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It’s been a while since we’ve seen this much discourse on Tech Twitter. Last week, Calendly took the spotlight as the most discussed product. It felt somewhat reminiscent of the 2015 “The Dress” viral phenomenon (is it blue or gold?!) dividing the Internet, except this time, the debate was focused on the question of "is sending a calendar link rude?"

The discussion stems from a post by former Facebook VP, Sam Lessin, arguing that Calendly is “The Most Raw / Naked Display of Social Capital Dynamics in Business.” The Twitter crowd can’t really agree on a consensus either: some shared a satirical response, while others offered up alternative products.

The Calendly team has been addressing concerns like these through a Calendly Etiquette series they started last November.

Still, if you side with Lessin or are just looking for an alternative calendar experience, here are others to check out:

Cal.com is an open-source Calendly alternative that you can self-host and integrate into your business. It's also launching Cal.com for web3 today. 👀

SavvyCal overlays your calendar and your recipient’s calendar, giving them the choice of how long the meeting should run.

Coffee Chats helps you build a no-code website that is connected to your Google Calendar. Think Carrd meets Calendly.

Zcal offers a free Calendly alternative that allows you to customize your booking page.

Hera Calendar was built with remote teams in mind, allowing you to schedule meetings and share availability across all accounts and timezones.

Woven Calendar leverages group polling to find the best time for larger teams to meet.

Speaking of The Golden Kitty Awards, what did you think?!

We’d love to hear your feedback so we can make next year’s ceremony even better. Please take a moment to fill out this survey and be entered to win one of two $100 Amazon Gift Cards we’re giving away.

2021 was a breakout year for Solana.

“If you’d invested just $500 in Solana at the start of 2021, you’d have roughly $47,500 at the end of the year,” wrote Muslim Farooque for Yahoo News. Solana is a programmable blockchain, like Ethereum, whose native currency is SOL. It’s been called “the Ethereum killer” as more developers have been turning to the platform to build their own decentralized apps (dapps) and cryptocurrencies.

SOL has not been immune to the “crypto winter,” i.e. the recent market plunge that’s affected Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which some investors speculate will turn into a prolonged downward trajectory. Regardless, Solana’s momentum towards being a leading blockchain platform progressed this week with a new launch.

Solana Pay is a new way for merchants to accept crypto payments with Solana-based tokens like USDC, a stablecoin tied to the US Dollar. It was developed with partners Checkout.com (which just raised $1B), Circle (which founded USDC), Citcon (a mobile wallet payment provider), and wallets Slope and Phantom (a Golden Kitty Award nominee for web3). The makers are also working on an integration with Shopify.

“Cash is king — and Solana Pay is more cash-like,” writes Tomio Geron for Protocol. Solana Pay offers merchants and customers a direct connection through a decentralized payment gateway. For merchants, that means they can skip intermediaries like Visa. For consumers, smart contracts could enable a host of opportunities, like the ability to hold funds in escrow for big-ticket items. Solana Pay is also attractive for the speed and cost of transactions. Ethereum, in comparison, is too slow to settle and too costly, noted Sheraz Shere, Head of Payments at Solana Labs.

That’s not to say that Solana is criticism-free. For example, as Solana grew in popularity last year, it experienced congestion problems and slowdowns. It was also in the headlines just one day post-launch after a hacker stole $320 million in assets through Wormhole, which offers a bridge between the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. The attack was not a direct hack on the Solana network, but the incident could have a negative impact on the ecosystem.

So far the community has embraced the promise of Solana Pay. Add your thoughts. 👇

A new report by McKinsey looks at the economic impact of transitioning to net-zero emissions by 2050, assuming nine "system-level requirements" (like economic and societal adjustments) are met. The cost comes to about $275 trillion in this hypothetical scenario.

There’s some bad news:

“A disorderly transition could come with high economic costs as well as a backlash that delays the transition.”

And some good news:

“For all its short-term risks, the transition will also create rich new opportunities across sectors and geographies, for example in the form of new markets for low-emission products and support services.”

Climatiq Emission Tracking API is a great example of such low-carbon emission products we hope to see more of soon. The new API makes it easy for companies to embed and automate carbon measurements in their software. Maker Hessam Lavi shared that the team of makers wanted to do their part to help the climate crisis.

