The Roundup
Every Sunday
Build an app with a spreadsheet. No code required.
This newsletter was brought to you byHapaxBuild an app with a spreadsheet. No code required.
New technologies become easier to use over time as programs, platforms, and plug-ins are built.
Once upon a time, rooms of accountants would manually update spreadsheets, sketched on chalkboards. If one input changed, they would recalculate every other cell. Now, we get computers to do it for us and check Twitter all at the same time.
Spreadsheets are starting to eat the web development world. Sheetbase was #1 on Product Hunt yesterday, a tool that converts Google Sheets into programmable databases for your websites or apps.
It's pretty nifty: it combines Google's free spreadsheet software with JavaScript frameworks into a free database.
Sheetbase isn't the only spreadsheet-powered web development tool:
🛠️ Sheetsu turns Google Sheets into a programmable API
📊 Tabledo will update your website using data from your spreadsheets
💻 Sheet 2 Site lets you generate an entire website from one Sheet
📦 Airtable Blocks let you run entire programs inside spreadsheet cells
Highlight
The App Store has a new world champion: Tik Tok.
The karaoke-esque, music-sharing app has been downloaded over 45,000,000 times in the first three months of 2018. That's more downloads than Snapchat, Spotify, and Gmail... combined. 😮
Tik Tok originally launched in China as a lip-syncing app named Douyin with built-in video effects and poweful social network.
It reminds us of when we spent all weekend playing with Mac Photo Booth effects.
Tik Tok was developed by Bytedance, which coincidentally acquired Musical.ly for $1B last year. The apps are basically identical. Musical.ly, Douyin, and Tik Tok now have a combined 100,000,000 monthly active users around the world.
Social is hard. Today many scaredy-cat investors are too afraid to invest in anything competing head-on with Facebook. Rock on, Tik Tok. 👏
P.S. Musical.ly cofounder and co-CEO Alex Zhu may have the best Product Hunt username there is. 😬
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The Roundup
Every Sunday
Everything you missed this past week on Product Hunt: Top products, spicy community discourse, key trends on the site, and long-form pieces we’ve recently published.