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What are some of the best under-the-radar tools that you know of or use?
I am a sucker of niche tools which are not as popular their other alternatives, but they get the work done just fine, or in some cases even better.
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Gastón Fournier
For feature toggles: https://www.getunleash.io I might be biased but we use it internally (dogfooding) and just love it
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@gaston_fournier LaunchDarkly is slightly better now (2023) but Unleash is open source. Trade offs. Wouldn't think about the cost, you're going to either pay in $ directly or $ indirectly.
@mattdkerr certainly LaunchDarkly has a very good product, but what I really like about Unleash is its focus on privacy and how the system is purpose-built for it. And because it's open source, anyone can validate that it holds to that promise.
@gaston_fournier @mattdkerr Unleash also offers a paid offering.
Why do you find LD slightly better?
I use agileStories to generate epics and automate user stories and acceptance criteria creation, makes my job as a product owner easier ^^
@alfonso_matasc Can you share the link? I'd be interested in giving it a spin.
@mfurquim @sindia @swapdp_01 hey its actually https://agilestories.io , but that one looks great too. I will have a look
@alfonso_matasc That's awesome. I'm a BA, and just played about for a few seconds with a few sentences about my current client, and not only has it generated some great epics/stories/acceptance criteria for the business, it's even picked up terms that are very specific to the sector, but which I didn't mention. Very impressive.
Part self-promotion/part own-dog food.... Ever since I installed a whiteboard next to my desk, I use ShareTheBoard several times a day. Comes in handy both in meetings and during fitful bouts of individual brainstorming.
https://sharetheboard.com
@martin_demkowicz WHAAT!! Marcin, this is amazing! My white board is literally gathering dust since going remote. Congratulations for building STB and all the best!
@swapdp_01 Dust-filled whiteboard?! Unacceptable! Bring that awesome tool back into your flow! :)
Thank you for the kind words. if you can, please take the app out for a spin and let me know your thoughts!
@martin_demkowicz this is amazing; going to drive it for a week in my virtual leadership coaching academies and see how I do
@steve_hopkins2 Thanks, Steve! That sounds like a perfect use case. Tear it to shreds and let us know how to improve!
@steve_hopkins2 Running through my old comments and thought I'd follow-up... Did you take ShareTheBoard for a test drive?
Surfkey by @johancutych to always find relevant convos on Reddit. Either for growth or even mention monitoring/research.
@johancutych @a_m4 great tool for content creators and product folks! bookmarking it for sure. Thanks for the share Aleks!
I am working on a niche tool for developers: https://semanticdiff.com
It is a programming-language aware diff for Visual Studio Code. The extension helps software developers understand code changes faster by hiding style-only changes, detecting moved code blocks as well as refactorings.
@mmueller neat! All the best for scaling it Michael! I do not see the pricing on the website. You plan to publish once out of beta?
@swapdp_01 While the extension is in beta, it is free to use. After the release we will switch to a freemium model. The basic functionality will always be free, but certain features and/or programming languages may only be available in a paid version.
https://vento.so/ - Screen recording but you can pause, rewind a few seconds, and re-record over your mistakes/your dog barking.
Disclosure I'm the maker :) but it was #3 on Hacker News!
@christopher_lee4 this is super-cool Christopher! thanks for sharing and congratulations on the launch!
I use this tool called YourChamp, it's like a digital business card showing all of your socials followers.
@kulsoom_awan interesting! saw the demo now, seems like a great tool for content creators and influencers.
@kulsoom_awan Cool! This reminds me of a startup someone I know created called Ovou which is a tappable business card that links people to a "Linktree" type page for easy networking
doppio.sh, an api for html to pdf or screenshots, it just works and its cheap with cool features like async render with webhooks
Height for project management! It's a super clean interface that's intuitive to use, but with a ton of powerful + customizable features, too. https://height.app/?home
@kaitlin_marks @gregstenson thanks for sharing, Kaitlin! As it happens that I am scouting for a PM tool which doubles up for customer portal. Giving it a try!
@swapdp_01 amazing! if you have any questions, i'm happy to set you up on a call with height's customer experience manager (she's a wizard at going over all the things you can do with Height)
Love this question and thread - anyone using anything particularly good at mining and management of LinkedIn for b2b growth ?
