Issue 5

Hello

Welcome to the fifth issue of Rounding Third. We've got some new readers this month, so a special welcome to all of you.

Here's a quick reminder of the categories in the newsletter for those of you who are new to the program:

Inside Baseball is where we'll share what we worked on this month on the product side of life.
Water Cooler is company culture content, and other fun stuff we're talking about at Simple Focus.
Moneyball links are about running a business.
Tools of the Trade shines a spotlight on apps and digital products we use at our agency on a daily basis.
Pushing the Pixels and Git Push, Git Paid are straight from our designer and developer team Slack channels.
Inspirational Things are exactly what they sound like.

Enjoy!

Inside Baseball

October Update: The Old Design Rides Off Into the Sunset

This month we officially shut down the old version of Ballpark and have transitioned everyone over to the new design. It took a long time to get to this point (we started letting folks use the new design over nine months ago!) but we wanted to be sure that we rolled out the new version slowly so that we could address bugs quickly and efficiently. We’re proud of the team for all the work that’s been done in the past year, and we’re excited to keep making Ballpark awesome! Read the rest of this month's update here.

Water Cooler

How to Run a Remote Workplace When Not Everyone is Remote

Are you part of a team with both office and remote workers? Check out this article for practical advice on communication, goal setting, and building a cohesive culture. —Matt

Moneyball

Jeffrey Shaw on Speaking the Lingo of Your Ideal Customer (Podcast)

A photographer shares how he rebuilt his business by researching the markets of his ideal customer, and how that market's perspective of the world would affect their willingness to pay him for his work. Do you understand the 'secret language' of the market your business is trying to reach? —Calvin

5 Reasons Creative Businesses Should Run Like Hell From Hourly Billing

A really interesting take from Andrew here. Have you tried hourly billing and project-based billing? Which one worked better for your business? —JD

Tools of the Trade

Dark Mode, Data, a brand new look and more in Sketch 52

The latest update to the Sketch (Sketch 52) was recently released, and it’s one of the biggest yet. The totally redesigned interface – including a dark mode for macOS Mojave – is getting the headlines, but we’re most excited about the new feature for adding real data to your design from various sources on the fly. —Matt

Favicon Checker

Favicons are a surprisingly deep rabbit hole. If you've gone down it, you'll enjoy this nifty tool by Colin Keany that helps you check your favicon's appearance against all the different shades of gray that exist in browser tab bars. —Andrew

Pushing the Pixels

Edward Tufte forum: iPhone interface design

I love how Tufte approaches the new iPhone back in 2007. He looks at it like a scientist inspecting a brand new species from head to toe. Super relevant and interesting. —JD

Git Push, Git Paid

Start Performance Budgeting

I’ve been reading a lot lately about how unnecessarily large the web can be these days, so I love the idea of performance budgets. Set goals for load times or asset file sizes, and treat them like cost budgets. —Caitlin

Moss

Moss is a little server admin utility that will configure your server for you, auto-deploy, monitor, and ensure security. It looks like a great little tool for someone who wants to host something on their own server but doesn’t know or want to do a lot of the server admin stuff on their own. I have to wonder if Moss is named after the I.T. Crowd... —Caitlin

Inspirational Things

Old Concept Cars

Huge internet gallery of old and retro concept cars, prototypes, vintage and dream cars. —John

Salt Fat Acid Heat on Netflix

Most cooking shows are food porn. This is food art. Chef and food writer Samin Nosrat travels the world to explore four basic keys to wonderful cooking, serving up feasts and helpful tips along the way. —John

Closer

That's it for this month. If you have any links to share, please don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter or by replying back to this email.