“The problem is that emissions and the activities that cause them are largely invisible to us. The picture is particularly muddy when it comes to the environmental impact of businesses. This includes messy scientific data and methodology, and a lack of simple and affordable tools. Crucial insights, therefore, remain inaccessible to non-experts…”

So in collaboration with the science and sustainability community, the makers created an open emission factor database (OEFDB) and an API that allows for computations of emissions in real-time.

Climatiq has a free plan you can start using. The team is looking for feedback and suggestions.

As the McKinsey report also notes, despite the costs of transitioning to net-zero, we can’t lose sight of the longer-term and physical risks of global warming. So better get moving.

It’s not all just fun and games. Sometimes it’s also a business opportunity where you never saw one coming.

Creator Josh Wardle sold his viral word game, Wordle, to the New York Times for an undisclosed amount in the “low seven figures.” The NYT said the game will continue on for free “initially” and Wardle said he's working with the media giant to make sure your wins and streaks will be preserved. Wardle, an ex-Reddit maker, created the word puzzle for his girlfriend (*nudges partner*).

Jonathan Knight, General Manager of Games at the New York Times, stated that Wordle “captured our collective imagination.” We saw that in the form of Wordle artwork and memes across the internet. Here at Product Hunt, we’ve also seen a lot of Wordle-inspired products, from analytics to tools that help solve your Wordle. And these great riffs off the five-letter game:

Pictle: A companion game where you must create specific pixel art patterns
Custom Wordle: Make and share your own words to challenge friends
Chengyu Wordle: Guess Chinese idioms in 6 tries
Stockle: Wordle, but with Stock tickers
Numble: Wordle for math lovers

If words are not your cup of tea, we got you. Check out these newcomer games others in the community are playing.

For web3 devotees: punksVshapes
For parents: Joon
For doodlers: PenPlay
For parties (remote or in-person): Mafia
For history lovers: WikiTrivia

Or tell the community what internet game you're obsessed with. 👇

"Work smarter, not harder" is the productivity hacker’s adage.

The motto is vague enough to mean anything but we approached it by looking at a few technologies you should be aware of and using, if you're not already.

Text recognition
Text recognition has made great progress over the past few years. Apple’s computer vision software, for example, can now identify objects inside images (like texts on signs) so you can search for things inside your photos on your iPhone. Apple's framework can be used by makers to add text recognition to apps. Flyscreen, for instance, lets you search and organize your screenshots by text (including opening links from them).

Text recognition isn’t limited to your iPhone. BLACKBOX lets you “select and copy text from anything. Ever.” Use cases in the launch last week highlight the ease of copy/pasting code from coding YouTube videos, but you can “copy text from anywhere in your browser. Could be a video, image, pdf, literally anything.”

Autocomplete
A team of makers launched their first app along their quest to make engineers and teams more productive — Fig is "autocomplete for the terminal.” For the non-technicals, the terminal is the black screen programmers use to accomplish and automate tasks. The tool adds visual completions for hundreds of public command-line interface tools. Completions are built by the community via an open-source GitHub repo.

Short Cuts
About that command line. We’ve seen a lot of love for it lately. We recently told you about Omni, a product from Golden Kitty Maker of the Year nominee, Alyssa X. It lets you perform all sorts of actions with a simple command interface on Chrome. We’ve also covered kbar and Raycast in this space. Since then, Raycast has shipped more time-saving features like snippets that will insert frequently used text for you (to circle back to autocomplete).

Fuzzy Search
If you’re ever searching your browsing history, frustrated because you can’t remember the exact word you used before, just know, that’s basically us daily. "Fuzzy search" can also be called approximate string matching. It means searching for text that matches a term closely instead of exactly, and Chikcamichi launched over the weekend with an extension that enables fuzzy search for your Chrome history, bookmarks, and tabs.

The 7th annual Golden Kitty Awards are over. We kicked off this year's celebration when you submitted over 13,800 nominations to tell us what products were your favorites from 2021. You're clearly bullish on web3. It was the category with the most nominations at 11,497, followed by Productivity and Mobile Apps.

