Category: Technology

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Technology Tools

Remote working tools

When you work in a creative environment (and are social distancing or self-isolating), keeping close and collaborative can feel hard. Here’s a list of tools that can help that I’ve found useful.

Video calls

Whereby – A solid backup if Google Hangouts isn’t working. In this free version, we can have up to 4 people so good for small group chats. 
Slack – you can make video calls in platform

Writing 

Google docs – Obvs. 

Designing / Making

Miro – like a collaborative whiteboard, complete with post-it notes
Figma – design platform for digital projects and products 
Marvelapp – great for prototyping or showing flat designs
Canva – thousands of design templates, really good for social posts
Postermywall – quick poster and flyer design with loads of templates
Slidesgo – thousands of Google slides / Powerpoint templates

Workshops with clients 

Mentimeter – amazing UX, lots of functionality
Slido – polls and engagement tool
Fun Retro – good for lists and reflection

Tasks and project management  

Trello
Stormboard

If you know of more that have worked for you, please share!

Categories
Digital Technology Tools

Some useful tools

Every project is different in terms of what’s needed for insight, so I like to capture and share ones I have used recently in case others find them helpful. Here’s a little roundup of ones from this week:

Atlas of Emotions – This interactive tool categorises human emotions and responses. It’s super cool and useful for self-reflection and managing teams.

Connected Life Report – The content of this annual report isn’t as interesting than the data comparisons that you can do. If you explore year-on-year differences and geographical comparisons, there are a lot of nuggets (like Brits use ad blocking more than any other geography)

Similar Web – Handy for all those times you *wish* you had access to a client or competitors Google Analytics. Using a combination of sources, including partner website data and open source data, you can get a snapshot of how a website compares to others and other helpful data like referral sources and ad effectiveness.

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Digital Inspiration Projects I like Social Innovation Technology

Waiting

What’s the longest you’ve had to wait for something? Was it even worth waiting for? This simple idea, rooted in human behaviour is so impactful because it makes you think about what really matters.

Since c. 2008, I’ve had an idea that you could use tech to facilitate organ donation. Not in a sinister black market kidney sale kind of way, but more a connected, open, live saving sort of vibe. Ask Anna Maybank, she’ll confirm how much I talk and have talked about this. She thinks it’s illegal (I think she’s right).

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Projects I like Social Innovation Technology

What three words

How can you give an address to places that may not have a street name? Or a postcode? Insert what3words, an addressing system that assigns three random words to every 3×3 meter square of this world, giving every place a unique identifier.

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Brands Environment Social Innovation Technology

Fairphone 2

Fairphone are on a mission: disrupt the mobile phone sector. No big deal, right? Whilst this may seems like a massive feat,  competing with the Apples and Samsungs of the world,  they’re totally doing it. With 60,000 phones of their first model sold – many of which were pre-ordered with a long wait time – it’s obvious that there’s demand.

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community Environment Food Technology

OLIO

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In my last year of highschool, some friends and I volunteered at a soup kitchen in downtown Hamilton. One evening I served a man who said  “You can only be sure of two things in life: one, you need to eat and two, you’re going to die. So be sure that when you’re older you work in the food or funeral sector. That way you’ll be sorted for life”.  It was incredibly sage advice that I’ve never forgotten (and I do indeed work in the food sector now).

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Digital Technology

Getaround

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Upon a recent trip to San Francisco, I needed to rent a car. After tapping up the usual suspects I realised that I didn’t want the burden of looking after a car for the whole week. For one, parking in SF is a nightmare, there are just too many cars. And secondly, I only needed to drive a few times over the course of a week so it felt wasteful.

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Communications Digital Technology Tools

Useful and free digital tools

free_digital_tools

Born from requests from friends, clients and collaborators, I’ve compiled a resource that lists some of the best free online tools to use for publishing, social media, measurement and market analysis. There are *so* many companies providing services and my list is not an exhaustive one. It’s just some tools that I find useful in the work that I do and hopefully you will too. And if there are any gems you think I’m missing, do let me know!

Click here to see the view the list.

 

Categories
Communications Technology Writing

Writing About Writing

typewriter

Recently, I’ve been working on a few different writing projects. Only 15 days in to October, I’ve written more than 60,000 words this month. That’s six times the length of my dissertation. Wowza.

In writing so much I have come across a couple of tools that have transformed the way I work and the way I edit my work. These are Writer Pro and Poetica.

Beginning with Writer Pro, this professional writing software is genius. Firstly, it offers a full screen mode that’s hard to exit. This keeps all kinds of Buzzfeed/Twitter/Pinterest procrastinating at bay. There’s only a single blank screen in front of you. That is all.

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Categories
Charity Projects I like Technology

HandUp

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Many pressing socio-economic problems need rethinking. Homelessness is one of these. There have been a slew of amazing projects, stories and organisations emerging with new ideas to solve homelessness, a problem that exists everywhere.

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