARE REVIEW: APPLE WEIGHS IN WITH MACINTOSH”
““We’re Just Flipping Through Index Cards””
“Don’t Glorify Startup Failure”
“The reality of digital newsrooms: 'copy thrown online with a photo'”
“We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us.”
“Mobile to the Future (or Max's idea of "cloud screens")”
How can I accelerate my personal growth?
“Casinos' (and Facebook's) worrying knack for consumer manipulation”
“Some of what we did at Danger”
“The Buffett Formula — How To Get Smarter”
“Almost Human: The Surreal, Cyborg Future of Telemarketing”
“Pizza Packaging Has Come a Long Way...”
The Builder’s High
“The biggest shocker of 2013? That it really is a wonderful world”
2013
Dec
“The NSA: An Inside View”
“Facebook Wants to Know Why You’re Self-Censoring Your Posts”
“Facebook Wants to Be a Newspaper.”
Is lack of originality built into Twitter's DNA?
Why is your smartphone screen so dumb?
“Gaming Made Me: Charlie Brooker”
Nov
“The rise and fall of YouTube's celebrity pioneers”
“"IT Buyers Shun Social Media"”
“Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen”
“Where’s Waldo? That’s Easy. A Foolproof Strategy for Locating the Stripe-Loving Cartoon Man.”
“"The Mission of Tesla" = great 'blog' PR”
The Unacknowledged Compromise - Matt Gemmell
“Growth Hacking Word of Mouth | Ryan Hoover”
“Am I Going Insane? Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless”
“Microsoft’s plan is stronger than you think”
“Will Apple really move toward two iPad apps on screen?”
“How Jack Dorsey Makes Meetings At Square More Transparent”
“The product design sprint: a five-day recipe for startups”
“How To Write An Email”
Oct
“Facebook's future is in your past”
Microsoft’s plan is stronger than you think
🤡
Way Off
“The Incredible Shrinking Antenna”
“The inspiration of revisiting great books”
“Drinking With Your Eyes: How Wine Labels Trick Us Into Buying”
“MTurk + Google News API = Coverage”
Sep
How do journalists get 'out of' PR spam
“Sietsema on the Current State of Restaurant Criticism”
“Shane Richmond on solving Twitter's problems with a tick”
“Mission and Messaging at Instagram”
“Cyanogen raises $7 million to build better Android”
“the big Apple misunderstanding”
“The Semiotician’s Oath”
“"iPhone Keyboard Secrets" from 2007”
“Why Twitter Buying MoPub Is a Very Big Deal”
“Klout is running out of excuses.”
The only interesting things about the new iPhones/ iOS
“Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier – review”
A history of iPhone taglines
In defence of Google+
“Too much hard work is summed up in a sentence”
Aug
“Marissa Mayer is really clever”
“a great quote from Frank Chimero”
“Is online press coverage the best form of SEO?”
“Gnip and Datasift are the most intriguing parts of the Twitter ecosystem to me”
Nostalgic reflections of an aging PR Account Exec
“A good digest of how Facebook's newsfeed algorithm has changed over the years.”
It's good for journalists to see PR behind the scenes
“Going Independent - MaxTB Comms”
Evernote Moleskine: a confused review
Ask yourself "Why Google isn't killing PR"
Linkedin endorsements - cynical, not stupid.
“Interesting piece on the relationship between authors and alcohol.”
“A really well written profile of VP Joe Biden from GQ”
The modern 'manuscript' of status updates
A status update on a multi social network world
Jul
Trolling isn’t new — but the hierarchy has changed.
“A different path to Inbox Zero”
A different path to Inbox Zero
“In 20 Years, We’re All Going To Realize This Apple Ad Is Nuts”
“How a total n00b mined $700 in bitcoins”
“Thoughts on 'Lockdown' by Marco Arment”
“6 Things I Learned from a Notoriously Insane Innovator”
“Rory Sutherland knows how to save marketing”
“Coffee vs. beer: which drink makes you more creative?”
“Good business= social”
Jun
“Antifragile”
“"If you're not the customer, you're the product"”
iOS 7 - Macintosh or iPod?
“http://www.themorningnews.org/article/from-here-you-can-see-everything”
Who will build Android for Dummies?
May
“After Woolwich: how the media got it wrong”
“Businessweek Profiles Google X”
Google Glass at the Indy 500
Glass Half Empty
Narrating the startup journey
Holiday homescreen
“The Gruber Conundrum”
“Quadropus Rampage - From the creators of Towelfight 2 - Upcoming Android Games - DroidGamers Forums”
“Google Glass: the world’s worst surveillance device.”
