over 8 years ago from Sam Solomon, Product Designer at SalesLoft
This was inspired by Tim's post this morning. http://www.blog.herbigt.com/why-i-do-side-projects/
What side projects are you working on?
uiGIFs - http://uigifs.com
It's a showcase of app user interfaces as animated GIFs.
I started it because I'm constantly downloading and trying new apps & wanted a way to save & share the ones I found interesting. I also wanted more Wordpress sites on my portfolio at the time.
Really cool - great design. You might be interested in this site, as it's kinda similar: http://capptivate.co/
I've enjoyed getting these each week - keep up the good work :)
Another really neat site doing something similar is http://littlebigdetails.com/
Fergies Hairdryer http://fergieshairdryer.com/
A Man Utd blog.
The blog's built in Jekyll, which I've been wanting to learn. Also helping me learn more in Sketch and design.
Finally trying to make myself write more and seeing what good can come of it. Any Man U fan's out there enjoy!
Revision Pathhttp://revisionpath.com
Revision Path is a showcase of Black graphic designers, web designers, and web developers. There are two parts -- a weekly interview podcast as well as a blog with original articles, list style posts, and over three dozen long-form interviews. Some notable interviews include Kimberly Bryant (founder of Black Girls Code), creative director Jon Daniel, and American design legend Emory Douglas.
Revision Path was created because the stories of Black designers and developers deserve to be shared and told. And since most mainstream tech and design websites and podcasts don’t share or tell these stories, we’re stepping up to the plate and providing a platform for these creative individuals to shine.
This is awesome!
Thanks Temi! New episodes are available on iTunes/SoundCloud/Stitcher/RevisionPath.com every Monday at 10am ET!
Hell yes.
salute
• Leave a story
• I draw pictures in exchange for stories.
• I started it because someone once said that you have to put in 10 000 hours in order to become really good at something. This is my attempt in evolving as an illustrator.
This is absolutely great, kudos for creating it.
Thank you. Feel free to drop me a story anytime yourself if you'd like to.
Advertisershttp://advertisers.io/
I work as an interactive producer at an ad agency. We have a Facebook group where people post a ton of interesting branding, creative and strategy content. I'm sure other agencies have something similar. The thought is that Advertisers could be a place where collectively different agencies share links, discuss creative and show off some of their work.
Signal Towerhttp://signaltower.co/
Longform interviews with designers and entrepreneurs. I started hosting interviews because I took at job in Mobile, Alabama. After being in Chicago and Atlanta with booming tech communities, I moved to a place with absolutely nothing. The interviews were an attempt to keep in touch.
Podcats
An iPhone app to help you discover new podcasts
I started it (with my boyfriend) because we love podcasts :)
Looks beautiful. I also love podcasts.
Wish I had an iPhone so I could try it out!
The Meteor Chef - http://themeteorchef.com
Practical recipes for the Meteor JavaScript framework. An answer to "how do I do that with Meteor?"
Love it! Those recipes are insanely detailed.
Thanks :)
Two little fun things:
Aggregation of Product Hunt collections, because they should have that.
-
http://collinhartigan.com/things-of-the-internet/
I collect a lot of funny/cool links (lots from Reddit). Figured other could benefit.
Dig Collection Hunt - been waiting for someone to do that! Adding categories would be awesome too!
Thanks Chris! Yea good call. Haven't really thought how that would work yet.
tookapichttp://tookapic.com
tookapic is a site that helps you develop a habit of daily photo taking. Last year I decided to start my own photo a day project. I’ve been taking and publishing one photo every day. I have never missed a day for the whole year. I noticed people following, and starting their own projects. Most of them didn't last a week. So I decided to build a site to help them stay motivated. tookapic uses gamification features, such as experience points, photo streak, levels and achievements to keep you going.
