Ecosystem Players
Ecosystem Players
In an ecosystem, there are biotic and abiotic components - or living and non-living parts. Producers (the plant life) produces the food, consumers (the organisms) depend on the food, and the decomposers (fungi & bacteria) thrive off of decaying matter, which in turn recycles nutrients for the plants. The cycle continues.
In our little world of tech, we like to apply the word 'ecosystem' because it's an analogy that fully encompasses not only applications, but the broader interactions shared between things.
Something to think about this week: Which ecosystem player is your company, service, or product serving?
WHAT WE'RE EYEING
One of our bets is that the illustrious unicorn "designer developer" role will trend towards being common over the next few years. Do you agree?
Elon Musk embraced Bitcoin completely into the Tesla ecosystem, but then backed off this week due to the fossil fuels required to run Bitcoin transactions. Word is he’s looking at other ecosystems with less environmental cost, which could be options (such as Ethereum) :D
The Jamstack movement seems to be going strong right now, with news of Contentful going after a $5 Billion IPO - could this be the biggest IPO out of this ecosystem yet?
RECOMMENDED READS
🧠A new interface for designers to think about - your brain. These BCI Headphones that will do the thinking for you.
Tech Xplore — Neurable has revealed plans for brain-computer interface (BCI) headphones, similar to previous products designed to learn from human movement and predict intent. The use case will be to help users manage time, maximize focus throughout the day, and minimize distractions. I feel called out.
🎥Another chapter in the battle for who will own the Metaverse: Epic Games has raised $1B and is fully ready for ready player one.
Tech Times — After completing the fundraising round, Epic Games raised $1 billion for creation of a metaverse project, including $200 million from Sony. Integrating more than its games, the open space, internet, and the different types of digital reality like Augmented and Virtual (AR and VR). The virtual shared space would be capturing the next-generation experience which was seen originally seen in sci-fi novels and films like "Ready Player One."
🎤Google I/O is next week!
Google — May 18-20th. The virtual event will be completely free this year. The keynote usually includes some big Google announcements and specific sessions will run all day to cover various Google products like Android, Chrome, Firebase, and their Machine Learning efforts. Check out the curated schedules if you're unsure what you'd like to check out.
🧈Butter brings all of your favorite workshop tools into one place, so that your virtual gatherings run smooth as butter
Butter — You don't have to run a cable news level of production to run a quality workshop (or routine meeting) with Butter. Facilitate a professional virtual gathering with slick integrations and common-sense additions like a digital agenda, timers, polls, and whiteboards. Butter is built on modern web tech, so no download is required! Powerful but simple features you won't find in leading video conference platforms.
👍SvelteKit • The fastest way to build Svelte apps
Recommended by Gus, 2C Indie — SvelteKit is a full-stack framework built for the Svelte UI component library. Formerly "Sapper", the name was changed late last year and it went into beta more than a month ago. Think Next.js but with Svelte: server-side rendering, routing, code-splitting for JS and CSS, adapters for different serverless platforms and more. This should be a powerful boon to the rising Svelte scene.
🍎Kit.app
Script Kit — Here's an awesome Mac app for developers. Script Kit, built by a solo developer, lets you solve common, everyday problems and complete boring tasks with the power of JavaScript. Launch your scripts, or those contributed by the community right from a quick prompt just like Spotlight or Alfred.
🖌Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering
Workspace Updates — Google Docs is largely rendered with super complex HTML, so the shift toward the Canvas API will be a huge upgrade. Even if there aren't any new shiny features, users should see large performance boosts and wider compatibility. Definitely good news for those of us that see Docs get bogged down with more than a few tabs open.
As always, special shoutout to Taylor Beseda for helping curate this content.
Follow him on twitter @tbeseda.