My Top 10 Tools List for 2024

This is my submission for this year to Jane Hart's annual list.

1. Firefox - this is my web browser of choice, the only one properly effective against tracking and advertising, and where I start and end every day

2. Mastodon - my social network of choice, which I use to I post OLDaily article and photos, and where I keep in touch with the learning technology community. I use the web-based version on the desktop, and Tusky on my phone

3. FreshRSS - this replaces Feedly, where the price got too expensive and the AI too predictable, as my primary feed reader. I manage it using Cloudron. I follow 800 feeds give or take; here's my OPML

4. YouTube - I do a lot of my personal learning over YouTube, not so much for tech so much as help with cycling and photography. I also use OBS webcast my work with new technologies as well as my gaming and cycling (I also have a PeerTube instance but it requires a lot of care and feeding).

5. Google Mail - while my office uses Outlook I'm using Google, partially because it simply works better, and partially for the convenience, though I'm looking to migrate to something I manage myself so I don't need to depend on it and mailing services like Mailgun for OLDaily.

6. Visual Studio Code - all my development work is done in VS Code, which offers me an excellent development environment as well as integration with GitHub. I haven't used CoPilot yet.

7. Google Docs - works really well as a cloud document authoring tool, and I need a cloud tool because I use several different computers in different places; I don't try to sync with Drive or OneDrive because they are unpredictable. I've tried alternatives OnlyOffice in NextCloud but it's slower and takes a lot more work.

8. Lightroom - this is unfortunately my go-to for image processing, mostly because I've never found an alternative that I can depend on. Don't point me to Gimp; I hate Gimp.

9. PowerPoint - I find it the easiest to use for producing slide presentations, and I also use it to create box-and-arrow type diagrams and simple graphic design. Again, my choice here is based on ease-of-use over alternatives like Google Slides or Open Office.

10. Zoom - my videoconferencing app of choice, though of course I use the full range of alternatives depending on what other people are using, and have my own (mostly unused) Jitsi instance.

Looking at this list it's worth reflecting that while some of it is open source, I use many commercial tools as well. This is by necessity, partially in order to be able to interoperate with other people, and partially because the commercial software is easier or has features I like.

What's really important, though, is that I don't depend on any commercial software. I have my own website, cloud environment, and content management system I developed myself, and this is where anything permanent goes. For me, using commercial software is like buying coffee from Starbuck's - I use it in passing, but I grind my own beans and make my own coffee at home.