Pixel Revelhttp://pixelrevel.com
When started, this was just one tumblr theme. One, very simple tumblr theme. I noticed most of the themes out there are just all-in-one, multi purpose, creative blog magazine style template for creative agencies, and mothers. And most of them take weeks to set up. So I started making really simple "plug & play" themes for WordPress and Tumblr. Quite a nice source of passive income.
Task appnot yet available
Again, this is just an app I would use. A simple day to day task management app for small teams (2-5 people). Biggest advantage? You create, assign and schedule tasks with a single input field. It literally takes seconds to plan out a day for the whole team.
I'm working on a personal blog, but doing it from scratch. It's a great way to learn about backend programming, as opposed to building something out of the box on a platform like Wordpress.
At this point it's like a scratchboard for things I want to learn. My next mini project for it is integrating with Google Maps to add a visual of my location each time I post. (It's for a travel blog.)
Right now im working on http://www.leefamilydinner.com
Please excuse the mangled homepage.
The idea was to have a site where my mother could upload her recipes to some sort of digital recipe box, so all the kids of the family could have an easy reference to classic recipes.
I also made some adjustments to the recipe detail pages to make it a really easy layout to cook with.
I'm at about ~50% completion (there isn't even a header), but I figured, why not show some people.
After this is done, I'm going to start learning Unity.
Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gifit/khoojcphcmgcplkpckkjpdlloooifgec
GitHub: https://github.com/Fauntleroy/GIFit
GIFit! is a Google Chrome extension that gives you the power to make GIFs out of sections of YouTube videos. It lowers the barrier of GIF-making so low that I'll even do it.
As an avid GIF collector myself, I'm always on the lookout for new sources of high quality GIFs. One day I suddenly realized that all the pieces for making GIFs out of YouTube videos were there in Chrome, so I whipped up a quick prototype and went from there!
Hmm . . . Quite a few right now.
NDSearch - http://ndsearch.co
A re-implementation of Notre Dame's Class Search interface/functionality, with some extras.
Notre Dame's current course search interface is terrible (http://class-search.nd.edu). I'm using this project as a means of learning EmberJS with Rails, but I have a feeling I'm going to start on something new soon once I wrap up the final features on this.
I was hoping NDSearch related to a new football coach.
Don't remind me about this rough season. I've never seen a football season look so optimistic and then come crashing down into a pile of flames.
+1. I've had about all I can stand from BK.
Git Gossiphttp://gitgossip.com
I was just playing around with the Github API and they have an example of requesting the most followed users. I sat around thinking what could that data be useful for other than showing off internet points. Thought it would be cool to see a weekly aggregate of the prolific Github users blog post, a few hours later I launched Git Gossip and now have ~1k subscribers.
Broughton Boots
Boots handmade in Northampton – shoe-making capital of the world.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1979541609/broughton-boots-handmade-in-the-heart-of-england
I thought I would go straight physical with my current side project. Actually this is the first side project that feels real, probably because it isn't another digital thing. At least not purely.
By the way, this is my only real side project tip, don't do it purely alone it is sooooo much more fun with someone else you can bask in the glory together and get angry together. The shared emotional weight is worth it.
The boots look great!
Thanks man, much appreciated. It took more than a year. I forgot what the non-digital world was like in terms of speed. Slow!
Name : AllTheFreeStock
URL (if applicable) :http://allthefreestock.com
*What is it? * It's a curated list of free stock images, graphics and videos.
*Why did you start it? * I often look for stock photos and this makes it easy to do that, because you can find all the good free stock photos sites in once place.
This is really helpful, thanks for sharing. I am waiting for someone to combine all of these into one search...
The Voting Game
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PJKCXJCwww.thevotinggame.com
The Voting Game is a party game that is best played with friends over drinks. The game consists of voting anonymously on which player is most closely related the the current question. A few examples of questions:
Who will marry someone who isn't born yet?
Whose Google search history would you most like to see?
Who is obviously an only child?
I started The Voting Game because I wanted to try my hand at creating a physical product. I spend my days designing the social components of apps and wanted to use that knowledge to build something "Real."
