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Open-source software continues to grow in popularity and is even seen by many as an essential way to develop software.

A survey by the Linux Foundation, the New Stack, and the TODO group found that 63% of companies consider open source programs as critical to business. The model allows developers to easily access a software’s source code and modify it. It’s also seen as a way to expedite development and catch issues early on, allowing companies to save time and money on programming. Instead of starting from scratch, developers can pick from other open-source software to fuel their next project.

Here are some recent open-source launches that could help spark some innovation (or just serve as a useful tool):

Medusa is an open-source alternative to Shopify that allows developers to add their integrations and use “building blocks” to own their setup. ”[W]e learned how important it is for fast-growing e-commerce businesses to be able to change out parts of their tech-stack in a quick and efficient way so we have built Medusa’s architecture to allow for exactly that,” shared the makers.

If you’re stressed out by form-building, snoopForms might be able to help. The open source alternative to Typeform lets users create no-code or code forms that pipe submissions to one central hub for managing and forwarding data. The tool emphasizes forms as a data source and focuses on offering a single place to manage, analyze and forward that data. The makers plan to offer more interfaces such as Vue, React Native, and Email embeds to collect form data down the road.

Acapela co-founder, Heiki Riesenkampf, recently introduced his latest creation, clientdb—an open source, in-memory database for enabling real-time apps. Fueled by problems faced while building Acapela, Heiki sought to create a solution that quickly fetches and updates data in real-time so that developers don’t have to write server-side code.

Will you give any of these a try?

Sleek slide decks are like a form of art. You know it when you spot one, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes it so visually appealing or how to replicate it. They’re also a time suck – writing the content is one thing, but getting it to look cohesive on a fixed canvas? That’s a whole other beast.

Gamma launched yesterday to make the latter quicker. The tool lets you focus on writing and uses flexible cards and fluid layouts to automatically align and fit the content. The makers liken it to building a Notion doc that converts into a presentation. It lets you embed GIFs, videos, charts, and websites, and has a “one-click” feature that allows you to restyle the entire deck without having to rework it each time. You can measure and understand engagement through built-in analytics and collect feedback from your collaborators using comments and reactions.

First-time founders Grant Lee, James Fox, and Jon Noronha met while working at Optimizely, an A/B testing tool that was acquired by Episerver in 2020. After coming out of stealth a year ago, the team raised a $7M round with participants including Airtable and Patreon founders, as well as Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan, and LinkedIn’s former CEO, Jeff Weiner. “While we're still super early, we're excited to open things up today, and wanted the PH community to be among the first to try out the product,” Lee shared on yesterday’s launch, which racked up 1,200+ upvotes.

The team also shared a little behind the scenes of building Gamma: “We ‘eat our own dogfood’ / ‘drink our own champagne’ here; every week, someone makes a deck and presents on it. Topics have been as varied as the History of McDonald's McRib, UFOs, woodworking, and tattoos.” We might give this a try for our next team gather.

We’ve covered alternatives to Google Slides and Powerpoint in the past, so seeing new tools wanting to disrupt the space feels exciting.

What do you use?

We’re big fans of remote, asynchronous communication. As much as that enables us to do deep, focused work, it can get lonely sometimes. This means that any chance to brainstorm as a team is always more exciting. One way of doing this is through whiteboarding, which is a handy way of enabling collaborative free-form thinking that lets you map out new ideas.

Canva launched Whiteboards yesterday with the community and is currently available for free on the web, desktop, and mobile. The new tool uses an infinite canvas that lets teams collaborate in real-time through stickies, voting graphics, shapes, as well as Canva’s library of 100 million images, videos, and audio tracks.

Canva’s new tool comes at an interesting time, as Apple’s preparing to launch its new similar feature, Freeform, on iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura later this year. According to Apple, Freeform is set to be a “flexible canvas that gives users the ability to see, share, and collaborate all in one place without worrying about layouts and page sizes, and with full support for Apple Pencil.”

If you’ve been watching the whiteboard space, you might also remember Eraser’s soft launch last year, as well as news of the product hitting the 1M users mark. The team is now back with Eraser 2.0, which focuses on distributed engineering teams. What makes Eraser different from other tools is its ability to support markdown, code blocks, cloud icons, and code-generated diagrams. It also takes a keyboard-first approach – you can draw an entire diagram without your hands leaving the keyboard.

How do you brainstorm? If you’re curious to see what else is out there, here are some community-sourced resources.

You’ve got a great product idea, now what? Going from the scratchpad to a finalized product isn’t a self-explanatory process. Luckily, makers are constantly developing tools to help other makers develop and launch their products:

Ross Chaldecott (ex-Atlassian, Campaign Monitor, Shopify) and his co-founders (also from Campaign Monitor) felt that launching new software products was a complicated process with many barriers to entry. In hopes of making the SaaS building space more accessible, they built Kinde—a development infrastructure for software teams. The goal is to get “SaaS products to market faster with all of the building blocks software teams need in one place.” Kinde is equipped with user management tools, feature flags, monetization tools, and the ability to acquire users with passwordless authentication, all on one dashboard. The all-in-one platform can help makers building SaaS products save time on building infrastructure so they can focus on the core offering of their product.

