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    The Leaderboard
    November 13th, 2024
    News without the noise
    This newsletter was brought to you by
    Guidde

    Happy Hump day! In today's Leaderboard, we're talking about: a new tool to cancel unused subscriptions, a platform to ease your paperwork burden, and a news app that tries to cut through all the narratives. Let's dive in.

    Cancel all the subscriptions

    Sweet Lemon: Manage and cancel subscriptions that you don't use. 

    Sweet Lemon has a promising approach to subscription management, but it feels a bit undercooked. It integrates with Slack, Notion, and GitHub—handy, though limited if you're after a complete view of your subscriptions. Setup was a bit rocky; I hit an error, which luckily I could fix due to my admin access permissions, but it’s a hurdle others might struggle with. Once inside, the lack of onboarding left me staring at a dashboard without clear next steps. It’s an interesting tool with potential, but it needs more polish to really help with the hassle of tracking unused licenses.

    When will tech have eyes?

    Koncile: Customizable OCR for your data extractions needs.

    In Japan, so much is still processed on paper—and annoyingly, it often needs a digital backup too. From business receipts to visa applications and even buying a house, there's always paperwork to manage. Unfortunately, OCR tech doesn’t capture Japanese characters very well, so I end up manually entering every receipt into an Excel sheet for taxes each year. If Koncile works as promised, it could be a real lifesaver. Besides receipts, I can see it being helpful for business cards and other paper-to-digital conversions. My only question is, when will AI get “eyes” so I don’t even need to take a picture?

    News minus the noise

    Particle: An easier way to keep up with the news. 

    I was a big lover of Artifact — the news app built by the co-founders of Instagram. But since it joined the startup afterlife I’ve been on the hunt for a replacement. Particle is in the running for me so far. It has a diverse level of topics, breaks down stories into fairly concise summarys so I can spend less time trying to get the facts, and most importantly it presents otherwise polarizing topics in a fairly neutral setting minus all the narratives. I’m also a fan of how it uses AI. It allows you to ask questions about each story to get more context. It’s a cool addition and I like how it doesn’t try to steal the show.

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