Awesome! How did you go about getting it made? Are their companies that do this for you?
I'm working with a supplier that I sourced through Alibaba. It can be intimidating at first but once you've received a few samples from different suppliers you realize that they are legitimate businesses and they aren't likely to rip you off. Or at least I haven't had that happen yet. :)
We review the UX/UI of apps. It's like a design critique that we learn from and let people listen into.
We were already discussing the apps over skype and thought we should record and share it. We wanted a less "chatty" podcast and one very focused on design and learning.
Dev Prompts: I had the idea to create a site similar to http://briefbox.me/ but for devs, giving them prompts to build websites, programs, bots, etc. I'm using it as a way to learn to program--I started just grinding on it after I learned from my HN thread that I just need to program to learn to program.
It's been really hard so far. I get frustrated and/or lose focus very quickly, and stop working to do something else because I don't feel like I can work on it anymore. Need to figure out how to overcome that and just keep working.
Appsmarthttp://appsmart.geoffyuen.com
This is a quick and dirty page I made that shows iOS/Mac apps that are on sale. The name is just temporary. I'm still working on this (branding, design, code) but the main reason for it was learning some js templating libraries and figuring out how to do that drawer type ui.
'Pegcity Newshttp://pegcity.geoffyuen.com
Another quick and dirty page that aggregates all the local news sources in my town (Winnipeg). It's really just a fancier js/php rss feed reader. Just a small project to learn some more js.
I've got a lot of other projects but most are frontend type tools that I'm too lazy to put on Github.
These are both cool, although, it took me a while to realize that the white bar at the top of Appsmart was a search field.
Thanks! Yeah I really got to sit down and work on the ui.
Any chance you're going to Open Source your Pegcity News project? I've been trying to get something similar (for personal use) for a while.
It's not that complicated. I use some ajax to read those feeds and display them with a small js templating library called t.js (https://github.com/jasonmoo/t.js). The ajax function calls a PHP file (using filegetcontents) to download the RSS feed to get around CORS.
I guess what I'm confused about is the PHP file that avoids CORS and threads the downloaded JSON data (previously XML) into the HTML output. Can you tell me how you did that? I have very little experience with this sort of thing. I appreciate the help.
Someone should make a sideproject that showcases all the projects in here. This thread is blowing up.
A side project showcasing side projects—perhaps I will!
Name: Gumwall URL: http://gumwall.com What is it?: A private place to get your memories back. Why did you start it?: I'm a sentimental hoarder/ pack rat. I keep movie stubs, concert tickets, notes from exes, and anything with a shred of emotional value. I created Gumwall as a way to digitally declutter and organize all of those important moments.
I also wanted to created a simple "dropbox" of sorts to petition friends and family to add photos or write down a memory of me.
It will be out in public beta before the end of the year, so sign up for updates.
I'm going to make furniture with my dad. Because it's awesome. It's a small table for magazines, or some records and a record player. It's going to look something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tpeogfcs520uaca/3.jpg?dl=0
Started it because I always wanted to do a project with my dad. At the same time I can work on my C4D, vRay and furniture-making skills.
Still think the table is maybe (a bit too) simple. Or maybe that's a good thing.
That's awesome! Great table and great way to connect with your dad.
The Start FM Podcast
The Start is a podcast focused on creative individuals and their growth in the industry, from the very beginning.
I wanted to learn more about the people powering out industry (the known and not-so-well-known)
Thanks for sharing. Looks really interesting project.
I am thinking of starting a podcast as well, do you mind sharing what theme (if any) are you using for your website? And what tools do you use to record these podcasts?
It's a custom theme (I designed/developed).
In terms of tools: - Blue Yeti Mic - SimpleCast for audio CDN - Quicktime for recording the audio - Dropbox for sharing audio files - We did use garageband for editing in season 1 - Hired a podcast editor some episodes of season 2
Thanks Patrick!
