The Roundup

Many of us spend more time at our desk than with our BFF. So, make it comfy.

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. 😉

Last week this stealth startup – backed by Y Combinator, Spark Capital, Amazon Alexa Fund, and others – announced $140M (!!!) in funding to build next gen Google Glass. But unlike Google's dorky headgear, these smart glasses look like something you'd find at Warby Parker. Words won't do it justice. Watch the video.

Some initial reactions from the Product Hunt community:

“Looks like a scene from a Kingsmen movie” — Kaivalya

“Feels like this can deliver on the promise of smart watches to provide less disruptive notifications.” — Kris

“I AM SO EXCITED TO ORDER MINE” — Skylar



While the Focals look like Warby's, they're not priced like Warby's. They're available for pre-order for a whopping $999, a heavy price tag for this first generation model which ships sometime next year. But new tech like this always starts expensive before it becomes affordable for the mainstream, and fortunately there's competition for your eyes:

• Apple is rumored to be building smart glasses.

• The hyped Florida-based startup recently launched the Magic Leap One.

• Snap has v2 of Spectacles (which lacks an AR HUD... for now).

• Google Glass still exists, built for the enterprise.

And many others are competing in this space, hopeful to become the next big platform, the same way the iPhone changed the world when it was introduced by Steve Jobs in 2007. Take a look (pun intended... sorry) at the Focals and feel free to share your thoughts in the discussion.

Last week, Michael Seibel, Y Combinator CEO and guest on the illustrious Product Hunt Radio podcast, revealed the top 100 YC companies by valuation.

“Most people know that Dropbox and Airbnb are YC companies, but they might be surprised by many of the other companies on the list.”

More than 28K jobs and $100B in enterprise value was created from these 100 companies. Impressive. Top of the list:

1. Airbnb. The $30B traveling platform continues to expand globally and introduce new features like Experiences.

2. Stripe. Earlier this year the company raised another $245M and introduced Issuing to make credit card issuing easy.

3. Cruise. Acquired by GM in 2016, the autonomous vehicle company may have sold too soon, considering their most recent valuation puts it at $14B.

Explore the full list here. 💥

Night mode is the best when burning the midnight oil in front of the LCD. Unfortunately, most sites don’t offer this option to night owls.

The rumors are true. Facebook just launched its first hardware device: Portal.

Portal looks a bit like Amazon's Echo Show, but with a focus on helping you connect with people (as you might expect from the social network).

“Connecting through Portal feels like being together in the same room, even when you’re far apart. And Portal makes it easier to connect more regularly with the most important people in your life.”

The device sits in your kitchen, living room, or bedside. Use it to video chat your long-distance boo, family back home, or start a Houseparty-like group call with your buddies using its smart camera. Unlike other video chat apps you might use on your mobile, Portal is activated with your voice, hands-free.

While much of Facebook's marketing have fixated on video chatting, its audio/voice functionality might be the real killer app. As audio and voice eats into our screen time, Facebook needs a voice play. Other members of the FAANG already have theirs (except for Netflix... that we know of). Amazon has spread Alexa everywhere, integrated into all Echo devices and even their new microwave. Apple has Siri and AirPods. Google continues to roll out different variations of Google Home, including an adorable “donut”.

Funny note: because Facebook hasn't launched their own assistant yet, the Portal is powered by Alexa. Another win for Jeff Bezos. 😮

This is why Facebook Portal is so important for them. However, the device has been met with skepticism:

“Most of us already own more convenient, portable video calling devices. They’re called smartphones. Quality not as great, but will do the job for most people.” – Kurt Wagner

“You can’t watch YouTube; there’s no web browser; WhatsApp and Instagram are nowhere to be found; and you can’t send or receive normal Facebook messages, even if they’re video recordings. If you buy the Portal, you have to really want to video chat with other people on Facebook, and do so from one room in your home, on something other than the phone or laptop or tablet that you likely already have.” – Jacob Kastrenakes

Less than two weeks ago the company announced 50M accounts were compromised amid ongoing concerns about user privacy. It's also rare to see a software-first company successfully expand into hardware. Facebook's smaller archenemy, Snap, attempted this with Spectacles which resulted in a $40M write-off in 2017 (although v2 is looking fresh 😎).

