The Leaderboard // Who needs books anyway?

Happy Friday! Welcome back to the Leaderboard. In today's edition: Who needs books when you have YouTube, ditch the API docs and learn by doing, and use AI to plan your next vacation.

LookieAI: AI-generated summaries of YouTube videosConfession:

I’m generally disturbed by my generation’s tendency to substitute watching YouTube videos for reading books. But that’s the world we live in, and I’m sure LookieAI will serve those too busy to watch “Crash Course World History” well on their AP Euro exams. Still, I’ll be curious to see whether these text summaries of videos actually take off — my sense is you could get the same value, without the inaccuracies, from full transcripts.

Hello API: Takes your web API and creates a nice UI to test out API calls from the browser.

While I should probably meticulously read the documentation when exploring a new API, I often find the fastest way to learn about an API is by trying it out. Hello API lets me experiment with an API right in the browser, making the process of understanding an API a lot less painful. If you're publishing an API I think this could be a really nice addition to make it easier to understand and use.

Pogo Travel: A Pinterest-style app that helps you better plan your trips. 

Like Pinterest but for travel is an interesting premise. I’m notoriously bad at creating itineraries when I travel so an app that lets me plan out everything I need to see, eat, drink, and experience in tandem with an AI assistant is super enticing. The only thing though is that Pinterest is already the “Pinterest for travel” — I can create an itinery just by spinning up a board and adding stuff I see from my global feed. Maybe there’s something the makers can add to differientiate it for power Pinterest users like me.