“Why Iron Man 3's Director Ruled Hollywood”
“"Ain't No Reason" - The Magazine”
“Conservative Party 1978 Manifesto (2nd draft)”
“A Rake Too Far: Optimal Platform Pricing Strategy”
Apr
A perfect journo email app
“Twitter's Big Challenge: Too Much Twitter”
“'Now Is The Best Time': A Critique Of BioShock Infinite”
“Weakness with consequence: Why marketing is like gravity”
“Meat - a charming short story about mankind”
“The Power of Swarms Can Help Us Fight Cancer, Understand the Brain, and Predict the Future”
“Vine is best when you're Being John Malkovic”
"why not offer an alternative cut back version of Google results that shows fewer ads and reminds the..."
“Why Bitcoin poses an interesting ethical conundrum for journalists paidContent”
“Killing Home Working”
“How formal should your marketing experiments be?”
Mar
“"Bioshock Infinite: How long should an NPC look at a boat?"”
“"What’s your engagement currency?"”
“"A good analysis of how the Yahoo Summly purchase is a weird one"”
“"This is “brand journalism”."”
“Product satisfaction: It's all about the upgrades”
“"Data contributes to development but doesn't replace the very unscientific notion of what to build and why"”
“"(Nike's) Parker borrowed more than a bullshit meter from Steve Jobs."”
“"Thiel doesn't subscribe to what he calls the start-up 'religion' of a-b testing"”
“"Unless you look at the numbers, you do not know what the Internet looks like."”
Feb
“Moves for iPhone”
Jan
“Vine is Twitter's route to selling visual ads in your stream”
The Re-Tale of Retail: HMV, community and the future
2012
Nov
Thoughts on 'Culture Shock' by Will McInnes
Who do you trust with your data?
Beaten: Xbox Mini could give Apple TV a run for its money
So Far With... iPad Mini
Sep
What happened next...
Facebook - What a difference a day makes
Aug
Fitbit, Klout and your data silhouettes
Journalists vs Bloggers: How not to do it.
Jul
A New Start: MaxTB Ltd.
Jun
Looking Beneath the Surface
Google Zero: the answer to the backlash
Apr
Email won't send with O2 Broadband? Here's the solution.
Mar
“Could OAPs be Apple's Secret Testing Team?”
Feb
Facebook should update its concept of 'Friends'
Jan
Facebook wants you dead
Free Speech Has Turned a Corner
2011
Nov
Power Struggles of the Advocate Age - The Social MBA
The Age of Digital Inhibitions
Sep
How will we Manage without degrees?
Aug
How do I filter tweets from TweetDeck?
5 ways to turn distraction into inspiration
Amazon's Re:Kindle: should we pay for content on the web?
⏳
Still Waiting
Jun
Failure Conference: the ultimate success?
May
Death of the Social Media Guru: 4 New Signs of the Social Media Try-Hard
What happens to social profiles after you die?
How to write a CV... with your life
Apr
“Could PRs become the next best journalists?”
Jan
Why Quora will be a slow burner success
Location alone gets you nowhere
Overtransparency and the Dilemma of #Client Vs Integrity
Quora and the big "what if"
2010
Dec
Social Media: the Talk
The truth behind Follow Friday
So Far With... Kindle 3G
Oct
Does the tech scene need more humanity?
Aug
PR coverage- a new perspective
Playing Games in Business
Sustainable Social Media: A Manifesto
Stop asking what social media is for
Jul
Knowledge and Power
Is there a PR career sweet spot?
Dell's Streaky Tablet Strategy
Old Spice: Swan Dive or Cannonball?
iPad Thoughts- 1 month later (ish.)
May
IPad Thoughts - 4 days in
Information is Beautiful but Ceremony is Special
Apr
Spot If I am right about the future of Spotify.
Why I'll always have time for timesheets
Apple's Razor Sharp New Direction
Mar
Maxicom - AxiCom = MaxTB at Wildfire
Jan
How to Stop PR Spam
Thank Me Later: The Role of Gratitude in Social Media
Why the Nexus is not "just another Android phone"
Thoughts on Journalists' Public Relations Relations
2009
Oct
Griffin vs the Chimera of Society
Have Apple Miced an Opportunity?
“Are you a fan of fans being fanned by the fantastic Dyson Fan fan?”
Sep
Why didn't The Sun switch to the Lib Dems instead?
Follow Friday - 18 Sept 09
Does Android Dream of Electric Waves?
“Follow Friday - 4 Sept 09”
Jul
“Where do you keep your Chromium?”
Jun
“Vodafone (femto)selling half of the future”
Are you Content not to Contend with Content?
Thoughts falling far from the tree?
Sometimes business just ain't pretty
