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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
Pro tip: Don’t quit your daydream.
We’re living in the age of side hustles, where companies from Instagram to Glossier to GitHub have evolved from personal projects to huge successes.
If you’re not familiar with the history of Product Hunt, we also got our start this way. 😏
We rounded up some interesting resources to pull from if you’re hustlin’ on the nights and weekends:
💌 Sidemail launched earlier this week as a cheaper alternative to multiple G Suite accounts, so you can manage email for your side projects with unlimited inboxes.
🤔 If you're stuck on your next great idea, use The Side Project Scoring Tool to evaluate and choose the right pursuit.
🙌 IndieHackers is a website and community focusing on helping entrepreneurs become profitable while remaining independent.
💰If you're looking to put your side project up for sale, Transferlot is a curated marketplace where founders can easily buy and sell.
👋 MakerWidget is particularly helpful when you're first getting going. You can embed a widget of yourself on your project pages so visitors can see who you are, where to find you and what you did before.
💻 newCo is a community and bootcamp to build a product without a writing a line of code.
Are you working on a side project? Join us on Makers, a place to share what you’re working on and get support from other friendly folks in the Product Hunt community. We’re announcing something big later this month. 😉
The presidential election isn't until 2020 but today's midterm elections remain incredibly important, shaping the House and Senate. A massive amount of voters (36 million!) have already cast their ballot ahead of today's election, pointing to the possibility of a record turnout for a midterm. 😳
We went down the Product Hunt rabbit hole and found some cool tools to help you get to the polls and exercise your right today:
🇺🇸Vote.org is building tech that removes the barriers to voting. You can look up your nearest polling place so you know where to go today and they'll show you who and what will be on your local ballot.
👀 EveryPolitician is a rich open database on politicians, including everything from biographical details to social accounts.
🗳VoteWithMe matches your phone contacts with a voter file to show you registered friends who needs to get to the polls
💻Vote Banner is a small javascript snippet to add a banner to your site to remind your users to go vote.
☎️Dial Congress is a Chrome plugin that displays the phone number of a member of the U.S. Congress when you hover over their name. You can use this to let your legislators know how you feel about political issues in the future.
See you at the polls!
The Product Hunt community had some mixed reactions:
"I'd hazard a guess that this app provides a comparable level of distraction to a phone conversation" – Andreas
"I used to drive 4 hours a day to get to SF, my time was spent only on podcasts because not listening to something would be so boring. I dig the idea, and wish you the best" — José
"I respect the effort, but distracted driving is a big no no" – Shuen
Niko, the founder, quickly jumped into the discussion:
"The existing research shows that so-called Alertness Maintaining Tasks (AMTs for short - and trivia has been specifically tested as part of existing research) actually have a *positive* effect on driving safety, by slowing performance deterioration and maintaining a higher level of alertness for longer."
Drivetime is a new entrant in a growing list of audio-based app experiences. We'll see more exploration in this space as people adopt Google Home's, Alexa-powered microwaves, Apple's HomePod, Facebook's Portal, AirPods, and other audio-based interfaces. Consumer behavior is already shifting toward an audio-first future.
Whether you say "Alexa", "OK Google", or "Hey Siri", there's no denying audio is on the rise. In fact, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches by 2020 and about 30 percent of all searches will be done without a screen. 😳
Keep an ear on this space.
The new venture, naturally dubbed Hers, offers birth control, hair products, prescription skin creams and sexual wellness products for women. Andrew, the founder, jumped into the Product Hunt discussion:
"Although most people think access to women's 'wellness' is abundant, when you actually look at the ability for a woman to get REAL medicine online, and on her time, and with her own decision making, it's non existent."
