As a remotely friendly company, we gather the whole team together once a week to review our progress, introduce new projects and share tips, tools and our general learning experiences.
We’d like to share 52 things we’ve learned or discovered throughout 2016!
Week 01
Tips for Virtual Meetings
Shared by Jordi
Icebreakers for getting virtual meetings off to a great start and good tips for keeping them interesting.
Week 02
16 Personalities
Shared by Luciano
Get insights about your own personality, your strengths and weakness by taking this test. The whole team took part and we published the results in a blog post.
Week 03
Git Flow Cheatsheet
Shared by Stefano
A nice infographic explaining Git Flow and it’s tools to automatically do merges, tags and releases.
Week 04
Bugfender Receives 100k Investment
Shared by Aleix
Bugfender was selected as one of the best startups in the European Union and was awarded a 100k investment from IMPACT.
Week 05
Parse Shuts Down
Shared by Joan
Parse was a collection of tools to help mobile developers. Fortunately they announced their closure with plenty of time and open sourced part of their server code.
Week 06
Mailtrack
Shared by Brian
Use Mailtrack to see when people open your emails or click on links within them.
Week 07
Particle
Shared by Jordi
Particle is an Arduino-style IoT prototyping board with an API so that you can send commands to it from anywhere.
Week 08
Vectors Come to Android
Shared by Vito
Vectors come to Android for any devices running version 2.1 or higher.
Week 09
Bugfender Sponsors mdevcon 2016
Shared by Aleix
Bugfender will be sponsoring mdevcon (short for Mobile Developers Conference) this year, a weekend-long conference for mobile developers by mobile developers.
Week 10
Software Development Methods Explained with Cars
Shared by Diego
The only thing more difficult than building software for a client, is explaining how software is built to a client.
Week 11
Duet Display
Shared by Pablo
Try Duet Display and turn your iOS device into your secondary monitor.
Week 12
Trello Chrome Extension
Shared by Fran
Enhance your productivity with useful shortcuts from the new Trello extension for Chrome.
Week 13
Bugfender Releases Android SDK
Shared by Aleix
Bugfender has released the Android SDK, now you can improve your Android apps quality with the best remote logger.
Week 14
Alfred
Shared by Adam
Use workflows to run Applescript and Terminal commands from spotlight-like app Alfred.
Week 15
CaptionBot
Shared by Marc
Upload a picture to Microsoft’s CaptionBot and it attempts to describe it using natural language.
Week 16
Google Releases Agera
Shared by Jose
Agera is a library from Google for reactive programming in Android.
Week 17
CSS Flexbox Tutorials
Shared by Fran
Here’s an entertaining way of learning the CSS flexbox model.
Week 18
Microsoft Flow
Shared by Luciano
Flow is Microsoft’s version of IFTTT, allowing you to connect apps and services.
Week 19
Opera VPN
Shared by Stefan
Opera has released a new, free VPN offering that blocks ads and trackers on iOS. They claim to respect your privacy as well.
Week 20
Sell Photos with Snapwire
Shared by Fran
Leverage your existing photos and earn some cash with Snapwire!
Week 21
PJAX
Shared by Brian
PJAX is a jQuery plugin which lets you easily add complex server-rendered ajax interactions within a webpage.
Week 22
Chrome Remote Desktop
Shared by Pol
Give access and share your computer with Chrome Remote Desktop. Great for fixing issues with clients (and parents).
Week 23
ButlerBot for Trello
Shared by Adam
Trello has introduced their first bot ButlerBot, providing some awesome automation in natural language.
Week 24
App Review Guidelines
Shared by Pablo
For WWDC 2016, Apple have released their App Review Guidelines as a comic.
Week 25
Swagger
Shared by Jose
Swagger is a powerful framework for API documentation.
Week 26
Adam Sci-Fi Film
Shared by Luciano
Watch Adam, a short sci-fi film, created and rendered in realtime with Unity game engine.
Week 27
Client Care
Shared by Adam
How better customer service attracts and retains better clients.
Week 28
Blisk
Shared by Aleix
Blisk is a new web browser that helps developers when building responsive sites.
Week 29
Toggl
Shared by Aldo
Toggl is a great time tracking alternative to Harvest!
Week 30
Google Formulas
Shared by Fran
Use Google formulas to automatically pull-in currency information or even translations into to your Google Sheets.
Week 31
Timezone.io
Shared by Luciano
Use Timezone.io to keep track of your teammate’s local time around the globe.
Week 32
Headspace
Shared by Luciano
Headspace is an app for guided meditation, great before work and only takes only 10 minutes.
Week 33
Stay Awake at Work
Shared by Fran
An amusing device to help you stay awake at work.
Week 34
FLEX by Flipboard
Shared by Jordi
Flex is a really nice tool for debugging iOS applications on-device.
Week 35
Inspectlet
Shared by Jordi
Use Inspectlet to see how customers actually use your website, not just how you think they do!
Week 36
NGROK
Shared by Brian
When developing things which use webhooks ngrok makes life a lot easier, offering http and https tunnels.
Week 37
Angular 2 is Released
Shared by Aleix
Angular 2 is finally released! Time to start building some awesome things.
Week 38
Morality in Languages
Shared by Brian
Speaking in a different language can cause you think differently, morally speaking.
Week 39
Easy Invoicing
Shared by Adam
Create and send invoices and estimates, track time and expenses and accept online payments with Invoicely.
Week 40
Beware of the Manchineel Tree
Shared by Nuria
Surrounding our remote office in Martinique are Manchineel trees, full of toxins that can cause blistering of the skin, blindness and can even be fatal if eaten!
Week 41
Our Teammates on Redbull TV
Shared by Pol
Our teammates Aleix and Pol and their Castellers team featured on Red Bull TV.
Week 42
Oversight
Shared by Stefan
Oversight is a free macOS app similar to Little Snitch that observes processes accessing your mic and camera.
Week 43
Brand Colors: What They Say About You
Shared by Adam
Branding is such an important aspect on how customers perceive our products, services and messages.
Week 44
Mobile App Security Vulnerabilities
Shared by Jordi
The top 10 security vulnerabilities in mobile apps from OWASP.
Week 45
SubjectLine
Shared by Adam
SubjectLine is a great marketing tool that rates and provides suggestions for email subjects.
Week 46
Quick, Draw!
Shared by Adam
This is a fun AI experiment from Google that guesses what you’re drawing.
Week 47
Useful Tools for Gifs
Shared by Vito
Monosnap and Licecap are great, free tools to help you turn screen recordings into an animated gif.
Week 48
IoT Project Directory
Shared by Paolo
Codemade.io is a nice website full of Internet of Things projects to inspire you after learning a new programming language.
Week 49
App Transport Security
Shared by Jordi
Apple will be enforcing App Transport Security (ATS) from January.
Week 50
Find My Phone
Shared by Joan
A short film about what happens when phones get stolen.
Week 51
UX Tools
Shared by Pablo
A great website compiling the most useful UX tools (also UI) for prototyping, collaboration, monitoring and more.
Week 52
Gmail Extends CSS Support
Shared by Pol
Gmail now supports some CSS media queries in its web app. The full specification of media queries can be found here.
We hope you’ve enjoyed these tools from nearly 1,000 we’ve suggested this year. We continue to share our learning experiences and new and exciting tips we find.
What tools or devices have you discovered this year? We’d love to hear.