Supernormal just launched an easy new way to create free AI agents. These automated assistants can independently host, transcribe, and summarize online conversations. See what they’re like by trying my experimental agents: one conducts reader surveys, another screens sponsorship inquiries, and a third collects cool tool nominations.Read this full post on the Wonder Tools siteI even set up a Skeptical Critic agent you can try that will question your ideas. It’s useful as a verbal jousting partner to prepare for difficult conversations. Read on to learn how and why to create your own AI agents for free, along with caveats and my pro/con reflections.How to create your own agent * Create a free Supernormal account. * Select the type of agent you want to create: sales, survey, customer support, event feedback, employee engagement, or custom.   * Give your agent a name and an optional logo and color.* Select whether you want to collect participant names and emails.* Provide context and instructions. For my survey agent, for example, I provided a list of questions and background info about my newsletter.* Once you’ve created the agent, publish it and copy its link to distribute.* When users click the agent's link, they’re prompted to provide their name and email (if required) and offered a button to start a live Google Meet video chat with the agent.* Powered by ChatGPT’s top model, your agent understands conversations and follows custom instructions to guide one-on-one discussions lasting up to 10 minutes.* If you connect an agent to your calendar, it can schedule a meeting for you to follow-up.  * When the conversation ends, the agent saves and summarizes the transcript for you to review at your convenience.* The agent can continue hosting meetings with whomever has its link until you deactivate it.Want to give it a try? Converse with my agents* Talk to my Wonder Tools survey agent to share your thoughts on this newsletter. * Talk to my sponsorship agent to promote your product or service to this newsletter’s readership.* Try sharing your workflow and getting a suggestion with my AI productivity intern.* Recommend a tool, tip or tactic. Have a cool site or service I should write about? Help me understand what’s useful about it. * Talk to my skeptical critic about anything you’re working on to get practice responding to tough questions.* Talk with Supernormal’s sales agent to learn more about Supernormal.Privacy and pricingPrivacy. The conversations you or others have with your agent remain private. Your data isn’t sold or used to train LLM models.Pricing. It’s free to use supernormal agents while in beta. For transcribing meetings, Supernormal is free for limited use, up to 1,000 minutes. It’s $10/person/month billed annually for unlimited transcription and other advanced capabilities. Businesses can pay $19/person/month to connect Hubspot, Salesforce and other tools.What to do with your agents* Role play. A Texas professor created an agent to act as a combative patient. Pharmacy students were assigned to converse with the patient to practice handling difficult conversations. * Collect info. Gather observations, opinions, anecdotes or examples from community members. Some people might find it more accessible and convenient to share input with an AI agent verbally, rather than in a form.* Answer common questions. Provide your agent with a list of frequently asked questions and basic info so it can provide answers. People need not pore over a long text FAQ online or wait for you to answer mundane queries.* Schedule follow-ups. Your agent can let people schedule time to talk with you after chatting with your AI. Connect Supernormal to your Calendly (see past post) to give your agent a live view of available time slots. People can then book a meeting with you without a lengthy email exchange. Add an agent to a team meetingPaid subscribers can invite Norma, Supernormal's new AI agent, to team meetings. Norma can help with brainstorming, catching up latecomers, or answering live questions.Example: Watch a recording of a 10-minute meeting I had with Norma where I asked her (it?) to brainstorm creative ways of using an agent in a live meeting.* Catch people up. If team members miss part of a meeting, Norma can get them quickly up to speed on what’s been discussed.* Get helpful info. Norma can add ideas or insights about trends, industry history, or whatever else you might look up.* Gain a brainstorming assistant. Bat ideas around with Norma in a private conversation, or add her to a team idea-jamming session. So far this strikes me as the most useful of Norma’s capabilities.Transcription. Aside from its agents, Supernormal excels at recording, transcribing and summarizing online meetings. You can add its bot to any meeting to get a detailed summary and transcript. Having compared it to a half-dozen other tools, I’ve found it to be one of the best at meeting summarization. I like the expanded bullets feature, which lets you drill deeper into any section of a meeting summary. I also appreciate the new AMA — Ask Me Anything— capability. Ask a bot about any meeting transcript to review important points.