Backed by $97 million in funding, Hers is the latest in a lineup of startups bypassing the doctor's office and drugstores to deliver prescriptions straight to your door. 💊
VC's are hot on this space. Here are a few other startups in this area that have gone on to raise recent rounds:
• Nurx helps women get birth control prescriptions without a doctor’s visit ($41M raised)
• Roman prescribes erectile dysfunction meds online, and more recently expanded their product line to offer a service to help smokers quit ($91M raised)
• Modern Fertility helps women gauge their reproductive help with at-home fertility tests ($7M raised)
• Capsule provides an on-demand service for prescriptions ($70M raised)
• Curology pairs patients with dermatologists to provide customized skincare treatment ($19M raised)
The global telemedicine market has exploded in recent years, with startups raising over $1.2 billion since 2013. The market is expected to reach nearly $20 billion by 2025, up from only $6 billion in 2016. 😳
After 10 years, we still don’t know the true identity of Satoshi and his/her/their long-term impact on banking, government, business, etc. 🤔
At its peak in late 2017, bitcoin’s market cap was over $300 billion, quickly approaching the market valuation of the world's most notable technology companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. It's now dropped to a third of what it once was before. 😳
This volatility is another sign that we're early in the days of crypto as makers around the world continue to tinker and build creating decentralized apps (indirectly) inspired by Satoshi. Here are a few to explore:
📷 Pixelfed is a decentralized take on Instagram
🎨 Cryptographics lets you create and own digital art on the blockchain
👀 Blockchain Demo visually explains how the blockchain works for newbies
💰 Crumbs turns spare change into cryptocurrency, similar to Acorns
🎧 Blockchain Curated turns top crypto articles into podcasts
💬 Leeroy is a decentralized Twitter built on Ethereum
🎲 Crypto Takeovers is a prediction-driven game on the blockchain
💸 Blockchain Job is the place for non-technical folks to find jobs in crypto
And of course there's also Cryptokitties, which is one of the most well known consumer dapps, even though fewer than 500 people use it daily.
While many of today's consumer dapps lack the accessibility and features of their centralized counterparts, we're excited to see the space mature. Bitcoin's white paper may have been published a decade ago but we're still early.
There are so many relevant products we could share today, including this app to scare the poo out of your friends on iMessage or this "Netflix for free horror films". But today we'd like to help the last-minute costume shoppers.
Lapa Studios creates masks you can print at home using paper technology. Turn yourself into a monkey, deadmau5, luchadora, crocodile, or robot. If you decide to print a kitty mask, please share a pic with us on Twitter.
We went down the Product Hunt rabbit hole and found 10 cool desk accessories, do-dads, and gadgets:
💡 The aerelight A1 is an ultra thin OLED lamp with a built-in wireless charger for your phone.
🖥 Lifta Desk Organizer is a minimalist, woodgrain lift for your monitor.
🖼 Retro Patents adds some visual appeal to your space, showcasing patents from PlayStation, BlackBerry, Tesla, and others.
🔴 The famous Fidget Cube will keep you occupied... although your desk neighbor might not appreciate it. ;)
🚦 For many, open office spaces are the worst. BusyLights is the “do not disturb” for real life.
🏠 De-sk is the LEGOs of desks, completely modular to fit your space.
🔋 Peel beat Apple to launch with their Super Thin Wireless Charger for iPhone (and Android).
☀️ Wynd is a personal air purifier that's small enough to fit on your desk.
💪 Hovr is a silly-looking device that will help you burn calories while sitting at your desk.
What would you add to this list? Snap a photo of your favorite desk products and share it with us on Twitter. We'll RT the most useful, creative, or ridiculous recommendations. 😉
Arguably the most interesting use case is in esports, augmenting the personality and experience for those broadcasting on Twitch, Douyu, and other livestreaming platforms. As Dave points out:
"Wicked smaaaht. Are Sponsored Lenses a part of the distribution too? Imagine a Twitch player with a huge following using a Sponsored Lense on an hour long feed."
If Snap can help streamers make money, Snap Camera could attract a new audience and use case to combat its falling stock price. 😁
Yesterday, Spatial launched on Product Hunt, blowing the minds of many. Watch the video.
The San Francisco-based startup revealed its AR collaboration software along with its recent $8M in funding from some notable investors. As more teams adopt remote and distributed workforces, tools that can replicate the fidelity of in-person communication will become increasingly important.
Of course we've all seen demo videos like this that promise a future much further out than its first generation model (we're looking at you, Magic Leap). When asked about this skepticism, the CEO of Spatial responded with:
"We are very aware of the hype in the space and are also sensitive to it. For example, we took great pains to film the video in real time with people actually in Spatial and using the features. You can see some of the imperfections shine through."
It's 2018 and we continue to struggle with spotty video chat apps, so skepticism is expected. But it's hard not to get excited about tech that looks like the Holodeck. 😎
The best part: It’s just a 5 minute read, so you can get all the most important updates, then get on with your day. Check out what some community members had to say when Morning Brew launched on Product Hunt with over 1,700 upvotes earlier this year:
“I love, love, LOVE Morning Brew. Insightful, yet straight to the point... (with a dash of puns and jokes in there, too).” – Lama
“Love the Brew! It's the one email I look forward to in the morning ☕ ” – Zach
Today's Brew featured Tesla's latest earnings, Tim Cook's dramatic speech on privacy, and a breakdown of all the VC money going into food delivery startups. Catch the full story along with 675,000 others who are already in the know with Morning Brew.
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Morning Brew. Psst! They're hiring.















