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Here's a thought: Imagine hearing about Apple products from Steve Jobs himself. Or perhaps you'd rather have a conversation with Elon Musk about going to Mars. Want to ask the Dalai Lama about spirituality. Well now you can.

Earlier this week, Sidekik launched on Product Hunt with the mission of creating “Digital Humans” through artificial intelligence. The Maker, Johannes Tammekänd, hopped into the comments to discuss the inspiration behind the product. 💬

Last year, Johannes's grandfather passed away. Like a lot of people, he regretted not spending more time with him, and ended up exploring what he left behind; letters, photographs and videos. The experience inspired an idea to bring memories to life through AI and neural networks, starting with important figures in history. The long-term vision? Seven billion digital humans so all of our legacies can have a voice.

What the community thinks:

“I think the digital preservation of folks is something really critical and opens up whole new avenues for learning, entertainment, and real conversations” - Joel .

“The same question to each of the AI personalities gave me similar but different answers, really cool!” - Sercan

“The Dalai Lama just reminded me of how important meditation is to preserve a healthy mind.” - Sten

Who should Sidekik replicate next? Bieber? Oprah? Vote for your favorite here.

In the meantime, more avatar apps:

👀 Chudo

👀 Icon

👀 SelfiMoji

👀 Facehub

👀 Toonstar

👀 Genies

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

Plaid, a platform that lets people connect their bank accounts to an app, announced its expansion into the UK today. The company will support major UK banks and neobanks as part of the launch.

Whether you’re a start-up with the next big innovation to serve the underbanked, or a large enterprise looking to leverage the latest in fintech on a global stage, you can now partner with Plaid to access banks globally.

A brief history of Plaid: Plaid was founded in 2012 with a focus on lowering the barriers to entry in financial services by making it easier and safer to use financial data. Companies like Acorns, Betterment, Coinbase, Transferwise, and Venmo all use Plaid, and tens of millions of people have successfully connected their accounts to apps they love using the service. In the past six months, Plaid raised $250M and acquired Quovo to give developers access to investment and brokerage data.

Plaid's products include:

🛍 Transactions: Access detailed transaction history and balance data

🏦 Auth: Instantly authenticate bank accounts for payments

👤 Identity: Verify users’ identities and reduce fraud

💸 Balance: Verify real-time account balances

📖 Assets: Verify borrowers’ assets straight from the source

💲 Income: Understand income and verify employment

You can also play around with Plaid's API for free. Start building here.

P.S. New developers get 500 free connections for UK banks.

P.P.S. Founder Club members get an additional special offer on Plaid.

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is reportedly working on its own smartphone.

What we know: The phone would come with preloaded ByteDance apps, which includes TikTok, chat app Flipchat, video-messaging app Duoshan, Slack-like work messaging app Lark and news aggregator Jinri Toutiao. Over the weekend, rumors broke that ByteDance is planning to launch a music streaming service. The company also confirmed it made a deal with phone maker Smartisan earlier this year — now we know why.

ByteDance isn't the first company to make smartphones as a growth hack. Selfie app maker Meitu also builds smartphones pre-loaded with photo editing apps, and recently sold this arm of its business to Xiaomi. Amazon tried this with its Fire Phone (launched in 2014) and Facebook with 'Home' (launched in 2013). Both companies have since discontinued these products.

Ultimately, it's pretty easy (and cheap) to download any app you want on say, an iPhone, without buying a smartphone preloaded with a suite of apps.

On a related note, we have seen a ton of cool new smartphones launch in the past year if you are thinking of shaking things up. Some to check out:

📱 Palm is a tiny smartphone that fits in your palm

📱 Blackview is a super rugged smartphone

📱 Redmi Go is a $65 smartphone from Xiaomi

📱 Huawei P30 is a photography-centric smartphone

📱Samsung Galaxy Fold is a foldable smart phone

We’ll keep you posted when the “TikTok smartphone” launches. Until then, send us your best Lil Nas X lip sync videos. 😉

It's official: Facebook is getting into crypto.

The tech giant reportedly plans to test its cryptocurrency “GlobalCoins” by the end of this year. The move comes as part of Facebook's larger plan to launch a digital payments system by 2020.

The big goal: It seems like Facebook is looking to create a system that *successfully* combines sending messages with sending money. As the owner of WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, Facebook's cryptocurrency is poised to do just that.

