Essential Links in February 2025

/ product-dev, agile, ai, digital-sovereignty, tools, strategy, software-dev

The Essential Links article series is about publishing a collection of inspiring, interesting & good-to-know articles of the previous month as a kind of recap of what happened in the world. And boy, what a month this was. I thought a lot about posting some political content today, but I finally voted against it (pun intended).

I am sure you already had your share.

Part of the Rosengarten wall in South Tyrol seen through an opening in the morning fog

In February I read Mike Kus' The Pocket Photographer, a tiny but very inspirational book about taking pictures with your smartphone, it was recommended by Marc Thiele somewhere. It's very small, you will read it in an hour, but it has beautiful pictures and 7 very insightful principles for composition, that I will from now on always keep in my mind. I will create a phone background with them, they are so helpful that I don't want to forget them - recommended.

Let's get started.

A.I.

Agile

Product Development

Digital Sovereignty

I had to think about the title of this category. I wanted it to be generic enough to contain many different items that will help you to build your own little digital sovereignty in the internet. The internet is not facebook, is not x, is not AAA corps selling your profile to the highest bidder. Be sure to have that in mind and help to keep the web open.

  • Here's Tim analysing what happens if you open an app with in-app advertisement in your phone. TL;DR: You will be tracked in a detailed level you are not prepared for.
  • Mike Kuketz' blog is one of the most important resources in German language when it comes to setting up your own digital environment. They now founded the hashtag #UnplugTrump that you can follow in the fediverse to receive tipps, tools and insights how to become more independent from the big players.
  • There are many alternatives to U.S. based services here in Europe. The list is growing and you should definitely have a look - there is a wide range of services from web analytics to microblogging, translation and time tracking that you can use based on European regulations (without publishing your personal data and your profile out into the world).
  • You do not need Amazon. You will find many alternatives for ordering stuff here in Europe (German).
  • Framasoft tries to help you de-googleising your internet. They offer a lot of browser-based tools find alternatives for your usage of the Google portfolio.
  • Into the Fediverse: Become an independent digital citizen and use fedi.tips as a starting point to learn.
  • savesocial.eu tries to preserve social media as democratic instruments.
  • open.nrw is the open data / open info portal of the government in Northrhine-Westfalia
  • A podcasting cheatsheet for FOSS (free and open source-software) is helping you to get started with podcasts in the fediverse.

Tools

Software development

Organizations & Strategy

Roger Martin overload.

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