The Roundup

Facebook’s experimental NPE team have recently launched their latest creation, E.gg, a goofy personal webpage creator that is reminiscent of the 90’s. The app feels very nostalgic, a hat tip to the days of GeoCities and MySpace.

Kevin, from NPE, shared;

“It all started when a few of us found ourselves missing the raw and exploratory spirit of The Early Internet and began to wonder things like: Is this misplaced nostalgia? What was _actually_ so special about that time?”

The result of this train of thought was E.gg. A blank canvas for self-expression with GIFs, text, and shapes. The idea is that you can be ‘off-beat’ and ‘mis-matched’ without drawing a critical eye from peers to represent your half-formed ideas and passions.

Early feedback from the community is largely positive;

“Tumblr, Google Sites, WordArt, ~a e s t h e t i c~, it’s all in the beautiful and zany world of e.gg!” - Khoi

“This gives me early internet vibes — that landing page is crazy (in a good way)“ - Anthony

“I... I'm in love 🥺 Literally can hardly wait to try this out, mind is BUZZING with ideas” - Alexander

E.gg isn’t the only site drawing early 90’s internet vibes of late. Dating app Struck's aesthetic is very retro and reminds us of Poolside Fm, itself a visceral throwback for the senses. Could it be that with all the progress and complexity of modern technology, we’re craving the simpler times where we could all just innocently hang out with everyone’s first internet friend, myspacetom?

If you want to take a step back in time, there are plenty of products out there tugging at our nostalgic heart strings:

Stackoverflow 90’s: Bring back the '90s to StackOverflow with this retro looking Chrome Extension

Icon rewind: Don’t like change? Get old icon logo’s for the apps on your phone with MSCHF’s 22nd drop

Retro Wave Generator: Bring back the 80s with this throwback image creator

My 90’s TV: Watch the TV shows from your childhood and wind back the years

Macintosh.js: A 1991 Macintosh in an app - for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Transfer files in and out, mount disk images, and time-travel back to the 90s.

GifCities: Discover the GIFS of the early internet with this retro animated GIF search engine

The Internet Arcade: 900+ classic arcade games from Joust to Paperboy, free and playable in your browser

Last weekend tech Twitter was ablaze with tweets about OpenAI’s newest project, GPT-3. A handful of makers and builders received early access to test out the new AI model with some incredible results. This is one of our favorites from Jordan Singer, a Maker of the Year nominee from a few years ago.

While there’s debate about how “game-changing” GPT-3 is, it’s undoubtably another step toward the future. In a tweet, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, stated, “For non-programmers, it's like experiencing the magic of programming for the first time.”

Over the years – especially the last few – we’ve seen an increase in the number of AI-related products launch on Product Hunt. No doubt we’ll see a wave of GPT-3 powered experiments shortly. In the meantime, here are 10 AI-powered products launched over the last few months:

Is it cake answers the internets biggest question of the moment

Slazzer quickly removes the background on any image

Fluently users machine learning to help you write in any language

Rosebud AI generates realistic, but fake, virtual models

Perfect Quote uses AI to find quotes that match any image

Krew offers at home fitness options enhanced with AI use cases

Proven offers personalized skincare powered by AI tailored to individuals

PodBot.ai generates and records a podcast episode about your topic of interest

Pearlii offers free, fast dental check-ups using AI image processing

Let’s Enhance uses AI to increase photo resolution with no loss in quality

Follow the Artificial Intelligence topic to keep up to date on the latest AI launches.

LEGO and Nintendo have joined forces to offer us some light relief and nostalgia in the form of the Nintendo Entertainment System LEGO kit. Currently pre-launch and hitting shelves on August 1st, we know how we’ll be spending some of our socially distanced summer hours.

Other Makers have also brought us joy through these challenging months with their creative product launches:

Is it cake answers the internets biggest questions on whether an item is cake or not. 🍰

Invite Rick injected some short-lived joy into our Zoom calls. Unfortunately it violated Zoom’s TOS and quickly shut down 24 hours later. Rick's rolling was just too pure for this world.

Elon Musk Name Generator allowed us all to discover what we would have been called had Elon been our dad.

