My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the weekly digest about creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources, combined with useful insights, articles, and findings from the fields of design and tech. The newsletter built for the creative community.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 257 👋

Some of you might know that I have recently built a directory website featuring privacy-focused, end-to-end encrypted, and open source productivity apps, called ProductivePrivacy. The first version of it got built with Softr, but then I moved it to Super, which allows people to turn a Notion page into website with just a few clicks. The only disadvantage, it costs $12 per month, which is a quite hefty price tag for a casual side-project which is not (yet) monetized. Therefore, I was researching for alternatives and services which would give me the possibility to streamline the directory website a bit more, but especially save some costs until I have figured out a way to monetize to keep it a sustainable side project.

Whenever I am working on a side project there is also a quest to learn something new, acquire new skills, and explore different tools and services. Therefore, I got excited when I found out about Publii, a beautiful, simple, privacy-focused, static CMS, that is easy and intuitive to set up. After some quick evaluation, I found a fitting theme, and was able to deploy an updated version, a new site for ProductivePrivacy to Netlify using Publii. And guess what, as part of Netlify‘s Starter Plan, the site does not cost me anything as of now (besides the domain costs). Publii offers desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux which makes it incredibly easy to edit your site and deploy updates. So, far it has been a joy building the new ProductivePrivacy website with it. Besides that, I am also excited to be using Netlify. I heard nothing but great reviews so far. One aspect that I absolutely love about Netlify is the fact that they are committed to environmental sustainability, not only for their own global infrastructure but also for the products and practices they are delivering to their customers. This is a huge plus, and it feels great to use such a service.

The new ProductivePrivacy site is not live yet, but I am currently in the process of finish up the last couple of bits. I am excited about this move, this migration to a static CMS that gives me the power to streamline my publishing process, and it is simply amazing to get to build with a CMS that is not only privacy-focused and GDPR-compliant right out of the box, but beyond that is committed to build an intuitive, simple, and secure way to create a website.

I will keep you updated about the new version of ProductivePrivacy, and I also have a blog post for my personal blog in the pipeline, in which I share some more information about the side project itself and why I decided to build it.

Apps, Software, Tools

Cycle →

With Cycle you get the chance to unify all your customer feedback and user research into a single platform. Besides that, it will give you the power to extract insights from the feedback with no hassle, powered by AI.

Cycle launched its v1.0 already in February 2023, and as part of that, they announced a $6m funding round by Boldstart Ventures, eFounders, Base Case, The 20VC Fund, and a lot more. With that investment, the team at Cycle set out to build the future of product management. By integrating Cycle with HubSpot, Intercom, and Slack, you can turn it into a CRM for your product team by bringing in all your customers. This sync will happen two way, which means you can be sure that your data will always be up-to-date. With ease, Cycle will let you capture feedback from many sources, which means user interviews, NPS surveys, and more will all get gathered in a single place, and in fact in a single inbox. The inbox in Cycle is the home for your feedback from all of your sources, to make sure no feedback gets unnoticed. Feedback forms can be easily customized, simply configure the properties and tags you want people to fill in when they send you product feedback. When capturing feedback from Intercom or anywhere on the web, Cycle allows you to add another layer of context. While capturing the data and the insights is one part of managing feedback from users, documenting is another and probably the even more important step. With Cycle, you can write rich user research docs with all what you expect from a modern rich text editor, even markdown and media embeds are supported.

After capturing the feedback from your users and customers, Cycle is here to help you extract product insights in your inbox. You can intuitively split your inbox the way it fits your needs so you can process feedback in a full-focus mode. You have never been flying through your feedback that fast, as Cycle supports intuitive keyboard shortcuts so you can get to inbox zero in no time.

With ease, you can add customers context once you opened a product initiative in Cycle. The delightful writing experience and the full-fledged real-time editor have been build for speed and delight. To streamline your writing process, Cycle is offering content templates. By adding custom properties to your product initiatives, you can easily organize your whole roadmap. Additionally, with Cycle you get the chance to close the loop with customers at each release. Once you have shipped a cool new feature, you can use Cycle to get back to folks who requested it.

But that is not it. Cycle is packed with delightful and powerful details and features like cover pictures, quick previews, real-time collaboration, a powerful search, bulk action, themes, incognito mode, and more. Already over 500 product-led organizations are getting stuff done with Cycle. If you are struggling with managing feedback, you might want to give Cycle a try.

upload in progress, 0
Capture your Mac’s screen like a pro

CleanShot X provides you with over 50 features making it the ultimate screen capturing tool for your Mac. Annotate, capture scrolling, do a screen recording, create a beautiful background, pin screenshots, hide icons, and more, simple and straightforward.

