Last August, we bestowed an “Ubercool Innovator” award on Airtable. We love Airtable because its simplicity and ease of use completely upstage both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel, while also delivering a blow to Apple’s FileMaker, the former king of easy to use databases. Today, the company announced another major enhancement: “Blocks” — modules that allow users to add maps …
CRM on the Mac
Things haven’t gotten much easier since our 2013 update, the Mac continues to be very weak in database management, especially in CRM-type solutions. Managing contacts is an arduous task on the Mac, particularly in the area of seamless integration with social networks. There are a few rays of sunshine. Apple has broken its tradition of rarely updating its Contacts app, …
Google Inbox
With the average U.S. business executive spending 3.2 hours daily on work email alone, it’s no surprise that email is the bane for many. After many years of stagnancy, email innovation if finally accelerating. In 2015, Google Inbox became available to the more than 5 million businesses that use Google Apps for Works. The Verge put it best, “using Google …
Sketch
You can’t call Sketch an overnight success. Its creator, Pieter Omvlee, has been working on it for 10 years now. But what Sketch has achieved in that timespan is truly noteworthy. Sketch, a Mac only software, has become “quite the darling among design teams right now.” A formidable ecosystem of templates and plugins outpaces that of Adobe Photoshop in areas …
Slack
Slack launched in August 2013 and one year later it had already attracted 1.1 million users. By December 2015 that figure had reached 2 million users, 570,000 of whom were paid accounts. With that type of heady growth, it’s no surprise that Slack is a Silicon Valley “Unicorn” — scoring its last $160 million venture capital round at a $2.8 …