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Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

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Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#102
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, great to see Instrumental ( https://instrumentalapp.com/ ) in your list. I'm one of the folks working on it, would love to hear your thoughts on us. Some quick reviews of some of the products listed: * Lighthouse ( http://lighthouseapp.com ) - Bug Tracker - good for keeping track of simple stuff last I used it (~2 years ago), but Github Issues obviated its use for me. * Pivotal ( http://www.pivotaltracker.co…

Pivotal: Horrible, abysmal tool. Hate it with a passion. No clear overview at all, UI is full of shiny colors but is messy as hell. I'm really glad we've switched to Jira[1] after fighting with pivotal for a couple of months. YMMV ofcourse :) [1] http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview

I love Pivotal. While I haven't used Jira, I've gotten the feeling that other members of my team have used it in the past, and don't like it at all. On another note, Siebel time tracking is a pit of hell.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#103

I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on. ( http://startingandsustaining.com ) Some of the categories are fairly loose as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is a helpful list. --Browser/Email Testing BrowserStack ( http://www.browserstack.com ) Litmus ( http://litmus.com ) --Bug/Issue Tracking BugHerd ( http://bugherd.com ) Lighthouse ( http://lig…

You might want to trim that down a bit. As it stands it's more an incomplete list of services for each category than a list of favorites.

I like that it's not a completely biased list, but more of a curated 'these are options you should check out and make your own informed opinion on' list.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#104
post #72

This is our current list; I'm ignoring ones we've stopped using or haven't really started using properly yet. Github - obviously AWS - obviously Ylastic - easier AWS management Sendgrid - mail delivery Stripe - payment processing Pingdom - external uptime tracking PagerDuty - ops alerting and scheduling Xero - accounting JIRA - task management (the hosted version at Atlassian) Desk - support tickets Crashplan - perso…

I don't think Github is an "obviously" unless you have an open source project. It's really not that hard to set up a git ssh server

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, great to see Instrumental ( https://instrumentalapp.com/ ) in your list. I'm one of the folks working on it, would love to hear your thoughts on us. Some quick reviews of some of the products listed: * Lighthouse ( http://lighthouseapp.com ) - Bug Tracker - good for keeping track of simple stuff last I used it (~2 years ago), but Github Issues obviated its use for me. * Pivotal ( http://www.pivotaltracker.co…

Pivotal: Horrible, abysmal tool. Hate it with a passion. No clear overview at all, UI is full of shiny colors but is messy as hell. I'm really glad we've switched to Jira[1] after fighting with pivotal for a couple of months. YMMV ofcourse :) [1] http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview

Pivotal is an agile planning tool; JIRA is an issue tracking and classical project management tool. While each can be coerced to the other's function, it's really comparing apples and oranges. I'll admit that JIRA and Pivotal continue to muddy the differentiation with afterthought additions like JIRA's Greenhopper and Pivotal's time tracking. But JIRA is a good tool for issue tracking and Pivotal is a good tool for agile planning. If you're trying to use either tool for the other's purpose, you'll hate it.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#106
post #104
post #72

This is our current list; I'm ignoring ones we've stopped using or haven't really started using properly yet. Github - obviously AWS - obviously Ylastic - easier AWS management Sendgrid - mail delivery Stripe - payment processing Pingdom - external uptime tracking PagerDuty - ops alerting and scheduling Xero - accounting JIRA - task management (the hosted version at Atlassian) Desk - support tickets Crashplan - perso…

I don't think Github is an "obviously" unless you have an open source project. It's really not that hard to set up a git ssh server

The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository. Pull requests are awesome for code reviews, the code browsing interface is best of breed, and if you use their issue tracker and/or wiki everything links together fantastically well.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#107
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pivotal: Horrible, abysmal tool. Hate it with a passion. No clear overview at all, UI is full of shiny colors but is messy as hell. I'm really glad we've switched to Jira[1] after fighting with pivotal for a couple of months. YMMV ofcourse :) [1] http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview

I definitely agree with the YMMV bit; I have found this category of tools to be incredibly divisive. I know a lot of folks who thought that going in the opposite direction of yours, Jira to Pivotal, was one of the best decisions they've made for a project. I've only ever casually used Jira, however, so am ill qualified to speak to its strengths.

I'm in the category you're describing. (Switched from Jira/Greenhopper to Pivotal and happy about it).

I think the divisive bit may, in part, be that Pivotal is a strongly opinionated tool while Jira is a fairly customizable and open ended tool.