Are you going to buy a $199 Portal? Add your thoughts in the discussion.

The new iPhone Xs costs over $1,000. It doesn't even come with AirPods. 😿

We solved your problem. Enter to win a brand new iPhone Xs and AirPods, courtesy of our friends at Elevator, Men's Health, and more:

😮 Apple's most stunning OLED screen ever.
📷 A camera that can adjust the depth of field *after* a picture is taken
😅 Picture-perfect Memoji that work inside Facetime
💃 Dance anywhere with Apple's "best cordless product ever."

New phone, new headphones, new you. Boom. 💥

Google's had a terrible, horrible, no good very bad few months.

First, the new Google Chrome update automatically began logging browsing history in perpetuity if you logged into any Google-owned service, like Gmail or YouTube. They quickly backtracked, promising a more secure version with next month's release. They've also been caught secretly tracking your location data... even if you've opted out.

Google also began development of a censored search engine in China and took part in buliding Pentagon-funded AI tools to improve targeting for unmanned drones. Over 3,100 employees signed a petition to dissuade Google from taking the contract.

To top it all off: the EU fined Google $5 billion dollars for antitrust violations earlier this summer. That's a lot of Google Home Minis. 😮

Users are beginning to fight back. Launched yesterday by serial-builder Pieter Levels, No More Google curates the best apps to replace your Google-owned tools. Came in #1 on PH with 850+ upvotes. 🏆

Replacing Chrome? Try Firefox Quantum or Brave.
Replacing Google Search? Try DuckDuckGo.
Replacing YouTube? Try Dlive.
Replacing Google Docs and Sheets? Try Notion and Airtable.

It's community driven, so you can even upvote or add your favorites. Share your thoughts about No More Google in the comments. 🔒

Jeff Bezos had a biiiiig week.

First, they quietly launched Amazon Scout, a Pinterest competitor powered by machine learning to help you discover (and purchase) your next favorite product based on what you 👍 and 👎.

Right now, most everybody visits Amazon with specific intent to purchase something – AA batteries, new socks, or maybe a case of LaCroix. But nobody browses Amazon just for fun. Their next big opportunity is window shopping, encouraging consumers to discover and buy things they weren’t necessarily looking for.

Pinterest started with this use case (of course, broadly focused on imagery but a large portion of pins are product-specific) and are now attempting to close the loop with buyable pins.

This isn't the first attempt to create a browsing experience by Amazon. They launched Interesting Finds and Launchpad a few years ago. We'll have to wait and see if Amazon Scout is as sticky as Pinterest, which pulls users back into the site with friends, messages, and notifications.

Next... Amazon launched a ton of new Alexa devices. The first, an Alexa-integrated subwoofer called the Echo Sub, is an attempt bolster the audio quality of the Amazon Echo, which some say can sound a bit "thin." Just like a Sonos system (which launched their developer platform a few weeks ago) or Apple's HomePod, the new Echo Sub can pair with up to 2 different Echos.

They also launched an AmazonBasics Microwave that has Alexa built-in, an Echo Auto designed to sit in your car, the new Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Show, and a new Echo Input mic that turns literally any speaker into an Alexa-enabled device.

Last week, Microsoft acquired a small AI startup less than 6 months after their launch. That was fast. 😮

Lobe launched in May to make building machine learning models easy. Backed by Chris Sacca's Lowercase Capital (and others), the small team is making machine learning as easy as putting together LEGO bricks.



Their app is super simple to use:

1. Label your training set with your desired results. For instance, you could upload pictures of dogs labeled with their breed, or houses listed with their architectural style.

2. Watch as the algorithm builds itself, automagically.

3. Ship it. Export your model into Google's TensorFlow, Apple's CoreML, or directly into your app on iOS or Android.

"A holy shit moment in tech from our company Lobe. Full AI capabilities that you can put in your app but without having to write any of your own AI code! Watch the demo. It's bananas." – Chris Sacca

It's absolutely bananas. Lobe’s landing page might be the best product landing page we’ve seen since Muzzle. 🤐