From the list of semi-finalists, you chose the products you wanted to see win an iconic Golden Kitty Award. Tens of thousands of votes later, we made it to the ceremony.

We had a blast yesterday — we’re still talking about the winners, magician, and Sahil Bloom’s outfit. You can watch what you missed or relive the highlights here. You’ll find a list of all finalists there too, so make sure to browse through all of the products your peers love.

Thank you to everyone who attended — you made it a truly special event. Without further ado, here the winners are…

🗣 Audio & Voice Tool of the Year: Podcastle

📱 Mobile App of the Year: Obsidian for Mobile

🙅‍♀️ No Code Tool of the Year: Flutterflow

👩‍💻 Productivity Tool of the Year: Cron

⛱ Work from Anywhere Tool of the Year: Sessions

🙀 WTF?! Product of the Year: The Table™️

🤖 AI & Machine Learning Product of the Year: Uizard

💸 Fintech Product of the Year: Carta Launch

🛠 Hardware Product of the Year: Opal C1

🔐 Privacy Tool of the Year: Drata

🥕 SaaS Product of the Year: Lucky Carrot

⛓ Web3 Product of the Year: ConstitutionDAO

👥 Community & Social Tool of the Year: Canva Video Suite

👪 Children & Family Product of the Year: Brickit

✍️ Creator Tool of the Year: Contra

💻 Developer Tool of the Year: DhiWise

🛍 eCommerce Tool of the Year: Mode Magic 2.0

📚 Education Product of the Year: Odyssey

🏋️‍♂️ Health & Fitness Product of the Year: Loóna

🎥Product Video Demo of the Year: tl;dv
Watch all finalist videos here.

👀 Side Project of the Year: Workspaces Newsletter

⚤ Diversity & Inclusion Product of the Year: leap.club

🌳 Social Impact Product of the Year: Crewdle

🎨 Design Tool of the Year: Clover

🌟 Maker of the Year: Savio Martin

🙋‍♂️ Best Community Member: KP

🏆 Product of the Year: Softr 2.0

Finally, thank you to our sponsor, Flatfile — make sure to check out the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60 seconds.

Let’s take 2022 to the moon!

Today is THE day. We’ll see you soon for the Golden Kitty Awards 2021 ceremony, starting at 9am PST. Sign up to watch here.

You might have heard that Twitter launched NFT profile pictures recently (though it’s still working to enable fully on-chain NFTs). Now Reddit is testing a similar feature.

Updates like this are fodder for those in the right-clicker camp, but the NFT ecosystem grows almost daily.

While celebs and Lamborghinis continue to make headlines, many in this space got into NFTs to share or support art (and sure, maybe that piece will be worth something in the future, too). A new launch today helps art connoisseurs make a bigger impact than profile pics. Letsmint just debuted its NFT crowdfunding platform. Maker Darina Lysachkina explained that the goal is to provide “essential launching conditions” for artists, including finances, an audience, and technical tools.

We’ve also written a lot about how makers are using NFTs to enable member organizations to engage meaningfully with each other and brands. The latest headlines in this space merge real-life experience with blockchain tech.

• Poolsuite launched an NFT collection with exclusives for members, with your membership card integrated into Apple Wallet.
• Steve Aoiki and Manifold just launched A0K1VERSE, a new ecosystem that lets NFT holders and collectors unlock on-chain and physical experiences.
• Moonpay just dropped a plug-and-play service companies can use to give customers a streamlined way to buy and sell NFTs using a credit card.

Then there’s the (not-so-)real estate boom. Metaverses like Decentraland and The Sandbox have linked digital property to NFTs and established fixed quantities of land, opening the doors for people to pay hefty sums of crypto for “a 116-parcel estate in the heart of Decentraland’s Fashion Street district.”

There are so many more entry points into this space than we had even 6 months ago. Even if you’re not that into art, Poolsuite's vibes or Decentraland house parties may be your gateway into web3. But if you are...

A new study from Slack shows that hybrid work is the way.

