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This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. If I could use only one app, Id pick Craft. Craft is my favorite multipurpose document/notes tool. It looks and feels nicer than Google Docs or Apple Notes. Its easier to use than Obsidian, Coda or Notion. And its flexible enough for everything from shopping lists to client proposals. Read on for why its so useful, new features, limitations, and more. Craft’s eight best features Visual: Elegant sub-page cards help Craft docs look neater & nicer than Google or Word Docs, which tend to bog down with lots of text. Easy: Add text, images, links, tables, or sub-pages intuitively. Shareable: Collaborate on a doc and publish & share it with a link. You can create custom links and track metrics to measure visits. Export: Print, export as PDF or text, or transfer material to Day One, Bear, Drafts, Ulysses, Things, iA Writer, or other apps. Calendar: Easily sync your calendar to use Craft for daily notes. Affordable: The free version is great and the unlimited option is fairly priced. Flexible: Works quickly and reliably on mobile, desktop or Web. You can even email material into your notes. AI options: Pick from multiple AI models within Craft, or avoid it entirely. Templates: Starting docs for travel, events, family, and more. Pricing Free for basic usage, with up to 1500 content blocks and 1gb of storage. Free upgrade for students and educators with your school email address. Free upgrade w/ a subsription to Setapp, $10/month for access to 200+ apps. Plus plan: $8/month billed annually for a Plus account to create unlimited notes and documents. ($4/month with a special 50% current discount). Team plan: $15/month for sharing with 2 to 6 people. (50% current discount) Examples of Craft Docs Useful AI prompts: Excerpts from my resource for paid subscribers Planning great class sessions: Excerpts from my guide for paid subscribers Syllabus outline: Draft from teacher Jeremy England Home life notes:By the Craft team Examples of Craft Templates Simple company handbook with sections for people, policies & resources Sales plan has sections for mission statement, team roles, action plan, etc. Home design planner with customizable pages Travel packing list with customizable visual sections for your next trip. New features I like Styles For designing distinctive docs, Craft added 100 new premade styles Collections Its easy now to keep track of lists for projects, books, movies, etc Whiteboards Create a freeform brainstorming page with Post-Its, images, etc Sync with Readwise Import Kindle highlights and other clips youve saved Privacy and Security Craft has strong policies on data security and privacy. TL;DR: Craft does not own your data, nor do we sell it to others or use it for advertising. Limitations Android: doesnt have a full app yet, though a mobile Web app is on the way. Craft works on Mac, iOS, VisionOS, Windows, & Web. Tagging: It’s not yet easy to organize pages with tags as easily as you can with other notes tools, though the team is working on it. No synced blocks: In tools like Notion and Workflowy, you can create a synchronized block of text that stays up to date anywhere you use it. This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
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E-Commerce
Now that the WNBA finds itself at the halfway mark of the season, its time for an All-Star break to celebrate. Tip-off for the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game will take place tonight (Saturday, July 19) at 8:30 p.m. ET at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, home court of the Indiana Fever. Fans, players, media, and coaches voted to create an All-Star pool from which team captains drafted two teams of 12 to go head-to-head. Team captain Caitlin Clark and team captain Napheesa Collier are ready to lead their squads to victory, but only one can end up on top. Lets take a look at the rosters and some new exciting rules before we dive into how to tune in. Who made the 2025 WNBA All-Star teams? Clark and Collier became team captains because they received the most fan votes. They were tasked with drafting their teams from the pool of players. Head coaches Cheryl Reeve and Sandy Brondello were chosen because the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty have the best records in their respective conferences so far this season. Originally, Reeve was supposed to coach Team Clark, and Brondello, Team Collier, but the women switched things up since Collier and Brondello already have a working relationship. Clarks loyalty to her Indiana Fever teammates runs deep and flows into the All-Stars. She chose Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell. Collier acted in a similar manner, choosing Courtney Williams from the Minnesota Lynx and selecting Kayla McBride as an injury replacement alternate. You can view the full team rosters on the WNBA website. What