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If you’re taking a flight anywhere in the world this summer, we’re sending hugs. As airlines are cutting tens of thousands of flight schedules due to staff shortages, the excitement of going on holiday is likely in free fall. While some matters are out of our control (unless you’ve got a private jet), there are things we can do to make the rest of our trips less stress-inducing.

Travelley, for instance, gives you up-to-date information about popular travel destinations in one place. You can find data on average rent prices, safety, visas, transportation, and things to do. While you’re there, snap some pictures for the Gram in locations discovered using this Backdrop app.

Baryl takes a more technical approach and uses AI/ML to algorithmically curate restaurants and recommendations based on your personality and interests. Similarly, iplan.ai uses AI and your answers to a few questions to put together a complete itinerary that fits your preferences.

If you’re on a tighter budget, Elude helps you find your next adventure based on how much you’re willing to splurge.

FlightPenguin also recently launched its flight search app as a successor to the popular sunsetted Hipmunk. The app lets you search for flights on a visual timeline.

For traveling in larger groups, Triphie lets you plan and manage trips collaboratively.

If all these tools don’t make you feel like a global citizen yet, feel free to use this digital scratch map to visualize how much of the world you’ve seen.

We’ll leave you with a pro tip too – AirTags for your checked bags to avoid the mayhem of lost luggage.

We hear it all the time in start-up land: you can't be everything for everybody. Yet somehow, a few giants out there managed to become a lot of things for a lot of folks. One of these is HubSpot.

When the company launched 16 years ago as an inbound marketing platform, founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah wanted to give smaller start-ups a chance to compete against established, larger companies. As they highlight in their latest launch, HubSpot Free CMS, that statement still holds true: “though the platform is much more robust than it was even a few years ago, we're still not really going after the ‘enterprise,’” Shah shares.

At its core, HubSpot Free CMS is a website builder. However, given the array of tools HubSpot offers, that changes things a little. The no-code tool uses a drag-and-drop builder and gives you access to web hosting, SEO recommendations, and analytics. As the name suggests, these are available for free, with additional features being part of a premium subscription.

The requirements for a website can become very specific, which might be a reason the no-code space won’t be a winner takes all situation. If you want to browse and compare some of the latest launches – we got you. 👇

Siter.io also launched recently as a no-code website builder that allows you to create directly inside your browser, using workflows similar to ones you’re already familiar with, like Figma’s.

Daftpage works like a document. The app lets you build web pages using an editor similar to Notion, drag-and-drop functionality, and pre-existing templates.

Superflow is building a library of Webflow components that you can copy and paste into your project and customize to fit your branding.

Typedream CMS lets you create a website from your Notion data, as well as build an NFT mint page.

Most days we bring you the deets on all the cool software makers are launching, so each time we see new, shiny hardware, it’s a little extra special. If you haven’t felt excited by new phone releases in a while, these announcements might do the trick.

First up, we have the highly anticipated Nothing Phone (1) from OnePlus co-founder, Carl Pei. The device stands out with its “glyph interface,” which consists of a set of light strips on its rear. These act as notifications for things like the state of your battery and incoming calls.

When the device goes on sale at the end of July, it will be available in the UK and parts of Asia and Europe, at a mid-range price of about $475. Nothing seems to be betting on its distinctive design (it’s transparent) and powerful integrations with third-party products and technologies, like Polygon, instead of costly (yet cutting-edge) processors.

Xiaomi also launched its 12S Ultra flagship phone recently, which sports an impressive, custom-built 50.3MP 1-inch camera sensor from Sony that lets you take crisp images in low light, adding depth to your shots. In contrast to Nothing’s device, the 12S Ultra comes with the new, energy-efficient Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor.

If you’re an old soul and like to describe yourself as quirky, the Nokia 5710 XpressAudio might be a better choice. A blast from the past , the device brings back the traditional keyboard, but with a twist. The back of the phone has a built-in charging case for the earbuds it comes with.

In a world where giants like Apple and Samsung reign +40% of the smartphone market, seeing companies like Nothing try to disrupt feels exciting. Will you be snagging any of the above?

We oftentimes fall victim to the planning fallacy – overestimating how much we can get done while underestimating the time it will take to do it. It might be that we’re just being optimistic, or it might be that there’s so much noise, and finding the signal becomes hard. This applies particularly well to the vast amounts of content we see every day.

Upnext promises to solve a notoriously difficult problem – helping you consume the things you’re saving, rather than leaving them to die at the bottom of a folder. The app collects everything – from articles to Youtube videos and Twitter threads – and displays them in a homepage digest called Daily Picks. This shows you a curated list of items you have yet to go through, as well as previously created playlists of content.