GlobalCoins' status: Mark Zuckerberg has already met with Bank of England governor Mark Carney to discuss the cryptocurrency, and U.S. lawmakers have sent Zuck a letter of regulatory questions regarding the token. Facebook is expected to outline more plans about GlobalCoins later this summer.

In the meantime, check out these recent crypto products that caught our attention:

Fundabit.co is like Patreon, but built on Ethereum 🙌

Honeyminer Mac is a superrr simple mining application 👏

Lolli lets you earn free bitcoin when you stop online 🛍

Cheeze Wizards is a crypto-native game by the CryptoKitties team 🧀

CoinsCrate is a lightning fast crypto market data provider ⚡️

Birdchain pays you in crypto for watching ads 💸

CoinBits automates bitcoin investing 🤑

Prediction: your next shiny new toy will be yellow.

Yesterday, Playdate, a tiny *yellow* Game Boy-like device made headlines for its black-and-white screen, chunky retro buttons and...hand crank. 👀

Panic, a company mostly known for making Mac apps, is behind the console, with help from hardware design company Teenage Engineering (the team behind Pocket Operator).

How it works: Instead of buying cartridges or downloading games, Playdate will release a “season” of games by unlocking one new game each week. The hardware is anti-smartphone and deviates from devices like the Switch, in that its aiming to be a distinctly *different* gaming experience.

Naturally, the Product Hunt community had some mixed reactions.

Some thought the device seemed quaint...

“What an awesome little collectors item” - Jonno

Others were surprised by Panic's design choices...

“IT HAS A CRANK???” - Ryan

Others were intrigued, but confused...

“I want it but I am not sure why” - Cody

Playdate will cost $149 and is expected to ship in early 2020. 🚀

Tell us what you think here.

Until Playdate ships, here are over 9,000 old school arcade games, playable in your browser for free. Happy Friday!

P.S. In case you were wondering, the crank is supposed to work as an analog stick that breaks us of the “touch psychosis” that smartphones have caused.

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

The way we *digitally* interact with our coworkers is becoming more important than ever, especially when it comes to communication, collaboration and keeping teams in sync. So naturally, tools are cropping up to do just that.

monday.com ($84.1M raised) is a work management tool designed to keep track of teams and projects. Over 70K teams currently use monday.com to get work done, including companies like Discovery Channel, Carlsberg Group, WeWork, and Fiverr. 👀

How it works: monday.com lets you track everything your team is working on with customizable columns to fit your team's workflow. It's like a spreadsheet, but more intuitive and visual. You can communicate directly in projects to keep conversations centralized and get a high-level overview of metrics with Dashboards. The platform also integrates with other services like Slack, Trello, Dropbox, and Google Drive, with build-in automations to save your team time on manual processes.

From the Product Hunt community:

"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

Oh, and the company's customer success team will always get back to you in 10 minutes, even on the weekends. 🙌

According to reported code hidden in Uber's Android app, Uber is planning to launch a subscription service for unlimited food delivery. The 'Uber Eats Pass' will cost $9.99/month and omit Uber's service fee that's usually ~$5 or more. In other words, if you order in a lot, this could save you a lot of money.

There's already lot of competition in the food delivery space, but Uber's going after customer loyalty. In October, the company introduced Ride Pass, a $14.99/month subscription that gives riders flat, discounted fares to save them 15% on travel. This suite of subscriptions is very Amazon Prime-esque, and it's not hard to imagine Uber offering a subscription for all deliveries in the future.

But Uber isn’t the first to offer a delivery subscription. There's Postmates Unlimited and DoorDash DashPass (both $10/month for no delivery fee on orders over $15). With these services available, you're a lot less likely to order from apps like Caviar or Seamless if you're already paying a recurring monthly fee for a different food delivery service.

But part of the fun of ordering in these days is the democracy of places to choose from. Some other options:

🥕 Our Harvest for fresh produce
😋 Soylent Squared for mobile snacking
🍎 Farmdrop for groceries from farmers markets
🇮🇳 The Buttermilk Company for fresh Indian food
🔥 Yummit for home-cooked meals
🍴 AmoChef for booking a private chef

Raise your hand if you remember Google Glass? 🙋‍♀️

You probably do, since it came before Snapchat Spectacles, Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap One. It was also a notorious flop with consumers. But yesterday, Google took the hood off its newest version of Glass.

