Ask HN: Bootstrappers, what do you use daily?

13 points by netmau5 ↗ HN
What kinds of products, services, communities, or tools do you depend on daily to make your life easier? What can you not live without, what do you wish existed?

13 comments

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    - Coffee
    - A laptop
    - Windows 7
    - Spotify
    - Google Chrome
    - Everything (Instant filename search. If you've never heard of it, 
      do yourself a favor and check it out: www.voidtools.com)
    - Qt Creator for the C++ IDE
    - Communities Qt and KDE
    - Mercurial + Bitbucket to version the code
    - Notepad++ to take notes
    - MindManager to organize my ideas
And that's all :)

Why the question?

I'm curious how everyone else manages their daily workflow and for ideas on how I might improve Sparkmuse to better help entrepreneurs meet that end.
I signed up for an invite: I helped you in your quest, can you help me check out your service? :)
Definitely, thanks for checking it out. We're still a fledgling community in beta but I hope to grow it into a useful place for those of us trying to create something on this here interweb. If any other HN'ers want an invite, feel free to drop me a line; email in profile.
- Evernote to take notes - Gmail - MacBook Pro - Vim, Terminal, and standard unix commands - Blink (Sip Client), or Google Talk

That's what comes to mind.

I wish there was something that can track how I spend my time better. I used rescuetime before, but their free version is very limited, and I'm too cheap to upgrade...

- A standing work table - A very good chair - A Macbook and a normal laptop - Mac OS X & Ubuntu - VirtualBox for testing / using multiple platforms - EverNote (how did I live without...) for taking quick notes - A Mont Blanc pen & notepad for sketching - iPad for documentation / books & reading github - Flipboard for keeping up to date without spending too much time (Means Twitter, Facebook and more) - Flexlists for (todo, very finegrained tasks) lists - Balsamiq for online sketching - Backblaze for backup - SplashID for passwords - Jedit for programming - Dropbox for sharing - GrabBox for screenshots - Gmail for mail - Github for versioning - GitX (the fork) for easier versioning - Xmind for mindmapping / high level optimizing - AWS (just about everything) for my cloud needs for fun and profit

I would need all these tools or equivalents; cannot imagine living without them.

What I would really like is something which would allow me to program on the iPad, offline (synching) without having to type too much text (so not 'regular' programming). Or something which would allow me to program while walking through the forest :)

I don't qualify as a bootstrapper, but white boards have always added to my efficiency in my line of work. It seems silly, but they're really awesome to flush out ideas and then hash them out with a group of people.
It may be archaic, but I'm in the same boat with you. If China lined the great wall with dry-erase, provided coffee and a few director chairs, I'd relocate and use the entire space - and a lot of markers... Online I use scriblink.com.
I have a white board at arms length of my chair. Swivel 45 degrees and I can draw, make lists etc. So useful.

  - My trusty old Bialetti  
  - MacBook + OSX  
  - alfred (app launcher and more)  
  - iTerm  
  - MacVim  
  - git + github  
  - ssh  
  - hn  
  - GMail  
  - Google Calendar  
  - Google Docs  
  - Google Talk  
  - Google Chrome  
  - StayFocusd (Chrome Plugin)  
  - Skype  
  - Billings  
  - Skitch  
  - Dropbox  
  - VirtualBox  
  - a keyboard with us layout! the german keyboard layout is a mess!
- MacBook - Gmail - Google Calendar - homegrown Dashboard - Ringio - Rackspace cloud - Aptana - XCode

Those are some of the tools we use at blue shoe mobile. We've tried a few pm/ticket tracking tools but haven't yet found a free one we like

(Apps)

    - Chrome
    - TextMate
    - Terminal
    - Twitter for Mac
    - Sparrow
    - DropBox
(Sites)

    - Google Analytics
    - Much of Google Suite (Docs, Spreadsheets, Sites, Calendar)
    - Quora
    - LinkedIn
    - Pivotal Tracker
    - GetSatisfaction
Also just signed up for sparkmuse, curious to see it as well.
(sites) - HNews - Quora - Mixergy - Sparkmuse