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Obsidian 1.0 launched yesterday with a whole new look.

If you’re new here, Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking tool that works on local Markdown files. It first beta launched in 2020, and received a Golden Kitty nomination in productivity, and then won the 2021 Golden Kitty for the mobile app category. With nearly 4,000 upvotes across its first two launches and a strong social media following, Obsidian’s existing features and UI were already highly favored.

The makers introduced a complete redesign to Obsidian for its beta graduation. The team describes the new Obsidian as more robust, accessible, and easier to theme. They’ve also prioritized using more native OS features for menus, windows, and other details.

As co-founder Erica Xu puts it, the 1.0 version is a “new way to browse your second brain,” with a new tabs feature throughout Obsidian’s UI. For an alternate tab-viewing experience, you can turn any tab group into a “tab stack.” The per-tab history also changes how users browse their vaults — each tab maintains its own history for navigation.

“Obsidian is one of my favorite apps of all time. Been using it for over a year and it is now a solid version 1 even though it's been working great for the last year in very workable betas,” said one user in the comments.

The makers have also shared a product roadmap; up next on the agenda is a Canvas view that lets you create mind maps, flow charts, org charts, moodboards, family trees and more.

The takeaway? Keep developing your product — your users will thank you for it.

From Meta’s new $1,500 headset to Elon Musk’s “Burnt Hair” perfume, it’s been an action-packed week. Microsoft joined the mix with its annual 3-day Ignite conference — here’s the biggest news from Day 1:

Microsoft’s committed to making OpenAI’s tech accessible with a new design app powered by DALL-E 2. Microsoft Designer is a free, AI-powered graphic design app that helps you design high quality social media posts, digital postcards, and more. Mohit Anand, a Product Manager at Microsoft, launched Designer on Product Hunt and said that its purpose is to “empower anyone to create designs with ease, using the power of AI.”

“With ‘start from scratch’ within Designer, you can simply describe an image you want to see, and the app does the work for you to create something totally unique,” said Liat Ben-Zur, Corporate Vice President, Product Marketing

Designer also uses AI to make template suggestions as you build out a presentation in PowerPoint, and the team plans to eventually integrate Designer into Microsoft Edge. We wonder how Canva users will feel about this. 👀

For lovers of both the Apple ecosystem and Xbox, Apple Music is now available on Xbox consoles. Next year, Apple Music and Apple TV will launch across Windows. iCloud is also coming to Microsoft devices — the new iCloud for Windows app will enable Apple users to see their iPhone pictures and videos on the Photos app in Windows. This is the crossover we knew we needed.

In hardware, the Surface Laptop 5, Surface Pro 9, and Surface Studio 2+ are also on the way.

But Designer’s use of DALL-E will likely continue to be the show stealer this Ignite. Early adopters so far are excited and discovering the product’s capabilities, like a Send to Phone feature.

“Keen observer!” responded Mohit Anand. “You can just send your created design to your phone with a simple scan of QR code :) Hope you like it.” He also notes users can access the product “Soon!... Just add your email… and we'll let you know when you've got access. 😊”

If you’ve ever tried your hand at eCommerce or moved your business online, you know making a sale isn’t as simple as listing an item.

Rye launched today, following a $14 million seed funding round led by a16z, to enable developers to build eCommerce directly in native digital experiences. Rye is co-founded by Justin Kan (Twitch co-founder), with former Reddit engineers Arjun Bhargava and Saurabh Sharma serving as CEO and CTO, respectively. Others on the team include Scribd co-founder Tikhon Bernstam, former head of Zynga Robin Chan, and Jamie Quint, former head of growth at Notion.

“After weeks of researching the market and talking to brands and sellers, my co-founders and I started to sketch together what the future of eCommerce should look like: an open and free network that could hold the collection of all products — where any brand can plug in their inventory, and any seller could pull from,” said Bhargava.

Rye will use a native token ($RYE) to offer lower transaction costs and make Rye a strong competitor to Amazon and Shopify, betting on $RYE’s valuation increasing in the long run to make up the difference. According to Kan, the ability to help merchants sell more inventory with no additional cost is part of what reeled him into the venture. Developers and merchants can also unlock USDC cashback rewards and more. Eventually, the Rye API will be fully decentralized on the Solana blockchain, and Bhargava and his team plan to introduce wallet creation for shoppers, NFT drops, and coupons.

One of Rye’s areas of focus is allowing sellers to retain their relationship with customers and get higher quality customer data. They can also retrieve data from 390M+ products, including those on Shopify and Amazon, and connect to affiliate programs, which are meant to make it easy for companies to get paid out, whether selling through influencers or directly.

For shoppers, Rye minimizes the hassle of being redirected to another merchant. According to the team, 46% of shoppers bounce when redirected to a merchant page. Instead, end-users can checkout directly from your app using any credit card. One-click checkout flashbacks?