are the four new rules for the WNBA All-Star game? The WNBA is keeping things fresh. To give players a chance to show off their skills, four-point circles will be added to the court. Clark, unfortunately, tweaked her right groin in a recent game and will now sit this game out. The shot clock also got shortened. It was previously 24 seconds, but will be 20 on Saturday. This will keep things fast-paced. Another rule will also move things along. There will be no free throws for the first 38 minutes of the game. Instead, when a foul occurs, the maximum points will automatically be awarded to the team of the player who was fouled. For the last two minutes of the game and any overtime period, free throws will take place. Adding more drama to it all is the use of live substitutions. The offensive team can sub in one player at a time while the ball is in the backcourt. They are not allowed to touch the ball until it crosses half-court. How can I watch or stream the 2025 All-Star Game live? ABC has the privilege of bringing this high-energy game to the masses. If you have an over-the-air antenna, ABC is free to watch. Traditional cable subscribers can easily find ABC in their channel guide and also watch ABC on its website if they sign in with their provider. If you’ve cut the cord, some live-TV streaming services carry ABC and let you watch it live in some markets. Those include: Hulu+Live TV Fubo YouTube TV Be sure to double-check that these services carry ABC in your region before committing, due to regional differences.
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E-Commerce
The ink was barely dry on President Donald Trumps April tariff missive, when owners of independent nail polish brands sounded the alarm that the changes could chip away at their businesses. That shocking executive order ushered in sweeping tariffs of as much as 145% on Chinese imports. Much has changed since then. In May, the U.S. struck a trade deal with China that included a 90-day truce and reducing tariffs to a still-high 30% for most imported goods; then, in June, President Trump said a trade deal with China is done and tariffs on goods imported from China will total 55%, while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the level wont increase again. There’s currently a pause on tariffs of goods imported from China, effective until August. But the prolonged chaos of the past few months has dragged small beauty brands into the middle of a big trade war. And its created uncertainty that could leave a long-lasting smudge on business. Even the latest news doesnt provide much reassurance, says Rachel Wraith, founder and owner of Rogue Lacquer, a Phoenix-based indie line of nail polishes. It still feels like a slap in the face and I never feel certain with any set decisions because everything seems to change, regardless she tells Fast Company. Waking up each morning lately, Wraith says, has meant bracing herself for what news might come that day that will affect her livelihood. Hurdling one obstacle, she adds, makes her question what the next one will be. The uncertainty is very hard and very stressful. Going rogue For more than a decade, Wraith has been making customized nail polishes and she launched Rogue Lacquer in 2018. The business is a primary source of income for Wraith and her husband; he works full-time for the business, while she also has a full-time job in healthcare. The powdered pigments that Rogue imports from China are a crucial component for Wraith to create the customized nail polish colors that she sells in small batches. And there arent really alternative locations to source these pigments, which meant news of tariff increases left Wraith with little option but to pay up. This is a broader problem for the beauty industry as a lot of manufacturing is concentrated in China, adds Sucharita Kodali, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. The issue right now is there is no definitive place that is an alternative to China because you dont know what that situation is going to be in three months or six months, Kodali says. Until the dust settles, no one knows.” Advantages for big brands Even as tariff increases rocked indie beauty brands, the impact was less severe on the industrys biggest players. Thanks to margins of about 80% to 90% on many beauty products, some companies are able to absorb higher tariffs without making price increases, Kodali says. But the longer-lasting impact tariffs will have on the beauty industry remains to be seen, notes William Curtis, senior industry and risk analyst at IBISWorld. In the short-term, the big winners will be the companies with a more diversified, more domestic manufacturing base. Curtis points to LOréal, which has been actively diversifying where it produces its broad array of beauty products in recent years. Two-thirds of the LOréal products sold in the U.S. are now produced in the U.S., according to company figures. Of course, moving production elsewhere isnt an