If you’re one of those people fed up with screen time, you’ll want to hear about Daylight.

On Friday, a new company called Daylight Computer launched its first tablet, DC-1. Six years in the making, DC-1 can be compared to a “Kindle on steroids,” or an iPad meets Kindle.

Not another ePaper tool. Most of today's other low-strain tablets, like Kindle, use E Ink technology, but Daylight calls its new tech “Live Paper.” In some ways, it's similar to E Ink — its monochromatic display is low-strain and gives users a tactile feel while writing, but those features usually result in tradeoffs in performance. DC-1’s Live Paper, on the other hand, allows for a lot more speed, making it possible to functionally use apps like Notion, Spotify, or ChatGPT.

Despite its speed and function, DC-1 is designed to be less distracting than other tablets and better for your health. Outdoors, the tablet can use the sun as its backlight, and indoors it uses a pure amber glow instead of blue light to better protect your circadian rhythm.

Not another hardware fail.You might feel burned by the recent failures of rabbit r1 or Humane Pin, but even weary tech founders are putting a different lens on Daylight.

“I take back what I said before. Clearly not just an LCD,” tweeted Ghost founder John O’Nolan after watching S3’s video interviews with Daylight founder Anjan Katta. In the video, Katta explains the motivations behind his work, pointing back to Steve Jobs and the early days of computing. “Daylight is just trying to come back to the early hippie days of computing for helping you think…,” Katta says.

On that note, despite my earlier comparisons to Kindle, Katta’s vision is bigger than a tablet. The founder says that DC-1 is just the entrance and that Daylight plans to apply the screen tech and OS they built for DC-1 to distraction-free phones, laptops, and more. “The ambition is ‘What does Apple for public benefit look like?’”

Not another VC darling. While we don’t know much about Katta, we know he’s got big ambitions and has been working hard to make Daylight a reality. “We’ve been funded almost entirely by aligned angel investors, institutional VC capital rejected us outright, Bootstrapped from life savings first 3 years before that,” the company posted on X.

The DC-1 can be pre-ordered for $729 for delivery in November.

Do you remember the “If Google was a guy” College Humour (now Dropout) skit? In it, the Google search we all know and love gets a human face, and would-be Googlers show up to ask this human Google to do their searches for them. It gets pretty wacky, fast.

The Browser Company’s latest launch feels like the company saw the video and said, “Hey, let’s make it a feature.”

Announced yesterday, Call Arc is a new feature in Arc Search, the company’s AI-powered mobile search companion. Picture this: You’re in your kitchen trying to remember a recipe to cook tonight. You pick up your phone, and instead of typing, you put it to your ear, and ask for an “authentic carbonara recipe.” From there, Arc Search will play some hold music before providing a verbal answer and standing by for another question. 

It even looks like a regular phone call. Pull it away from your ear, and you’ll see an iPhone-esque splash screen complete with a caller ID, hang-up button, loudspeaker option, and read more button. 

Arc Search first launched in January of this year and initially made waves because of its ‘browse for me’ option. This AI-powered function allows users to get a summarized version of their search instead of the more typical browsing experience they’re used to. Arc’s been working to add more personality to web surfing, and we think it’s safe to say they did it. 

Arc Search went old school with Call Arc. Picture this: You’re in your kitchen, pick up your phone, and ask Arc Search for an “authentic carbonara recipe.” It plays some hold music before providing a verbal answer and standing by for another question. Read more.

New Microsoft Windows laptops, called Copilot+, will have AI hardware and native AI software features enabling features like "Recall" for a searchable photographic memory on your PC, and the ability to run over 40 different AI models, including GPT-4o. Read more.

Maven is a new social media site that does away with followers. Backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, Maven is built around "open-endedness." Instead of following people, you follow interests like cooking or coding. Read more.

Canva redesigned its editing experience and launched Canva Enterprise at Canva Create. Enterprise features include enhanced security, single sign-on, dedicated support, folder customization, and a “suggestion mode” on Google Docs for reviewers to leave edits. Oh, and this happened. Read more.

Ivee, a B2B influencer marketing platform claimed Product of the Week. It lets companies find and evaluate LinkedIn, YouTube, Apple Podcast, and Substack influencers, and reach out for collaborations. Read more.

NocoBase, the top developer tool of the week, is built on the principle that 80% of requirements can be achieved with no-code tools. The 20% that require development can be implemented through the platform's plugins. NocoBase’s core and plug-ins are open source. The platform is also driven by data models, decoupling data and UI.

Voicenotes is a voice app built by the Buy Me a Coffee founder. There’s no login — open the app and hit record. Say you’re going shopping and can’t remember what deodorant you bought two weeks ago. Simply ask your AI to trawl your notes for you.
Read more | Voicenotes

🧑‍💻 Jijo Sunny, Aleesha John

AFFiNE, a Miro meets Notion tool, stands apart for its open-source and local-first approach. What’s under the hood of AFFiNE could potentially offer users the same exact features as Notion or Miro, but with customization and flexibility.
Read more | AFFiNE

🧑‍💻Jiachen He📍Singapore 💰Seed

Snaplet generates realistic seed data using AI to understand your database schema. Snaplet was founded by Peter Pistorius, who was also on the co-founding team of RedwoodJS with former GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner.
Read more | Snaplet

🧑‍💻 Peter Pistorius📍Berlin 💰Pre-seed

Equals had its biggest release since its initial launch. There are three main parts to the update: a redesigned query experience, even more flexible spreadsheets, and more dashboard features.
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🧑‍💻 Bobby Pinero, Ben McRedmond 📍SF 💰Series A 🏆GKA 2023 Best in Data

Plenty is a wealth management platform for couples. It's designed to help modern couples discuss, manage, and invest their money together. Plenty was started by a husband-wife duo in fintech (formerly Stripe and Even [acquired]).
Read more | Plenty

🧑‍💻 Emily Luk, Channing Allen 📍SF 💰Seed

OpenAI launched its latest model, GPT-4o. What really stood out was the voice handling. Users can ask the model a question and mid-answer, interrupt it to divert the conversation or correct it. OpenAI stressed how much more human-like this model is by showcasing its emotional reasoning capabilities. Read more | GPT-4o

Google launched a bunch of stuff including its answer to OpenAI's Sora. Veo outshines Sora by generating minute-long, 1080p videos from a single prompt. It can produce various visual styles, like landscape shots and time lapses, and allows for editing existing footage. Read more | Veo