I kicked off 2024 with an attempt to get more organized and continue my quest to rely less on big tech. To start things off, I’m trying out an open-source taskboard called Kanboard. It’s like Trello but without all the integrations or surprises. I’ve been using it for personal tasks and side projects. I like these boards for dumping out the things I want to do and then visually sorting them into their status and priority. Doing the things is still hard, but at least I know what I’ve got on my plate.
Outline is another open-source tool I’ve been using lately for note-taking and knowledgebase purposes. Previously, my app of choice for this was Bear.app. It worked out well for markdown notes, but I needed something more like a wiki to organize content. I discovered Outline in late 2022 and found it to be a snappy experience and just what I needed: nestable collections, markdown, and a decent search experience. Outline delivers that and more. It also offers real-time collaborative editing like Google Docs and public shares for either a single page or for all nested pages of a share.
Other services I’ve been using lately
- Listmonk – An open-source alternative to Mailchimp just released version 3. It’s great as a stand-alone newsletter. Also seems like a low lift for capturing leads for side projects.
- PikaPods – A cost-effective way to try out or run open-source apps.
- OpenSaaS – I was curious what the latest starter kit for building out SaaS apps looks like. I wrote my own a whole decade ago github.com/eddywashere/node-stripe-membership-saas.
- SerpBear – I’ve been getting back into SEO and search engine position tracking. I’ve been using this tool to see how my site and others are doing over time.
- n8n – Zapier alternative. I just set up a workflow that calls my SerpBear API, sends that to quickcharts to create a graph, and then sends me a message on Signal with signal-cli-rest-api. I’m thinking of building some templates through the creator’s program. Let me know what you’d be interested in seeing.
These last two aren’t open-source, but they have been pretty helpful:
- Pandan – This app is pretty handy for time awareness. I enjoy the little notification that I’ve been focused on for some time and can see how long I’ve been on my computer.
- Aiko – A handy app for creating a text transcript from an audio or video file (iOS and MacOS).
That’s it for now. If you’d like these updates in your inbox, subscribe below ✌️
Top comments (1)
Thanks