@lara_peterson_plllar here are a few tools, I haven't started sales but this is what I plan to try out:
https://kennected.org/ (recommended by a Sales rep at a b2b dev tools company I respect)
https://www.voilanorbert.com/ (recommended by founder at Tiny.com) to hit up users on linkedIn you know you need to outreach.
https://www.salesbricks.com/ (once you need to do customizations)
https://www.clay.run/ (this one looks like a gold mine)
https://www.folk.app or close.io (if you need to make calls) for CRM
In addition, if you need to store all these links from this thread, hand down https://mymind.com/.
@lara_peterson_plllar I recommend clay.run too. There is a good review here: https://www.growthtool.co/clays-...
I use Peerlist (https://peerlist.io/), it's like a better LinkedIn alternative where each aspect of professional networking is very carefully designed. For example, they offer to verify work experience using your work email-id and add a nice verified badge on your profile. The same applies to other aspects like proof of work, a news feed, chat, etc.
Also, did I mention the verification is free?
@itsaadityaa @designerdada I have come across peerlist in few communities I am part of, but didn't sign up yet for some reason. Doing it now. Thanks for bringing this up Aaditya and thanks for building this Akash!
Templater for Adobe After Effects from Dataclay. It turns After Effects into a server for developers to create customized video on the fly. End users from organizations such as the NFL, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix use it to a great extent to automate the creation of video content and still images for broadcast and social media and other apps. It's a powerful tool running under-the-hood for many apps offering customized, highly targeted, video content. Templater can read data from Google Sheets, local files, and API's including Dataclay's QUE platform.
Templater
https://dataclay.com/templater
QUE
https://dataclay.com/que
@ariestav damn! it's amazing how such niche tools are running mainstream services and platforms. thanks for sharing, Arie and congratulations for building Dataclay! 💯👍🏻
@swapdp_01 I built it because I had the common problem of not doing enough research. 😂
Camtasia by @techsmith for screencasts. I like to have an offline tool for that.
Lucidspark for whiteboarding.
Nebo for cross platform notes (iOS, Windows, Android).
Zenkit for project management and To-dos.
Wide Angle Analytics (my tool) for web analytics without cookie banner.
@techsmith @jarek_rozanski lists like this adds so much value for everyone! thanks for sharing, Jarek!
Oh no, all I make are niche tools 😅
https://flowchart.fun -> free, in-browser, text to flowchart generation
https://palette.tone-row.com/ -> custom tailwind color palettes from a prompt
@tonerow @martinseeler This thread is meant for you and folks like you Rob! Thanks for making and sharing!
Here's a growing collection of *under-the-radar tools* that are also *free*:
https://goodtools.substack.com
@robingood Damn! Love it. When I asked this question a month back, I was wondering why wasn't there any directory or newsletter which does this!? And now I have found one! Subscribed. 🚀
Here are my top 5 tools
1. Canva: Canva is a powerful online design tool that allows users to create stunning visuals for social media, presentations, and more. It's easy to use and has a wide range of templates and features.
2. BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is a great tool for content marketers and influencers. It helps you find the most popular content in your niche, analyze competitors, and track your own performance.
3. Viralpep.com: Viralpep is a social media management tool that helps you manage multiple accounts from one dashboard. It also provides analytics to help you measure the success of your campaigns.
4. Dotbooker.com: Dotbooker is an online reservation system that helps businesses manage bookings, payments, and customer relationships. It's easy to use and integrates with popular payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
5. Trello: Trello is a great project management tool that helps teams stay organized and on track with their projects. It's easy to use and has a wide range of features to help teams collaborate effectively.
Not to toot my own horn, but InPrivy (https://inprivy.io) is still pretty much under-the-radar but really useful to lots of people already.
I use thunderclient vscode extension alot over the postman desktop app
@samvelraja_sakthivel my non-technical background doesn't completely appreciate the significance of this.😜 thanks for sharing! 👍🏻
@swapdp_01 ha ha. Developers who wants to save their RAM understands it well 🤣