Hit your reading goals

Hi, hi, hi! Hope you’re having a great morning, afternoon, or evening. In today’s digest, I’m covering a new app that’s kind of like Blinkist but for fiction. But first…

The headlines: 

🍎 iOS 18.1 for developers has rolled out, and with it, Apple Intelligence (kind of).

💰 Perplexity plans to start sharing ad revenue with outlets cited by its chatbot. 

🎨 Canva has acquired a new generative AI platform to bolster its own efforts in the space.

If your idea of unwinding after a hard day of work is by cracking open a fresh new book to get sucked into, you’re probably familiar with the likes of Blinkist and Headway. You might have seen their Instagram ads. Both apps exist to summarize books quickly into bite-sized pieces so you can get key insights quickly. There’s just one thing missing — they only work with nonfiction. 

Rade Joksimovic has been bootstrapping SaaS products for the past 18 years. In his downtime, he likes to read fiction. Throughout the books he read, he discovered the plethora of life lessons that can be taken from them. However, after searching online, he couldn’t find a suitable app that would extract these lessons. That’s why he decided to build Wisebits over the course of a year. 

Wisebits is similar to Blinkist and Headway, but it focuses on fiction and has a few neat twists and turns along the way. It currently ships with over 670 different fiction stories, all of which you can immediately transform into bite-sized short stories based on lessons you can learn from the books. 

If you’re a read-on-the-go kind of person, you can also quickly transform the books into summarized audiobooks. Play, the conversational AI startup is used to narrate each of these stories in a more visual way than the traditional sense. Whichever route you choose, you can track your reading goals and progress within the app, partly for self-reflection or, in my case, partly to boast to my friends. 

Alongside that, Wisebits comes with some features to spark joy. One in particular is the addition of personalized letters. As you use the app, you can find personalized, AI-crafted letters from your favorite characters in the book that will offer wisdom and life lessons in the tone of your chosen character. 

DEVELOPER TOOLS 

GitStart AI Ticket Studio understands your codebase and gathers requirements to create well-scoped tickets within minutes.

Kasama is a plugin for JetBrains IDE that helps you improve your coding habits by keeping an eye on your coding practices, such as coding sessions and testing habits.

HEALTH-FOCUSED TOOLS 

Olo uses sound to alleviate anxiety, reduce stress, and improve productivity. Its specially crafted soundscapes are designed to help you relax and rejuvenate quickly. 

Pace Chase is a colorful app for the fitness community. It allows you to manage and track your pace during training or races. 

PET TOOLS

Can Cats Eat It Is a website and PWA designed to quickly check the toxicity of various foods, plants, household items, and more for cats. 

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