Author: Awais

I had the opportunity to attend two conferences in 2025 after getting 5 years into my career without attending any. Those conferences were SXSW London and Spotlight by Semrush (which I got to attend with my teammate Kirsti!), and were transformative experiences.Why are these conferences even a big deal in the first place? Well, being a remote team has several huge perks — working with people from around the globe, for starters. But there’s something about meeting face-to-face that simply can’t be replicated over Zoom.Plus, the right conference does two things at once: it gives you access to top-tier education and opens…

We independently review every app we recommend in our best apps lists. When you click some of the links on this page, we may earn a commission. Learn more.Work’s done, time to get paid. But that’s not as easy as emailing a reminder: you need to send a professional invoice with clear payment terms, accurate line items, and all your business and client details.Streamline your invoicing workflows with automationYou can do that with a Google Docs template, for sure. But when you’re copying everything every time, it’s easy to forget to include a key element like a payment link. Even…

If you want a cheap gift that feels expensive, the Echo Spot is a great pick. The versatile smart display can handle dozens of everyday tasks, and right now it’s back at its all-time low of $44.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy. That actually beats its Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing and marks the first time it’s dropped this low since Prime Day.I’ve always thought of my (ancient) Echo Show 8 and Echo Pop as tiny digital assistants that help me get through the day, which is why Echo devices are some of my favorite gadgets.…

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to get into the Mac ecosystem (or retire an aging Intel iMac or laptop), this is it. The latest Mac mini with M4, 16GB unified memory, and 256GB SSD is down to $479, which is wild value for a brand-new Apple desktop “built for Apple Intelligence.” You’re getting Apple’s newest chip, plenty of RAM for everyday multitasking, and the usual tiny footprint that fits almost anywhere. What you’re getting This Mac mini uses Apple’s M4 chip, which brings faster CPU and GPU performance plus a more powerful Neural Engine for all the…

[Submitted on 12 Jun 2025 (v1), last revised 9 Dec 2025 (this version, v2)] View a PDF of the paper titled Beyond Formal Semantics for Capabilities and Skills: Model Context Protocol in Manufacturing, by Luis Miguel Vieira da Silva and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Explicit modeling of capabilities and skills — whether based on ontologies, Asset Administration Shells, or other technologies — requires considerable manual effort and often results in representations that are not easily accessible to Large Language Models (LLMs). In this work-in-progress paper, we present an alternative approach based on the recently introduced Model Context…

After suggesting a hatchet, a wood-burning stove, and a mini bellows, you should have seen this coming. What you need to complete the full-fire package is Cooking On Fire, a gorgeous book of recipes and techniques for cooking over an open flame. Cooking on Fire has a good mix of recipes, ranging from simple and delicious veggies to slow-cooked meats that require hours. There’s also plenty of background on different types of fires and cooking techniques, as well all the equipment you might want to cook various things (for example: spits, forked sticks, cast iron pans, and so on). It’s…

Look, there’s no getting around it—there are good food holidays and bad food holidays. Good food holidays include Thanksgiving (obviously), Christmas and Hanukkah (hello, latkes!), and Valentine’s Day (bring on the chocolate). As for bad food holidays? I’d argue Passover falls in that camp. Don’t get me wrong, I love brisket and matzo ball soup as much as the next person, but as a bread-obsessed person, eight days is a long time without my beloved yeasted foods. There is, however, one Passover treat I not only love, but it’s one I wait all year to make. In fact, I’m not…

Do you want to immediately raise the blood pressure of the Google Ads practitioner sitting next to you? Say one word: Recommendations. If you’ve spent any time in the Google Ads platform, you’ve seen Recommendations jumping out at you on every screen: when you’re adding keywords, when you’re adjusting your campaign settings, when you’re changing your bid strategy, when you’re minding your own business! And we’ve all received that email from a client asking why their “Optimization Score” is falling. In this article, I’ll explain what Recommendations actually are (and aren’t), where they come from, and how you should handle…

Design tool Figma launched new AI-powered image editing features today, including the ability to remove and isolate objects and expand images. The company said that these features will save the hassle of exporting images to other tools for editing and importing them back. It added that generation models like Nano Banana are good for creating images, but users often need granular tools for editing that work without any text prompts. Figma has improved its lasso tool for selection. Now you can use it to select an object, remove it, or isolate it to move it around. When you move around…

Pasta is a beautiful thing, and much of that beauty lies in its simplicity. Even if you’re making fresh pasta at home, there isn’t a lot to it, and that’s what makes the Italian staple such a popular base for easy weeknight meals. Despite the basic formula for making dried pasta — boil salted water, cook until done, drain and serve — there are dozens of hacks purporting to make your pasta cook faster, taste better and behave more cooperatively once it’s done cooking. Many of those secret tricks are actually doing more harm than good. To sift through the mire of pasta-making…