Justin Kan, co-founder of Rye and Twitch, is hosting an AMA today. Ask him about Rye, entrepreneurship, or crypto, and learn what makes his new venture different from other eCommerce platforms.

Sitting at a computer all day gets monotonous and overwhelming real fast. Productivity flies out the window. Work piles up. Panic ensues.

Like many of us, maker Dmitry Pushkarev felt fatigued by the end of his workday. So, Sidekick Browser 2.0 was born. Despite having a successful first launch in 2020, Pushkarev wanted to offer more. He noticed an increasing number of people with ADHD were extending their kudos to Sidekick as a browser that “fits their special traits.” That inspired V2 of Sidekick; “regaining focus” for users became Pushkarev and his team’s “north star.”

“As Sidekick helps people with concentration disorders, we believe it will also benefit others who live in a world where attention is the most valuable currency,” said Pushkarev.

The new version of Sidekick is equipped with features like workspaces, focus mode, multi-accounts, synchronization, and more. You can turn your most-used sites into apps and keep them in your browser’s sidebar, and declutter your tabs. The “workspaces” feature separates your work apps, sessions, and docs from your personal ones. With focus mode, you can mute notifications and automatically sync your status to apps like Slack and Messenger.

Since neurodivergent folks typically face discrimination and stigmas in the workplace, we love to see makers trying to create a level playing field for everyone. Skeema (another browser tool) and the all new Spark (for email) are just a few other examples of productivity tools that can help neurodivergent and neurotypical adults alike.

Remember when you could sit through a one-hour vlog? Those were the good days.

Many of us now look for more ways to skim content and find shorter alternatives, either because of time or the inability to focus for that long. The numbers don’t lie either — Gen Z’s attention span is 8 seconds, compared to a millennial’s 12 seconds. 😬

While working as a software engineer at Amazon, maker Marin Smiljanic noticed it was increasingly difficult to sit through hours of training videos and even harder to find the exact moments when a topic was covered. That inspired the creation of Omnisearch, a tool that uses context-aware AI to find anything inside your audio, video, image, and word files.

With his co-founder, Matej Ferencevic, Smiljanic built on the 2021 release of Omnisearch with more limited search ability. Today’s version lets you find both spoken and visual mention of an object; if you search ‘banana,’ you’ll find video frames where the word is spoken and frames containing an actual banana. It can also search for people and characters within images and videos.

The Omnisearch API lets makers integrate Omnisearch into their websites or apps, which enables users to skim through various types of content. Smiljanic and Ferencevic target makers of online learning services, citing the low attention spans of students and the difficulty of searching for a topic within a lecture as reasons why Omnisearch could grow their user base.

As attention spans get shorter and schedules get busier, could tools like Omnisearch become an important part of website and product building? If you made it this far, let the makers know how you feel in the comments.

Will no-code tools replace developers? Doubtful.

Despite the need for less code in some areas, developers remain in high demand and solve problems that machine learning platforms and no-code tools alone cannot.

Budibase 2.0 launched this week and is a supplement to developer expertise. Coding is optional, but doesn’t replace the developer’s role. Instead, it helps developers build internal tools without tedious and repetitive tasks, and shortens dev cycles. The latest version of Budibase allows for building custom components with custom datasources, a plugin repository, and more.

“In every business across the world, there are developers who are under pressure to deliver unique business applications. These applications are tedious to build, incredibly repetitive, and the bane of many developers lives. Our entire founding team experienced this,” said the makers.

With Budibase, developers can build custom business apps, admin panels, forms, and portals. It also offers various templates to shorten the design process. The REST API connector lets devs fetch data, receive form data, and authenticate with external APIs to build even quicker.

If you’re looking for a React-based framework, refine launched this week too. It’s open source and connects to 15+ backends. Refine helps devs build admin panels, dashboards, internal tools, and storefronts for free.

Virtual events can feel like a longshot. You risk technical hiccups and losing out on a highly engaged audience and monetization opportunities.

If Hopin is any indication, the space appears to be slowing down. The unicorn soared during the pandemic, hitting a peak valuation of $7.75 billion. This year it had to lay off 29% of its staff and re-position itself for live events.

While there’s no replacement for live events, we would venture to say virtual events aren’t dead yet. With teams split across distance more than ever, they will likely have a place in our personal and professional ecosystem. And perhaps a team that understands that type of dynamic more than others can deliver a tool that helps such events flourish.

Beams launched yesterday. Maker Egor Zolotukhin and his team started out hosting Dreamers Online Forum 2020, a virtual event of 3,500 participants for startup owners. They went on to organize 50+ international events ranging from big conferences to corporate activities. “We researched the event tech field in detail, understood the problems that participants and organizers had, and found how they could be solved by applying our experience in web products development,” said Zolutkhin.

