We’re near the end of the year and it’s looking a lot lke the Web3 hype is overblown. Unfortunately, that conversation’s sucked so much of the air out of the room, that category-shifting products are being built without any acclaim outside of the occasional Product Hunt feature.
In the rarest moments of spare time, I began putting a list of these products together. My hope is that 2023 will begin by using some of these (mostly free or freemium) tools to change how I write, draft, import imagery, concept sites, and communicate. Here’s what I’ll be exploring over the next two months.
- Axiom – Automated browser gestures that kill repetitive tasks. For me (and others), this would be super useful for invidiually compressing batched photos into the same size and compression standard
- The Colors of Motion – Color selection tool for personal brand projects using your favorite movies
- Excel Formula Bot – A bot that generates the correct Excel formula based on what you say you’re looking for
- Fig Components – Most excited for this one. If you can automate a Figma-to-WordPress relationship, theoretically anyone can create high-fidelity mockups and site deployments in hours. It would entirely upend a vertical. I’ve seen one plugin that could do this handshake but it’s in early alpha.
- Fffuel.com – Generate SVG and design elements across all mediums
- Lex.page – AI generated auto-completion for sentences. I don’t see this category ever taking off because pattern-matching is what makes the modern internet boring (“5 Ways to Write the Same Headline As Your Competitor”)
- Mixkit – Stock video best for personal use
- PFPMaker – Easy gradient backgrounds for professional headshots.
- Randoma11y – AI-generated color combinations that satisfy standards of accessibility in search engines.
- Screenity – Screen record and annotation for Chrome.
- SuperDesigner.co – Quick mockups of blobs, background patterns, and color variances
Web3’s hype is rooted primarily in decentralization and it’s already running counter to that promise. Digital tokens, currency, and clearing houses are controlled by a few people, and the early verdict isn’t making the best case. (Update: Unless we’re counting criminal cases…)
Under our noses – and theirs – content creation (design, development, publication, distribution) is being decentralized. Whatever’s made and sold in a metaverse-still-not-created will be the result of tools that Web3 evangelists should have thought to own when building a market/world from scratch. This is a reminder to me to grade these after testing this out in staging environments.