One of the things I’ve been missing most about Japan is the chewy Pon de Ring donuts from Mister Donut, especially the glazed ones. So you can imagine my excitement about the reopening of Brotherbird Coffeehouse. All I could think about was their famous mochi doughnuts that have been making the rounds on Instagram. Plus, it’s served with soft-serve ice-cream. Can it get any more sinful than that?

The two-storey bakehouse is known for its croissants, prominently displayed in a glass case on the first floor. The interior is dressed in a no-fuss industrial-chic style. Head up to the second level and you’ll be greeted with a clean, minimalistic space with natural lighting. Even on a weekday afternoon, it’s a full house with many hopefuls waiting downstairs for an available seat.

Their menu extends beyond pastries and desserts — they have pasta, shoestring truffle fries ($9) and brunch essentials like Eggs Benedict ($21) and Smashed Avocado Toast ($18). Their cuppas ($4-$7) are brewed using coffee beans from 2 Degree North Coffee. Non-caffeine drinkers can explore their options of tea ($6), chocolate ($6.50), yuri matcha ($6-S$7.50) and cold-pressed juices ($7).

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It was love at first sight with the signature Mochi Donut ($15). Made with glutinous rice flour for that ideal chewy texture, it is glazed with a salted caramel sauce and lavished with a sprinkling of almond crunch in the centre — striking the perfect contrast between sweet and salty. Atop a Graham cookie that has a taste reminiscent of childhood is a mountain of cookie butter soft serve. I especially love how the cookie stayed firm even after sitting in the melted soft serve for some time.

As expected, cutting through the donut took a bit of an effort, but it was well worth it once I popped a bite into my mouth.

Of course, I couldn’t leave without trying their croissants. Known for their ingenious flavours that change seasonally, they’re the perfect afternoon snack or a pick-me-up for those constantly on-the-go.

The Blackforest Croissant ($5) features a generous amount of chocolate shavings and dustings of powdered sugar. Tearing the buttery pastry apart was a messy affair, and that’s testament to the crispiness and flakiness of the creation. The morello cherry ganache’s tart flavour profile balances out the sweetness of the chocolate.

For those who crave something savoury, go for the Roasted Chicken Twice-Baked ($6) which is stuffed with cajun roasted chicken and topped with cheddar cheese. It supposedly has red currant jam as well, but I felt that the chicken was so flavourful that it overpowered the jam. Nevertheless, I did enjoy how it was spiced, and how well it went with the twice-baked croissant which was crispy on the outside but soft and chewy on the inside.

In the words of my companion, the two croissants taste “just like Christmas”, which was no surprise as these flavours are from their exclusive December 2020 line-up. Fingers crossed that their other seasonal flavour, Mont Blanc ($5), will still be available when I visit again!

The only thing I’m hoping for is that they’ll consider selling the mochi donuts a la carte because those are seriously addictive. In the meantime, I’ll stick to their delicious croissants as my afternoon snack to take with me back to the office. Definitely looking forward to the new exciting flavours they come up with this year!

Brotherbird Coffeehouse

Address: 32 Bali Lane, Singapore 189868

Phone: 9296 4997

Website: https://brotherbird.sg/

Email Address: statelandcafe@gmail.com

Area: Bugis

Opening Hours: 10am to 6pm daily.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brotherbirdcoffeehouse/?ref=page_internal

MissTamChiak.com made an anonymous visit and paid its own meal at the stall featured here.

Let’s build a food community that helps to update the food news in Singapore! Simply comment below if there’s any changes or additional info to Brotherbird Coffeehouse. We will verify and update from our side. Thanks in advance!

Long gone are the days when the whole team sits in one meeting room analyzing a problem for hours. Emails are going to history for time-sensitive discussions that require a quick response. A traditional way of face-to-face collaboration is getting replaced by technologically advanced solutions to meet the needs of the modern business landscape.

Online collaboration tools increase productivity in today’s fast-paced business environment and enable communication for teams working remotely. We prepared a list of some cool online tools to help you stay organized and in the loop with your tasks and other team members. Find the one that suits your needs and keep it busy and productive!

Communication-focused Tools:

BlogIn

BlogIn is an internal blog platform for organizations looking for a better way to share news & knowledge internally and boost company culture. Developed for teams of any size, BlogIn offers tools to run an internal blog with unlimited pages, posts, and uploads. Multifunctionality of this application enables users to share the news just about anything, from project work to informal chat. Created to simplify internal communication and inspire team collaboration, BlogIn encourages commenting, feedback, and replies. Forever stored knowledge, never erased posts, and own company wiki reduces the learning curve and the time needed for internal news sharing processes.

Key features:

• Collaborative writing
• File sharing
• Group posting
• Analytics
• Search and editing
• Unlimited members, pages, and posts
• Company wiki
• Integrations with Slack, Google, and Zapier
• High security and privacy
• Great customer support

Key benefits:

• With the infinite number of members, posts, comments, pages, and files, BlogIn developed a service that meets various types of needs of teams of any size, allowing the members to chat just about anything without any limitations.