For projects & teams committed to the process Pivotal champions, it's highly optimized. For teams using a different process, or who need to customize views for different people etc, Jira can provide more options, and be a better fit.

For me personally... at the moment, I really appreciate Pivotal's relative simplicity and the way it encourages folks to focus on the somewhat nearer term.

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#109

I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on. ( http://startingandsustaining.com ) Some of the categories are fairly loose as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is a helpful list. --Browser/Email Testing BrowserStack ( http://www.browserstack.com ) Litmus ( http://litmus.com ) --Bug/Issue Tracking BugHerd ( http://bugherd.com ) Lighthouse ( http://lig…

Here's a few more to add to your list (not all SaaS)...

--ANALYTICS

Snowplow (https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow)

Segment.io (http://segment.io)

--CRM

Close.io (http://close.io),

Streak (http://www.streak.com/)

Base (http://getbase.com)

--SALES

ElasticSales (https://elasticsales.com/)

--CUSTOMER SERVICE

Metaverse Mod Squad (http://metaversemodsquad.com/)

--DATA

Factual (http://www.factual.com/)

--DATABASE

Titan (http://thinkaurelius.com/)

Tinkerpop (http://www.tinkerpop.com/)

Bulbs (http://bulbflow.com)

Datomic (http://datomic.com)

--LOG MONITORING

Logstash (http://logstash.net)

Lumberjack (https://github.com/jordansissel/lumberjack)

Fluentd (http://fluentd.org),

Flume (https://github.com/cloudera/flume)

Kafka (http://sna-projects.com/kafka/)

Scribe (https://github.com/facebook/scribe/)

--ACCOUNTING/INVOICING

Harvest (http://www.getharvest.com/)

Ballpark (http://www.getballpark.com/)

PaySimple (http://paysimple.com/)

AcceptPay (http://acceptpay.com)

FreshBooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/)

FreeAgent (http://www.freeagent.com/)

Blinksale (http://www.blinksale.com/)

--PAYMENTS

Balanced Payements (https://www.balancedpayments.com/)

Dwolla (https://www.dwolla.com/)

-- BANKING

Simple (http://simple.com)

--PHONE/PBX/SMS

Plivo (http://plivo.com/)

Tropo (https://www.tropo.com/)

Twillo (http://www.twilio.com/)

PhoneBooth (http://www.phonebooth.com/)

-- PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Orchestra (http://www.orchestra.com/)

-- RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM

Runa PerfectOffer (http://www.runa.com/products/perfectoffer/)

--SYSTEM MONITORING

Tracelytics (http://www.tracelytics.com) / AppNeta (http://www.appneta.com/)

Riemann (http://riemann.io)

Zipkin (https://github.com/twitter/zipkin/)

Pulse (https://github.com/heroku/pulse/)

--SEARCH

Bonsai (http://www.bonsai.io)

WebSolr (http://websolr.com/)

Swiftype (https://swiftype.com/)

Searchify (http://www.searchify.com/)

CloudSearch (http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/)

SearchBlox (http://www.searchblox.com/)

--SECURITY

Burp (http://www.portswigger.net/burp/intruder.html)

DuoSecurity (https://www.duosecurity.com/)

Authy (https://www.authy.com/)

CryptoSeal (http://cryptoseal.com/)

AnchorFree (http://www.anchorfree.com/)

Cloak (https://www.getcloak.com/)

--SHIPPING

Postmaster.io (https://www.postmaster.io/)

Runa PerfectShipping (http://www.runa.com/products/perfectshipping/)

-- SUPPORT / HELP DESK:

Olark (http://olark.com)

SnapEngage (http://www.snapengage.com/)

--DESIGNERS

Dribble (http://dribbble.com/)

Sortfolio (http://sortfolio.com/)

--NOTES

Evernote (http://evernote.com)

Re: Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

#110
I'm not sure about the current trends, but here is my list for 2012-2013

- Github (http://github.com) for Open Source and private source code control.

- Bitbucket (http://bitbucket.org) mostly private source code management.

- Linode (http://linode.com) Where I run my virtual servers.

- Trello (http://trello.com) Manages all my projects

- Basecamp (http://basecamp.com) some clients still use it.

- Google Analytics (http://google.com/analytics) Sticking with Google.

- Freshbooks (http://freshbooks.com) For invoicing matters.

- ahref (http://ahrefs.com) Tracking my backlinks.

- Skype (http://skype.com) P2P calls and VoIP.

- Google App (http://google.com/a) Planning to move this year, still on the free plan.

- Gmail (http://gmail.com) still no plans to move yet!

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