Podcast 241: New tools for new times

This week we chat about Textmoji, a tool for stylizing your text messages and Slack chats. Paul and Sara discuss how their computer workstations have evolved over three months of being fully remote. And Ben hips everyone to Seek, an app that uses machine learning to turn real plants and animals into collectible Pokemon.

Episode Notes

You can find Textmoji here. A few taps and you’re the hippest typographer in your company’s work chat. 

Seek, the app from iNaturalist, is available on Android and iOS. You can find it here. Ben has over 30 plants, a dozen insects, and five amphibians, so if you’re feeling competitive, it’s gonna be a long hike to catch up.

It can be hard selling software or design in a period where vendors and potential clients can rarely meet in person. Paul has been enjoying Whimsical, which advertises itself as allowing users to “communicate visually at the speed of thought.” 

We also spend some time discussing Supabase, an open source Firebase alternative.

As discussed in the intro to this episode, we wanted to share some resources connected to the ongoing protests and memorials happening in the US. Black and Brown, a group of employees within Stack Overflow, put together recommendations of social media accounts to follow. You can find some below.

• Antiracism Center: Twitter
• Audre Lorde Project: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
• Black Women’s Blueprint: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
• Equal Justice Initiative (EJI): Twitter | Instagram | Facebook