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Riddle me this: What exactly is Trello?Despite counting myself as a heavy-duty power user of the product for well over a decade now, its a question Ive long struggled to answer. Technically, Trello has always seemed to fall into that group of apps folks like to frame as project management toolsproducts like Asana, ClickUp, and Notion that do a pinch of everything and are as much note makers, info savers, and life managers as they are project organizers.But Trello in particular has always been a bit of a chameleon. Personally, Ive used it for everything from storing story ideas to mapping out my weekly newsletters and even organizing my home workouts. Part of what makes the app so powerful is its versatility. With a flexible series of boards, columns, and cards acting as its core interface, you can shape it into serving practically any purpose imaginable for yourself or your company.It seems, though, that that very same versatility may have morphed into a challenge for the product. This week, Atlassianthe business-tech behemoth that bought Trello for $425 million in 2017 and brought it into its sprawling software empireis announcing Trellos biggest pivot to date. Its essentially a total reinvention, despite the fact that on the surface, not all that much actually seems to be changing.So, here it is: As of this spring, Trello will no longer be a project management toolor whatever else you want to call it. Itll be a personal tasks app, presented as being the best all-around hub for juggling all of your important to-do items, no matter where they may originate. Notably, too, itll now be aimed at individual users, not teams, which marks a pretty big shift from its original focus.But in an appropriately Trello-y twist, the services trademark versatility isnt going anywherefor the most part. And in spite of the official new framing and all the added elements that come with it, its still up to you to decide how you want to use Trello and what you want it to be.Outside of a small subset of early beta testers, most Trello users will see its new touches sometime in April. Thats when Trellos next era will truly begin.The Trello talefrom inception to reinventionIve been spending much of this month living with the still-under-wraps new version of Trello, and Ill share some detailed thoughts and impressions about what its all about in a moment. First, though, before we can wrap our heads around Trellos present and its future, we need to take a swift trip back to its past.Trello first entered the world as a concept nearly 14 years ago, in September of 2011the brainchild of Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky. (Pryor stuck around to lead its development post-Atlassian-acquisition until mid-2022.)From the get-go, the pair described the app as a totally horizontal productmeaning, in the words of co-founder Spolsky at the time, it can be used by people from all walks of life: Some people saw Trello and said, Oh, its Kanban boards. For developing software the agile way. Yeah, its that, but its also for planning a wedding, for making a list of potential vacation spots to share with your family, for keeping track of applicants to open job positions, and for a billion other things. In fact, Trello is for anything where you want to maintain a list of lists with a group of people. That versatility and the tough-to-pin-down quality that comes with it was a key part of Trellos foundation, in other words. It may have initially been inspired by the engineer-adored idea of Post-It Notes arranged into columns on a whiteboard, but it was always meant to be everything to everyone, without any guardrails or specific definitions for exactly how it should be used.Trellos board-centric interface has long been the services calling card. [Image: Trello]Over time, that underlying elasticity never wavered. But Trello began to be positioned as more of a team-oriented toolthat whole project management thing. In the context of its ultimate home within Atlassian, a company known for collaboration software, that focus made senseeven if Trello did always overlap somewhat awkwardly with the organizations homegrown Jira offering.By 2021, Atlassian had introduced a whole series of new views that promised to transform the Trello experience and make it even more well-suited for multiuer productivity. You could switch away from the standard Trello boards and view your data instead in a spreadsheet-like Team Table View, for instance, or flip over to a Timeline View that put all your info into a year-long spectrum. You could even opt for a location-centric Map View built specifically with sales and service teams in mind.And thats exactly where Gaurav Kataria, Atlassians head of product for Trello since 2020 and a former Google Cloud executive, sees the service as starting to lose its way.Typically, everything tries to become the one tool to manage everything, like