Airwalk Design http://airwalk-design.com Semi-curated social stadium for discovering beautiful design inspiration and smashing design resources. Sometimes we write too.
I like Pinterest, and I like digital art.
João Pacheco - www.moveast.me
It's a free stock image database where every photo is taken by myself :) I started because it was a way to keep track of the places I'm traveling since I moved to Dubai and also because sometimes image stock websites, they simply suck. I developed the whole brand, and so far I got featured in a few websites.
I just launched this last week to grab the photos from all the free stock image sites (like Unsplash, Jay Mantri, etc.), manually tag them with keywords and colors, and make them searchable.
So far, there are 1,500 images, but I'm in the process of adding more.
This is great, I have been looking for something just like this...
Thanks, Ryan! There's still lots of work to do on it and photos to add, but it's getting there. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to give me a shout @dvyio.
Sketch Talk
It's a place for Sketch users, to exchange and discuss knowhow, news and insights on using Sketch, plugins, workflows, best practices, etc.
Searching for Sketch news on Google can be quite frustrating. It's easy find a lot of free .sketch resources, some tutorials and tips. And then there are groups on FB, G+ or Reddit. But they tend to focus more on support, quick fixes for bugs and answers from the developers.
There was no real place to talk about the bigger picture of using Sketch in our daily work. Now there is. It's brand new and I set it up about a week ago.
Defqt app
It is an iPhone app for editing photos. You can easily add effect – in our case it is "defect", play with it and share it on social networks.
We started it because we wanted try how hard is create an app from beginning to end... it is not the end actually. We are working on the new version and we'll share some behind the scenes about it. Stay tuned!
YYZ- SFO (tentative title)
Working on a book. Its a way for me to experiment with type and printing methods. The main content for the book are pictures that I took in San Francisco while participating in the Angel Hack demo week.
I am also gonna produce it in a way that you can pull the pages out and use them as posters.
Great idea, but I would keep working on that title.
Woo hoo!
The name of my project is called
Marvelogs
URL is http://marvelogs.com
Marvelogs lets you keep all your favourite items in a single place. If you like videos on YouTube/Vimeo, photos from Flickr, Imgur, 500px, or have bookmarks from Reddit, Pocket, SoundCloud, Marvelogs automatically collects & organizes them in a single place, so you can find your favourite items quickly and easily.
We (my friend and I) started it because we realised our bookmarking behaviour was distributed among many channels, instead of using a single bookmarking service (and let's face it, there are many).
Marvelogs isn't just another bookmarking tool, it's more, bookmark aid, where you just keep liking, following, favourting as you have always done and it will help you by placing all of them into a single place.
Would love to show once it's ready to go! We're launching in January 2015!
A debugging library on clients
I'm building a simple but usable system which gives you an opportunity to see what your clients see, to run tests, test beta features dynamically and more in real-time. With this library, people will have an opportunity to watch all the clients at once: connection speed, errors, where clients click most, search most etc. I'm building it on the top of Node.js and socket.io and preparing a simple interface.
I started this because I certainly needed it, I needed to collect the bugs on the real clients. Now, I'm extending and making it FTW. It's not finished but it will in near future. I'll let you know after it finishes.
Bonsai
http://trybonsai.com/products/coffee-box
An ecommerce company that teaches unique skills with interactive kits
We started it because we're lifelong learners who were fascinated with all of the possibilities that are out there, but wanted to make it easy to get started.
SendMesendme.io (Landing page has some issues on ios still)
It's a platform to request files from clients. You send the client a file request via email or DM or whatever, they get a link with no log-in needed to send you files.
A friend and I wanted to hack together and push our skills a bit. Plus, many of our clients had a hard time sending us files. So we're making it even easier for non-technical people to send files to us.
Very cool. Been working on a similar approach with my project, http://gumwall.com, as a way to collect photos and notes from friends. "Just go to this link and drag and drop" is easier than, "go to this link and create an account, then search for my name, go to my profile and drag and drop the photos in".