FlutterFlow 3.0, a no-code Golden Kitty winner, is back with more features to help makers launch cross-platform apps too. The makers introduced a marketplace of plugins and templates (like Google Maps, Stripe, and Algolia) and the ability to build and deploy web apps. Makers can also use FlutterFlow to quickly translate their app into 100+ languages, collaborate in real time with their project team, add custom code, generate code with Codex by OpenAI, and more.

In the post-launch stage? Ignition launched a changelog tool to help makers collect customer feature requests, allow customers and teammates to vote, discuss, and prioritize feature requests, and more.

Now is a great time to be a maker. If you try these out for your product toolkit, make sure to leave feedback for the makers and let them know what you want to see.

Nothing freaks out email marketers as much as poor deliverability. Social media’s great, but email still seems to be one of the stickiest outreach methods makers and companies resort to. It’s personal and it’s effective. Given the abundance of writing tools, the challenge is no longer writing a captivating email, but getting it into people’s inboxes. We did some digging, and here are a few tools to optimize your email marketing.

Email Warm-Up by Snov.io helps you “warm up” your email to increase your deliverability rate. “Using a network of real human accounts, Email Warm-up automatically sends out realistic AI-generated emails that are then opened, starred, and replied to using the same AI conversation builder. Basically, your email gets the superstar treatment until email service providers can no longer deny you entry to the Inbox,” the makers explain.

The team behind Email Flows spoke to 100+ email experts and created 50+ plug-and-play email automation sequences for use cases like eCommerce, FinTech, Real Estate, and EdTech.

Email Testing By Inbox Pirates lets you test, preview, and analyze emails before you send them into the wild. According to the team, many people read their emails directly from their notifications bar (guilty!). The tool adds a big preview button inside your browser that lets you see what your email looks like from the notification bar and where it gets cut off in popular email tools.

If you have more email-specific questions, today we’re joined by Toby Howell, who previously worked on Morning Brew’s newsletter. Toby now leads Content at Launch House and writes the Homescreen newsletter. Ask him anything about newsletter and email growth strategies in Discussions.

Samsung’s annual Unpacked Event was this week and the main stars of the show were its upgraded foldable phones.

The Galaxy Z Fold—probably the most coveted item at the event—comes with minor refinements, but are they enough to convert naysayers?

The tablet-phone hybrid now has a wider screen creating a more desirable user interface, which is also more durable. It’s the first smartphone equipped with Android 12L, Google’s custom OS for foldable devices, giving the phone a PC-like bottom taskbar. If you’re here for the camera, the Z Fold 4 is equipped with a 3x optical zoom and Samsung’s 30x Space Zoom, so you can see the moon up-close and personal. One thing that hasn’t budged—the sticker price. At a $1799 price tag, many still think the Z Fold 4 is too much of a niche luxury.

For the flip-phone nostalgics, the Z Flip 4 is equipped with similar durability improvements as the Z Fold 4, is water-resistant (5 feet of water for 30 minutes) and has better battery life — a criticism of the Z Flip 3. The Z Flip 4 promises to reach 50% charge in only 30 minutes and to better sustain its charge.

People also tuned in for the new Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro, both boasting bigger batteries, which will hopefully translate to a longer battery life. Similar to the phone upgrades, both watches have a more durable display, but the 5 Pro offers the most protection with a bezel that’s raised around the screen. There’s also improved health features—the Watch 5 is said to come with more accurate readings and the Watch 5 Pro comes with GPX compatibility to track workout routes. Post-workout, expect to receive customized water consumption recommendations.

Samsung’s smallest gear comes with a price hike. The Galaxy Buds 2 Pro retail for $229, which is $30 more than its predecessor. It may be worth it if you’re into the new matte finish and enhanced comfortability—Samsung says the buds are 15% smaller and promise to reduce pressure and limit movement in your ear. For the audiophiles, the buds now support Dolby Atmos and 24-bit Hi-Fi sound quality.

What do you think about this year’s Unpacked?

Yesterday, Stark, a design tool centered around accessibility, announced its $6 million seed investment, along with a new suite of tools.

Stark first launched as a color-blind simulator and contrast checker for Sketch. Today, the new Stark suite is equipped with more features that can be plugged into more design tools, such as Figma and Adobe XD. Teams can also now use Stark for browsers like Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Opera.

“[T]he whole philosophy is that we hook into the tools that your product team is already using, whether you’re the designer, developer, project manager or QA expert, and stitch them together into an accessibility workflow,” Benedikt Lehnert, Stark’s chief design officer, told TechCrunch.

Stark gives teams the opportunity to tackle accessibility from start to finish, with the ability to measure a design’s typography, contrast, colors, and more. It tackles an issue that co-founder and CEO Cat Noone said is “not a small problem. It’s part of what we call a company’s internal PSA — privacy, security, accessibility — and accessibility [stands] right alongside privacy and security as one of these three major issues in software development that’s been ignored.” The company itself has a diverse team—a majority of the people on the team have a disability and it positively contributes to product development.