🤔 Caveats * Agent conversations are limited to 10 minutes. * All agent-hosted chats happen in Google Meet for now, though other platforms will follow.* While it’s free to create agents at the moment, they will eventually require a paid subscription.* The service is in beta, so you may bump into occasional minor hiccups. In some of my Google Meet tests, for example, Norma got stuck and couldn’t respond. And one of my agents lost its instructions.* The AI agent voice isn’t quite as lifelike as the newest ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode or the top ElevenLabs voices.Pro and Con👍 The case for AI agentsAI agents offer a helpful new way for customers or community members to meet with a virtual representative any time they choose. AI agents help people get questions answered, meetings scheduled, and leads qualified. The efficiency with which those routine conversations are managed by an agent can ensure human time is prioritized for conversations where person-to-person interaction is most valuable. When designed well, these AI interactions can be fun, fast, and fruitful.👎 The argument against AI agentsThe more we rely on automated AI assistants, the further people will drift from one another. When AI agents take over our calls, emails, dating, and schedules, we risk becoming more isolated and less connected to others.In his last essay as the NYTimes food critic, Pete Wells lamented (gift link) the decline of the human touch. “Blackbird’s new checkless exit gives me the creeps,” Wells wrote. “It is just the latest in a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and the human voice out of restaurants. Each of these changes was small, but together they’ve made going out to eat much less personal…”What do you think? Please leave a comment 👇Alternatives * For paying subscribers, ChatGPT's new advanced voice mode simulates natural conversations with lifelike inflections. You can use it to practice for an interview or work on a foreign language. Unlike Supernormal, it can’t interact with others as an agent on your behalf.* Intercom and other customer service tools are adding AI capabilities to assist with answering customer service questions. They’re primarily powering text bots to boost human agents’ efficiency, rather than promoting voice agents.* Speeko, Yoodli, Poised, and other new AI tools aim to be like Grammarly for public speaking, providing real-time feedback. These can be useful for instant input, but they’re limited to narrow use-cases. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

The audio for this post was generated by feeding the text of this Wonder Tools newsletter post into NotebookLM's new Audio Overview feature.Read the full post on the Wonder Tools Substack pagePerplexity is the most useful new search tool I’ve used this year. It uses AI to answer your questions using online sources. You get specific citations so you know where the info comes from and can dig deeper. The summary responses are concise and relevant, and the links help you validate the info. Read on for examples of when it’s most useful as well as limitations, and alternatives.Pricing: Free for unlimited quick searches and five Pro searches per day. Or $20/month for 300+ Pro searches and to upload and analyze unlimited files. See the feature comparison.PrivacyPerplexity lets you search privately in multiple ways.* You can search in an incognito browser tab without even creating a Perplexity account.* If you do create a free Perplexity account to store to your search results, you can turn on the Incognito setting to anonymize any individual search.* You can keep “data retention” off in your settings. (Screenshot)* Perplexity only parses publicly available information — not paywalled news. And it only reads URLs when asked a related question.What’s most useful about Perplexity* Citations Perplexity provides links to its sources, allowing you to verify information and dig deeper when needed.* Brevity Instead of long articles, get straight-to-the-point answers that respect your time.* Multi-Step Reasoning Perplexity breaks down complex queries into steps, providing more comprehensive answers.* Focusing Refine your search by specifying preferred sources or domains for more targeted results.* Follow-ups Ask follow-up questions to dive deeper into a topic, just like a conversation.* Collections Group related searches into collections for easy reference and organization.* Pages Create shareable pages to collaborate or present your findings.Examples: When to use Perplexity* Get up to speed on a topic: Need to research North Korea-China relations? Ask Perplexity for a summary and sources. You can then dig deeper as needed. See the result.* Research hyper-specific information: If you’re exploring organizations that help respond to earthquakes, ask for a list of organizations that crowdsource info about natural disasters. See the result.