My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 320 👋

While my writing backlog has been relatively empty for quite some, it has been filled up with loads of new ideas throughout the past couple of weeks. On one hand, this is great, since there are loads of ideas I can write about and therefore have a constant stream of posts I can publish to Creativerly. But on the other hand, I found myself writing about multiple ideas at once, which is not ideal, since this left me with a bunch of half-baked posts, rather than having finished up a single one. At the same time, I get reminded that I am doing this for pure joy, fun, and because writing is such a lovely creative process, I am free to approach it however I want, and there is no-one forcing me to finish a specific post in case I am get stuck, I can simply head over to a different one and continue writing it, simply because I am in the mood to do so.

Sometimes it is important to keep the work on side-project loose and flexible. The lovely thing about side-projects is that you can allow yourself to work on what you enjoy most, as this can foster creativity. When you are passionate about a specific task, or in my case I am currently passionate about multiple ideas to write about, it is likely that you come up with even more innovative ideas or solutions, and instead of limiting yourself to the initial task, it is way more fun to exploring and experiment along the way.

Whenever I am working on tasks or writing a new post I find enjoyable, it keeps me motivated and engaged, which also means, in case I am no longer enjoying writing a post, there are a bunch of others which could suddenly spark joy. I am not focusing on putting out a certain number of posts every single week, I feel a deeper urge of putting out high-quality posts, and that often means that I am writing them over a longer timeframe. Ultimately, working on side-projects like Creativerly is personal fulfillment, as it brings a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, and it to keep it like that, I just make sure to work on and write about what truly interests me at the time, and what I am deeply passionate about.

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Fresh Updates & News

OpenAI raises $40bn, valuing it at $300bn →

Sometimes when I read news, they are so far off reality for me that I just pause and try to understand them, how they fit into society, into the current challenges our whole planet has to face, and ultimately how they benefit the majority of humanity. The news that SoftBank is pouring $10bn at first and $30bn more by the end of 2025 into OpenAI, exactly fit into that realm. $40bn is a surreal sum. The fact that SoftBank has the resources to manage such an investment is simply delusional. I do not want to think about all the areas where this money would be invested in a better, more ethical, and valuable way too much, since it would get me frustrated. Now it gets poured into OpenAI.

I am not an AI denialist, I just believe there are loads of companies out there operating in the same realm, that are way more ethical than OpenAI. I am thinking a lot of about this, and trying to wrap my head around how people can just write a single prompt to generate images in a Studio Ghibli style, blatantly taking credit for something a machine reassembled because it has been trained on the artistic and creative work of people who poured their energy and time into that work.

I do not think that people need AI to function in modern society. And if the product of this revolutionary technology is that hundreds of millions users now have access to creating AI slop in the style of one of the most renowned and popular animation houses, I am fine without AI.

But then, I also see Designers like myself, fulfilling their dreams and building their own small apps, fully functional, for iOS or the web, which gets me excited. And yeah, I know that this is not the standard, since AI-powered development or vibe coding creates a huge amount of technical debt, and there are loads of examples where people suddenly had to shut down the app after a short amount of being publicly available, because Cursor or the LLMs they used could not fix the bugs that cluttered up their projects, created by AI. I am at conflict, and have been thinking a lot about what could be a thoughtful and ethical approach to AI, and experiment with it. But wow, it is hard, since we get confronted with all the things it gets wrong every single day.

And now the one actor who probably created the most harm and controversies, receives $40bn to continue and even doubling-down on what they are doing.

NaNoWriMo goes bankrupt after embracing AI →

Back in September 2024, the organizers of the National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit existing since 25 years, that regularly held a creativity-driven writing challenge during the month of November, published a controversial statement detailing their position on AI. In that statement, the organizers stated that the "categorical condemnation" of AI has "classist and ableist undertones". The statement quickly went viral, and led to longtime participants, as well as well-known writers and authors, who supported NaNoWriMo in the past, step away and criticise the statement from the organizers. Four members of the NaNoWriMo writers board even left the organization. Some major sponsors like Ellipsus, stepped down after the statement went viral.