• A collaborative, yet non-limiting nature of BlogIn along with features that encourage comments, feedback, and interactive communication makes this software a perfect online tool for boosting company culture and increasing happiness at work.

• Integrations with Slack and other tools via Zapier and automatic information transfer between apps make the whole communication among team members synced, organized, and productive.

Cons:

• Free 14-day trial, but no free options.
• No live chat.

Brosix

Brosix is an instant messenger platform created mainly for business communication. Equipped with strong encryption and security features not offered by public communications platforms, the platform requires authorization and proper permission to access which only valid employees can provide. Unlike other publicly available chat applications, Brosix offers an additional pack of extra features for more convenient communication between team members. Although quite different from a standard chat app, the interface is intuitive and easy to use created with simplicity in mind. Pricing plans are quite affordable, and they also offer discounts. It’s free for personal use.

Key features:

• Top-level encryption
• Multiple languages
• Multi-platform capability
• Premium tech-support
• Private and group chat
• Voice and video chat
• Screen sharing
• Whiteboard
• Co-browsing
• Unlimited size file transfer

Key benefits:

• A user-friendly interface reduces complexity level, enables fast performance, and allows team members to communicate in a seamless fashion.

• Essential features such as whiteboards, video chat, screen share, file transfer, private and group chat, and others enable consistent information flow between peers.

• The highly secure network provides all the necessary privacy to its users.

Cons:

• No free options.

The Bat!

The Bat! is a highly secure desktop email client suitable for both private and professional use. The platform is rich in time-saving features that allow its users a seamless experience with productivity in mind. The Bat! works without another email provider and protects users’ information through end-to-end encryption streams. Designed as a virtual account manager, The Bat! allows its users to manage multiple email accounts in one place with unlimited message storage.

Key features:

• Powerful filtering system
• Own address book
• Customized email templates
• Backup and restore
• Internal HTML viewer
• Selective download

Key benefits:

• In addition to the highly secure and privacy-conscious email system, independence from other cloud-based email providers makes The Bat! highly reliable application to its users.

• Powerful filters, folder views, templates, spam filtering, message tags, versatile search engine, and other excellent features offer its users easy email management and simplified life organization.

Cons:

• A lot of menu options make The Bat! a bit confusing at first.

Try The New Blogger

Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger has been specially designed to connect teams across organizations. It helps you to share ideas among the teams with the features of one-on-one messaging, group conversations, voice-video calls, audio messaging, and Burnout. This simple application crafted with seamless navigational feature flows extends excellent and uninterrupted workflows to its users. Connect across the platforms of desktop, browser, and mobile to share files, manage projects, achieve work deadlines. An exquisite advanced filter group feature allows the user to filter out search results based on images, videos, files, contacts, location, and URLs.

Being a SaaS freemium business model, it comes in three pricing variants; free, premium and enterprise. Business users can sign-up a free trial to try the features of an enterprise pricing variant.

BlueJeans

BlueJeans is a video conferencing platform aimed at professional teams usage. It’s designed with the capability to link multiple devices, support different browsers and operating systems, and connect many participants. BlueJeans account comes with a free 14-day trial, and it requires a work email to sign up, which indicates its professional intention only. Only the host of video call needs to be a BlueJeans member, thus everyone with a meeting link can enter the call without having to register themselves even before the host logs in. The interface is intuitive and easy to use, perfectly designed for communication with remote teams.

Key features:

• Screen sharing
• Recording options
• Multiple access points
• Intuitive and easy to launch

Key benefits:

• Integration capabilities with other communication applications such as Microsoft Skype for Business, Cisco, and Slack, enable its users to start a video chat without having to leave those apps, empowering productivity and faster workflow.

• Clean, functional, and flexible interface with multi-device and multi-platform support offering two-way face-to-face call services make BlueJeans a perfect solution for remote teams collaboration.

Cons:

• Not browser-based.
• Lack of legibility on screen sharing.
• No free options.

Ryver

Ryver is a business communication tool that came out of the need for a faster and more efficient communication process in today’s business landscape. The software can be both used online and downloaded as an app with an unlimited number of users, guests, posts, data, chats. With its rich feature set offered entirely for free, integration with other business applications, and multiple OSs capabilities, Ryver is taking team collaboration to a whole new level. The company promotes team collaboration, cohesion, and productivity, therefore works on creating such a communication service to meet modern business needs. Besides group and direct messaging option, it is possible to chat with anyone outside the company completely privately, also for free. Encrypted using 256-bit encryption, they guarantee a high level of security. Ryver integrates with a broad range of other applications, some of them are Evernote, Basecamp, Yammer, GitHub, and Salesforce.