Goat 2 Meeting invites a farmyard animal to your video meetings. You can even choose between a llama or a goat. Lol.

Bye is an email service that automatically responds with an insult, then deletes every email sent to you. No more inbox zero anxiety.

Zoom Exotic brings Joe Exotic an Carole Baskin to your Zoom backgrounds. Remember when we were all obsessed with Tiger King? 🤪

Proud mom of a CEO Newsletter will email you encouraging notes every weekday. Because, “We believe in you sweetie, you got this!”

PastaDrop allowed us to send a random pasta care package to unsuspecting friends letting them know we were thinking of them.

We’re thankful for the positivity and fun these products, along with many others, have brought us.

In one of the best product explainer videos we’ve seen in a while, Phil Libin of Evernote fame, introduced his latest project, mmhmm. The name is cool but more importantly: it could be a game changer for video calls and presentations.

Here are some initial reactions from the community:

“That's an impressive innovation in a cluttered field.”- Guillaume

“Congrats on the launch! Love the 'daily show' format. Excited to try this out.” - Paul

“I can think of dozens of use-cases for myself, but I’m really excited to see this used in educational contexts.” - Lucas

Of course, there are many options to host your video calls right now, including Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Around, Tandem, Remotion, Brave Together, Pragli, Jamm and even Facebook (among many others). But mmhmm is unique, focused on making presentations more engaging. There will be no Zoom fatigue on your next company all-hands.

How it works: Select a room with a virtual background to set the tone for your meeting. Then project a screen to host your presentation inline, similar to old fashioned news anchors reviewing the weather forecast. The app also supports “Jedi-Ghost mode” (see the video) and on-screen floating.

With so many competing technologies hoping to make our remote work-life more interactive (looking at you, Snap Camera), working from home in our new normal could become more engaging and connected than ever before.

Today Uber announced it’s acquiring Postmates, the SF based food delivery startup, for $2.65B in an all stock deal.

Postmates first launched on Product Hunt 6 years ago and according to cofounder, Bastian Lehman, the app was already soliciting addictive behaviour from its users even then:

“Food has a long tail just like books or music. In other words, everyone has a favorite restaurant and if you give them the ability to order from that place, they will. We have done deliveries from over 25,000 places. The more often you use Postmates, the more often you keep using it. For example, if you have used Postmates five times, you will (on average) continue to use it at least once per week.“

This is big news in the battle of the food delivery giants, with Uber having missed out on acquiring GrubHub earlier in the year to JustEat for $7.3B. JustEat is one of the biggest companies in Europe in this space, competing directly with Deliveroo and UberEats.

The food delivery industry is big business with a couple of dominant players emerging after a few key acquisitions. We saw DoorDash acquire Square-owned Caviar just last year for a reported $410M. Amazon even tried to get in on the game with Amazon Restaurants a few years back, although has since removed this from its online shopping empire.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen a rise in home cooking as people shelter in place. It might be a good time to invest in some Our Place kitchenware or buy a fancy June Oven. Or you could just...

Last week, AWS entered the competitive world of no-code app builders with its launch of Amazon Honeycode.

Using tables to input data and a drag and drop style interface to set layout, AWS VP Larry Augustin claims that anyone can build apps in Honeycode for both web and mobile.

Currently in beta, Honeycode is free to use for teams of up to 20 users and 2,500 rows per work load.

The launch is a surprise to some given Amazons historical focus on more traditional developer tooling. Although perhaps it shouldn’t have as more big co’s are investing in no-code solutions.

Earlier this year we wrote about Google’s acquisition of the no-code builder, AppSheet, for an undisclosed sum marking Google’s continued investment into the no-code/low-code space. What on the surface looks like a competitive move by AWS against existing no-code platforms like Webflow, Bubble, Airtable, Intermal or Retool.

But ultimately Honeycode is competing with the spreadsheet, the leader of no-code tools.

Every few years a new email client captures everyone’s attention. Yesterday HEY launched with hype, and for good reason.

HEY was created by Basecamp, the 21-year-old company led by Jason Fried and DHH. It’s the freshest take we’ve seen on email since Superhuman, but HEY isn’t just an email client, it’s an email platform. This vertical integration gives them the ability to do things others can’t.

