Each week I round up the best product on Product Hunt for you to check out. There are dozens of new podcasts, hundreds of new apps, and many more products launched on Product Hunt Each week. It’s hard to keep up, but luckily for you, I spend most my day lurking on the site. There were many more hunts I wanted to include, but these were the top ones I loved.
If you don’t know what Product Hunt is, I wrote a little description to help you understand:
Product Hunt is a service where you can share and discover new products. The site was founded byRyan Hoover in November of 2013, with funding from Y Combinator. The basis of the site is users submit a fresh podcast, an innovative app, other tech products, or wild gadgets. From there other users upvote the products onto the front page. The whole process feels a lot like Reddit but with a focus towards discovering products within the technology community.
I’m active on Product Hunt as @leonhitchens, where you can follow me!
Let’s hunt together!
Self-Driving Uber
Uber beat Google with self-driving cars giving passengers a ride around Pittsburgh. The cars still have a driver behind the wheel and an engineer in the car to monitor the cars reaction to an obstacle in the roads and how human drivers interact with the car. Uber is looking towards dropping drivers entirely by 2020, and self-driving cars are the best route. Drivers are Uber’s biggest expense, and with them bleeding billions of dollars already the self-driving car could help them become profitable. Either way, Uber’s self-driving cars will have a lot of riders going through their doors, and you’ll have a chance to ride in one.
Foursquare 10
Foursquare changed a lot when they broke their app up into two separate experiences. The check-in features became Swarm, and the core Foursquare app became the city guide or yelp like experience. The update to the app puts search first and adds a bunch of iOS 10 features. Foursquare is trying to build trust back with their users who have been upset around the apps being broken into two apps. The company is only starting to add some core features back into the apps, which this update does.
Echo Dot
The 2nd generation Echo Dot was accidently leaked by Amazon, but they’ve now confirmed the new $49.99 Echo Dot. The original Echo Dot cost $89.99, but you had to buy through Alexa, which meant you needed an Echo or a Fire TV to buy the Dot. That requirement is now gone, but Amazon also introduced multiroom support. There is also a new sleek white color to either blend in with your furniture or pop out in a room. I want to buy a pack of them to put Alexa in every room especially with a Sonos set of speakers.
Launchaco
The web service lets you instantly search domains, fonts, social media handles, and more information soon. It’s one of the best ways to find names and domains, especially when you had to look up the information before hand individually. All-in-all, the service is a very useful time saver for startup founders or anyone looking to brand them new app or service online. I’ve been using it to look up names, check social profiles, and much more. Not to mention it’s all for free!
Sign and Send
Digital Signatures aren’t always allowed when you’re doing tax returns or sending documents to individual states. The other issue is when you’re at home working you don’t want to go to the post office to print and send a document. Sign and Send help you send digital signatures through the physical snail mail. You just go through the steps and sign digital and tell the service where to send, and you’re done. It’s that easy!
Pandora Plus
Pandora had Pandora One – there paid plan for their streaming radio service. And now they’re shifting their premium plan from Pandora One to Pandora Plus with the same $4.99 monthly price tag. The update brings unlimited skips, replays, and offline playing that predicts when you might go offline. The price is half of Spotify or Apple Music, and while they don’t offer to listen to any tracks, they’re still one of the leading ways to hear to music. There are also updates to the free tier bringing more skips, video ads, and a few more upgrades.
Courage
Apple had the courage to remove the 3.5mm audio jack on the iPone 7. The phone will use the lightning port for all your audio needs, but the other option is Bluetooth headphones or earbuds. Apple, of course, sided on the earbuds with the Airpods. They’re the same design of the earbuds that have been sold for years, but now without wires, the earbuds will likely get lost or fall out. Courage is a set of cables that’ll hold onto your Airpods, so you don’t lose your earbuds.