In these troubled times there is an ever increasing need for digital tools that can help us stay connected with the people we work with. Day to day activities need to keep going but at the same we need to keep ourselves and those we care about safe. So, we’ve reached a point where the need for synchronous and asynchronous communication has become an integral part of our daily routines. At the same time, this situation can be a tedious and tiring task. It can get difficult, frustrating and we have to keep in mind our data privacy, too. The big community of developers of open source software around the world tries to create tools and processes that meet these needs.
The gE.CO Living Lab for enabling generative commons initiatives around Europe has put up a suite of software (gE.CO tools) that your community can use to tackle everyday tasks. Apart from that and having the current state of things in mind, we have put together a collection of digital tools that can increase your community’s productivity, are mostly free, secure, reliable and for the best part easy to use.
Be safe, stay at home but not alone.
The gE.CO Living Lab team.
Those marked with * are the ones UNEW is working on as far as the gE.CO tools are concerned.
List of tools that are mentioned in the gE.CO proposal:
- Iris, SMS donation platform. https://irismsg.io/
- App movement, platform to upload ideas about applications & find ways to support them that lead to their realization. https://app-movement.com/
- Liquidfeedback software that facilitates democratic decision making. Liquidfeedback.org example of use: weGovNow.eu
- PosterVote, electronic polling system. Postervote.online.
- *Loomio, decision making application, loomio.org
- Etherpad, open source collaborative editor, alternative to google docs & drive, etherpad.org
- Cryptpad, collaboration editing site, alternative to other office & cloud services., cryptpad.fr
- Whatfutures, large scale multiplayer future forecasting game by the red cross, whatfutures.org
- openEclass is a open source free platform for online courses, openeclass.org
- GNU health is an open source project for health practitioners & hospitals, health.gnu.org
- Plirosou sosta, application to check out your salary. (link: google play)
- FirstLife, crowdsourcing platform based on an interactive map, firstlife.org
- *Nextcloud, open source alternative to google drive & dropbox, nextcloud.com
- *WikiPages, a tool for creating wiki-like pages. https://wiki.js.org
Online free Calendar Apps:
- Google Calendar, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Calendar
- Lightning Calendar, a free calendar provided by the Thunderbird Mail Suite, https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/calendar/
- Any.do, to-do app with calendar functionality, https://www.any.do
- TimeTree, collaborative & sharing calendar, https://timetreeapp.com/intl/en/
- MyStudyLife, free organiser mainly for students, https://www.mystudylife.com/
Other free utility software:
- Zoom, for video conferencing & phone, alternative to Skype, Google Hangouts Meet, https://zoom.us
- Figma, platform for real-time collaborative design, https://www.figma.com
- *Rocket.chat, open source communication tool for chatting, etc., alternative to Slack, https://rocket.chat
- Mattermost, is a flexible, open source messaging platform that enables secure team collaboration, https://mattermost.com
- SSuite, free online office software, https://www.ssuiteoffice.com
- Delta chat, Telegram or Whatsapp like application without tracking or central control, https://delta.chat/en/
- Riot chat, open source universal secure chat, https://about.riot.im
- GeoJson, open source tool to create maps, http://geojson.io/#map=2/20.0/0.0
- UMap, create maps with OpenStreetMap layers in a minute and embed them in your site, http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/
- LimeSurvey, open source survey software, alternative to Google Forms, limesurvey.org
Open source software for online communication:
- Jitsi, tool for deploying video/audio conferencing, file exchanges, text messaging, etc., https://jitsi.org
- Signal, the safest and most private way to exchange messages between mobile devices, https://signal.org
- Mumble, is protocol for internet communication exclusively with sound, https://www.mumble.info
- NextCloud Talk, an additional functionality provided by nextCloud, https://nextcloud.com/talk/
Ideas for useful tools for the communities:
- GiftHub https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted, this is a repository of free software network services and web applications which can be hosted locally.