one tool to rule them alland typically, they tend come to become more complex, Kataria says. It has happened to every tool in the industry, Trello included.Kataria and his team decided it was time to step back and really think about what made Trello special, why people appreciated it, and where it should fit into our personal productivity puzzles.Meet the Trello task transformationOfficially, todays Trello announcement is about a fresh set of features coming into the servicefeatures that aim to make it easier to capture and organize all types of task-oriented info.But beyond the surface, the announcement is really more about redefining what Trello is for and how Atlassian, at least, wants it to be seeneven if you still have the power to shape it into something broader.We are taking a step back and staying that rather than trying to be that one tool, which is the project management tool for the whole team that can handle all levels of complexity and dependency and reporting, how about we focus on making the individual user more productive, Kataria says. Rather than being everything for everyone, lets be really useful to the one user thats using the product.The team behind Trello determined that the best way to do that was to shed Trellos murky project management moniker and frame the app as an all-purpose to-do hub that pulls in info from all sorts of other services and makes it exceptionally easy to organize. (The service will still offer its same generous free plan, which includes unlimited cards and up to 10 boards for individual usersalong with its existing premium and enterprise-level plans for companies that want to provide the service to larger groups of workers.)The centerpiece of that strategy is a new Inbox feature that exists as a sidebar to the left of every Trello board youre viewing. The idea is that its a landing pad of sorts for any type of task youre thinking abouta place for all that stuff to show up in Trello without any real effort and then be ready for you to drag wherever you see fit.The new Trello Inbox is a landing pad for all your incoming tasks. [Image: Trello]Today, if suddenly, a new idea pops into your head, you might have to first decide which board it goes into, which list it goes into, and does it go into the middle of the list or the top of the listso theres a little cognitive burden that you have to go through before you add something to Trello, Kataria says. We want to remove that cognitive burden.To that end, Inbox offers four integrations to start: Emailwhere you can forward any message to a special address to have it instantly added into your Inbox Slackwhere you can use the inbox emoji reaction () or the native Slack save-for-later feature to save any message into your Trello Inbox Jirawhere you can click a new native menu command to pull any issues from a project into your Inbox And Siriwhere you can simply ask your iOS device to add something into Trello to get it into that same Inbox view The Trello Inbox integrates with email, Slack, Jira, and Siri to start. [Image: Trello]Android support is on hold for the moment because of Googles awkward Assistant-Gemini transition and the current lack of support for third-party integrations with Geminibut Kataria tells me the team is watching the situation closely and plans to add in support as soon as it becomes possible. And in the meantime, a button on the Trello Android widget can serve as an only slightly more complex way to achieve the same end result.Atlassian plans to add support for some Microsoft-specific integrations next, but beyond that, its relying on the fact that almost every external service generates notifications of some sorttypically via either Slack or emailand so it can tap into those notifications easily via its existing integrations without requiring any additional connections or data access.We dont need to build a native integration with every tool under the sun, Kataria explains.As part of its tasks-centric transition, the service is also adding in the ability to check off a card and mark it as done from any board viewsomething Kataria says has been the companys longest standing feature request.By default, when you mark a card as done, it stays in place and just gains a checkmark indication on its cover. But thanks to Trellos powerful automation systemthe feature formerly known as Butler, for any of my fellow Trello long-timersyou can take total control of that process and set the system up to work any way you like. You might create an automation rule that instantly archives any card when its marked as done, for instance, or that moves it to a special list where finished cards are stored. The power is entirely in your hands, which feels like a thoughtful blending of the traditional Trello philosophy and its newly reshaped purpose.The user is still very much in control, Kataria says.All of that aside, what makes the setup especially interesting is the way Trello is