Fast-forward to today, and NaNoWriMo declared bankruptcy and is closing its doors. On March 31st 2025, Kilby Blades, a romance author serving as NaNoWriMo's interim executive director, published a video on their YouTube channel called The State of NaNoWriMo. In the video Kilby Blades shares the news that the nonprofit organization is essentially out of money. Further, Blades explains the money problems, addresses allegations of abouse and grooming regarding the nonprofit's forums, however, she absolutely failed to address last year's policy changes which allowed participants of the annual writing challenge to use AI, which ultimately led to the huge backlash.

I watched the video and was flabbergasted how it took Kilby Blade just a few minutes to immediately blame the situation on the community for not donating enough, so NaNoWriMo had to rely on sponsors and merchandising as primary funding resources. I guess it is sad to see a creativity-driven nonprofit that organized a beloved writing challenge for years go away, however, the organization got mightly lost already some time ago.

Thunderbird is going to offer email addresses →

I always have to put on a little smile when I am talking to friends and family about email services and tell them that there is literally no need to use Gmail and support a big tech corporation like Google or Alphabet, and they then just ask me "What should I use instead? Are there alternatives?". Well, there are loads. And now, we are getting one more alternative, as the developers of Thunderbird are planning to compete with Gmail and other email providers by offering paid "pro" tier services, including @thundermail.com email addresses and new services such as an appointment scheduler, file sharing tools, and some "Thunderbird Assist" AI features.

Sublime is now available to everyone, introducing free Basic Plan →

Sublime, an app that lets you save anything and discover hand-curated, related ideas other people found fascination, search through your captured ideas by context, feeling, or half-remembered details, and go from curation to creation with an infinite canvas that les you play with your ideas and discover new connections, has only been available for paid subscribers for quite some time. But now, it further opened up its doors, as Sublime introduced a new free Basic Plan which allows users to discover and explore the platform with some limitations. To unlock all features without limitations, you need to upgrade to either the Premium Plan for $75 per year, the Premium+ Plan for $100 per year, or grab the Lifetime License for $400 as a one-time purchase.

If you want to learn more about Sublime, you can check out this video of Sari Azout, who is the founder of Sublime, or check out Sublimes video series How I Sublime, in which users are sharing their setups and ... well, how they are using Sublime.

You can now listen to your favorite Podcasts in Sofa →

Sofa is known for being a lovely app to create lists of things you would like to watch, read, or play. It is a media tracker to stay on top of your favorite books, games, series, movies, and more. With its newest update, Sofa introduced its podcast player, which allows users to enjoy the convenience, simplicity, and fun of listening to podcasts right within Sofa. With ease, you can add any podcast and Sofa will automatically get new episodes and put them in your "Up Next" queue. You can sort that queue by title, publish date, and how long an episode is.

Mental Wealth

❯ Can Sleep Unlock Innovation? – “In previous posts, we described the first clear visualization of neurons by Camillo Golgi in 1873, as well as the realization by his younger rival Santiago Ramón y Cajal that they represent the basic anatomical and functional units of the nervous system. Cajal understood that mammalian neurons were contiguous, though not continuous, but was vague about how neurons might pass signals across what we now know as synapses. How this takes place was elucidated in 1920 by Otto Loewi, using an idea that came to him in his sleep. This is the story of how it came about, and how it joins a long list of creative events coming from the sleeping brain.”

❯ I Suddenly Lost My Enthusiasm for Interneting – “As someone who has spent years contributing to the digital noise (via blogging), working in the IT sector, and existing long enough to remember when “going online” meant hearing the tortured screams of a dial-up modem, I have to admit – I’ve lost my enthusiasm for interneting. And by interneting, I don’t mean in the technical arcane wizardry of network protocols, but in the old-school sense of surfing the web, discovering new ideas, and engaging in actual human interactions.”

❯ What to do with your life – “I think it's possible to identify what to do with your life. There's a super quick test for it. In my case, I will never start another startup. What happened: I spent an afternoon listing out everything I cared about. I was surprised to learn that there's another pursuit that achieves my goals far better than startups ever could.”

❯ The discomfort of every beginning – “When you first start learning something new, there's this weird feeling that creeps in. It's like you're an actor on a stage, pretending to be someone you're not. You're going through the motions, mimicking what you think a "real" person in that role would do.”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

The world of productivity software is ever-evolving, with users constantly hunting for the perfect tool. This phenomenon, dubbed 'half-life productivity software', reflects our tendency to switch tools frequently. But what drives this cycle of adoption and abandonment? Read more about it in my post Half-life Productivity Software.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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