Good morning! I’m in your inbox a bit early because Google just announced its new Pixel phones, and I’ve got all the details, including a cool LED ring on the back that lets you know who is trying to get in touch with you. Yes, notification lights are back, baby!
Then, Anthropic is watermarking Claude outputs, Amazon is sending oddly vague shipping emails and Mark Zuckerberg has written his open-model opus. Plus, a LOLz Pro Max roundup because while everything on the internet may be getting worse, it has at least been extremely funny this week.
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Breaking news: Google has reinvented the BlackBerry notification light.
The company just announced its new Pixel 11 lineup, including the new 11 Pro, 11 Pro XL and 11 Pro Fold. I want to tell you I’m wildly excited about all of it. But I’ll be honest, most of it feels pretty standard. The Google briefing I attended last week was a parade of new camera specs, Gemini enhancements and processor improvements. But then they showed me…a light.
Google calls it the HiLight, a customizable LED ring around the camera flash on the Pro models that lights up differently depending on who is trying to get your attention. Mom calls? Red. Your boss? Blue. Your boss’s mom? Purple.
And somehow, of all the fancy new technology in these phones, this is the feature I want. More on that, the higher prices, the latest foldable design and everything else below.
It’s been nearly six months since I started building New Things, which means the business is growing—and so is my need to keep an eye on what we’re spending.
Lucky for me, Mercury just launched Spend, an expense-management tool that lets me set intelligent budgets for the team. The system can automatically cut off spending when someone hits a limit. And by “someone,” I mostly mean me.
For instance, I set up a travel budget that caps monthly travel expenses for me and David (our head of video / my very patient producer) at $5,000. Mercury automatically classifies things like airline tickets, hotel charges and car rentals as travel expenses. Now, David doesn’t have to ask me every time he wants to buy a snack box from the middle seat.
Receipts can also be uploaded right from the app, and cards with overdue tasks can be automatically locked until those tasks are resolved. Hahaha, got you all! No chasing receipts, no manual review, no tax-time scramble.
More than 300,000 entrepreneurs rely on Mercury. The financial tech company has been an essential partner since we launched New Things, and I’m excited to keep growing my business alongside theirs.
(Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC. The IO Card is issued by Patriot Bank, N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated.)
Fun fact: Fabriano, a small town in Italy famous for its medieval papermaking, is credited with inventing the watermark in the 13th century to identify which mill made which paper. Bet they never imagined that 700 years later, we’d use the same idea to make sure everyone knows Claude wrote my email.
This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.
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