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At Product Hunt, we hear a lot about what it means to make a product — whether it's in the comments of a launch post, in a tweetstorm, on our podcast or in our DMs. The details behind these stories often translate into a lesson another Maker could use. So we decided to put these “How I did X” anecdotes in one place.

Today, we're excited to take the hood off Maker Stories, a platform for Makers to share their knowledge on Product Hunt.

What you can expect

Every day, we'll curate new stories from Makers — whether they're long-time CEOs or solo creators — to give real, accessible insight into what it means to make a product, build a team, acquire the first 100 users, and all the other things that go into building something new. 💪

We'll cover things like how to bootstrap a community-driven business with 50,000 members and why press stunts work to grow $20K in MRR. These will come as traditional blog posts, reimagined tweetstorms, Q&A sessions, podcast summaries and other experimental formats.

Share your story

We also want to feature you on Maker Stories. We're looking for stories on startup lessons, side projects, works in progress, failure, productivity, growth hacks and anything that goes into making a product come to life. Give us all the nitty-gritty details. 😍

If you're interested, share your story here with the following:

• Your name and job title
• A sample headline for the piece
• A 1-2 sentence description of the story's angle
• Your Twitter handle (if you have one!)
• The story!

Note: If you want us to republish a story you've already written, please provide a link to the story. Articles, Twitter threads and podcast transcriptions welcome.

Raise your hand if you're terrible at remembering passwords. ✋

Good news. Yesterday, the World Wide Web Consortium approved WebAuthn, a new authentication standard for password-free logins.

How it works: WebAuthn is an API that lets websites communicate with security devices, and allows users to log into their online accounts using biometrics and authentication hardware like FIDO security keys.

WebAuthn is already supported by browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. Android and Windows 10 also support the new standard.

The next step for WebAuthn? Websites need to integrate the standard. Dropbox, Facebook, GitHub, Salesforce, Stripe and Twitter are already on board.

Why this is important: WebAuthn is more secure than the weak passwords that a lot of people use to safeguard their online accounts. Three out of four people use duplicate passwords online, and 21 percent of people use passwords that are over 10 years old. 😳

What does this mean for password managers like 1Password, PadLock, Dashlane, Google Titan and Blockvault? Time will tell. But not having a password at all is simpler than having to remember any password in the first place. 🔒

“What if there's a chatroom where you pay per message?” - Marc Köhlbrugge

That's the basic concept behind Expensive Chat, a chatroom where you pay $0.01 per letter. Expensive Chat launched on Product Hunt last week from Maker Marc Köhlbrugge, who also runs WIP and BetaList (among many side projects). The more abstract idea behind the product: chatrooms turn into chaos quickly — so how will people act when every letter matters? 🤑

We noticed in the product's comments that people were surprisingly game for the social experiment, and even had some suggestions for other ways to monetize conversations on the internet:

“It will change the internet. It'd be nice if implemented in groups on WhatsApp or Telegram to reduce spam notifications. Google should think about this to fight email spam too. Email from non-contact lists should pay” - Agus

“This concept should be applied to intra-office email/chat communications. Or meetings. Apply cost to disruption like this and it could make communications between co-workers or meetings far more productive” - Hayden

“I want an integration with Twitter to get to know how much my timeline is worth” - Alessandro

Since Expensive Chat's been active, folks have paid to post things like a job board for remote opportunities and requests to follow personal Instagram accounts and podcasts.

It's turned into a conversational ad platform, which may play into Köhlbrugge's vision. In the future, he says he imagines Expensive Chat could be a place where celebrities or professionals could host paid chats. 💬

We've seen a few other “social experiments” looking to combat conversation overload. SayHenlo only lets you send users one message, and you can’t send another message until they respond to your last one. Leeroy is like a decentralized Twitter, where instead of "likes" you get "tips" for good content (and get paid real ETH it). Cardpop is like Snapchat, but for postcards — you can send cards from photos you've taken on your phone.

The internet may have its own podcast soon.