It turns out, Google Glass has been trucking along since it first launched in 2013, and shifted focus toward the the enterprise in 2017. Now, Google Glass is living on in warehouses, factory floors and hospitals to make workers more efficient and reduce errors on the job

What's new with Glass: The latest Glass has a more powerful processor, a better camera, faster charging, better battery life and a new AI engine. The latest version is also compatible with Smith safety glass frames — which admittedly make the glasses look a little more normal.

Google also moved Glass out of Alphabet's X 'moonshot factory' and into Google's AR/VR team.

Since Glass's initial launch in 2013, consumer-focused AR headsets still haven't become mainstream. The closest we've gotten is with Focals by North, which are Warby Parker-style smartglasses with a holographic display only you can see. 🕶

We’re eagerly waiting to see what Apple’s working on. 🤔

Since our API's birth in 2014, we've seen our community build a variety of creative, sometimes silly, ideas with it including a:

🙌 Chrome Extension to surface the day's most popular products

👀 “Tinder for products” mobile app

👏 Mac menubar app to quickly browse the day's top products

🤫 Command line interface to browse Product Hunt secretly at work

💬 Direct messaging app for the community

Over the past five years, we've also made several updates to Product Hunt, including a space for makers to share what they're working and help one another with their side (or full-time) projects. But we haven't updated the API to include this new functionality... until 4 days ago.

Today we're pulling the covers off Product Hunt API 2.0 and kicking off our next Makers Festival to support everyone in building something cool.

Throughout the next four weeks, we're challenging you to surprise and inspire the community with your 'API Edition' Festival creations.

For more inspiration, here are some product requests we and the community would love to see built:

• Makers mobile app. A simple app to view, add, and start goals.
• Makers Mac menubar app. A tiny app to view, add, and start goals. Bonus points if it includes the goals friends are currently working on.
• Goal integration with other apps. Make it super easy for people to share their tasks and to do's from 3rd party apps like Todoist, Wunderlist, Trello, and others to Makers.
• Guess the product. A silly game that presents four product taglines. Three are real, one is fake. Guess the fake product.
• Upvoting browser extension. A Chrome/Firefox/Safari extension that embeds an upvote button on the page when viewing a product that's been hunted.
• Mentorship matching. A site, weekly email, or app that matches makers in the community that have complimentary skill sets to accomplish specific goals or tasks.
• Tipping for makers. A browser extension that embeds a “tip” button on producthunt.com comments, using Lightning or something similar.
• Product Hunt TV. A site to channel flip through product videos.

Of course you can build whatever you’d like using the API. Get creative.

Sign up for Makers Festival here. Registrations close May 26!

Winners will be announced on June 25th (and receive a Silver Kitty trophy). If you have any questions, join the discussion here.

We can't wait to see what you build. 😻

Here's a novel thought: renting your furniture. While most of us are already used to the idea of renting an apartment at a monthly cost, what if you did the same with your couch? Or your dining table? Or your desk?

Yesterday, Feather launched to do just that. A membership gives renters a flexible and sustainable alternative to owning furniture, a particularly attractive option for folks who tend to move a lot.

How it works: For $19/month, members get access to over 150 different pieces of furniture at low prices (think $39 per month for a West Elm sofa, $12 per month for an upholstered bench, etc.). Member benefits include free delivery fees and assembly within a week, along with the ability to easily swap out your furniture at any time.

According to Feather Founder and CEO Jay Reno, members pay roughly 50 percent of the furniture's retail price in the first year. Jay also highlights that solutions like Feather are more sustainable than actually owning furniture.

“Not only is Feather beneficial for our members, but our model over time will solve a big problem facing the planet. Each year, 9.7 million tons of disposable furniture or 'fast furniture' is dumped into our landfills,” Jay wrote on Product Hunt.

Feather is already available in New York and San Francisco, and is now heading to Los Angeles with a fresh $12 million in funding ($15.4M raised in total).

From the comments:

“Love the furniture available on Feather - especially the Weaver bed frame. As someone who bed size commitment issues (should I choose a Queen, Full, or a King?), the bed frame on Feather is a perfect solution.” - Winnie

Want some more furniture inspo?

🙌 IKEA made 3D-printable ad-ons

👀 The Woodieful Chair is an adaptable chair

🔊This new speaker is part lamp, part sound system

🛋 Burrow makes customizable sofas

🛏The Floyd Bed Frame is a simple, minimalist bed frame