Another interesting feature is its review tool, a Tinder-style interface that allows you to swipe and decide whether to keep an item as “up next” or archive it. While this could prove useful for decluttering, it might not be enough to nudge users or give enough reason to come back and consume the content. The recommendation system the team is working on to help with categorization might bring it closer to that, though. “Our upcoming ML models will automatically categorize anything you save, to make your library self-organizing and let you focus on a particular topic,” the team shares.

We’ve seen companies from big to small try to tackle this very issue. A few notable examples in the space that the community has shown interest in include Heyday, Omni, and Raindrop.

The question remains: do we actually want to consume everything we’re saving or is knowing that everything is safely stored enough? Join the discussion.

How can you tell someone’s a bot? That’s the $44B question. If you haven’t been following recent tech drama, here’s a quick rundown. In April, Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share. When Twitter allegedly refused his request to see more internal data (particularly bot-to-real-account ratio), Musk decided he no longer wanted to complete the purchase.

This morning, Twitter reportedly hired the legal firm behind the “poison pill” invention to sue Musk. A loss in court could have him paying a $1B breakup fee, unless he is able to prove the data he received about the company’s valuation was misleading.

Regardless of the claims, the hold that Twitter has on the tech world (us, too) doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and we continue seeing makers find interesting ways to build tools that improve the experience. Did anyone tell Elon about these?

This Dynamic Twitter Banner automatically displays social proof and gives thanks to your latest followers.

Twitter Thread analytics by ilo.so helps you understand how impressions and engagements change throughout your threads, using detailed metrics, funnels, and breakdown charts.

Launch Tweets is a collection of tweets from makers and teams who are using Twitter to announce the launch of their product.

Twitter for Shopify is a recent add-on that lets you sync your Shopify product catalog to Twitter Shopping Manager, and set up your Shopping feature in a few clicks.

tweet.pics lets you brand the images you’re sharing on Twitter, adding a colorful frame.

The Typefully team launched Profiles to help you automatically turn your tweets into a blog.

Low-code and no-code platforms have had their fair share of popularity over the past few years. For good reason, too. We’ve seen makers build with no-code and get acquired by Zapier, while others are getting the attention of VCs and raising multiple rounds.

There’s certainly a lot you can do with no-code tools, especially in terms of speed and how easy it is to get started, regardless of how technical you are. Still, certain apps and products require a bit more complexity (and a lot more code). Fortunately, we continue to see makers launch developer tools of all sorts. While they might not do the coding for you, they can help make #devlife less stressful.

Plural is an open-source DevOps platform that helps you self-host applications on Kubernetes without the management overhead.

These Tailwind UI Templates built with React and Next.js by the makers of Tailwind CSS are a great starting point for your next project.

PocketBase is a lightweight version of Supabase or Firebase. The open-source Go backend packs an embedded real-time database, files and users management, admin UI, and REST-ish API.

Wilco helps you upskill using the same thinking behind a “flight simulator.” You complete real-life engineering challenges by going on “quests” and using a tech stack of your choice.

Mintlify is a personal documentation manager that routinely reviews your docs and tells you when you need to update them.

If you’re tired of the same old VSCode theme, you might want to take a look at VSLook and Sequoia Theme.

With the metaverse presumably looming around the corner, there’s one question we’ve seen: what language will it use?

For those who have 24/7 access to the internet and speak highly-covered languages (e.g. English, Russian, French, German), keeping up with a world that relies heavily on technology is easy. The problem? While highly-covered language speakers have benefited from advancements in machine translation, much of the world remains isolated as tech continues to evolve.

Despite only a quarter of internet users speaking the language, most websites are in English. In an effort to combat the issues of linguistic discrimination, FAIR (Facebook AI Research) launched a new AI model that translates between 200 different languages. No Language Left Behind (NLB) is a human-centered project that addresses the growing gap between highly-covered and less-covered language speakers. Researchers kicked off the project by interviewing native speakers of less-covered languages to understand their needs for translation support. From there, they developed a new “ universal speech translator,” a first of its kind. If you speak Python, the code is open-source and available on Github.

Meta’s new system won’t eradicate language barriers overnight. With the metaverse expanding, this new system allows Meta to extend the reach of its own products to less-covered- language speakers, too. It also raises questions about what’s next for existing translation services. Google Translate has long been a popular tool amongst Google users, and software like DeepL and Mate Translate have both provided innovative solutions.

