The Roundup
Everything you missed this past week on Product Hunt: Top products, spicy community discourse, key trends on the site, and long-form pieces we’ve recently published.
"The world isn't ready for this kind of progress"
"The world just isn’t ready for this kind of progress." – Ryan G
"Segway's track record of building 'so-sexy-you-have-to-fight-off-the-admirers' personal mobility vehicles continues unabated." – Dan K
We'll be the first to admit that the NEW Segway Drift W1's look a bit dorky. They're a little like motor-powered Heelys, those sneakers with wheels in the heel that exploded in 2008.
It's silly to ignore Segway and their never-ending quest to solve personal mobility and the "last-mile-problem." Segway was acquired by Beijing-based transportation robotics startup Ninebot in 2015, which raised $180M from Sequoia Capital, Xiaomi, Intel, and more.
Fun fact: The Segway-Ninebot amalgam designs and manufactures every scooter used by scooter-sharing startups Bird and Lime. Both startups have exploded in popularity across the US, each raising $350M+ to bring dockless electric scooters to a sidewalk near you. Segway is everywhere.
Everybody is trying to improve short-distance travel. The world's first flying car launched two weeks ago with a review from Casey Neistat, and Elon Musk's Boring Company wants to build tunnels that criss-cross cities to cut down community time. The city of Chicago just signed a $1B contract with the company. 🕳️
If you're intimidated by Segway's latest creation, Paris-based Flaneurz are clip-on rollerskates that attach to any pair of sneakers. Give them a try. 👟🔥
A new anonymous app built by high school women 🦋
A group of high school female makers built Trill to save the Internet.
Social media is ironically isolating. Between manicured feeds of Instagram #selfies and angry rants on Twitter, it's harder than ever to find welcoming communities. Group chats are the new Facebook, with entire communities shifting to Telegram and other chat apps.
Everybody deserves a place connect with others to discuss the same anxieties, frustrations, and worries you probably won’t post to LinkedIn.
Trill is a supportive anonymous community of over 13,000 people to date. While anonymous-based apps are incredibly difficult to moderate (remember Secret?), they’ve found early success in countries with restrictive speech or cultures and within the worldwide LGBTQ+ community, who often can’t safely discuss their sexuality.
The team of four includes a three-time WWDC scholar, who raised a small seed round to bring Trill to the world. Check it out.
This isn't the only app to launch in the space:
📹 Huddle is a video peer-to-peer support community.
🚀 Startups Anonymous is a confession board for startup employees
🙏 YC's Leap lets women in tech talk about anything they want
Psst! Trill is hiring an iOS developer for this upcoming summer.
World's first flying car 🚁👀
Last-mile transportation is heaaaaating up. 👀
Scooters and helicopters aren't the only competitors in the space:
🛩️ The Flyride actually lets you fly, powered by water.
👟 Low-tech Flaneurz convert your sneakers into clip-on rollerskates.
📈 The Onewheel is a self-balancing electric skateboard with only one wheel. Modern version of the hoverboards that went #viral last year.
What's your favorite innovative way to get to work? Let us know. 🚲
Decentralized scooter company Bird is raising at $2B valuation less than a year after they started. Dockless bicycle startup JUMP was acquired by Uber for $200M earlier this year. 12 different companies have applied for scooter permits... in San Francisco alone.
Not all last-mile solutions have wheels. 🚁
Flying cars have arrived, and Casey Neistat got a sneak peak. Meet the Kitty Hawk, a personal drone backed by Google co-founder Larry Paige.
"Oh my god, this thing is so f*cking fun." We can see why. Check out Casey's video review. The soundtrack is dope.
🛩️ The Flyride actually lets you fly, powered by water.
👟 Low-tech Flaneurz convert your sneakers into clip-on rollerskates.
🕳️ Elon Musk's Boring Company wants to build tunnels that criss-cross your city and cut your entire commute down to minutes. They just got a $1B contract from the city of Chicago.
📈 The Onewheel is a self-balancing electric skateboard with only one wheel. Modern version of the hoverboards that went #viral last year.
What's your favorite innovative way to get to work? Let us know. 🚲
Win a PS4 Pro Bundle 🎮
Fortnite keeps crushing streaming records. This week's Pro-Am Tournament in Los Angeles brought together 50 professional esports gamers and 50 celebrities for 2-player Hunger Games madness.
Over 1.5M+ tuned in to watch across Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook. That's insane. 😮
Unfortunately, not everyone’s equipped with a beefy rig that can push Fortnite at 60 frames per second. Gaming computers and consoles are pricey..
So, we're giving away a PS4 Pro Bundle which includes a similarly fun, large scale multiplayer game: Star Wars Battlefront. The entire bundle comes with:
🎮 Limited Edition "Star Wars Battlefront" PS4
📡 Free copy of Star Wars Battlefront
🖥️ 1TB of storage to store all of your clips and games
Yes, it plays Fortnite too. We promise. 😅
Zuckerberg VS Bezos 🦄
Zuckerberg is taking on Bezos. A battle of the unicorns. 🦄
Meet Facebook Gaming, a streaming platform for gamers to broadcast their best Fortnite dubs and League of Legends strategies.
Launched last Friday, it's a direct competitor of streaming giant Twitch, which Amazon acquired in 2014 for just under $1B. Twitch fans are fanatics: over 15 million log in every day to watch.
Not everybody is convinced Facebook is going to win:
"Gamers watch Twitch not only because the streamers they care about are there, but because they enjoy Twitch, period. Twitch as a platform managed to create a sense of community and belonging that I don't think other platforms can match, not even Facebook." – Thibaut Davoult
Will Facebook beat Twitch? Is Facebook actually competing for the loyal Twitch audience? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Sneak peek at Apple's WWDC Keynote 🍎
Calenders blocked off. LaCroix purchased. Credit card ready.
