Stories
Stories.
Featured web apps and long-form writing on browser-native software — by the editors who curate the catalog.
Featured stories
What we're excited about this week.
The lead story
Comparison
Whiteboard wars 2026: Figma, FigJam, Excalidraw, tldraw, and Miro
Excalidraw, tldraw, FigJam, Miro, Figma — five tools fighting over the same square of screen. They look alike. They are not. Here is which one you actually want.
Latest
Recent reading
New essays, reviews and buyer's guides.
Opinion
The personal software stack: what I actually pay for in 2026
Most software recommendations are written by people who got the apps for free. Here is the version where I read off my credit card statement and tell you which subscriptions I would actively miss if they vanished.
Guides
Privacy-first web apps: a buyer's guide
Privacy has become a marketing word, which means it now means almost nothing. The interesting work is in figuring out, for any given app, what the privacy claim is actually committing to. Most of the time, less than you think.
Comparisons
AI assistants in 2026: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity
Four chat boxes, all roughly the same shape on the surface, all different in what they're really good at. Here is the honest field guide to picking the one — or two — that fit your work.
Industry
The slow death of the file
Open your Documents folder. Count what you have actually opened from there in the last month. The number is smaller than it used to be. There is a reason for that, and it is not nostalgia.
Comparisons
AI writing tools, ranked by what they actually replace
Every AI writing tool now claims the same thing. The useful question is which part of writing each one is actually trying to do for you — drafting, polishing, summarizing, or thinking. They are very different jobs.
Guides
A plain-English buyer's guide to project management software
Most teams pick the wrong project management tool, then spend a year quietly working around it. This is a buyer's guide for the people who have to make the decision once and live with it.
All posts
The full archive — newest first.
Opinion
The personal software stack: what I actually pay for in 2026
Most software recommendations are written by people who got the apps for free. Here is the version where I read off my credit card statement and tell you which subscriptions I would actively miss if they vanished.
Sasha Khoury · Jun 8, 2026 · 8 min
Guides
Privacy-first web apps: a buyer's guide
Privacy has become a marketing word, which means it now means almost nothing. The interesting work is in figuring out, for any given app, what the privacy claim is actually committing to. Most of the time, less than you think.
Devon Park · Jun 2, 2026 · 7 min
Comparisons
AI assistants in 2026: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity
Four chat boxes, all roughly the same shape on the surface, all different in what they're really good at. Here is the honest field guide to picking the one — or two — that fit your work.
Mira Voss · May 30, 2026 · 8 min
Industry
The slow death of the file
Open your Documents folder. Count what you have actually opened from there in the last month. The number is smaller than it used to be. There is a reason for that, and it is not nostalgia.
Mira Voss · May 27, 2026 · 8 min
Comparisons
AI writing tools, ranked by what they actually replace
Every AI writing tool now claims the same thing. The useful question is which part of writing each one is actually trying to do for you — drafting, polishing, summarizing, or thinking. They are very different jobs.
Mira Voss · May 20, 2026 · 7 min
Guides
A plain-English buyer's guide to project management software
Most teams pick the wrong project management tool, then spend a year quietly working around it. This is a buyer's guide for the people who have to make the decision once and live with it.
Priya Menon · May 19, 2026 · 8 min
Guides
What a 'web app' actually is in 2026
Ask five people what makes something a 'web app' and you'll get five different answers. The phrase has been stretched so far it almost stopped meaning anything — but the distinction still matters when you're picking tools.
Mira Voss · May 12, 2026 · 5 min
How-To
How to evaluate any web app in five minutes
Most new tools deserve about five minutes of your attention before you decide. Here is how to spend them — the same checklist our editors use when a new app lands in the submission queue.
Sasha Khoury · May 12, 2026 · 6 min
Industry
The browser ate the operating system
Every year the browser eats another category most people assumed was permanently locked to native software. Here is the pattern, the holdouts, and the reason it keeps happening.
Mira Voss · May 4, 2026 · 6 min
Comparisons
Figma, Canva, Excalidraw: three browsers, three philosophies
All three of these tools live in a browser tab. None of them are really competing with the other two — though their users keep insisting they are. Here's what each one is actually for.
Daniel Park · May 3, 2026 · 6 min
Industry
How we pick Editor's Choice
Editor's Choice is the most visible badge on the catalog, and the one we argue about the most. Here is the rubric we settled on after a year, and the calls we still aren't sure we got right.
The dotstore editors · Apr 29, 2026 · 5 min
Opinion
The case for no-install software
I went twelve months without installing a single new app on my laptop. Not as a stunt — as a working experiment. Here is what survived, what fell apart, and what I learned about the install button.
Sasha Khoury · Apr 15, 2026 · 6 min
Industry
The real cost of 'free' web apps
Nothing is free. The question is what currency the bill is paid in — attention, data, conversion, time, or a slow erosion of the product. Here is how to read the bill before it arrives.
Mira Voss · Mar 22, 2026 · 6 min