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Japanese startup EmbodyMe has launched a new way for you to take Zoom calls ... or freak people out on them. Xpression camera is a virtual camera app that imprints the movements of your face onto any image while you chat on Zoom, Twitch, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

Issay Yoshida, CEO of EmbodyMe, recognizes that video chats and live streams have become an essential part of life. His team wanted to offer a way for users to appear on calls without the work of getting fancy (e.g., wearing a suit or putting on makeup). Rather than using a cartoon-like avatar, Xpression camera can turn any image or video into your avatar without any preprocessing time. Go from pajamas to suit instantly.

On top of its practical application, people have found other humorous uses. Users can show up to their next team meeting as Elon Musk or host a Twitch stream as their favorite video game character.

Here's what the community thinks of this release:

“Really cool technology and super relevant given that we spend half of our work time in video meetings nowadays.” - Robert

“The real-time application of this technology is impressive.” - Dave

“This is both very fun and almost terrifying at what is to come.” - Ian

Xpression camera is just one of the many applications that can imprint users’ facial movements. A few months ago in the newsletter, we covered Puppets.World which can produce a video of any person from a photo or portrait. While deepfakes can have some serious implications, products like xpression camera can also help you combat Zoom fatigue by relying on an avatar to take the pressure off emoting 100% of the time.

Will you be brave enough to turn up to your next video call in your PJ's?

Apple just launched three products.

Back in June, Apple announced that the Mac was taking a ‘huge leap’ forward. Yesterday, they shared what that meant with the new Apple Silicon chip for Mac called M1. Originally, a Mac needed multiple chips (processor, I/O, security, and memory) to operate. Now with the M1, these technologies are combined into a single system on a chip (SoC).

With 16 billion transistors, the M1 boasts high performance and high efficiency, meaning that it will use a fraction of the power to deliver quality experiences. Apple claims that typically PCs can’t achieve this balance, especially with integrated graphics - so expect gaming to be lit.

To compliment M1, Apple also shared that Big Sur, Apple's new macOS announced in June, will be widely available on November 12. Big Sur will be supported on older Macs too, so you don’t need to drop $$$ on a new laptop to experience the UI facelift and features.

So where will this incredibly smart chip be used?

💻The new MacBook Air starts at $999, with the CPU speed 3.5x faster and GPU speed 5x faster with the M1 chip. Also, most users will appreciate the silent, fanless design.

💻The new MacBook Pro starts at $1299 and boasts up to 20 hours of battery life - the longest of any Mac ever. It comes with 2.8x CPU performance, up to 5x the graphics speed, and improved microphones.

🖥️The new Mac Mini starts at $699, with up to 3x faster CPU performance and up to 6x faster graphics. As a desktop, it’s tiny but powerful.

The M1 chip models are available starting November 17, or you can preorder online today. Until then, you can explore the glorious memes circling from the event.

This weekend and for much of last week, most of us were glued to our Twitter feeds. 👀

Twitter has always played a large role in the Product Hunt community. It was the first way to authenticate logging into Product Hunt and still remains a large part of how we engage with our community. Hello Twitter fam.

We’ve seen tons of great products launch with Twitter in mind over the years. So much so that we have a topic dedicated to it.

Over the weekend, Hashflags launched as way to keep track of branded likes and temporary hashflags. For those unaware, a hashflag is a temporary static or animated image that comes after some hashtags—often associated with events or special dates. Although not new, they do appear to be increasing in popularity. To view some live examples, try #PlayStation5 #XboxSeriesX #AppleEvent or #iPhone12Studio.

For more Twitter oriented products, here's a selection of recent launches:

Yup monetizes users’ likes on top platforms like Twitter and Reddit.

Chirr App can turn a blog into a Twitter thread in a single click.

Bleepr uses natural language processing (NLP) to automatically tag hate speech or toxic language in tweets.

OnlyTweets is an experiment from Stir which allows creators to monetize natively on Twitter.

Stock Charts is a Chrome extension that allows you to see stock charts over tagged tickers on Twitter.

Twitter-Free Mornings hides your Twitter feed until noon every day.

Framed Tweets by Sticker Mule will ship you any tweet in an ornate, hand-made, gold frame.

Everyone is looking for their own version of TLC this year and we’ve seen products rise to the challenge of launching solutions to address health and wellbeing.

As we venture towards the last leg of the year, here are 6 recent products that can offer some wellness support:

🧘Stretch Club can help you move your muscles, either as a mid-afternoon energizer or post-work cool down. Select from a curated list of routines and follow along with custom illustrations.

☁️ Mirrorly is a mental health journaling app that uses AI. The app uses machine learning to learn a users emotional state throughout the day to predict insights about their mood.

🏃WorkoutMe pairs you with a partner to get through simple exercises to make those daily goals achievable.

🤳Plicly wants to help correct your posture to help decrease back and neck pain with real-time coaching. Less slouching whilst doom scrolling Twitter.

😴 Pzizz 5.0 helps to quiet your mind, fall asleep, stay asleep, by using a mix of music, voiceover and sound effects designed with the latest clinical research.

🌈 Trip wants to take users on a self-guided journey when responsibly using psychedelics. Blending modern neuroscience with the psychology, this is a timely app especially with the recent law changes in Oregon.