option for small beauty brands. Business owners could have taken a lesson from Trumps handling of tariffs during his first administration, Kodali says, and their options now are rather limited, which means some will face irreparable harm. Adds Wraith: Did anybody think to ask a small business how these decisions would affect them? Pushback on pricing After Trumps announcement of tariff increases in early April, many brandsincluding Rogue, Lurid Lacquer, Atomic Polish, and Dam Nail Polishposted candidly on social media that their businesses would be directly impacted, even if they werent quite sure then by how much. Comments from customers were overwhelmingly positive, with people empathizing about the stress the uncertainty was causing. Some of that sentiment has since changed as brands have begun testing just how much they can increase prices without their polishes losing luster in the eyes of consumers. Mooncat, an indie brand of nail lacquers, announced it would increase the price of its polishes by $1 to $2 each while also upping the free shipping threshold. Most bottles of Mooncat lacquer now retail for $16 to $18an amount some customers will happily pay, but a bridge too far for others. I cannot ever imagine paying almost $30 (including shipping and tax) for one bottle of polish, one person posted on a thread discussing the price changes on the RedditLaqueristas subreddit. Other customers have complained in comments on Instagram that, amid the price increases, theres no longer transparency about how much money is going to benefit cats in need of new homes, the brand’s charitable mission. Mooncat declined a request for an interview for this story. Brands embrace transparency ILNP and Cirque Colors have also recently announced price adjustments, with both brands opting for selective, rather than across-the-line, increases. Most bottles of ILNP polish now retail for $12.50 each, while many of Cirques polishes start at that same price but also go up to as much as $16.50. The reception to these price changes has generally been more positive among the 940,000-plus members of the RedditLaqueristas community. Some people commended ILNPs transparency and others noted that Cirques hasnt raised prices in several years. For beauty brands already struggling, tariffs have introduced a wild card that could make their future more uncertain, says Curtis. In May, the owner of Dimension Nails announced she was shutting down her store effective June 30, though she didnt specifically cite tariffs as a reason. The owner of Triple O Polish announced in mid-April that she wouldnt be able to keep her business open if the highest-planned tariffs went into effect, though shes still operational amid the tariff pause. What works best While the community of indie nail polish brands is niche and very friendlya group where Wraith might seek out guidance or compare notesshes intentionally not monitoring what other brands are doing in the wke of tariff announcements. I dont want to make a decision based on somebody else’s business model, she says. You just have to figure out what works best for your business. The risk of mirroring price increases taken by other brands, Wraith says, is that doing so could lead to a drop-off in sales in a year thats already proven to be a bit weaker. That appears to be a broader trend, as LOréal reported that U.S. sales of beauty products were more challenging than anticipated in the first quarter. For now, the biggest change Wraith has madewhich she announced in Aprilhas been to increase the threshold on orders eligible for free shipping, from $75 to $100. For those polishes made with high-end pigments, Wraith has bumped up prices by 50 cents, but shes resisted across-the-line price adjustments and most bottles of polish retail for $12 or $13. Navigating a new normal Prior to the initial tariff announcements, Wraith says she was fortunate to have a lot of pigments on-hand, and shes since limited imports to only those supplies she really needs. She has paid tariffs twice since April, including when they were at the highest level, and in this period of flux, shes opted not to branch out so much with the range of products shes creating. By keeping costs more consistent, Wraith is optimistic that Rogue can ride out this period of uncertainty. But its hard to make decisions, she says, when theres the very real possibility that she could place an order one day, and tariffs could change the next. This is characteristic of the chaotic rollout of tariff increases thats created a lot of confusion for small businesses, as Kodali notes. My hope is that in six months, all of these business owners will be in a better place.” Even if nail polish is a luxury item, creating lacquersfirst as a hobby, now as a businesshas brought Wraith a lot of joy over the years because she enjoys making other people happy. And people need that more than ever right now.
Category:
E-Commerce
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