Key features:

• Completely free
• Group & direct messaging
• Accessible on all devices
• Multi-OS capabilities
• Integration with other apps
• 256-bit encryption
• Strong filtering
• Searchable chat history kept forever

Key benefits:

• With the option to chat with anyone outside the organization privately, securely, and for free, Ryver makes it possible to communicate with clients and other business partners seamlessly and more efficiently than via emails.

• A completely free service with a rich feature set and unlimited everything (large files to send & receive, chat history, users, messages) offers an all-in-one communication tool than every modern business team needs.

Cons:

• No voice call, video call, and screen sharing.

Collaboration-focused Tools:

Samepage

Samepage is a comprehensive collaboration solution created to help business teams work together with their clients, partners, vendors, and customers efficiently and productively. As the name suggests, the application is built to keep all your files and tools in one place on one page. Offering a diverse set of features from file sharing, task, and scheduling, simultaneous page editing, discussion topics, video chat and messaging, the software is suitable for a wide range of companies and teams with different collaboration needs. With the ability to share any content format with anyone on one single page, Samepage makes project management go smooth. Integrations with Slack, YouTube, Dropbox, Google Drive, and other often-used apps make the whole team collaboration process a lot faster and better organized. The account setup is easy, it comes both as a mobile and desktop, with the option to give permission to anyone outside the company to see only what should be seen.

Key features:

• File-sync capabilities
• Multiple devices supported
• Multiple languages supported
• Mobile app for Android and iOS
• Free trial
• Video tutorials

Key benefits:

• The same-page, easy-to-manage structure of Samepage allows its user to monitor task progress and discuss with other team members in real-time, which greatly saves time, increases productivity, and improves team communication.

• A native both desktop and mobile app created for any platform make this service accessible to everyone, anytime, anywhere, from any device.

• Diversity of features and integration capabilities with other apps through Zapier make Samepage a fully-fledged service for team collaboration and project management.

Cons:

• No free options.
• No email integration.

Huddle

Huddle is a cloud-based software that brings communication, project management, and file sharing together. It’s good for small/medium businesses with teams that often collaborate with external partners and clients, and remote teams that work in different departments on the same project. Huddle integrates with Salesforce, SharePoint, Microsoft Office and Google for Work, making task management seamless and productive. The software comes with a whiteboard, meetings, and discussion tool. It keeps everyone up to date with the latest document versions both internally and externally.

Key features:

• Multiple languages supported
• Multiple devices supported
• Email integration
• Cloud storage
• Native mobile app

Key benefits:

• The combination of communication, file sharing, and task management features makes this application an efficient project management tool.

• The 90-day money-back guarantee provides flexibility and opportunity to test the software and decide if you like it with no expense if you don’t.

• With the Microsoft Office integration option and the ability to sync all files across all devices, Huddle makes it possible to access, create, and edit documents directly in Microsoft Office from any device.

Cons:

• Not free, relatively expensive.
• Free 90-day trial, but with 100MB of online storage space and other limitations.
• No group chat.

Ty Blog

RealtimeBoard

Try Logic Pro

RealtimeBoard is designed for simple and visual team collaboration from brainstorming to review. The service offers real-time collaboration, ideally suitable for remote teams and agile management. Developed with an infinite and highly visual whiteboard, RealtimeBoard allows its users to create a concept, generate ideas, leave feedback, post stickers, write mock-ups and schemes. Designed to boost creativity, the application is built for design thinking processes and teams working on creative concepts. Text, voice, and video calls are all possible with this service, which also integrates with Trello, Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Contacts, Facebook, Slack, and JIRA. Whiteboards can be downloaded as PDFs and images, and also shared across social media or blogs. Upload formats supported are PDF, pics, docs, Google Drive files, and YouTube videos.

Troy Blog

Key features:

Tru Blog

• Visuality
• Pen feature
• Templates
• Interactive library
• Endless whiteboard
• Sticky notes
• Integrations with various apps
• Extension for Google Chrome

Key benefits:

• Real-time functionality with face-to-face chat options brings remote teams together and makes them feel a part of the team.

• Infinite canvas with a lot of tools boosts creativity and makes visual planning meetings and brainstorming sessions a whole lot easier.

Cons:

Try On Haul Blog

• Requires guidance to learn how to use it
• No phone support
• Free services limited to 3 board, 3 users per board, and 100MB of storage space

Conclusion

As you’ve probably figured out yourself, the list can go on forever. There’s no way to cover all the tools available, neither to find the one-fits-all. Every team has its own way of communication and collaboration, diverse needs and habits, and most importantly different company culture behind it. Tools don’t solve problems, they just make it easier to do things you already do. Therefore in order to get the most out of any tools you choose, think about whether it fits your company culture and how it clicks with your team.

So what’s your favorite collaboration tool? Did you find the right for you? Is there any other online communication tool out there worth mentioning? We’d love to hear your thoughts!