The tech industry's Superbowl is today. Apple's WWDC kicks off at 10AM, with Tim Cook taking the stage in San Jose to inspire the world with new iDevices and space grey accessories.
Here's what we're expecting / hoping / praying to see:
🦊 New Animoji, and potentially Animoji directly inside Facetime.
😳 A tool to build apps for iPhones, iPads, and Macs... all at once. This would drastically increase the number of apps in the Apple Mac Store.
💻 New MacBook Pro, MacBook, and iMac. Maybe even an improved keyboard to help with recent complaints about the butterfly keyboards.
🚫 Improved Do Not Disturb controls to help curb your phone addiction. Apps like Moment and Feedless are already focusing on this problem.
🔌 The all-in-one wireless charger for iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods. You know, the one they announced last September. 🤔
📸 ARKit 2.0, a new toolkit for developers to build in Augmented Reality.
💿 Software upgrades for the Apple TV, Apple Watch, and HomePod.
The live event kicks off at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. Watch it here. ✌️
How to get a free Macbook
Evvvvverrybody loves their Mac. Even Obama.
Not everybody loves paying for a Mac. We have a solution. 😽
We've partnered all of your favorite newsletters so you can win a brand new $2400 Macbook Pro for all of your cat GIFing needs.
After you win, you can download all of these 39 Must-Have Mac apps, as determined by the Product Hunt community:
🔍 Alfred lets you run your entire computer via your keyboard.
✂️ Jumpcut gives you copy-pasting super powers.
🚀 Rocket will insert Slack-style emojis everywhere.
✨ Popclip is like a Swiss Army Knife for your cursor.
The winner of the Macbook Pro will also receive more Product Hunt stickers and t-shirts than they know what to do with. 🤗
Build an app with a spreadsheet. No code required.
New technologies become easier to use over time as programs, platforms, and plug-ins are built.
Once upon a time, rooms of accountants would manually update spreadsheets, sketched on chalkboards. If one input changed, they would recalculate every other cell. Now, we get computers to do it for us and check Twitter all at the same time.
Spreadsheets are starting to eat the web development world. Sheetbase was #1 on Product Hunt yesterday, a tool that converts Google Sheets into programmable databases for your websites or apps.
It's pretty nifty: it combines Google's free spreadsheet software with JavaScript frameworks into a free database.
Sheetbase isn't the only spreadsheet-powered web development tool:
🛠️ Sheetsu turns Google Sheets into a programmable API
📊 Tabledo will update your website using data from your spreadsheets
💻 Sheet 2 Site lets you generate an entire website from one Sheet
📦 Airtable Blocks let you run entire programs inside spreadsheet cells
This tweet drove 100,000 downloads 😳
This single tweet drove 100,000 app downloads in one weekend. 😳
Be My Eyes is pretty nifty - it connects blind and visually-impaired users around the world who are having trouble with a specific task - like reading the expiration date on a carton of milk – with a community of over 1M+ volunteers around the world.
You'll get push notifications every time somebody needs help. Download today for iOS and Android and start helping. 🤗
Technology should make the world more empathetic, and Be My Eyes isn't the only one:
🙋 Give out HandUp Gift Cards to homeless in your neighborhood, redeemable for essentials like toiletries, clothes, and housing.
👂 Ava makes any conversation accessible for deaf. The demo video is crazy impressive (and got 2k+ upvotes!).
🤖 Microsoft's Seeing AI is a talking camera for the blind.
🎮 The Xbox Adaptive Controller was designed specifically so gamers with limited mobility can experience all of your favorites.
Verizon quietly launched a startup 📱
Nobody loves their phone company. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile - each have been the target of thousands of angry Twitter rants.
Everybody wishes there was a better option, but rolling out your own telecommunications network across the entire country is expensive.
Visible just launched this weekend, with a surprising owner: Verizon.
The new "startup" sells all-in-one phone, messaging, and data plans on Verizon's network for $40/mo flat, no extra fees. You can even pay directly inside their new, well-branded app.
Two caveats: the data is limited to 5Mbps, and it's invite-only. Lucky for you, we have a special invite code just for the Product Hunt community.
This isn't the only product that saves you money on your phone bill:
🕵️♂️ Binge all the Netflix, YouTube, and internet #content you want: this app tracks every part of your monthly data usage.
🦈 Billshark fights with your mobile providers on your behalf. 2 minutes could save you 25% or more on your phone bill. Sorry, Geico.
📱 The Lightning Phone is designed to be used as little as possible, so you don't even have a phone bill to pay in the first place.
Or... if you're ready to cut the cord completely, here's an app that lets you stream Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and Amazon all in one place.
Everybody wishes there was a better option, but rolling out your own telecommunications network across the entire country is expensive.
Visible just launched this weekend, with a surprising owner: Verizon.
The new "startup" sells all-in-one phone, messaging, and data plans on Verizon's network for $40/mo flat, no extra fees. You can even pay directly inside their new, well-branded app.
Two caveats: the data is limited to 5Mbps, and it's invite-only. Lucky for you, we have a special invite code just for the Product Hunt community.
This isn't the only product that saves you money on your phone bill:
🕵️♂️ Binge all the Netflix, YouTube, and internet #content you want: this app tracks every part of your monthly data usage.
🦈 Billshark fights with your mobile providers on your behalf. 2 minutes could save you 25% or more on your phone bill. Sorry, Geico.
📱 The Lightning Phone is designed to be used as little as possible, so you don't even have a phone bill to pay in the first place.
Or... if you're ready to cut the cord completely, here's an app that lets you stream Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and Amazon all in one place.
