The Scout Report -- Volume 26, Number 14

Happy Hues is a fun color resource perfect for website designers or any project requiring a color palette. The resource offers a curated collection with about 17 pre-selected color schemes. Visitors can explore these different schemes by clicking the "Try changing the palette!" button at the top of the site, or by selecting palettes along the left-hand side of the site (accessible by selecting "Toggle palettes") to bring up a page for that palette. On each palette page, users can click the "Toggle section colors" button to bring up that palette's hues, with color names provided in hex code for easy use. As users scroll down the landing page, the resource begins by introducing visitors to basic color concepts, including: hue, tint, and saturation. Next, the site delves into the psychology of color, discussing the ways primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) make people feel. For example, red is described as "a very emotionally and visually intense color that can actually have a physical effect on people by raising their metabolism, respiration, heart rate," while yellow is associated with a wide range of feelings from "happiness" to "anxiety." Secondary colors (green, orange, and purple) get similar treatment, as do the neutral colors white and black. Happy Hues was created by designer Mackenzie Child in 2019, using the free website builder Webflow. [DS]

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Featuring important holidays such as National Pet Day (celebrated on April 11) and National Bulldogs Are Beautiful Day (celebrated on April 21), April is a month for dogs. Celebrate the smiles that canine friends bring with Dog Per Day. Launched by dog-loving couple Eric and Kate, the site highlights a new cute canine every day, sure to bring a smile to any visitor's face. On the Gallery page, visitors can view approximately one hundred pictures of dogs (as of this write-up), with captions briefly describing their breed, name, and other key details. Interested readers can even opt to receive a daily email from the site showcasing the featured dog of the day. Interested in submitting your own dog to be featured? There's an option for that, too, by following the instructions on the Submit Photos page. In addition to plenty of "aww" worthy content, the site contains the Dog Blog and Articles sections, which highlight topics relevant to dog owners and enthusiasts. [EMB]

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For those working from home while simultaneously caring for children, this free lab activity is great to have on hand (especially for those caring for middle school-aged children). Lab participants take on the role of experimental paleontologist, hypothesizing and testing theories by using examples of fossils and modern animals to better understand the ancient sauropod's digestive system. Readers may recognize sauropods, a plant-eating dinosaur most distinguished by their long necks, due to references in popular culture such as the film Jurassic Park. Provided for free in this activity are excellent diagrams, graphics, and materials that students use as their "artifacts." Through the activity, participants gain an appreciation of something as seemingly menial as fossilized dinosaur poop, while also gaining a better understanding of the digestive system functions in different animals we find on Earth today. The lab uses materials that can all be purchased at your local grocery store (or that you may already have on hand in your home) to actually observe the chemical processes that may have been taking place in the sauropod's stomach thousands of years ago. This resource was created by Nick VanAcker, a museum educator at the Michigan State University Museum, and is featured on the popular science site Science Friday (featured in the 10-13-2017 Scout Report). [SMH]

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Meet change, challenge, and adversity with "calm, focus, [and] happiness," through Mindfulness Mode. Hosted by mindfulness consultant Bruce Langford, the podcast seeks to help listeners "be more relaxed, contented, and satisfied with [their] life." Covering everything from self-love to ending gender-based violence, episodes feature guests from different areas of expertise, including: neuroscientists, religious leaders, writers, and activists. Recently, the podcast has touched on strategies particular to navigating challenges related to COVID-19 (see the March 27, 2020 episode) such as finding strength and calmness during adversity. Some installments also include guided meditations in which listeners can participate. With new episodes released every few days and over 500 episodes available as of this write-up, there are plenty of topics to choose from. Most episodes are under an hour and the full archive of Mindfulness Mode can be found at the link above (under Show Notes or All Episodes, both under the Podcast tab). Readers can also listen on a variety of other streaming platforms such as Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Music. [EMB]

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Readers interested in eco-friendly crafting using items already available in their homes may enjoy Upcycle That, a website dedicated to exploring the intersection of sustainability and style. Upcycling is "a creative process where waste is looked at as a resource. Materials are reused in a clever new way, giving them a second life and function." Launched in 2012 by Judy Rom and Jacques Karsten, the website contains information on a variety of sustainable themes, from do-it-yourself holiday decor to "zero waste groceries." It also provides tutorials to turn household items that would normally go to waste into exciting home furnishings. For example, they have instructions for turning cardboard egg cartons into strings of flower lights and a rotary phone into a "retro phone lamp." Users can navigate free projects under the Make That tab (which is sorted by creation type) or Use That tab (which is sorted by material). Readers who make innovative Upcycled creations can submit their own work to be featured on the site under Submissions. [EMB]

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Real-time and all online, Etherpad is a great tool for smooth, remote collaborating. Last featured in the 09-14-2018 Scout Report, the platform was most recently updated in December 2019 to improve security and ease of use.