With at least 1.5 billion people in the world having at least one disability, Stark is taking on an issue that many might think is too much to handle. The good news? Bigger companies are now making progress.

Last month, Twitter Accessibility announced its new image description reminder. The feature went live to 10% of users, reminding them to add image descriptions to their photos for blind or low-vision people using screen readers. Twitter is also exploring live captioning for Spaces and profile photo image descriptions.

TikTok also recently added auto-generated captions that now allow viewers to turn on closed captions, as opposed to leaving it up to the creator. Translation is available for captions and video descriptions, helping content reach more users.

These updates signal that accessibility software and content is being seen as less of an option and more of a necessity for large companies. Tools like Stark make it feasible for everyone. Let the makers at Stark know what you’d like to see next.

You’re probably no stranger to data leaks. Twitter just confirmed a breach exposing 5.4M accounts. It happens too often.

One of the ways cybersecurity experts work to prevent this from happening is through penetration testing. Pentesting involves discovering vulnerabilities in an environment with the purpose of taking control of a system. Ethical hackers, also sometimes referred to as “white hats,” often play a role in this process. They employ the same techniques as a malicious hacker to exploit weaknesses in a system.

Makers Sebastian Brandes and Anders Skovsgaard noticed an opportunity in the market and worked for 6 months to launch Heyhack—a new, automated pentesting solution.

Cybersecurity consultants and ethical hackers can be inaccessible to companies with small budgets. Moreover, “automated vulnerability scanners test just a tiny part of your web app and these solutions won’t let you look into the process of how testing was conducted,” explains Heyhack in yesterday’s launch video.

“Realizing this, we set a goal to build a 100% transparent product with complete coverage and minimal configuration,” wrote Sebastien. Sebastien is an AI professional and former Tech Evangelist at Microsoft, while co-founder Anders is a pentester with 15 years of experience.

Heyhack spins up browser instances on virtual machines in the cloud and navigates your application like a real user, interacting with every element it finds on your web app. It captures screenshots of daily tests that “surpasses the level of hackers.”

Makers in the comments have shown excitement over the tool’s ease of use, clean UI, and accessibility for startups and bootstrapped teams. Heyhack says it “requires zero technical knowledge” — when a vulnerability is found, the tool sends a notification with technical details and “complete guidance” on how to fix it.

Think it looks easy enough to use too? If you give Heyhack a try, be sure to let makers know what you found in the comments.

Let’s check in—how are your New Year's resolutions going? If you’re anything like the majority, your resolutions were probably abandoned around February or March.

Keeping up with resolutions in this hectic world (where there seems to be a crazy new development every day) is difficult. The last thing you’re thinking about is getting your daily water intake in.

If you’re overwhelmed by life and the state of the world, chances are you’re not feeling motivated to stay on top of your goals. Buddy Crush is a new accountability tool that might help by letting you track your habits with friends. And if you really need a burst of motivation? Maker Marc Lou built the app in 24 hours on a plane from Bali to Paris.

Buddy Crush offers a fun, competitive approach to accountability. You and your friends challenge each other to keep goals and healthy habits alive. You can engage in various accountability groups, like career or educational ones, and track your progress against your friends’ to see who has read the most books— or who’s on a consistent workout streak.

If one of your resolutions was to get out of your comfort zone, you can join an existing group to make new friends and track your goals with them.

This isn't Marc Lou's first time indie hacking a helpful habit tool. 50 Hacks (which garnered 700,000 likes on Reddit) lets the internet upvote their favorite productivity hacks, and Books Calculator lets you see how many books you can read in a month, year, or lifetime with just a few minutes a day.

Think of Product Hunt as the non-judgmental Breakfast Club. You like to spend your money on JPEGs? Carry on. Maybe it’s jewelry or maybe it’s art. You do you. In fact, we’re always on the lookout for interesting products that think outside the box and challenge how we perceive wealth.

VALT caught our attention. The asset management app is part of Vincent, a search engine and database that allows you to discover and analyze $6B of alternative investments across 150 investment platforms. VALT came as a response to feedback the makers received about Vincent – “I’m kind of busy with my day job and I’d like to just send you some capital and have you invest it in the best deals for me.”

The platform lets you invest in alternative assets to diversify your portfolio. It gives you access to assets typically reserved for institutions and the ultra-wealthy, like rare art, collector’s items, pre-IPO ventures, and NFTs. VALT has an in-house portfolio team that sources these and provides in-depth analysis. Investors can access private calls with the team, investment memos, weekly performance updates, and news alerts.

It’s not the first rodeo for some of the makers behind VALT. Slava Rubin and Eric Schell co-founded the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, which has helped companies raise over $1.5B in funding.

If you want to try your hand at investing but need to do some research first, check out Revenue Watcher, a curated database reported directly by the founders of startups and indie projects. Revenue numbers are sourced from platforms like Twitter, Hacker News, YouTube, Starter Story, and Indie Hackers. Bear in mind, this isn't financial advice and you should always seek professional advice before committing to any risky investments.