Whether or not other companies follow suit, NBL is likely a crucial next step for Meta. Zuckerberg has pretty much put all his eggs in that basket — renaming the company and spending $10 million on the metaverse in 2021. We hope to see more projects that use tech for good with that chunk of money.

Video gaming has a very interesting and rich history. While a lot of you might only be familiar with gaming in the era of the smartphone, video games got their start in the 1950s and 60s in research labs. They would later see the homes of consumers as the Odyssey (first video game home console) and Atari’s Pong (first arcade game).

Fast forward many decades and consoles later. As technology evolves and trends emerge, companies need to keep up. In 2015, an app developer called Ijji launched Gameflip, a mobile marketplace for gamers, and this week it evolved too, re-launching as a Web3 marketplace for digital gaming items. Gameflip has generated over $120 million in sales since launching, fostering a community of 6 million gamers. Its premise remains the same, except that everything now happens on the Blockchain.

The shift to digital gaming (purchasing games online through your console) has made ownership rather blurry, with items being “locked” within each game you’re playing. That’s what Web3 gaming startups want to solve – allowing gamers to have more ownership and freedom over what they’re trading and reselling. “Gameflip enables gamers to buy and sell anything that they can trade including digital gaming items, digital codes for games & gift cards, and digital gaming collectibles and assets (NFTs) through simple and safe transactions with built-in compliance and consumer protection,” one of the makers shares.

While Gameflip focuses on the buying and selling of gaming collectibles, other startups are focusing on play-to-earn. In this model, players buy NFTs and earn in-game items in the form of tokens or, you guessed it, NFTs. Axie Infinity is one of the most popular but it's been under some pressure as DAUs and token price started dropping.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the play-to-earn monetization conundrum, Peter Yang wrote a great analysis titled “Is play to earn gaming a Ponzi scheme?”

What’s your case? 🐂or 🐻?

Giving objective feedback is hard. More so when most of us are working remotely and have to explain that one pixel on the left side of the website looks slightly off. Which one? That one, right there.

That’s one issue the makers of ruttl ran into, too: “While running a design agency we faced the problem of website feedback a lot. Currently, people use screenshots or Zoom to give feedback on websites. The average time required to review any page using such methods is over 3-4 hours alone.”

So they built ruttl, a visual feedback tool that lets you leave comments on live websites, web apps, graphics, and PDFs. You can also make real-time edits and share detailed feedback with your developers. Other things you can do with ruttl include bug tracking, guest (your clients) commenting, replacing assets, and integrating with tools like Slack, Asana, and Zapier.

Queue and Instacap are similar products that help you review visual feedback on websites and even React-based apps. The feedback you leave using Queue gets added to a workspace so you can keep track of which changes are complete and which are still in progress.

While we’re on the subject of feedback and review, Krock.io caught our attention today with its content review and creative project management platform. The app is aimed at freelancers and creatives who need a place to keep track of progress and communicate with their clients.

Besides traditional project management tools like Gantt charts, Krock offers drawing and visual commenting tools, allowing others to comment on images (png, jpg, .psd, ai), videos (.avi, mp4, .mov, etc), PDF files, and, soon, audio files.

Believe it or not, we’re already halfway through the year. Last week, cap table management platform Carta launched its H1 2022 compensation report. If you’re a big data nerd, you’ll love this. The company utilized more than 127,000 employee records from startups that use Carta Total Comp to paint a picture of where startup compensation is at, what jobs are most in-demand, and which cities are the highest paying.

When it comes to salary trends, it looks like it’s a good time to be in legal, strategy, product, or engineering, in that order. All of these functions have a median salary of over $150,000. Still, according to Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, “Product actually fares even better than third if you just look at companies worth over $1 billion. Median salaries in Legal and Strategy are high in the dataset because often small startups only have a single lawyer (and they are very senior).”

Product touches so many areas of a company that it makes sense to be so highly valued. If you’ve been pondering switching to a job in Product or are curious about what it takes, we have a few resources for you to check out.

Future of Product Management Report 2022 surveyed 5,000 PMs to provide a deep dive into Product-Led Growth, key stats, and trends to look out for.

Speaking about Product-Led Growth, this book will teach you the importance of PLG, how to showcase value through your product and help you assess which free model is right.

But if you’re more of an audiophile rather than a bookworm, Lenny Rachitsky recently launched Lenny’s Podcast where he interviews product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable and tactical advice to help build, launch, and scale your product.

This Notion Pack for Product Managers includes a collection of curated templates for daily standups, agile retrospectives, and 1:1 meeting planners.