Here are a few features you might love:

• “Imbox” screening – Only people you’ve approved get into your imbox (aka, inbox)
• File browser – Every attachment is indexed and easily searchable across email threads
• Reply later workflow – Rather than chicken peck your way to inbox zero, HEY offers a slick UX for batching replies
• Built-in spy blocker – By default, spy trackers are blocked so senders don’t know when (or where) you opened their email
• Silent by default – Push notifications are off by default to avoid repeated distractions throughout the day

Thousands of folks signed up on the waitlist for the $99/year service. But if you’re looking to explore other email tools today, here are a few other recent entrants you may not have heard of:

• Tempo takes a very minimal, zen-like approach to email
• Twobird bundles email with to do’s, reminders, and collaborative notes

But if you’re eager to claim your firstname@hey.com vanity email, check out HEY sooner than later.

P.S. If you’re curious how Basecamp built HEY (and its other products), read ShapeUp, a free book for startups and makers.

If you’re new to remote work, the endless options of where you could move can give you FOMO.

The remote work revolution started “gradually, then suddenly,” as penned by Matt Mullenweg. Within a few weeks, everyone from Square to Shopify was announcing permanent or extended WFH policies.

Here's a list of tools for digital nomads looking for a change:

First, start out with the practical stuff. Take your list of dream cities and plug them into a Relocation Calculator to find how far your salary goes on the basics. 💸

If early retirement is high on your list, scout out cities with a lower cost of living with this Financial Independence Calculator. 🏖

Timezones become really important with a distributed team so you’ll want to look closely at timezone overlap with your teammates.⌚️

A little tip: plan a trial trip before you lock it in. Test out a new city first by staying at an Outsite with fellow nomads. 👋

All this said, it’s still a tricky time to move right now, especially internationally. Keep tabs on travel restrictions for countries on your dream list with MayWeLeave. ✈️

We had to cancel our regular team offsite for Product Hunt this year, so we’ve been looking for fun ideas for a remote retreat. Since the social part of our retreats are the best bit, boring apps have no place here. 🙅

Here’s a preview of some quirky remote apps and games we're exploring:

• Brightful Meeting Games introduces icebreaking games to “super serious” business meetings

• Buzzfeed Quiz Party to test the team's knowledge on important things like, “Which Nicholas Cage character are you?’” and “What’s your British name?”

• MerryMint brings IRL activities online. Hire a magician for a magic lesson, invite a chef to teach how to make the perfect pancake, or get a mixologist to spice up your Friday happy hours

• Goat 2 Meeting sends an invite to a real goat or llama to join your video call (photo above)

• Moonshot is a virtual escape room. Join your team on an important space mission where you must escape. You can play this one with up to 100 people

We’re looking forward to a highly productive year following this retreat. 😆

Black Lives Matter. Period.

Product Hunt is a global community of people from all ethnicities, colors, genders and backgrounds connected through a shared love of products and technology. We hurt when people in our community hurt, and today, we like many of you, are hurting.

In today's email we want to celebrate Black makers from within our community. Here’s a small sample of the awesome products built by Black makers over the last few years:

🖤 Nappy - Beautiful high-res photos of black and brown people for free

🖤 While at Home - Stay up to date on all available resources during the COVID-19 pandemic

🖤 Calendly - Simply book meetings without the back and forth

🖤 People of Color in Tech - Join a growing community of People Of Colour working in tech and startups

🖤 Dream Big Hustle Hard - The millennial woman's guide to success in tech by Abadesi

🖤 The Bootstrapped VC - The official podcast of Backstage Capital hosted by Arlan Hamilton

🖤 Indie Hackers - Work together to build profitable businesses & side projects

🖤 Blacks Who Design - Highlighting inspiring Black designers

Let’s support more Black makers, together as a community. If you’re Black and made something you’re proud of, let us know on Twitter.

Lastly, if you have the means consider donating to Minnesota Freedom Fund, ACLU Foundation, The Bail Project, or many of the other organizations fighting for equality. You can do so on Every.org, a non-profit that makes it easy (and social).