The global Pulse study comes from a consortium called Future Forum launched by Slack and its founding partners. It found that 58% of knowledge workers are currently working in hybrid work arrangements (up from 46% in May 2021) and 68% of those surveyed cite hybrid as their preferred working model.

There are so many reasons to love hybrid work, but most relate to reduced anxiety and a better work/life balance.

Unfortunately, Slack’s *knock brush* sound has been known to rustle up feelings of anxiety, like when it was heard at the start of an NFL commercial break. The Future Forum survey notes that leaders will need to “intentionally align on principles and guardrails that outline how hybrid work will work at their organizations.”

On that note, we put together 9 tools that might help make the *tsst dukdukduk* noise less scary.

Motion helps you and your colleagues find, agree, and schedule a meeting time
Fastest Fingers is a collection of multiplayer speed-typing games
Bored has games like employee roasts and spot the faker to play with your team
Incognito lets you collect anonymous messages & polls in Slack for honest feedback
Magik creates member directories, engagement resources, and more tools for your Slack community
Sup! helps hybrid teams automate stand-up & follow-ups asynchronously
Floppy Disk lets you save your favorite Slack threads to Notion, Airtable, or Coda — with retro vibes
Whatis can organize your team’s context, like acronyms and metrics, from across Slack (it just launched its Chrome extension, too)
Feedback Friday strives to get your team on a weekly feedback streak with gamified participation

Mark Cuban is known and loved for many things, and this week he’s adding “cheap drugs” to the list.

Cuban just launched an online pharmacy that promises cheaper drugs by cutting out industry middlemen and charging manufacturer prices, plus a flat 15% markup and pharmacist fee.

Let’s get one thing out of the way — yes, this is so American. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that around 3 in 10 Americans say they haven’t taken their medications as prescribed due to concerns about cost. To our global community: You might not benefit from much from the Mark Cuban CostPlus Drug Company (MCCPDC), but you can still join the conversation.

“Amazed that this wasn't already done in the US. It's going to be a lifesaver.” Rohit Agarwal

“It is incredibly sad for Americans that this is even remotely necessary and I'm very glad it's available.” Rob Baker

MCCPDC currently offers 100 generic drugs to treat illnesses like diabetes, asthma, and heart conditions. As an example of savings, Imatinib, a drug used to treat leukemia, retails at other pharmacies for $9,657.40/month or $120/month with a voucher. On MCCPDC it's $47/month.

The company’s approach is different because it's working as both a retailer and a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM). PBMs act as intermediaries that manage drugs on behalf of Medicare drug plans and private insurers. They’re consistently identified as contributors to high drug prices in the U.S. MCCPDC explained: “Because the company refuses to pay spread prices to third-party PBMs in order to be allowed to process insurance claims, the online pharmacy will be a cash pay venture.” I.e. You can only pay out of pocket for now, but MCCPDC says it will still cost you less than what most insurance plans' deductible and copay requirements would total.

MCCPDC will put pressure on other digital pharmacies, including Amazon Pharamacy which just launched a year ago.

"Not everyone sets the goal of being the lowest cost producer and provider," Cuban told Axios. "My goal is to make a profit while maximizing impact."

We have two more Golden Kitty Awards categories to introduce you to before the big day.

Check out the finalists for 2021’s Best Community Member and Maker of the Year.

Unlike the other awards, finalists and winners for these categories are selected using data like comments, upvotes, and product launches from the past year. Winners will be announced very soon…

About that big day:

The Golden Kitty Awards 2021 virtual ceremony is THIS Thursday, January 27th at 9:00am PST. RSVP now or forever hold your FOMO. We’ll enjoy literal magic, live music, a panel with Ryan Hoover, and a couple more surprises. Our hosts Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom (who you know from the "Where It Happens" podcast among many other things) will guide us through it all, handing out Golden Kitty statues to the best products of the year along the way. We’ll all end up in the Doge Temple for a legendary afterparty.

From London to Austin, people in the community will be gathering to watch and celebrate one heck of a year in tech. There’s still time to host a meetup in your area, virtually or safely in-person.

Our friends at Flatfile are the champs helping us make it all possible. They’re the makers behind the unified platform that SaaS companies use to import customer data in less than 60 seconds.

Now, let's go!