Discover more from Bizarro Devs
Issue 102
Bizarro Devs collects the best tools, articles, and resources from around the web to help and entertain you.
🏠 PROVEN TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE REMOTE WORK, PLUS HOW TO FIND FREELANCE GIGS & LEARN TO DANCE
Heya,
I have already done five weeks stuck indoors and my Netflix is empty. So, most of the links are cures for boredom or ideas for side-hustles.
A couple of apps I use have offered month-long trials. This link gives you a month's trial of Waking Up if you are interested in learning some meditation.
If you need some productive music, then I also have this link which will give you a month to try Brain.FM.
Enjoy this bunch of web miscellany,
Chris.
📰 From the Newsroom
A chilling tale of dubious online traffic and browser hijacking. 👹
The Chrome Web Store is a battleground with Google regularly purging extensions that inject malicious ads. Millions of users were said to have been impacted.
You want numbers? Buzzfeed worked with cybersecurity researchers and discovered that over 60 extensions led back to one person. These extensions could have generated "at least tens of millions of visits a day to different sites".
Ad fraud is big business with at least $40 billion stolen last year alone.
How's the form? Pretty consistent. All of the most annoying internet behaviors are represented from one of the first scams ever, Xupiter to plagiarism and hidden browser windows.
buzzfeednews.com
Proven tips for leading a remote team. 👩💻
A great article for those of us who are lucky enough to have remote-friendly jobs.
Make it easy to switch between modes If you send your brain signals then it will adjust to the new rhythm. If you wear pjs and work from the bed, then the transition to work mode is much harder (trust me on this).
Make yourself available during the day Kind of like an AMA for your colleagues. When you're in the office it is easy to ask for help and get feedback. This can be replicated with a regular time slot devoted to providing help and dispensing advice.
Try everything another great tip is to experiment with tools, processes, and structures. Find what works for your team.
Patience is key. I always find that I give Slack too much priority when I work from home, so I try to respond to messages immediately. It's better to give people time to reply.
markboulton.co.uk
⛓️ Ten Must See Links of the Month
It doesn't matter what skills you have, they give you something you can write about. This article has great tips for finding freelance writing work.
Inspirational websitesi curated by the team at Tympanus. Pretty much every 2020 design trend can be found in the list.
Funny code comments are the best thing the internet gave us.
Guess My Word is a great way to spend a few minutes (it took me way longer than that but I am trying to be cool here). Enter any word and the site will tell you whether the secret word falls before or after, alphabetically speaking, it.
I'm in love with the subtle animation on these radio buttons.
A list of over 500 museums you can view from your couch. I don't want to get you too excited, but the Bruce Lee Foundation is on the list. Take that, Mr. Chuck Norris, sir.
This Instagram feed visualizes the funniest one-star reviews of America's great national parks. My pick is Zion National Park which has "distant" and "impersonal" scenery.
Kapwing is an easy-to-use video editor. The free plan is quite good with no watermarks and 500MB upload limit.
If you're going to be working from home, then this is a good list of productivity tools to help you stay on task.
An interactive guide to TikTok dances is either a great way to embarrass your kids or a ticket to fame and fortune.
Outro
That's another week done.
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See you next week,
Chris.