Free Productivity Apps
We like to talk about the "Creator Economy" but really, we are all creators. It's innately human. Most of us like to make stuff, though we tend to think of "Creators" as those among us who make a living from their creative endeavors — or at least try to. That's a tough business, hats off to those who try and especially those who succeed.
I like to make stuff too. There are few things in life as satisfying as creating something that is "all you". I like writing, making music, and building software. I especially like the process — visualize something, then materialize it through creativity and toil.
Building software is especially cool — you imagine the application, think of how you might build it, and then after after a lot of hard work, there it is, bit by bit until you finally have something. At least, that's how it used to be. With AI, I'm not so sure. AI is definitely democratizing software development, to the point where making a quick and dirty application requires little skill and even less time. All those years spent honing my craft, only to see it devalued. Only time will tell where this ends up.
At any rate, I've built some apps over the years that others might find useful, so here they are. They are all 100% client side, meaning they run exclusively in your browser — there is no data sent to a server (other than page views to Google Analytics), so they are about as private as an app can be. They are also very cheap for me to host, hence I can offer them for free.
These are apps that I've built to either scratch an itch or solve a problem of interest to me. You might find them useful too. At least the price is right. A few, which I've yet to post, were attempts to make a little cash building music education apps on the App Stores. Mostly, I learned that it's a lot harder to make actual money building apps than I imagined.
And So, Without Further Adieu
You can find a list of the apps I've released so far here, along with a brief description of what they do and what they're for, also repeated below, along with links to the individual apps.
Gizmo Draw
This app is like an amalgam of mermaid.js, PlantUML, and draw.io. I'm not entirely sure it's useful, but I've always wanted to create my own programming language, and me creating the next Rust or Golang isn't in the cards. This app is both a programming language and a drag and drop graphical editor, all wrapped up into one. It might be useful for learning to program. It might be useful as an easy-to-learn gaming platform (I might yet integrate rigid body dynamics). It might be useful as a time waster while you are on Zoom calls. At any rate, it was fun and challenging to build.
Gizmo Plan
"When Will it Be Done?". I loathe those words. Yet, as a leader of software development teams, I hear them all the time. In fact, the real definition of "Agile Development" is this: developers are reluctant to (aka refuse to) provide time estimates (you get "points", or maybe "tee shirt sizes" instead) and from that their managers (me) tell the business when things will be done — which the business usually translates to firm customer "commitments". And these estimates sans commitments are often wrong, and everyone is unhappy. This app doesn't solve that problem but it will help you deal with it.
You upload your list of tasks from a spreadsheet, including the time estimate for each task and the skills required for each (or enter them in the UI), and out comes a timeline based on the "optimal" resource assignments. I use the word "optimal" loosely here, because finding the "real" optimal value is computationally quite difficult (this is a well known constrained optimization problem). So what you get is a schedule that is "pretty good" and quite likely better than anything you could do on your own. This app is pretty useful, I must say.
Gizmo Notes
Do we really need another Notes app? Nope. Plenty to choose from, and plenty are free. But still, there's always room for one more, maybe with a twist, right? Gizmo Notes runs in your browser so it's right there, where you spend a lot of your time. It works great with both Markdown and Rich Text. And, there is a companion Google Chrome Extension that will let you right click on any web page to popup a context menu that, with a click, Gizmo will create a new note for you that summarizes the content of the page and captures some summary data, like the source URL. The summarizations use a built in AI model (yes, it's possible to do this in the browser, believe it or not. Not quite ChaptGPT but it gets the job done). It's like bookmarks on steroids. Use it to keep track of your favorite medium articles, like this one.
Gizmo Retire (and FIRE)
I've got a financial advisor and plenty of spreadsheets too, but… when can I retire? It's hard to tell. Can I trust the 4% rule? What about the 25 x salary rule? What will I do with my time? What if I run out of money? What if I drive my wife crazy? Well, one thing I can do is work on this app, which is a financial planner that let's you run a lot of different financial scenarios with Monte Carlo simulations. What's a Monte Carlo simulation? Well, it doesn't involve betting or traveling to an exotic location. Have a look to find out. This app is fairly complex, so if you find any issues — which I'm sure you will — please ping me in the comments here or send me an email (which you'll find on the web site), and I'll try to fix them — and I appreciate your input.
But Wait — There's More, Maybe
I've got a handful of music education apps I'd like to release for free as well, and it's on my todo list (hey, there's an app idea), because there is a bit of work involved. So check back in a few months and see what's up.