These are a few of my favorite things

Inspired by my last post about my favorite book about creating products. I wanted to write a little post about a few other things that help me stay inspired on a daily basis.

Below are a list of tech related Apps, Websites, Newsletters and Hardware that make me happy when I use/consume them.

Apps

For quick mockups I use Balsalmiq but whenever I want hi fidelity mockups I use Sketch, it is a delight to design in. I cannot code without my music and I need and endless supply of it, so Spotify is my weapon of choice. I read news every morning as soon as I wake and every night before I fall asleep on Zite, because I have refined the news curated for me over the years, I read almost every article. I have never seen a my computer stats displayed as beautifully as it is on iStat Menu, this helps me catch those unauthorized background downloads and processes. That brings me to GAget for OS X, a beautiful display and quick access to my Google analytics and last but not least Inbox by Gmail, I don't think I have ever loved my inbox this much. Once I subscribed to the inbox zero philosophy everything made sense. And lets not forget Evernote I put everything in there. From app ideas to feedback from clients!

Websites

Producthunt is my daily dose of what new products are on the streets. Hacker News keeps me updated with what's buzzing in the land of tech. On Unsplash I get beautiful non-stock images to design sites and blog posts with. I keep my coding skill up to date on Treehouse, it has some of the best online lessons I have seen on various topics. When I am stuck on a design for a website I go to onepagelove for inspiration. If I want to get into custom fonts on a project typekit has all the fonts I ever need and I integrate them in seconds.

Newsletters

I love reading the random questions in the Quora Digest and learning random facts that I would have never found if it was not for them. Also You never know what cool new open source project you might find till you open up the Github Monthly Newsletter. And with iOS Weekly I get all the relevant iOS news for the week in one sitting.

Hardware

The Macbook Air. This is without a doubt the best machine I have ever owned and I have owned a lot of machines, The finish on this is just excellent.

I use all of these multiple times a week, if not everyday. I think it is great thing to build something people rely on everyday and not only do they use it everyday they also look forward to using it and enjoy it. This post is just a shoutout to all the creators that make these beautiful products shine.