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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.

The 2-week-old app with 1M downloads

David Dobrik has 11 million Instagram followers. He has even more followers on YouTube, where over 15 million people subscribe to his channel. All of that is excluding the three million followers he has on his Instagram account dedicated exclusively to photos taken on a disposable camera. You get it — David has a lot of followers.

That’s why it’s not that surprising that David’s new camera app, David’s Disposable, has already reportedly surpassed over one million downloads. FWIW, it launched in late December. 📸

The app landed briefly at the top of the list of Apple’s more popular free apps in the App Store, sitting above Disney+ and Instagram itself (it’s no longer listed at the top of that list). According to The Verge, folks on TikTok have also taken to recommending the app.

The lo-fi, '90s look of disposable cameras has made a big comeback on Instagram as of late, a trend fueled by nostalgia and the need for imperfection on an app the rewards perfection. So far, that look has been achieved through apps like Huji Cam (which was downloaded over 22 million times as of 2018), 1888, Gudak, or an actual disposable camera if you’re old school.

David’s Disposable seems similar to a lot of these apps — it turns your phone screen in a Fujifilm-style disposable camera. When you snap a photo with app, you have to wait until 9 a.m. the next day to look at the photos, simulating the experience of an actual disposable camera. You can also order the photos as prints directly from the app. 👀

David’s Disposable is free to download, but a $1 subscription fee will get rid of ads within the app.

100,000 teams use this

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at monday.com

Over the last few months, we’ve shared how monday.com‘s (valued at $1.9 billion) work management tool is uniquely designed to help teams collaborate, communicate and stay in sync. To date, over 100,000 teams worldwide — including companies like Uber, Adobe, Universal, and Cotsco — use  monday.com to get work done. 

How it works: monday.com allows you to manage any workflow or process through a variety of different views (kanban, timeline, charts, etc) to visualize the status of your projects, see who’s doing what, prioritize tasks, set due dates and communicate with your team in real time. It also lets you put your workflow on autopilot, integrating all your tools into one automated workflow. Ultimately, it frees your team from repetitive manual tasks so they can focus on impact and innovation with pre-made automations.

Bonus features:

  • Dashboards give you the ability to see the big picture, and you can build and customize your dashboards to gain important insights and a clear overview of your work
  • Automations with third party tools, including your calendar, email, Zendesk, Slack, Dropbox, Mailchimp and many, many others

You can try it for free here. Some reviews from the PH community so far:

"I love Monday, truly. It's beautiful and strikes a great balance between clean and intuitive and deep functionality." - Jason

“Friendly, modern an intuitive UI. Limitless applications. Visual, overview, fantastic support, rapid development of even more features." - Bart

“My definition of an agile tool. Combines all that my team needs in one place.” - John

Review: A year of deepfake launches

Facebook put out an announcement earlier this week outlining its plan for addressing deepfakes on its platform. The TLDR; intentionally misleading deepfakes are banned, as is content that uses AI to merge, superimpose or replace content onto a video. 👀

Facebook’s new rule is not all-encompassing by any means — it does not extend to parody or satire, or “video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words.”

It’s the latest step by a big tech company to combat the spread of misinformation by deepfakes before it gets out of hand. The announcement also follows a tweet from Twitter’s Safety team in October that asked the public to weigh in on its new policy to address deepfakes.

All of this comes at a time where synthetic media is growing steadily, as is anxiety over the potentially harmful fall-out from deepfakes (i.e. in political elections) on social media. Within the past week, it was reported that TikTok’s parent company quietly built a deepfake maker. Snap also seems to be investing in the technology with its recent acquisition of AI Factory (a startup that created animated selfies that map onto videos), which we wrote about earlier this week.

Over the past year, we’ve seen over 10 product launches of the “this X does not exist” variety, meaning AI-generated faces, resumes, cats, personalities, startups, snacks (lol), Airbnbs, memes, and feet. There was also a few products that let you deepfake yourself into pop culture scenes, including the Star Wars galaxy or the Marvel universe.

Cannabis drama at CES

KEEP is the first cannabis company to win a CES Innovation Award, but the company won’t be exhibiting at CES.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), aka the trade group that governs CES, banned KEEP from saying the word “cannabis” on the CES show floor. So KEEP decided it wound’t display at CES (despite winning a top award), since, well, it’s a cannabis company.

How it works: KEEP is a smart storage device for storing weed. The unit looks like a sleek smart speaker or clock, but it discreetly keeps marijuana hidden with an airtight seal and organization containers. Facial recognition unlocks the device, and the owner gets mobile alerts if the device is tampered with (there’s no risk of kids or dogs getting into this device).

The product was dreamt up by two dads, Ben Gilksman (a venture capital attorney) and Philip Wilkins (who previously sold two companies). They simply wanted a more safe and secure way to store their edibles.

“We found that the only products on the market we're perpetuating the 'stoner' stigma associated with cannabis and did nothing to address keeping cannabis responsibly, not hidden. After a year of research, design, and prototyping, we've built a product we're incredibly proud of." - Philip

While KEEP is not exhibiting at CES, the company is featured on the CES website alongside other Innovation Award Honorees.

This all feels familiar right? To jog your memory — last year CES rescinded an award for a micro-robotic sex toy made for women. Then, CES reinstated Osé as the winner of a robotics prize at the show. Don’t worry, the company is back at CES this year.

Acquired by Snap 👻

Snap just made its latest acquisition. 💸

News just broke that the company has bought up AI Factory, a Ukrainian startup that will power a new animated selfie feature in the Snapchat app. These animated selfies are being dubbed “Cameos” by Snap — they map selfies onto videos and resemble, well, deepfakes.