Nice. Cool project. I'll look forward to seeing more when you have some progress.
I agree, make it as easy as possible on the users. Especially for non-technical users.
Yea, I kept thinking of my parents and grandparents. They can email and follow a link, so it should work for most use cases. Will definitely need to observe them doing it the first time though, to see if it could be simpler.
New Today
A collection of small mobile apps that I'm building just for me, but making available to others...
I have 2 of about 5 apps, I want to build, done: http://newtoday.us/tv
http://newtoday.us/weather (Just submitted this, so might not be available right away)
Currently available for Android, but iOS coming soon.
I started doing these, because I wanted to do get more experience building mobile apps, and wasn't happy with the apps available for my needs.
Blocks Edit: http://blocksedit.com An email editor for custom-designed email templates.
As we've been designing/developing email templates for clients, we decided giving them a way to build and edit emails from our templates would make things a lot easier for everyone!
HeyThere.ca
A site I put together to highlight creatives in Canada. I put up a new interview almost once a week, and I hope to roll out a more casual blog in the next few days. Aimed primarily at Canadians, but lots of info for other readers also.
Started it really since there was no online platform which interviewed Canadian creatives on a regular basis. Plus I believe creativity is all interlinked and shouldn’t be restricted to one discipline such as web design or graphic design etc. I wanted a site that allowed readers discover people working at the top of their game in various industries.
I do welcome your feedback on the idea itself. Currently I have a system where the business gets a dedicated phone number where users can send an SMS and I am also working on a consumer app that they can download and send feedback via app instead of SMS. I have a client app that can be used by business owners to view, manage and reply to the feedback from their mobile device but they can also use the web dashboard.
Design related books that I read and find interesting. I would love to get recommandations from other, btw. If you think you have a great book for the list, let me know!
MisterJack - misterjack.co
A web app to easily and rapidly create playlists, mainly intended for parties when you don't have a Spotify account and end up opening 10 Youtube tabs.
It was an idea with a friend, based on tech that I used on my music blog. It solves a problem I often have and a lot of my friends already love it so I keep working on it.
superluper
An iOS app for making perfectly looping gifs using time-travel.
Started it because the jaggy skips back to the beginning of a looping gifs annoyed me a little, sometimes - very occasionally.
Podcatshttp://podcatsapp.com/
Podcats is a podcast discovery app for iOS that I built together with my girlfriend who works as a designer. We started this project because we're crazy about podcasts and we wanted a way to find more interesting content outside of the podcasts we already knew.
Turns out Katie beat me to it. Sorry for posting about our project twice.
Earlier this week I released Tappy, an open-source JavaScript library for recording and comparing rhythms.
It actually started with a game, now living at http://play.tappy.pw. I realized that the rhythm detection portion could be used for a whole lot more (event recording / playback, keystroke dynamics), so broke it out into its own thang.
DidYouKnowFootball - http://www.didyouknowfootball.com
Actually this was launched about 1-2 months ago. It's a one page one football (soccer) fact. My friend did the design and I did the coding with Laravel. Not really that complicated, but I really like the minimalist feel of it.
Been thinking of adding more features (user login to view favorited facts, submit your fact, etc) when I have the time.
[ User was banned for this post. ]
Neue Poster Graphics was side project I created for myself to practice and experiment with front-end development techniques. I took popular classically designed posters from recent history and reinterpret them for today’s digital screens. This marries my first love of graphic design and my growing interest in front-end development.
I started it because I was inspired by Jon Yablonski's work and wanted to try an recreate it.
I recently got a tilde.town account running and am jumping ship from Facebook in the next coming weeks. So, I'll be dicking around with that for a while.
Professional Email DesignBlog post
Writing my second book on the dark art of email design. This one goes a lot more in-depth with the code, reasoning behind particular techniques, and more advanced stuff.
While it's been better over the past year or so, there still aren't a ton of great resources for learning email design and development–especially when it comes to books. I wanted to change that.
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