The Leaderboard

Last week, we told you we were bringing back Shout-Outs, a place to highlight makers and products that made your year one to celebrate.

Some of us are observing our last day of cheer and rest today, while others have returned back to work. Regardless of which you are, we thought we’d equip you for 2022 with uplifting words of support from your community.

So before we get too far into speculating, analyzing, and hyping up 2022’s most interesting products and makers, take a moment to read a few shout-outs:

“@soham_roy4 is one incredible hustler and collaborator I came across. To own a vision and take command of execution is a skill very few have. He excels in both.”

"What a crazy good year 2021 was for makers and the indie community! I thank the crazy NoCode community and especially folks like @thisiskp_ among others who have been super active driving the community."

"A voice for change. He always made me think "what can we do better for humanity?" — @davidsacks. 🤔 And my wife Frances…. Without her, I wouldn't know where which foot goes first."

"This was a big year for the buzzword "web3" and I consider myself at least mildly knowledgeable on the subject thanks to the info from the Odyssey learning DAO."

"Grateful for @samdebrule and @haleymbryant in 2021 - without their support and insights I wouldn't have made the transition into tech and landed a role @producthunt 😺"

"@xianmingchen for inspiring with his wild progress."

It’s not too late to appreciate someone (or something) else — they’ll get a notification when you do, if they’re in the Product Hunt community, too.

It’s HERE! The countdown is about to end. We’ve made it to the top 5 most upvoted products of the year! If you missed the products from the rest of the list, you can find them in this week’s Daily Digest newsletters here.

Let’s do this.

5. Lucky Carrot is an employee engagement platform that enables peer-to-peer recognition (with redeemable carrots) and promotes company values.

“Like your powerful insights on employee interactions…, predicting possible turnover. Great to bring visibility to employee relationships. Your "Interaction Graph" is supercool 🤩.” arakelyan

4. Typedream is a website builder with a Notion-like interface for making any website look good with minimal effort.

“Man, such a great match between how my brain structures and how websites render. Love it.” Daniel Shein

3. RobinWho comes from investing app Qooore, which wanted to release a product that (hilariously) weans you from making money on the stock market.

“Finally, a product that won't let me get to the moon with all my $DOGE. Having a job to attend and debts to pay, there's no time to get rich.” Jay June

2. Tango automatically creates step-by-step how-to guides as you complete your work, with screenshots, links, and descriptions.

“Awesome stuff! Superfast way to document processes — and even faster for the viewer since it focuses on the important highlights. Better than video for sharing step-by-step workflows!” Mark Lamb

1. Sprig (formerly UserLeap) is a product research platform that lets you run microsurveys within your product, record interviews, and test design concepts.

“Recruiting and creating authentic context are my two most significant pain points when doing user research; I'm thrilled to see a product that seems to address both 🎉” Josh T

Until next year!

We have made it all the way to the top 10 most upvoted products of the year. Let's go!

10. Podcastle is an AI-powered audio platform to create production-quality audio content and conduct online interviews.

“Wow - just checked out the sound difference with and without the magic dust - that's impressive! Great work on putting such a great tool together!
”
 Petar Petrovic

9. Ray.so lets you turn your code into beautiful images.

"This is an amazing alternative to Carbon! Thanks for building it – just bookmarked the site!" Steven Tey

8. Cal.com (formerly Calendso) is an open-source, calendar scheduling solution you can self-host and integrate with your business.

"Fantastic to see an open-source alternative to the calendar/p2p-scheduling layer. The UI is great as well, but the main magic is being able to do deeper integrations." Chris Dietrich

7. Persona offers a suite of fully-automated identity verification components (like gov't ID, video selfie, supplemental documents) that can be configured and branded.

“We use persona at Rippling, where we are constantly combatting financial fraud, and Persona has been a real lifesaver for us in stamping this out." Parker Conrad

6. Contra is a professional network for flexible work where you can recognize the people you've worked with and accept inquiries for opportunities.

“Super excited to see this go live. Freelancers - like myself- are often hit by % fees on platforms, which cuts into our hard earned $$$.” Kate Rushton

See you tomorrow for the final five!

We’re counting down the most upvoted products of the year. Unfortunately, one sleepy kitty put the wrong links in yesterday’s Daily Digest, so we’ll start by recapping yesterday’s five.

20. Integrately helps non-techies integrate their apps
19. Mobile Chat Kit is a UI and SDK kit for building in-app chats
18. Zodier is a dating chatbot for popular messengers
17. Audiblogs lets you listen to articles in your podcast player
16. Doodle Ipsum generates placeholder illustrations for your site

15. SavvyCal is a scheduling tool that makes it easy for both parties to find the best time to meet, without the awkwardness.