AI Factory was founded by Victor Shaburov, who previously founded Looksery and sold that company to Snap in 2015. In case you don’t remember, Looksery created facial feature detection and manipulation technology which has since led to one of Snapchat most successful developments — “Lenses.” Remember when we all augmented our faces to look like babies? That was a lens, and it became so popular that it contributed to quarterly user growth at Snap last year. (Note: Snapchat recently launched another face-aging lens to bring people back to the app.) 

The details of the deal haven’t been confirmed, but some reports speculate that Snap paid $166 million for AI Factory.

For alllll the Snap products — from automated ads to Spectacles — check out this list. 👈

For a similar deepfake-y product, try Morphin.

RIP alcohol

2019 was the year of the “sober curious” movement.

We saw product launches of all stripes in this space, from Kin (a non-boozy alternative to alcohol) to Haus (a low-ABV option) to a cannabis-infused social tonic.

So it’s appropriate that there’s now tools that promote wellness around alcohol consumption. Notably, Less launched this week to help you become more mindful about drinking. The app was created by the makers of Zero, an app the lets you track your fasting.

How it works: As you log drinks through the app, your daily intake affects a weather simulation where you’re on a metaphorical sailboat. To keep “skies sunny and the wind at your back,” you have to stay under your alcohol limit. The app then organizes your drinking data in graphs so you can watch things like how many drinks you have per week and how much money you spend on alcohol over the course of a year. There’s also a “Tips” tab that has a selection of drinking-related articles, mocktail recipes and advice from medical experts. 🙌

Some early reviews from the PH community:

“I’m pumped for this. Use Zero religiously.” - Justin

“I really appreciate this app and I wish I had a product like this when I decided to curb my drinking a few years ago.” - Zak

“Just embarking on dry January. Less is going to be in my pocket and on my side“ - Carrie

Would you use this? 10 points to whoever has smooth sailing for the rest of the year. ⛵️

“Please leave us a review in iTunes”

For anyone who runs a podcast, you know that it can be challenging to get listeners to review your show. Don’t believe us? Just read this on why no one should ever start a podcast.

But rankings on platforms like iTunes and other platforms are determined by reviews and ratings (as well as downloads and subscribers), so reviews remain an important part of podcast marketing.

“A lot of shows ask you to 'please leave us a review in iTunes' but it's not a very useful call to action because most listeners don't know how.” - James

To solve this problem (and help podcast makers get more reviews in general) James created Rate This Podcast, a tool that lets podcasters create a memorable link to read out to listeners at the end of every episode. It works by listing out the right apps for their device, explaining how to subscribe and leave a review, and then it sends them to the right place with a deep link. The links also prompts listeners to subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts.

“Ratings and reviews are important for improving the credibility of your podcast and they act as social proof for attracting new listeners.” - James

Other tools that will level up your podcasting game:

🎙 Descript is an all-encompassing tool for producing podcasts

🎙 Podcast Rental will help you find and rent podcast studios

🎙 Soundtrap for Storytellers is a podcast studio in the cloud

🎙 Anchor is a superrr simple tool for making podcasts

🎙 Zencastr lets you record crystal clear podcasts remotely (we use it for PH Radio)

🎙 Chameleon is like RapGenius, but for podcasts

We’re giving away an iPhone 11

Christmas came late.

Enter to win a brand new iPhone 11, courtesy of our friends at The Street Sheet, Titan, SheFinds, Newser and more. 📱

The winner will also get an annual subscription to DC Universe streaming service (worth $75). 🙌

If you're not an iPhone person, consider buying yourself a late Christmas present and get the minimalist Light Phone.

Note: Due to legal restrictions, this is only limited to U.S. folks. If it were up to us we'd be sending you all iPhones and kittens this year.

That is all. 🎁

Dear Product Hunt...

Dear Product Hunt,

It's me, Product Hunt. Happy (almost) New Year! Tomorrow’s the first day of 2020 and I'm so excited for all the stuff we have planned over the next year.

As I'm writing this, I know you’re hard at work prepping the launch of something new in 2020. I hope everyone likes those pancakes you’re cookin’ up.

You’ve also been thinking a lot about how to bring Makers around the world together IRL. I can’t wait to see how the huge global meetup in January goes over with the community. And I'm of course excited for the Golden Kitty Awards. Am I nominated? 😉

Anyways, I’m glad you were born in the 2010s and I hope you have a great 2020.

Love,
Product Hunt

P.S. If you want to write a letter to your 2021 self, use this.

Top Launches:PadloczRateBookyBooky
We made a thing ❤️

It's almost the new year (and the start of the 2020s!). Cue the 2019 reflections.

Instead of evaluating your old routines and habits, let's recognize the people and products that made a difference to you this year by giving them a shout-out here. Here are a few submissions from the Product Hunt community so far:

“Thanks to  @adamwathan for making Tailwind CSS it changed the way I build websites, and they look so much better!“ - Mubashar

“Thank you to @mijustin for the Mega Maker community, @marie_dm_ for Women Make and @anthilemoon for the Newsletter Geeks community. Being a solo founder doesn't feel as lonely with their support.“  - Veni

“I am so thankful for the @producthunt team and all of the members of the Makers by Product Hunt community. I want to personally send a thank you to @rrhoover @abadesi @aaronoleary and @amrith for being so communicative and helpful this past year.“ - Brendan

“I gotta give @philzcoffee and @jacobjaber another shout out. For 7+ years, I spend the first few hours of my day slapping the keyboard with a Silken Splendor.“ - Ryan

Add your shout-outs and we'll share some of our favorites on Twitter. 😊