integrating AI into all of this in a similarly thoughtful and actually useful way.Trellos finer task touchesRather than cramming in the standard and often silly write/rewrite text for me or make a list for me-style generative-AI options, Trello is opting to lean on AI solely to transform whatever you add into your Inbox into a simple, task-like summarywith a succinct title for the associated card, a single-paragraph overview of the info in its description field, and then the full text and a link back to the original item for further reference.Trellos AI is all about making info easier to managenot writing or organizing it for you. [Image: Trello]It works brilliantly well, in my experience, and makes me wish every app offered something similar. And, suffice it to say, I dont at all find myself missing the option to have the service write stuff or attempt to organize stuf for meand then, in all likelihood, having to waste my time redoing and fixing what it did. That seems to be exactly the experience the Trello team is aiming to create.The reason people use Trello is because it reflects their mind, Kataria says. We want to remain really true to that spiritthat Trello is about how people see the world, not about how they follow a certain workflow or process.(If you want, you can still add cards directly to a specific board like before, by the wayand as of this week, doing so will incorporate the same AI formatting magic present in the new Inbox approach.)Ultimately, Inbox is just another list in Trello. But it lives in that special sidebar that makes it easy to access as a single starting point for any incoming itemsuntil and unless you decide to sort and file them into a board.Inbox and its AI elements also go hand in hand with another new task-oriented Trello addition known as Planner. Trellos Planner is an integrated calendar that connects to Google Calendar (with support for Microsoft Outlook on the way soon) and lets you drag and drop tasks from your Inboxor any Trello boarddirectly into that day-to-day view. That way, you can see all your tasks alongside your agenda and plan out your hours accordingly, with the full perspective of everything on your plate.You can drag cards from your Inbox or any board directly into the new Trello Planner. [Image: Trello]Its a step forward from the tacked-on calendar elements Trello previously provided, and it ties back into the newfound goal of making Trello all about the individual rather than the team.All the previous calendar views are the legacy of trying to solve project management use cases, Kataria says. With the Planner, were really thinking about planning your day, planning your week, where youre only looking at your calendar.The approach actually reminds me a lot of Akiflow, a calendar and tasks app I wrote about last fall and have been personally using ever sinceonly, for better or for worse, Akiflow is solely a calendar and tasks app. Trello, in contrast, has the advantage (or maybe distraction) of all the board elements and the broader organizational opportunities they offer.Speaking of which, for now, at least, all of Trellos legacy elements and potential use cases will continue to be supported. Kataria hinted that certain elementslike those team-centric Timeline and Table viewsmay be phased out eventually, over time (and will certainly be de-emphasized in the meantime).But the general goal seems to be to keep allowing everyone to use Trello in whatever way they see fit, even if personal task management is now the main purpose being presented. Some actions around more complex team-oriented project management uses will now lead to gentle nudges to move over to Jira for such purposesa move thats frankly surprising Atlassian has managed to resist up until now. But everything from automations to the rich ecosystem of third-party Power-Up add-ons will remain, just with the added emphasis on Trello being the place for personal productivity.Its [still] a project, but a project thats born out of your own mind, Kataria says. Trello is so well-loved as a tool that people bend it in different ways to make it whatever they want it to become.Card-mirroring is one of the smaller but still significant touches coming into the new Trello. [Image: Trello]Only time will tell, of course, if the world embraces the services new task-centric framing or if people keep treating it as the versatile productivity power-tool its known to be. Either way, its creators seem content with knowing theyre shifting the focus to individuals over teams and presenting their best vision for how Trello can help.We are really thinking about how the world is going to change over the next decade and how we can make every individual more productive, Kataria says.Be the first to learn about all sorts of interesting new productivity treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligencea single eye-opening new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday!