The new virtual event platform is equipped with live streaming, breakout rooms, networking sessions, surveys, and third-party app integration. Zolutkhin explained to one commenter that it's different from tools like Hopin because it uses one-window technology, which ensures that attendees don’t get lost “in a myriad of rooms or stay alone in a networking zone or exhibition hall.” Also “event activities take turns according to the organizer's scenario, without any click of the participant.”

Event organizers can showcase partners and sponsors, utilize tools like action buttons and interactive links, and use integrated apps to monetize during virtual events. Third-party integrations can boost engagement through video games and virtual office tools like SpatialChat. Users can also host trade shows with unlimited booths and exhibitions.

So far, the response has been pretty positive. “This captures the Zeitgeist of the post covid world so very well!” said one person in the comments.

Still skeptical? Fair. See what others are asking and the makers’ responses.

If your NFTs have taken a nosedive, you may have given up on investing and abandoned FinTok for good.

It’s easy to become discouraged, but makers continue to create products that help individuals start investing, regardless of the negative economic outlook.

As a hybrid between online learning and crypto/NFT platforms, Continuum is one of the more unconventional ways to get started with investing. Users can complete short-form courses on topics like the basics of cryptocurrency and NFTs, and then get paid in crypto and/or NFT rewards. The Continuum team’s goal is to “democratize creative education to create new pathways to financial freedom for all through the pixelated economy.”

Real estate has been a huge topic this year as millennials are starting to purchase homes, though investing is still unreachable for many. Makers Ming Zhu and Jack Donnell picked up on this and created FundHomes to help people build wealth by investing in top-performing Airbnbs. With Fundhomes, you can purchase shares of vacation homes and get returns without the responsibilities of home ownership.

Proptee is an NFT-based real estate investing platform that lets you buy fractionalized NFTs associated with EU, USA, and UK residential and commercial real estate and earn rental rewards for it.

Bloom Stock Market Game is a simulated stock market game that lets you compete with friends by simulating investing in over 4,000 stocks.

With more than half of US households owning stock and 16% of American adults having used crypto before, it might be worth learning how to build your own portfolio.

The road to a healthy lifestyle can get overwhelming— one day it’s “coffee adds 10 years to your lifespan”, the next it’s “coffee drinkers are more likely to develop viruses stored in glacier ice.”

In healthtech, makers are brainstorming solutions that center around the individual and make healthy living a little less confusing. Though VC funding for healthtech startups has dipped this year, the industry amassed a whopping $34B in 2021, with alternative care receiving 38% of that funding. The rise of alternative care aligns with trust in existing healthcare systems being fairly low, especially in Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American populations in the US that continue to experience racism and inequities in medical care.

With all that in mind, here are some recent launches in healthtech that could alleviate some confusion 👇

Joining the list of health wearables is the Ultrahuman Ring, an Oura-esque ring that gathers insights on your metabolic health. Maker Mohit Kumar noticed the vast amount of people struggling with metabolic health disorders and created a solution that can provide you with metrics on movement, heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and sleep. “We have always believed in the power of self-quantification to make health optimisation more efficient,” said Kumar.

Oura dropped a new ring last week. The Oura Gen3 Horizon is equipped with the same health-tracking abilities as its predecessor, but has a new “perfectly round” design, which is supposed to deliver on comfort.

If you’re not into wearables, Amazon just released Halo Rise, a bedside health tracker that uses low-energy sensor technology and machine learning to provide personalized sleep analysis.

Guava is a holistic dashboard that helps you manage your medications, symptoms, and health records. It also provides personalized insights and recommendations.

SoundMind helps you work towards mental wellness through audio and visual music therapy.

Time to take more of your health into your own hands (literally)?

In an effort to catch up with Gen Z, Google’s making some changes to its search engine.

At its annual Search On event, Google announced that Google Search is shifting from its traditional list format to a more visual search results page, depending on what you search. For example, if you’re looking for a new vacation destination, Google will present the information using more imagery and short-form video content, including that of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. As you explore information on cities, you may see visual stories and short videos from people who have visited, tips on how to explore the city, how to get there, and more.

It comes on the heels of a recent report showing that Gen Z gravitates towards TikTok for search. “We definitely know that there is a class of user who really does like the results that they see on TikTok,” said VP and GM of Search Cathy Edwards. Though Google won’t exactly mimic TikTok, its shift towards a more exploratory and visual search experience targets inquisitive users that want quicker results. If you don’t know what angle you want to explore, “[Google will] provide keyword or topic options to help you craft your question [as you type],” said Edwards.

Above all, Google wants to ensure that users are finding relevant information, and for some topics, that means presenting them more visually or helping users “search outside the box.”

If you fit in with the visually inclined, here are some recent launches that might be up your alley:

xTiles is a visual workspace for organizing ideas and projects.

Interior Computer uses AI to generate interior design ideas for your home or work place.

Growth Design V2 teaches you product tips in a comic book format.