“You know it's a good product that when you send someone an invite [and] they mention how good it was and that they are going to give it a go!” Simon Bennett

14. Veganzone is a mobile app where people can meet and share their common values, socialize over their events, and purchase vegan products.

"This application is well built for communities! Loving the social network kinda look. Congrats on the design!” Owen Chandler

13. Scribe lets you automatically create step-by-step, detailed guides with screenshots for any process.

"Love it! As a part of a large tech support team, I can appreciate how Scribe makes it easy for the entire team to follow the documentation and procedures identically."Tanja A

12. tl;dv helps you catch up on your meetings with linked meeting minutes, contextualized takeaways, and CRM integrations.

“This is so needed. So much time at work is wasted on meetings you just don't necessarily need to attend/that I would much rather rewatch later.” Mehdi Benbrahim

11. OpenVC lets you browse 2,200+ funds by investment criteria. In return, VCs receive less spam and more qualified deal flow.

"Finally! This database was needed many years ago. Thanks a lot for making the VC world a bit more open!” Tony Urban

Tomorrow, we’ll kick off the top 10 most upvoted products of 2021. Can you guess who made the cut?

ICYMI, we’re here counting down the top most-upvoted products of 2021. We’re down to our top 20. Here we go!

20. Integrately helps non-techies integrate their apps and automate their processes.

“The learning curve is low because their interface is very simple and intuitive, I can optimize my boring tasks… The cost is also very cheap compared to other major competitors in the market.” Huy Tùng

19. Mobile Chat Kit is a UI and SDK kit from Stream that enables makers to build beautiful and scaleable in-app chats.

“Love how Stream is helping product teams improve their product functionality, user experience AND remain focussed on their core competency!” Tai Rattigan

18. Zodier is a dating chatbot for popular messengers like Facebook and Telegram.

“Using chatbots in business will be in-demand [in the] following years, so you've caught the wave... Keep it up.” Nadezhda Krukovskaya

17. Audiblogs lets you listen to any web article in your podcast player in an Audible-like voice.

“If you're anything like me and have a chrome window with a thousand tabs of articles that you'll definitely, absolutely, 100% find the time to read (lol), you need this.” Nader Khalil

16. Doodle Ipsum is a free illustration tool for devs that automagically generates placeholder illustrations with a simple line of code.

"I had fun playing around with this! Very useful, I can imagine reaching for this tool all the time. Upvoted, congrats on the launch! :)" Clio

What it year it was. We gained our own personal AI assistants, made our first no-code products with blockchain tech, and tried new search engines that made finding content easier.

Over the next few days, we’ll be closing out the year by counting down the top 25 most-upvoted products of 2021, shining the spotlight on five every day.

Here are the first five:

25. Codex is a machine learning tool from OpenAI that translates your English text into code.

“This will enable every no-coder to stand up and take the driving seat to build the software they always wanted.” Mayank Mishra

24. Leanbe is a platform that generates a smart roadmap using collected feedback and feature requests.

“I like the fact that you didn’t just build the major feature of the product but made it be universal at its core - covering the whole cycle.” Sona Madoyan

23. Deep Nostalgia is a “deep fake” tool that lets you animate the faces in your family photos.

“It really looks like the frames in Harry Potter!” Baptiste N

22. SigmaOS is a macOS browser made for work and designed to make you faster and better.

“With Sigma, I’ve been able to organize all these tabs in different workspaces for my different projects and just this already has made me much more efficient… The split screen is a killer feature for me.” Léa Lortal

21. Ghost, the publishing platform for creators, launched its 4.0 version — 8 years after its first on Kickstarter.

“Hooray! The membership features have been an absolute game-changer for me. Thank you (and your brilliant team) for the work you do.” Sam Beckbessinger

That’s all for now. Stay tuned tomorrow, as we drop the next five.

And we're not talking about a Christmas mouse. Or Jack Dorsey stirring the web3 pot.😼

We're talking about the Golden Kitty Awards!

We’ve been cooking up the Golden Kitty Awards 2021 and you’re going to love what’s on for this year.

New here? The Awards are an annual celebration of the year’s new products and the makers behind them! They’re a really big deal. Nominees go down in history with winners like Robinhood, Figma, and Notion, oh my. And the best part? You’ll help pick the winners across categories from AI to No Code.

This year’s ceremony and celebration are going digital again, but don’t worry about one of those stuffy, snoozy streams. We're planning a lot to celebrate 2021 right (think less "agenda items" and more metaverse).

To make sure you take advantage of your chance to vote, and to be the first to get the details on the event, sign up for notifications right meow.

