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    <title>Sam Larson - Blog</title>
    <link>https://samlarson.dev</link>
    <description>Full Stack Developer. Construction Tech Innovator. Freelance Photographer + Videographer.</description>
    <language>en-US</language>
    <lastBuildDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 15:49:13 GMT</lastBuildDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[The Best Tech Tools to Simplify Your Life in 2025]]></title>
      <link>https://samlarson.dev/blog/best-tech-tools-2025</link>
      <guid>https://samlarson.dev/blog/best-tech-tools-2025</guid>
      <pubDate>Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <description><![CDATA[A curated list of essential tech tools that have stood the test of time, helping to streamline finances, security, and reading habits.]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Below is a list of my favorite products that I've adopted over the past few years to save time, money, and effort. Too often, I find myself adopting a trending tool someone recommends on Twitter, loving it for 2-3 months, and then never touching it again. These are NOT those tools. I've used the products below for over a year now, so I'm comfortable recommending them to others. Monarch Is a great tool for organizing your finances, setting budgeting goals, and tracking investments across multiple accounts and vendors. Think of sites like mint, empower, or personal capital but syncing is made easy and doesn't break all the time. It's especially useful if you have a partner, and want the benefit of seeing everything in one place without having to go through the hassle of combining all of your financial accounts. I've used it over the past few years to establish budgets, keep an eye on monthly spending habits, view investments across various brokerages, and track metrics like net worth and personal cashflow. It also connects to all of your credit cards to track recurring purchases, subscriptions, and alert you when payments are due. Price: $5.83/month (when paid annually) Get Started with Monarch → 1Password Gone are the days of having to constantly reset your passwords. 1password is a phone app and browser extension that keeps all of your passwords in one secure bucket and transfers them between your safari, chrome, and individual smartphone applications. All you have to do is remember your "one password" to autofill into the site that you're logging in to. Now, you can make all of your individual passwords super secure without the burden of remembering them all. Price: $2.99/month (when paid annually) Send to Kindle A free app offered by Amazon that allows you to send any PDF to your kindle device. I use it often to quickly send newsletters, free ebooks, reports, and white papers that I stumble across to my kindle device for later reading. It has a phone app, browser extension, and you can also get a unique email to send readings through. Price: FREE]]></content:encoded>
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      <title><![CDATA[Construction Tech Update: 2025]]></title>
      <link>https://samlarson.dev/blog/construction-tech-2025</link>
      <guid>https://samlarson.dev/blog/construction-tech-2025</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <description><![CDATA[An analysis of the digital transformation in construction, from digitization to AI integration and the future of robotics.]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Construction may be one of the last industries to embrace digital transformation, but the shift is finally happening—and fast. After years of lagging behind, the built world is waking up to the power of digitization. 1. Digitization Has Arrived—A Decade Late While finance, healthcare, and logistics went digital in the early 2010s, construction clung to paper drawings, whiteboards, and Excel. That's changing. Field teams now use tablets. RFIs and submittals are managed through cloud platforms. Photos, schedules, and inspections are being uploaded in real time. The digital foundation is finally being laid. 2. Integration is the New Frontier Despite progress, most construction tech stacks are still siloed. Companies might use one tool for project management, another for CRM, and yet another for accounting—with no native connection between them. This fragmentation is creating opportunities for internal innovation teams and savvy consultants to come in, stitch together data lakes, and write the glue code and automations that unlock real operational leverage. 3. Still a Strategic Exit Market, Not a Public One Startups in construction tech face a narrow path: build a product that solves a specific gap, grow revenue, and aim to get acquired by one of the big three—Procore, Autodesk, or Trimble. The market isn't big enough (yet) to support a wave of IPOs. That's why we're seeing more startups position themselves for strategic acquisition or run profitable niche businesses with strong cashflow. 4. AI Is a Perfect Fit—If You Know Where to Apply It Office-side construction workflows—like estimating, RFIs, submittals, and change orders—are all rules-based, repetitive, and well-documented. That's fertile ground for AI agents. We're also seeing traction with AI tools that can scan drawings, extract data, and prompt large language models for faster documentation and decision-making. It's early—but it's real. 5. Robotics & Pre-Fab: Still Waiting for Prime Time The skilled labor shortage isn't going away, and both robotics and pre-fab are long-term solutions. But pre-fab still hasn't scaled meaningfully in the U.S., and jobsite robotics remain largely in pilot phases. The companies that crack this at scale may not be construction startups—they may be Tesla, Nvidia, or other tech giants with deeper AI and hardware stacks. That said, startups training models on skilled trades' motions might still have a shot if they move fast.]]></content:encoded>
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