gistfile1.md

We're doing a small year-end news nerd countdown on Source. Lists are too much, so please send us ONE THING—an app, a tool, an article, a tweet, an image, a map, or something else entirely—that you loved this year. Might be something that made your job easier or made you smarter, or it might have more obscure relevance. All we ask is that you can link to it.

Don't think too hard about it, just take 30 seconds and send one in now to [email protected]. We'll be posting an assembly of favorite things and all we can say about it right now is that there will be GIFs.

[email protected]

Wooo.

Also, our team moved from Skype to HipChat this year -- https://www.hipchat.com. We have one big team chatroom, plus separate chatrooms for major projects. There are hooks for Github (so new commits, issues and comments come up in the chat). And we have a hubot set up to respond to key phrases with alternately useful (google hangout links, cafeteria/food truck lunch menu) and silly (gifs galore) things. https://github.com/nprapps/totebot2/tree/master/scripts

http://www.moma.org/inventingabstraction exhibit + book + website

ImageAlpha.

Tim's Kitchen Tips, for teaching me how to cook.

SVG Crowbar from NYTimes. Save an HTML document along with styles as an SVG. Amazingly handy when you want to export a visualisation as an SVG.

A good clipboard history app really freed up my brain RAM. I like Alfred, but I'm sure there are many more.

Tabula has been the hours-saving chart-enabling magical tool that still leaves me in awe every time I use it...even though I probably pronounce it wrong http://tabula.nerdpower.org

Chrome's OneTab extension. Gives a respectful way out from having a bajillion tabs open.

Similar to @alykat's thoughts, I so loved the strength of his community and the efforts of so many this year. I've mentioned in passing before, but the effort to collaborate, teach and learn sted of competing is such a testament to those working in this space. An obvious byproduct of that are the tools and apps and methods that are created.

Thank you ethan marcotte: http://bukk.it/

framework for reusable d3 charts http://misoproject.com/d3-chart/

AND: https://twitter.com/gridinoc/status/357563758324875264/photo/1

For me, 2013 was the year that iPython + pandas + matplotlib became an indispensable toolkit for exploratory data analysis.

I discovered d3js.org this year. I am still far from really getting everything (does anybody except Mike Bostock anyway?). Being able to display a map from pure geodata in the browser was my personal best moment in coding this year.

Close to home, but my colleague David's Chartbuilder has completely transformed how we do things at Quartz: https://github.com/Quartz/Chartbuilder/

I'm gonna go with http://mixture.io/

Just starting to learn how Knockout can integrate with SharePoint but seems to be very powerful. Looking forward to mastering in 2014.

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Two Javascript libraries were of great utility to me this year. imgLiquid helps resize photos to fit a container. Having written my own version of such code a few times, this one works shocking well. Waypoints is an equally useful library for scroll-based event triggers and effects.

For me, the Beaglebone Black http://beagleboard.org/products/beaglebone%20black was key - a simple, cheap, powerful way to prototype IoT-style interactions

Sublime Text with SFTP. It meant never having to code within a CMS <textarea> ever again.

It's far from new, but learning Make was huge for me. Mike Bostock's post earlier this year on how and why to use Make changed how I do every project.

http://javisantana.com/kotar by @javisantana.

A visualization of a race synchronized with a video made with d3 + OpenStreetMap + a GoPro + CartoDB.

+1 for Mixture. Absolute ace for prototyping. My take on it.

Tiny Circuits. Arduinos the size of a coin. Yummy. https://tiny-circuits.com/products/tinyduino/

I recently discovered Bret Victor's book-length design treatise, "Magic Ink", full of revelations, inspirations and provocations.

Yeoman...its simplification and conveniences for the building of JavaScript applications made me really appreciate how important workflow is to actually finishing -- and enjoying -- projects.

Handlebars.js: http://handlebarsjs.com/

Templating has made app building so much easier...