Tech Knowledge

Last week, I attended Figma’s annual design conference, Figma Config, to learn about all the innovative updates they’re bringing to the platform. As a senior UX/UI designer with added experience in visual design content and web development, I’m used to pushing Figma to its limit to help drive projects forward. At Altar, Figma is an essential part of our product creation process. It’s the ultimate meeting point for almost all stakeholders involved in the project: the design team, the managers, the clients, the developers, the product team and many more. Figma has always been a fantastic tool to craft, share and iterate on designs. But with such a diverse range of people working on a single project, communication can sometimes become a hurdle. For this reason, I was delighted to learn that the focus of Figma Config 2023 was to optimise their design tool to make it accessible for all. This will bridge the gap between design, product, development teams and non-technical stakeholders, allowing the delivery of projects to be faster and more seamless. At Config 2023, Figma announced a whole host of new features from tiny, quality-of-life improvements like Font Picker and Flex-Wrap to actual beasts like Dev Mode (which I’ll […]

If you’re an entrepreneur beginning your tech startup journey, you’ve probably heard the terms Agile and Scrum get thrown around. They’re often used interchangeably – which can cause a lot of confusion if you’re new to the two methodologies. Having spent the last three years as a Scrum Master, I’ve seen first-hand how daunted early-stage entrepreneurs can feel when presented with these, seemingly confusing terms. However, defining Agile and Scrum is actually pretty straightforward. The short answer is, that Agile is an approach to software development, while Scrum is one of the methodologies that fall under the Agile umbrella, alongside other key methodologies such as XP (Extreme Programming) & Kanban. But to define why Agile and Scrum have risen in popularity, we need to dig a bit deeper. Throughout this article, I will explore the Agile approach. I will go on to contextualise how it can benefit your startup using Scrum methodology (and the roles you usually see in Scrum teams) as an example. To get started, I want to give you a more in-depth understanding of both Agile and Scrum. Contents What is Agile? Agile allows project teams to adapt to changing priorities, rapidly respond to problems as they […]

Recently, SpaceX launched Starlink in Portugal. So, naturally, I got one for Altar as soon as the pre-orders opened. A couple of weeks ago, the sleek satellite dish finally arrived. In no time at all, a couple of devs from my team and I had unboxed it and set it up in the garden outside our offices. https://altar.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/altarXstarlink.mp4 Fast forward to today, and I’ve had the opportunity to use Starlink, as well as run some tests. I’ll go through those later in the article, but first I want to talk about my initial impressions. Starlink Unboxing & First Impressions Inside the large grey Starlink packaging, you’ll find: The Starlink, motorised, satellite dish– connected to a 30-meter (100 foot) Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) cable A metal tripod stand A power adaptor A small metal Wi-Fi Router with its own PoE cable. The initial set-up was incredibly simple: Click the dish into the tripod mount, plug the PoE cables from both the router and the dish into the power adaptor, plug it into the wall socket, download the app and you’re ready to go. The hardware is well designed, especially the metal Wi-Fi router, which looks like it’s been freshly carved out of a Cybertruck. […]