Well what are the cool tools we’ve been using lately:

  1. Slack. Wow I see why they got a billion dollar valuation. Slack is already a verb in our shop and I barely read email anymore. It is much more public than email and has some really convenient features for developers: a) you can edit your posts so you can correct things, b) all the posts are searchable so you can post snippet (like pastebin) and it indexes google documents even as you update so you it is much more useful than a wiki that you have to maintain. Plus it looks amazing. Plus the mobile application is very good.
  2. Getfranke.com. Slack has integrations which make it easy to connect your email system to slack. You just email <your slack board>@getfranke.com and the email gets visible and indexed there. 

  3. Trello. Scrum is what the new kids on the block are doing for agile development. Trello is a great tool for this (from the folks who gave us stack overflow). The board, list and card methodology is much simpler to view than say github issues. And the fact you can drag for priorities and the mobile apps are great really makes a difference.

  4. Shiftit. With the world of very large screens, it is the easy way to just shift things into quadrants on the Mac.

  5. Compiz Grids. This is the equivalent tool on Ubuntu (it is actually already built in). You use a Ctrl-Shitt sequence to move things around.

  6. Stay. This is a mac tool that detects what your monitor setup is and moves windows around. Super useful if you flip your macbook from a big screen at work to the small screen outside of it.

Things we are trying now:

  1. Trello Plus. it is chrome only but gives you burndown charts and time tracking, so when you activate a card, it records how long you worked on it. I tried Cato which was nice, but kept forgetting to click on it. And hubstaff has a good list of alternatives.

I’m Rich & Co.

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