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E-Commerce
Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows.The Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.“It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.”Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to the Associated Press, Politico and other media services that the administration said it would discontinue. Others were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased, and interns that have come and gone.An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.In all, DOGE data says the 417 contracts in question had a total value of $478 million. Dozens of other canceled contracts are expected to yield little if any savings.“It’s too late for the government to change its mind on many of these contracts and walk away from its payment obligation,” said Tiefer, who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.Tiefer said DOGE appeared to be taking a “slash and burn” approach to cutting contracts, which he said could damage the performance of government agencies. He said savings could be made instead by working with agency contracting officers and inspectors general to find efficiencies, an approach the administration has not taken.DOGE says the overall contract cancellations are expected to save more than $7 billion so far, an amount that has been questioned as inflated by independent experts.The canceled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services.The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a contract in September to purchase and install office furniture at various branches. While the contract does not expire until later this year, federal records show the agency had already agreed to spend the maximum $567,809 with a furniture company.The U.S. Agency for International Development negotiated a $145,549 contract last year to clean the carpet at its headquarters in Washington. But the full amount had already been obligated to a firm that is owned by a Native American tribe based in Michigan.Another already-spent $249,600 contract went to a Washington, D.C., firm to help prepare the Department of Transportation for the recent transition from the Biden to the Trump administration.Some of the canceled contracts were intended to modernize and improve the way government works, which would seem to be at odds with DOGE’s cost-cutting mission.One of the largest, for instance, went to a consulting firm to help carry out a reorganization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which led the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The maximum $13.6 million had already been obligated to Deloitte Consulting LLP for help with the restructuring, which included closing several research offices. Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Investors in cryptocurrencies are seeing red today. In the past 24 hours, the prices of most major cryptocurrencies and meme coins have plummeted. This includes crypto heavyweights like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP as well as popular meme coins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and TRUMP. Heres what to know about the biggest losers and possible reasons behind the crash. Bitcoin drops below $90K for the first time since November Unsurprisingly, the crypto that is getting the most headlines today is Bitcoin, which as of the time of this writing currently sits at around $89,000 per coin. Thats a 7% drop in the last 24 hours alone. It also represents of few other ignominious milestones for the cryptocurrency king as of late. First, todays decline marks the first time that Bitcoin has fallen below $90,000 since November 2024, after Donald Trump’s election victory sparked a crypto rally. Second, Bitcoin is now also down 20% since another important Trump marker: his inauguration day on January 20. On Trumps inauguration day, Bitcoin had hit an all-time high of over $106,000. The postelection victory and post-inauguration gains were largely fueled by the belief that a Trump presidency would be good for the crypto markets in general. But its not just Bitcoin that is plummeting today. Other cryptocurrencies are as well. Those include (as of the time of this writing): Ethereum, which is down almost 10% in the past 24 hours (and down over 27% in the past month). XRP, which is down over 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 31% in the past month) Solana, which is down almost 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 46% in the past month) Dogecoin, which is down almost 11% in the past 24 hours (and down over 42% in the past month) Official Trump, which is down almost 14% in the past 24 hours (and down over 56% in the past month) But what exactly is causing todays crypto crash? While the digital assets do tend to be highly volatile anyway, the general consensus among crypto industry watchers is that two main events could be contributing to the plunge. Trumps tariffs lead to macroeconomic uncertainty While Trumps election victory was hailed as the best possible outcome for the crypto industry, it now appears that Trump could be doing more harm than good for digital currency markets. Thats because since Trump was sworn in, he quickly set to initiating tariffsor at least threatening toagainst Americas major trading partners, including China, Mexico, Canada, and nearly every other country in the world. Many fear these that tariff threats may lead to an all-out trade war between America and other major economies. Indeed, as BeinCrypto points out, after Trump seemed to confirm yesterday that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada would be moving ahead, Bitcoin sank and crypto markets saw almost $1 billion in liquidations. When there is macroeconomic uncertaintylike the kind generated by potential trade warsinvestors usually seek to lock in gains where they can by selling assets that have had good returns as of late. Larger anxieties about where the economy may be headed may be driving many crypto investors to take their profits now to buffer any losses in the future. The Bybit hack reminds crypto investors they are vulnerable It’s not just Trumps actions that are rattling crypto investors. Last week, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked, leading to $1.5 billion dollars of cryptocurrencies being stolen. It is reportedly the largest crypto heist on record and is believed to have been carried out by actors in North Korea, reports CNN. Major crypto heists in the past have rattled investor confidence, and this one is no different. Heists such as this remind investors that cryptocurrencies are more readily at risk of theft than other assets, such as stocks or properties. To put the Bybit hack into greater perspective, Reuters reports that in all of 2024, there was $2.2 billion worth of crypto stolen. The ByBit hack signals that 2025 may be an even bigger year for crypto heists.
Category:
E-Commerce
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