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š„ļøArchive or perish, Synthetic Milk, and Zenly's Demise
Free plans are yeeting and deleting
Hey everyone! How are you doing this Monday?
September is finally here - so Iām gearing up to start watching horror movies again in the next week or so. If you have any good recommendations - please let me know.
I discovered a really fun album to get you started on those Halloween vibes.
From power metal to synthwave - thereās vibes aplenty here for ya.
No lie - Iāve listened to it like five times since I found it on Tuesday. Itās awesome.
I think Iām going to listen to it again while I write here.
In other news - Iāve stepped down from my role at Creative Brew, and will no longer be writing the Creative Brew newsletter. Between my family, work, The Land of Random, and Creative Brew - Iāve been really busy and stressed out the past year. I need to slow down for a bit.
Spend time with my wife, kids, play some video games, watch TV without a computer in my lap . . .that kind of thing.
Of course - Iāll always be here, writing The Land of Random - and I plan to do audio, a premium plan, and more audience growth.
I will be doing the Land of Web3 once in a while rather than every week. With āCryto Winterā here, thereās not as many interesting things to share.
Letās dive in, shall we?
š„ļøArchive or Perish
The sounds of Dies Irae ring in the distance.
Heroku is deleting free product plans
Gitlabs threatened to delete inactive accounts until they backtracked.
With all the tech companies laying off 10% or more of their staff, itās definitely possible that smaller startups may start getting rid of free plans in order to cut costs.
Itās within reason that some of those wacky websites I share each week may begin to disappear as free plans begin to disappear.
Links disappear on the web all the time - like ships at sea in the 18th century.
This site āstumble upon for cyberpunkā is gone.
This fun Audibly website is gone too.
There is no Internet Archive archive backup for the first one, but you can check out the second one here.
Itās just gone . . . forever, unless you want to reverse engineer who shared it, message them, and see if they have a backup to share.
These are just two examples of dozens of other dead links I have saved in my bookmark manager.
I could go on with other links - but Iād rather introduce a way to save webpages from death - and itās an easy-to-use Chrome extension.
The Internet Archive has made saving the web as easy as one click. Just click the big SAVE PAGE NOW button and voila! thereās now a copy in the Internet Archive to explore at a later date.
You can do more if you have an Internet Archive account - such as saving all the outlinks, or taking a screenshot of the page.
You can also view previous versions of pages too - like Amazon from the old days.
If the page doesnāt support being saved by the Internet Archive tool, you can always get around it. Thereās always a way to save a page from the internet.
Check out this massive list of archiving tools for more.
Ready to start saving the web?
Download the chrome extension at the link!
š„Synthetic Milk
Why drink Oatly when you can drink synthetic milk?
Weāve seen synthetic meat, mushroom bacon, and other meat substitutes - but synthetic milk is a new one to me.
Synthetic milk does not require cows or other animals. It can have the same biochemical make up as animal milk, but is grown using an emerging biotechnology technique know as āprecision fermentationā that produces biomass cultured from cells. (source)
Brewing cell milk, in a way . .
There are several startups heading the charge in this sector - including Eden Brew. Hereās some of Eden Brewās explanation of their process.
We map cow milk genes to produce dairy proteins that delivers cow milk nutrition and sensory experience . . . Our process of fermentation takes the gene map and uses a natural yeast to grow them into nature-identical cow's milk proteins . . . Feels like milk. Tastes like milk. Works like milk. Without any of milkās downsides. (source)
Isnāt that really interesting? Theyāre taking the āgene rootsā of milk and using natural yeast to emulate milk proteins.
That last phrase of the quote really interests me.
āFeels like milk. Tastes like milk. Works like milk.ā
Thatās the trick right there. If you can get a bottle of this to taste the same as normal milk and cost less. Well, youāve got a serious competitor to the O.G. milk.
Hereās what the bottle looks like.
Props to their marketing team for that design - Itās visually similar to milk, taps into the nostalgia of the āolde daysā of glass bottle milk, and that green color is very pleasing.
I look forward to seeing and tasting this from a grocery store! Check it out at the link.
š¦Zenlyās Demise
Snapchat has decided to discontinue Zenly - so I decided to download it one last time to take it for a spin.
Sadly - Zenly will be added to the stack of startups where āLOL we bought it for millions for the tech and gave up, RIP.ā
Itās still available - so if youāve never tried it - try it one last time.
If youāve never heard of Zenly - itās a location sharing app meant for small groups of friends. Think Google Maps - but you can see all your friends and where they are.
Hereās a hype video from earlier this year
Itās a fun app - with a lot of really slick UI effects.
Basically - hereās what you can do
Cajole friends to sign up
Watch them at their homes, or when theyāre out and about - check on their battery life or how fast they are driving
Add places to the map - like a coffee shop you and your friends like.
Chat or send voice notes to friends
other fun surprises I didnāt figure out but saw on Twitter.
Itās not much different from Snapmaps in terms of usability - but itās focused on getting you out and about meeting up with friends. Zenly is the app that had the potential to break into the āfriend groups meet up and hang outā niche - especially in the post Covid world.
Everyone wants to get out of the house as much as they can!
In theory - it sounds like a sick idea - a social incarnation of Google/Apple Maps.
In practice - it got popular enough to be given a chance to survive - at least in Japan!
Zenly was showing no signs of stagnating, and if anything, it looked like it had the potential to be one of Snapās prized possessions if it could only figure out how to turn it into a money-making machine. The data seems to back this up, too ā Zenly claimed some 35 million monthly active users earlier this year . . . While Data.aiās numbers also show that Zenly is regularly among the top 20 downloaded social apps globally, digging deeper into market-specific metrics reveals that it often out performs every single other social app. In Japan, for example, Zenly is typically in the top five or 10 apps. (source)
Given enough time - Zenly could have gotten into the āaverage joeāsā phone/friend group in a few years.
They had cool marketing too - like this awesome viral campaign in Japan.
Instead - Snapchat opts for its own bloated Snapmaps.
Snap thinks it already has the whole maps/location thing covered in Snapchat, it doesnāt have the cash flow to continue funding Zenlyās growth and itās not prepared to let another company take over the reins as a means to protect its business interests. (source)
A fun and innovative app - killed for the sake of the core product.
Go check out Zenly before it disappears forever!
šThe Land of Random
Into the land of random we journey
Boom Boom Boom
Iām not a Warhammer fan, but this clip makes me laugh. Old YT vibes
Tamajoji
Virtual pets in your browser!
3D Browser
Virtual Browser windows are coming to a web app near you! This 3D demo is really cool . .
The Drawing Garden
Draw your emoji garden AND try to play a tune at the same time
I Love Bees
Take a trip back in time with this Halo 2 ARG which is STILL online!
Earbuds with a screen
Ok JBL - I admit it - youāve one-upped everyone else and STUCK A USEFUL SCREEN ON THE CASE. Well done.
ShaderGlass
Make your adesktop look aesthetic with over 300 screen filters - from TV to VHS. Very cool.
TikToks You Canāt Miss
How did this get approved as an ad
The most confusing Youtube ad in history. I watched 30 minutes!
The Pokemon Story weāll never know
They brought out the B2 fam
Wait till people are hacking their DNA so it canāt be processed.
Thatās all for this week! See you next time.
š„ļøArchive or perish, Synthetic Milk, and Zenly's Demise
Horror movie recommendation: Near Dark.
Bill Paxton for the win!