This is of course just a snapshot. To view more products in this space, view the health and wellness topic.

Todays' newsletter was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Ground News.

Ground News dropped its latest tool, Bias Checker, last month to help users avoid biases in the news consumed on social media. If you watched the Social Dilemma and were terrified, this browser extension aims to ease some of those anxieties.

Having already helped over 150,000 users identify biased news through its iOS, Android, Web Apps, and Blindspot Report, Ground News aims to help more users avoid the dangers of an echo chamber within their bubbles on social media through the Bias Checker.

So how does it detect bias? Let’s break it down:

✅ Instantly shows the media bias distribution of any story on your social media feed (% of coverage from sources on the left, right, and center).

✅ Easy access to media bias data and other perspectives on articles from over 50,000+ news sites.

✅ Click to see an aggregation of reporting and compare how other sources are covering the story.

Uncover the underlying political bias in your Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook news feeds. To find out more about Ground News directly from its CEO Harleen Kaur, check out Bias Checker on Product Hunt.

V.One wants to empower non-technical founders and product owners to build monetizable apps with no code.

This product is a simple option to build and release an app. You can drag and drop modules, connect data, and publish to the app store, or opt for beta testers with TestFlight.

With integrations from Airtable, Stripe, Canva, Webflow and Shopify (among others), V.One makes it easy for anyone take a product idea to app build quickly, and without any code.

V.One also offers virtual lessons and best practices to help get anyone started, even providing personalised loom videos to help onboard early users.

Here’s what the community said on launch day:

“I have some design experience but I legitimately don't think it's necessary - it's really built to be used by someone from any tech background.” - David

“This is such an amazing tool for first-time founders to build their MVP. I wish I had this in 2015.” - James

“As a developer, being able to export an actual react native app is just amazing. Would make a first prototype using VOne for sure next time instead of coding.” - Karen

V.One joins other no code app builders that have launched this year from Candu and Bravo Studio 2.0, to Google and Amazon.

Your profile picture is often the first image people have of you. Twitter friends that you've never met IRL, or a potential new employer connecting virtually for the first time. The way you choose to portray yourself visually online, especially in our remote-first world, can say a lot about you.

We've seen the trend for using AI and AR to enhance profile images and online avatars increase in popularity in recent months. Last week, makers, Roman, Eugene and Tanya dropped PFPMaker, a product that uses background removal AI that makes the subject (you) stand out.

Similar products launched in this space include Trace 2.0 by Sticker Mule, BG App, and PhotoRoom.  If you want to be fancier, you could always wait for Adobe Photoshop 2021 which uses AI-powered neural filter features to change someone's expression, pose, age, gaze, etc. among other features.

To go beyond an enhanced photo image of yourself, Toonify takes your features and turns you into a cartoon, and Photo Lab AI Artist can turn your profile into a piece of art.

Perhaps you want to spruce up your design portfolio with a talking sketch portrait of yourself. AI Portraits by SketchAR uses AI+AR to make that happen. And who knows - maybe 2D profile pics will be a thing of the past. Alethea AI imagines a world where users can create photorealistic, emotive, and intelligent avatars from one image.

Will you experiment with a new background for your profile picture? Let us know 👇

Today, Raspberry Pi launched Raspberry Pi 400, a portable keyboard with a complete built-in computer.

This fancy but ultra-powerful keyboard comes with a mouse, power supply, micro HDMI to HDMI cable, and SD card preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS - although, if you’re already a user of Raspberry Pi you can purchase the keyboard as a standalone unit.

The product has an impressive list of features for a keyboard (4GB of RAM anyone?), but most impressive is its low cost and portability for those on the go or those learning programming.

In the past few months, we’ve seen other cool keyboards that can power-up your fingers. 🆙

Lumi Keys is a portable illuminated keyboard that can help you learn music, where Keychron K3 is a wireless mechanical keyboard with the world’s first hot-swappable low profile Optical switches. With people working from home, the option to invest in a deluxe keyboard is quite tempting.

Todays' newsletter was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Secureframe.

Being enterprise-ready never looked sweeter. 😎Let’s chat about how Secureframe can streamline your SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance in a matter of weeks.

Getting SOC 2 (pronounced 🧦 two) compliant takes roughly 6 - 12 months, followed by regular audits and overhead. Let’s be honest. No one wants to spend hours trying to figure out new compliance standards or have administrative paperwork be a blocker every year.

“In the same way that companies use Quickbooks to prepare their books, Secureframe is hoping to do the same with security standards, starting with SOC 2 and ISO 27001.” - Shrav Mehta, Co-founder

Secureframe automates security awareness training, collecting audit evidence, monitoring cloud infrastructure, and more. They’re backed by Base10 Partners and Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused venture fund), where they’ve recently raised $4.5M.

As your company continues to scale, Secureframe will allow you to spend more time focused on your team and customers, and less time losing sleep over risky behavior.

Here’s what the community thinks of their release:

“Such an annoying process that all businesses selling to the B2B world need to go through. Glad someone is fixing it!” - Nick

“I would have given my left arm for this years ago. Enterprise compliance is such a bottleneck when it comes to closing & implementation.” - Harrison

“Game-changer in enabling startups to sell to established, enterprise businesses.” - Nikil

Are you a well-seasoned compliance pro or just starting your journey?