Yesterday, TAYL launched on Product Hunt to give content on the internet a voice. How TAYL works:

Step 1: Signup to create your own “podcast”
Step 2: When you find something interesting online, bookmark it on TAYL
Step 3: Later on, grab your AirPods and start listening to the internet (i.e. the sites bookmarked)

Some of TAYL's additional features:

It detects the language of text automatically 🔍
It uses A.I. to summarize long articles 🤓
It lets you select from over 50 voices in 17 languages 🌍
It sounds (almost) human 🎧

Some early reactions on Product Hunt:

“I’ve always wanted something like this. I listen to a lot of podcasts, never get the time to read though” - Keir

“Best voice imitation” - Anna

Audio technology like this could be a solution for people with vision or reading problems, and we're seeing others dip into the space.

Narro also turns articles into a podcast 📰
Voice Dream Mail reads you your emails 💌
Read2Me turns any website or file into a podcast 🎙
Play turns your Wordpress articles into podcasts 📝
Speechkit creates audio for any news story 🎧

We've been patiently waiting for the next Pokémon GO, or another mobile game that taps into today's zeitgeist and becomes an instant cultural hit. Well, maybe that game is already here.

Design Home launched in late 2016 to bring virtual spaces to life with real-life furniture, and it has become quite popular under the radar. How it works: Players are presented with “challenges” to furnish a few empty rooms every day. They then choose a room to furnish, pick out the furniture and it's rated by others. It's kind of like The Sims, but for millennials who used to play The Sims.

Something to watch: this type of video game points to the future of advertising. When users are picking out furniture “virtually,” they're presented with a catalog of pieces from retailers like West Elm, Design With Reach, etc. Like the Sims, Design Home allows an escape from real life in favor of a fantasy. In this case, the fantasy is beautiful apartments filled with expensive furniture.

To date, the game has been downloaded over 50 million times and over one million people (typically women between ages 25-55) play the game every day.

We're also seeing products like this launch that aren't even gamified. Back in January, Amazon debuted Showroom to let shoppers virtually decorate their homes.

Prefer to live in the real-world? We went down the rabbit hole looking tools to improve homeownership:

⏰ Cost of Living Calculator for seeing how far your salary takes you
👀 Omni rentals for earning $$$ on stuff you own
🏠 Home Assistant for home automation
⛓ Rentberry Rent Payments for paying and collecting rent with crypto
🔎 Nobbas for house searching
🛀 Fairy for home cleaning
🙌 Hello Alfred for everything
🛋 Havenly for interior design

“What's a tool that changed your life?” - us to freelancers on Twitter yesterday.

Why we think this is an important question: freelancing often means unchartered territory. When you work for yourself, it's up to you to find clients, lead projects, manage payments, find insurance, get dressed every day, etc. But freelancing as a career option is on the rise — reports predict that a majority of the U.S. workforce will be freelance by 2027.

Want that life? Here are some of the apps that freelancers are currently using:

Freshbooks for getting paid 💸
Slack for communication 💬
Notion for an all-in-one workspace 🙌
Webflow for web design ✍️
Qlearly as a tabs manager 👀
Nuzzel for news monitoring 🗞
Unsplash for images 🌄
Things for managing tasks 📝
Pastel for feedback and questions❓
1Password for security 🔒
AND CO for invoicing, expenses and proposals 👏

Robots will take over the world, they said.

But for now...the robots are helping us complete day-to-day tasks. And they're getting *creative* in the process.

Yesterday, Hexbot, an all-one-robotic arm that turns your desk into a production line launched on Product Hunt. The robot can do all types of work: drawing, laser engraving, 3D printing, etc.

From the Product Hunt comments:

“Can it make coffee? No seriously.” - Amelia

Well there's already a robot for that.

Here are eight other robots to make your life a little easier.

Roomba is a Wi-Fi-connected robot vacuum 🙌

Terra will mow your lawn for you 🌿

Kamibot teaches your kids to code ✔️

Serve will deliver your Postmates order 🚐

Robomart is like a self-driving grocery store 🍪

Varram will keep your pet company when you're not around 🐶

Scout will deliver your Amazon order 📦

Peeqo only responds in GIFs and videos. It's just the cutest. 🎬

There's a new wild west in tech: foldable smartphones.