The Crop tool lets you quickly specify the aspect ratio, the pixelate tool allows you to blur private information, with the highlighter you can easily highlight a text the way you do it in books, and thanks you the text tool which is packed with 7 predefined styles, you can customize your screenshots to your likings and needs.

With a single payment of $29 you get access to over 50 features which will let you capture your screen like pro, the app is yours forever, you receive one year of updates, and 1 GB of cloud storage. For $8 per user per month (billed annually) you can upgrade to the Cloud Pro Plan, allowing you to activate the app via your iCloud account, always get the latest version of the app, unlimited cloud storage, the possibility to add your own domain and logo and use it for sharing, advanced security features, as well as advanced team features.
Get CleanShot X now

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Fresh Updates & News

Posts by read.cv →

As social media got disrupted throughout 2023, loads of folks either stuck to existing platforms or migrated to new platforms. After Elon Musk took over Twitter, it went downhill fast, and people were on the hunt for a microblogging alternative. Loads of them popped up, but only some actually gained traction and build up a viable community space. One of them is Posts by read.cv.

For some time, the team behind Posts has been chipping away at it builder community, but now they are excited to announce that Posts has officially been released within the App Store. While read.cv has become the professional network designed to help people finding new opportunities and your next great hire, the team at read.cv felt the urge to build a more casual social environment for people to connect and build relationships together. And let me tell you, they delivered. Posts is such a calm and casual place on the internet, it has been nothing but joy to be a part of it for the last couple of months. You can think of Posts sort of like a pub or cafe, but online.

If you do not fancy any new social network, I feel you, we are all tired and exhausted from what has happened because of social networks as of recently, but if you are still willing to give a new platform, a new space, that is especially focused on becoming the network for niche communities and to connect with real people with shared interests and goals, then download Posts and sign up for an account.

Notion Calendar (formerly Cron) →

Back in June 2022, Notion announced that it has acquired Cron, an invite-only calendar app, that rapidly grow its users base especially because of its delightful, calm, and lucid UI. Fast-forward to today, and Cron has become Notion Calendar, as Notion incorporates the app to offer a deep integration with its current product. Notion Calendar is offering to see your schedule at a glance, it features built-in scheduling, the possibility to visualize your day across different time zones to collaborate with global teams, it is available in twelve languages, and a lot more.

Cosmos →

As Cosmos has been opening up its doors to multiple new users, it quickly gained traction, especially among the creative fields and niches. In a recent update, they announced what they have planned and in store for 2024. Throughout the upcoming twelve months, you can expect a “For Your” feed that learns your interests, Light Mode, in-app messaging, a refreshed manual upload flow, a new iOS sharing experience, iOS widgets, more intuitive desktop nav bar, many design facelifts, and so much more.

If you want to get access to Cosmos (as it is still invite-only) I have one invite to share, first come first serve.

Mental Wealth

❯ The Power of Personal Experiments – “Imagine two aspiring writers, both with the idea of establishing an online writing presence. The first writer, Alex, sets a fixed goal: they aim to grow their newsletter to 1000 subscribers by the end of the month. Alex has heard that consistency is key, so they choose a topic, decide on a format, block time in his calendar, and get started. To maintain the necessary self-discipline, they use a time tracker and a rigid but reassuring productivity framework.”

❯ Have Smartphones Destroyed A Generation? – “One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month.”

❯ It’s okay to suck when you try something new – “Allow me to list the short-lived pastimes I attempted and promptly deserted when I didn’t immediately excel: Pottery, softball, field hockey, surfing, violin, dance, designing novelty T-shirts, knitting, yoga, and, most recently, meditation. Easily embarrassed and uncomfortable asking for help, I’d rather drop a hobby than give myself time to improve. Mediocrity — or worse, actively sucking at something — feels gross.”

❯ Why Randomness Doesn’t Feel Random – “Unfortunately, when it comes to understanding random phenomena, our intuition often lets us down. Take a look at the image below. Before you read the caption, see if you can pick out the data set generated using truly uniform random numbers for the coordinates of the dots (i.e., for each point, independent of the others, the horizontal coordinate is equally likely to fall anywhere along the horizontal axis and the vertical coordinate is equally likely to fall anywhere along the vertical).”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

My new personal website is live and published at philipptemmel.com. For the past months I have been building my tiny home on the internet on and off, but during the last couple of days of 2023 I decided to sit down, focus, and finish it. My personal website is my own corner in the internet dedicated to my passions and filled with what I am writing, building, reading, listening, and creating.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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