Ryan Colgin

Product designer building useful software, tools & experiments. AI-assisted product development, UX/UI, indie products.

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

The Internet Vending Machine is officially stocked.

Edition 001 is live! 16 things I think are worth knowing about, using, or keeping around.

The machine will rotate regularly, with new finds moving in and old editions sticking around.

Come take a look:
https://t.co/byN7VyRalg

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Asked Reddit for feedback on The Internet Vending Machine & got it. Icons were confusing, products hard to see & the flow made people work too hard.

I've added real product images, better Vend/Product flow, & haul shows your vends. It feels much better.

https://t.co/byN7VyRalg

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

@uixmat @calcom https://t.co/3Oa8frWY5N 🙌

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

@yahyavision Shipping

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

It’s been a week & a pretty interesting mix of work:

designing sci-fi interfaces for a video series

learning how tides + coastal currents work for a friend’s fishing idea

and putting together a Build With Me program to help people in New Orleans turn ideas into working things

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

The Internet Vending Machine now has 100+ things in the stockroom!

101 products
76 brands
68 physical / 33 digital or free
16 in the machine at a time

Need help figuring out what belongs in the machine, what rotates through, & what should stay stocked.
https://t.co/byN7VyRalg

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Been collecting vending machine reference while building The Internet Vending Machine. So many good little details in these things.

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Deployed skeleton.exe

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

New build in progress…

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

I call this the "planning phase".

1 hour and 50 minutes until I can wildly overcomplicate something in Cursor again.

#CursorLimit

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

The Internet Vending Machine is starting to feel like an actual place on the internet.

New domain. A way to follow future restocks. Better product links. More interesting things trickling into the machine.

https://t.co/it0yjkYTQe

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Stocking night for the Internet Vending Machine.

Added image gallery and more products tonight, including a pocket eReader, smart cooking gear, travel stuff, and a WiFi speaker.

What you gonna add to your haul? 🚛
https://t.co/69NSRIng4r

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

My typical build stack lately:

ChatGPT → Figma → Cursor → React / TypeScript → Vite → GitHub → Vercel → Supabase

Figma is showing up less than it used to, & I plug in the APIs/services the product needs.

What are y'all using right now?

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

@ThePeterMick Vend the internet

https://t.co/eBgRRNPn15

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

@yahyavision

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

The Internet Vending Machine is turning into a way to wander around the internet and find stuff.

Select a slot, vend it, then go see the real product, free tool, app, or whatever else I stuffed in there.

Internet window shopping, 16 slots at a time.
https://t.co/eBgRRNPn15

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Caught a little snag myself, but seem to be back-ish...

[Downdetector @downdetector]

User reports indicate problems with OpenAI since 8:04 PM EDT.
How is it affecting you? #OpenaiDown
https://t.co/qU4YVGAOdp

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Curious what this looks like for other people lately. How quickly are you getting from an idea to something real enough to put in front of people?

[Ryan Colgin @RyanColgin]

Three projects into Cursor, the shift isn’t coding faster. I’m not a coder.

It’s being able to have an idea, build it, test it, & keep going past design.

StayOps: ~2 weeks → connected product + pilot interest
Horizon: ~2 days → live v0.1
IVM: ~1–2 days → strangers testing it