This month we started a weekly newsletter to share articles we’ve liked, apps that are making our lives easier and new developments in tech. The following is what we’ve loved in June. If you’d like to sign up to the newsletter you can do so here
Zoom.us
“If you have got an invite from me over the past few weeks you might notice I am now using [Zoom.us] (http://zoom.us/) for video and phone meetings. I have found that this service works far more reliably than GoToMeeting, Skype, Google Hangouts or JoinMe and I am super excited by how fast and easy it is to have meetings. There is a great free plan and I would highly recommend this service to anyone who needs to host meetings with people in multiple locations.”
– Matt
Kraken.io/web-interface
“Many of our products already optimise the images you upload. But, if you’re creating some media rich content without a tool designed specifically for the web, you should consider [this image optimiser] (https://kraken.io/web-interface) and your images will be loaded more quickly without affecting their quality. A quick user experience is a good user experience.”
– Erik
Random Hacks of Kindness
“This weekend we are heading to QUT’s beautiful Garden’s Point for the Winter 2016 Random Hacks of Kindness, otherwise know as RHoK. RHoK is the largest and longest running social hackathon in Australia. We’ve been doing this stuff since 2011, and have one of the most vibrant, engaged technology and social change communities in the country. We work on projects that make a real difference. In the last 4 years we’ve helped over 40 charities and community groups, using technology to solve their problems and teaching many of them the principles of lean and agile development. Further details can be found here.”
– Bruce
Testmysite
“This week we’ve been testing performance on mobile using this amazing tool created by Google. In addition to your scores you also receive recommendations for improving performance across all devices. I love it because it helps us to avoid spending time trying to figure out what’s wrong in our websites/webapps.”
– Lucas
Don’t build a mobile app
“Everybody has an idea for an app but should you invest in it? link highlights some lessons learned by Jean-Baptiste Coger, Chief Product Officer of Paris-based Birdly. A reminder to make sure your target problem is one that your market wants to solve on a mobile.”
– Erik
Let’s Encrypt
“Recently, when the SSL certificates of clients are coming up for expiry (particularly the expensive wildcard SSL certificates) we are using [LetsEncrypt] (https://letsencrypt.org/). This new service allows us to get you unlimited free SSL certificates, it only takes a few hours to setup and will mean you never have to worry about SSL certificates expiring again!”
– Matt
Tiempos Font Family
“Stumbled upon the Tiempos font family and I think it deserves a shout out to anyone who may be interested in using it in their marketing campaign. This font family speaks for itself in terms of personality and boldness. It is important to know that choosing the right font matters. Check out the fonts [here] (http://vllg.com/klim/tiempos-headline), and if you’re interested in using it, please get in touch.”
– Felix
Shoeboxed
“We are just days away from the end of the financial year and I was shocked to find out not everyone is aware of Shoeboxed. Able to be used for both businesses and individuals, Shoeboxed takes all your old receipts and invoices, scans them and stores them within your account. Not only does this mean I’m not longer sorting through months of receipts to find that half of them have faded beyond recognition I’m also able to search by vendor, payment date and payment type.”
– Madeleine
OneTab
“If you’re like me and end up with hundreds of Chrome/FireFox tabs open, then OneTab can help. It is an extension that converts all your tabs into a list. When I need to access a tab again, I can either restore them individually or all at once.”
– Matt
Wunderlist
“I love a good list, but what I love more is crossing stuff off that list like a boss. I use Wunderlist list to keep track of all the little tasks I need to do in my week for work and home. It works well on both desktop and mobile, and (unlike every other to-do list app I’ve tried) it actually syncs fast.”
– Ash
Change Detection
“It surprises me how often I want to know if a web page has changed – an event being listed, a price being changed, an article being added etc. Change Detection lets you easily monitor web pages for changes. It will look at the web page everyday and alert you of any changes since the last time it checked.”
– Matt
TheStocks
“TheStocks collects all the best royalty-free stock photo repositories in one place. Unsplash seems to be everyone’s go-to, Super Famous is my current favourite and notable mention goes to New Old Stock, which offers images with freshly expired copyrights.”
– John
