We’re big fans of remote, asynchronous communication. As much as that enables us to do deep, focused work, it can get lonely sometimes. This means that any chance to brainstorm as a team is always more exciting. One way of doing this is through whiteboarding, which is a handy way of enabling collaborative free-form thinking that lets you map out new ideas.
Canva launched Whiteboards yesterday with the community and is currently available for free on the web, desktop, and mobile. The new tool uses an infinite canvas that lets teams collaborate in real-time through stickies, voting graphics, shapes, as well as Canva’s library of 100 million images, videos, and audio tracks.
Canva’s new tool comes at an interesting time, as Apple’s preparing to launch its new similar feature, Freeform, on iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura later this year. According to Apple, Freeform is set to be a “flexible canvas that gives users the ability to see, share, and collaborate all in one place without worrying about layouts and page sizes, and with full support for Apple Pencil.”
If you’ve been watching the whiteboard space, you might also remember Eraser’s soft launch last year, as well as news of the product hitting the 1M users mark. The team is now back with Eraser 2.0, which focuses on distributed engineering teams. What makes Eraser different from other tools is its ability to support markdown, code blocks, cloud icons, and code-generated diagrams. It also takes a keyboard-first approach – you can draw an entire diagram without your hands leaving the keyboard.
How do you brainstorm? If you’re curious to see what else is out there, here are some community-sourced resources.
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Poly generates 4K UHD design assets with AI, including textures, graphics, and icons, from a simple text prompt.
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Redeem by SwagUp helps you create and manage landing pages for collecting swag recipient information and distributing it across the world.
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Rocket Money (previously TrueBill) lets you track your spending, cancel subscriptions, and automate your savings.
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Pulse Surveys by Roots is a Slack plug-in that allows teams to curate feedback and monitor employee engagement.
Monterey AI is like Copilot for product development.
The tool helps teams turn product requirements documents into repeatable workflows and generates product specs, wireframes, and dependency checks.