Last week, Samsung officially unveiled its “Galaxy Fold,” after teasing the new technology back in November. The Galaxy Fold folds like a book, with a large screen on the inside protected by an outer cover — which also has a screen on it. And this new tech comes with a hefty price tag: $1,980 to be exact. 😐

Now, not even a week later, the Galaxy Fold is facing some competition. Huawei launched its own foldable smartphone, dubbed the “Mate X” at Mobile World Congress yesterday. The Mate X folds depending on how you hold the phone, using one screen on the outside in three different ways. Compared to the Galaxy Fold, its screen is bigger, it folds flatter and it's thinner overall. But it'll run you $2,600. 😳

Foldable phone hype doesn't stop there! LG also launched its own version of a foldable device yesterday, but it's really just a phone that has a second screen.

We know what you're thinking — is there going to be a foldable iPhone? Maybe. Apple hasn't joined the foldable phone race just yet, but it's been reported that Apple may be working on a foldable iPhone that could launch in 2020. 🔮

If you’re not a fan of this foldable trend and miss Snake, pickup this Nokia classic.

Remember how we wrote about GAN, the technology behind the creepy fake face generator This Person Does Not Exist?

The TLDR: When you click on the website, it generates an image of a person’s face. Refresh the page, and you’ll get another face. But none of these people are real. They’re generated entirely by AI.

Needless to say, it's a trend now. This week, a whole new set of GAN use cases launched on Product Hunt, because the internet needs this #content!

Unsurprisingly, someone created This Cat Does Not Exist, which generates — you guessed it — photos of AI-generated cats.

“Please do this with food” - Nabeena

“Next would be dogs” - Arunkumar

“This is why I pay for my internet” - Amrith

Today, it's Which Face is Real?, which lets you guess if an image is a real human or GAN.

Go forth and create more GAN apps, Internet. Happy Friday!

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

A few health stats you should know:

😳 Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned

💊 More than 19 million women in the U.S. do not have nearby access to healthcare clinics that offer a full range of contraception

💸 Even if you do live near a doctor, an appointment to ask for a birth control prescription can run you anywhere from $35-$250

Healthcare company Nurx is on a mission to change those numbers.

The details

Nurx launched back in 2016 to help people take control over their own healthcare decisions and break down barriers to care. Their first product was on-demand birth control delivered straight to patients’ homes in discreet packaging.

Some immediate reactions on Product Hunt:

“I just ordered birth control in < 5 minutes. Hands down most useful product I've found on Product Hunt to date” — Kelsey

“This is great - solves such a huge (and undeserved) pain point. A real game changer” - Ruchita

“This is incredible, and such a huge pain point/need for me personally” - Constance

How it works: To get birth control delivered, patients download the Nurx app and share some information about their health history. Nurx’s medical team then reviews the information and determines if they can write a prescription for the best birth control option for the patient. Nurx offers over 50 brands of birth control, many of which are affordable and cost-effective — even for those without insurance. You can also request and get Plan B delivered to your home through Nurx.

Nurx’s overall mission is to revolutionize healthcare by putting control back in patients’ hands, and this starts with with making birth control affordable and accessible. With insurance, birth control through Nurx is typically free. Without insurance, birth control starts as low as $15 per month. 🙌

A brief history of Nurx

After the healthcare company found success with birth control, Nurx introduced PrEP, a daily pill that helps HIV-negative people stay HIV-negative. Nurx is the only company where patients can request PrEP and do all the necessary testing without needing to visit the doctor or lab IRL.

Last July, the company raised $36 million led by Kleiner Perkins. Public health leader Chelsea Clinton and Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin also joined Nurx’s board of directors.

Just last month, Nurx launched an Home HPV screening test to help women get tested for high-risk types of HPV that lead to cervical cancer. It’s a great option for women that haven’t been getting pap smears as regularly as they should. The HPV test costs $69 without insurance or $15 with insurance.

What’s next

Nurx is now available in 22 states and the District of Columbia, providing access to nearly 80 percent of the U.S.