We love Christmas traditions as much as the next Buddy the Elf (okay maybe not that much), but a lot has changed this year, like our grasp on the metaverse and NFTs. Mulled wine and jingle bells are awesome, but it’s in our nature to wonder “what new?”

So we’ve put together a bunch of ideas for new ways to have fun this holiday season as you gather with loved ones, rest and relax, and prepare yourself for the new year ahead.

Connect with loved ones
📹 Create memories - HomeMovie has the nostalgia of the old-school Camcorder with a twist: This app lets you create and record together with friends.

💻 Watch together - If you can’t be with your loved ones this season, browse and watch with them online using a tool like Hyperbeam.

📱 Play together - Or challenge each other to games in iMessage with Gamebytes.

Plan your next trip
🚴 Cycle somewhere - This BikeSpot crowdsourced app helps you find the best bicycle tracks with info on things like difficulty level and elevation details.

🏡 Work from anywhere - Work remotely now? Wander has a network of smart homes that will set you up for up for your next workcation.

🏕️ Get outdoors - Camperguru works with photographers and experienced campers to find the creme de la creme of camping spots for you.

✈️ Streamline your planning - Puffin Maps is an all-in-one trip planner that lets you drag and drop locations to shuffle your itinerary, track travel times, and use real-time collaboration to plan with others.

Learn Web3
🥽 Enter the Metaverse - Haven’t taken a walk around the metaverse yet? Decentraland could be a good place to start according to one user: “Just getting my feet wet but this has potential to be something big/special. Reminds me of a blockchain-based "Second Life" that's accessible via a web browser.”

🎨 Learn NFTs - How to NFT is a free resource for creators to be able to create, mint, and explore the NFT ecosystem.

🤑 Learn, play, and trade - vig provides gamified decision intelligence for stocks, options, crypto, and ETFs — and lets you play fantasy stocks games.

Not sure about you, but we live in the gray space between mindlessly scrolling and absorbing everything the internet has to offer. We feel good when we’re able to dismiss those iPhone screen time reminders and chalk up at least some of that time to reading.

The problem is, we know much of it doesn’t stick. Time is wasted scrolling past unworthy reads to get to the good ones. And then we don’t always even read the best stuff — thank U headline, next.

Fortunately, this year brought a ton of products that are designed to guide our modern reading habits. Here are 9 of them (time to consider a New Year's reading resolution?)

Alfread: Manage your read-later queue with quick actions for archiving and snoozing using a familiar Tinder-like interface.

ReadBit: Upload or scan books and documents — ReadBit uses NLP to give you the key points of each chapter, tracks your progress, and more.

Thank you for Reading: Get one weekly Substack email digest from your favorite Substack writers.

Dark Reader: Choose a dark, dimmed, or colorful theme for every website on your iPhone and iPad running iOS 15.

Volv: A news app that gives you the latest stories (from election updates to Supreme's collabs) in 9-second reads.

Readwok: Upload your text (e-pub, text, etc.) and read it with progressive reader mode, paragraph by paragraph.

The Juice: Find marketing and sales content relevant to your work with curated lists or by searching by type (eBooks, reports, etc.). Then skip past content gates.

Context Note: Take notes on the web with their context with this Chrome extension that includes a tag system to manage your notes.

Bookstash: Read short ideas from books, podcasts, videos, and other online stuff and keep track of what you read.

Last week, we hit you with awesome new products that make it easier to gift, but this time of year everyone’s struggling to stay on top of their to-dos. Whether you’re still shopping for the perfect gift or you just want to bookmark these for later, we rounded up 10 truly unique gift ideas we discovered this year, including a few for the last-minute gifter.

EarlyBird: No supply chain issues here! This app lets family and friends collectively invest in & gift a financial future to a loved little one.

Ethercard: Ethercard is like Amazon gift cards but for Ethereum. We can't think of a more on point gift for 2021.

Ray-Ban Stories: Creator vibes. Ray-Ban and Facebook teamed up this year to create a Spectacles competitor and they might be a perfect fit for the creator in your life.

Opal C1: We’re all spending a lot more time on Zoom meetings now so why not give a highly upvoted camera that will have them looking their best all year?

Nothing Ear: These ultralight earbuds with active noise-cancellation feel like nothing — which is much better than gifting nothing.

Phone Cell: There are so many types of people who might like this phone display (and conversation piece), from artists to techies.

The Minimalist Entrepreneur: Its a manifesto for "a new generation of founders who would rather build great companies than big ones" and could be perfect for the hustler in your life.

NanoFoamer is great for coffee drinkers and the Clara French Press would be a win for tea drinkers, too.

Fart Sender: For the one who has everything? Because this list wouldn't be complete without a “WTF?!” gift.