Etherpad is a web-based real-time collaborative editor. Any user can create a collaborative document, called a "pad," each of which has a distinct URL. Anyone that has this URL can make edits to the pad, with every editor's changes appearing in their own color. Etherpad automatically saves changes periodically, but users may also checkpoint specific versions at any time. The editing history of each pad is also saved, with a slider allowing users to rewind a document to view previous versions. Pads can be downloaded in plain text, HTML, PDF, ODF, or Word format. A number of free, public Etherpad servers are available. These can be located in the "List of public instances" under the Links section of the Etherpad site. For users that wish to self-host an Etherpad instance, server installers are provided on the Etherpad site for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Etherpad is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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Featured in the 08-25-2017 Scout Report, Twist continues to be a highly regarded communication application for teams and provides a great way to stay in touch while working remotely. Notably, 81 percent of surveyed team leaders reported improved efficiency with the platform.

Readers searching for a collaborative communication app for their team may enjoy Twist. While email shines as a tool for person-to-person correspondence, it can often be less effective as a collaborative space for teams. It can be difficult to share old messages in a thread with a new team member to bring them up to speed. Furthermore, the process of fleshing out new ideas often works better as a conversation rather than a correspondence. A number of collaboration platforms have arisen in recent years that provide both a global history and a more conversational interface. Twist is one such platform. Unlike similar platforms, Twist maintains the concept of threads with their own distinct topics. It also features an inbox where users can see all threads with recent activity. The Why Twist and Compare to Slack sections on Twist's website present an argument for why this organization is a sweet spot for team collaboration. While some upgraded versions of the platform come with a price per user, there is a free version available. Twist is available on the web, as an application for Windows and Macintosh computers, and in the iOS and Android app stores. [CRH]

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ShareX (featured in the 07-27-2018 Scout Report) continues to be a popular tool for sharing screenshot and screencast information. Since the release of the latest version in March 2020, this tool has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.

Easily share screenshots and screencasts with co-workers through ShareX, a Windows utility for capturing and sharing this information. The resource provides a number of ways to specify what should be captured. Users can select from everything on all displays, a single display, a single window, a single region of a window, and other capture modes. Once an image or movie is captured, ShareX can perform a number of post-processing tasks, including watermarking and text recognition. Completed screenshots/screencasts can be uploaded to one of several dozen services. Links to the uploaded file can be created with a variety of URL shorteners (bit.ly, is.gd, tinyurl.com, and others). Lastly, these links can be shared using a number of social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Reddit. ShareX is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3, with source code available on GitHub. Executables can be downloaded for Windows computers. ShareX requires Windows 7 or newer. [CRH]

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Last featured in the 11-22-2019 Scout Report, Magic Wormhole's mission to "get things from one computer to another safely," is even more important in remote work environments.

Magic Wormhole is a command-line tool for moving arbitrarily sized files or folders from one computer to another securely, without storing them on an intermediate server (e.g. Dropbox). It is designed primarily for situations where two users are already talking and need to exchange a file. To use Magic Wormhole, a sender issues a command such as wormhole send FILE and is given a "wormhole code" derived from a short, pronounceable, phonetically-distinct word list. The sender must then relay this code to the recipient. When the recipient runs wormhole, receives, and enters the provided code, the two computers locate each other via a public "Rendezvous Server," establish a secure connection via Password-Authenticated Key Exchange, and transfer the specified data. Detailed API and protocol documentation describing exactly how this works are provided on the Magic Wormhole site. In the Installation portion of the site, users can locate installation instructions for macOS, Linux, and Windows computers. Magic Wormhole is distributed under the MIT license, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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Those in creative fields (such as graphic design and marketing) may be searching for work-from-home collaboration tools designed to share more than text. Drawphile (featured in the 09-28-2018 Scout Report) provides just that: a collaborative image-editing platform. In February 2020 Drawphile released an updated version, correcting a few previous bugs.

Drawpile is a network-enabled drawing program that allows multiple users to simultaneously edit the same image. In the servers section, users can find a list of active public sessions and may create their own drawing sessions (either fully open or password protected) on the public Drawpile server. The Drawpile application also includes a built-in server that can host collaborative drawing sessions that are accessible to other users on the same network. A number of functions for managing sessions are provided (for example, kicking/banning problematic users); the full list is described in Collaboration and User Management in the About section of Drawpile's website. Drawpile can also create animations, either by recording a whole drawing session as a video file or by using image layers as frames. Images are exported in OpenRaster format, which can be imported by applications like MyPaint, Krita, or GIMP. Drawpile executables can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Drawpile is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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By now readers are likely well-acquainted with the Center for Disease Control's important health resources. Their WONDER database (last featured in the 03-08-2017 Scout Report) curates important epidemiology information and reports that add to their work in the public health sector.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) offers a number of databases and datasets related to public health. In the WONDER Systems tab, visitors can explore dozens of online databases that allow visitors to retrieve data on a range of issues including Population statistics, Mortality Statistics, and Environmental Statistics (e.g. sunlight and air temperatures). The Topics tab offers additional data via nine broad categories: Chronic Conditions, Communicable Diseases, Environmental Health, Health Practice and Prevention, Injury Prevention, Nationally Notifiable Conditions, Occupational Health, Reference Data, and Tools. Topics can also be found alphabetically on the A-Z Index tab. Readers interested in the latest COVID-19 updates from the CDC can find this information by clicking on the CDC logo at the top of WONDER (which takes users to their homepage).

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