* Explore personal curiosities: If you're interested in Mozart’s development as a violinist, you could ask for key dates and details. See the result.More examples of search results* Gather data: “How much debt has been forgiven under the PSLF in 2023 and 2024?” See the result.* Summarize official reports: “What are the most reputable forecasts about the long-term impact of Brexit on the UK's GDP? What are the main findings of the report?” See the result.* Check public opinion: “Is there a Pew survey about discovering news through social media platforms?” See the result.* Explore historical archives: “List literacy and education programs implemented in high-growth African countries in the last decade.” See the result.* Discover patterns: “Compare residential rent to residential real estate trends in California.” See the results.Caveats* Accuracy and hallucinations: While Perplexity uses retrieval augmented generation to reduce errors, it's not flawless. Always double-check information, especially data, before using it in your work.* Real-time information: Perplexity isn’t an optimal source for up-to-the-minute information. For breaking news, rely on primary news sources instead.* Document analysis limitations: The file size limit is 50MB. For larger files, try converting them to text.* OCR capabilities: Perplexity works best with modern files that already have optical character recognition. Historical documents with hard-to-read pages or faded text may pose challenges.* Limited image generation capabilities. While Perplexity can be used to generate images, I haven’t found that to be one of its strong points. I’d recommend another service focused on images, like Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Canva or Flux. I mostly rely on DALL-E 3 as part of the ChatGPT plan I pay $20 monthly for.* The Discovery section offers quick news summaries. As with Google News, though, it's unclear how topics and sources are selected.Bonus features* The Perplexity Encyclopedia has an interesting collection of tool comparisons, like Descript vs Adobe Audition.* The free Chrome Extension lets you summon a Perplexity search from any page. The “summarize” button doesn’t always work for me, though.AlternativesFree* Google Generative Search: Google's AI search (in testing) gives summary responses like Perplexity. Early on it made embarrassing mistakes but has improved.* Arc Mobile Search: A mobile app that uses AI to browse multiple sites and provide summarized results. It has ad and tracker blocking.Free with optional paid subscription* Liner is an AI search tool aimed at university students that looks a lot like Perplexity. It’s already used at NYU, USC, UC Berkeley. It was #4 on Andreessen Horowitz’s list of the most popular Web-based gen AI tools. Pricing: Free for basic searches, or $20/month for more advanced searching.* Consensus: Excellent AI research tool. Pick a scientific or academic topic to get a summary of findings and source links. This example shows the results of a search for how cash transfers impact poverty. More useful than Google Scholar, which just gives you a laundry list of study links with no summary. Pricing: Free for unlimited searches and limited premium use; $9/month billed annually for full AI capabilities.* Elicit: Designed for research tasks, it helps with literature reviews and data analysis. This example shows a helpful response I got when exploring the extent to which Shakespeare was influenced by Montaigne. Pricing: Free for basic usage or $10/month billed annually to extract data from more PDFs. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Hugging Face is the best place to try thousands of free demo apps that show what AI can do. It’s an open-source community where developers test new models. It’s also an exciting digital playground where you can try out the most advanced new AI experiments for free. Read on for free ones I recommend trying. What new AI tools are you finding most intriguing?Read the original full post online for all links, images and more Generate stunning images Hugging Face gives you a great fast, free way to try multiple versions of the most-buzzed about new AI image-generation engine: Flux. This AI model renders remarkably vivid images. It has several distinctions over earlier AI image generation tools, including:* Pick dimensions: Choose the horizontal/vertical ratio; not just squares.* Show words. It can show text inside images. Other engines struggle w/ this.* Short prompts work. No need for paragraphs to get a superb result. Instantly remove an image’s background Upload any image or take a Webcam picture. Seconds later, download a background-free image, with more reliable results than I saw with prior software tools. Useful for slides, posters, and other designs. [Alternatives: Adobe Express has a free background removal tool, no log-in required, and remove bg lets you try one for free].Enhance an image Upload a blurry image and see it re-rendered instantly with sharp details. The viewer has a helpful scrub bar so you can easily compare the before and after. Generate a gif Instead of searching giphy for an existing gif, make your own with a simple prompt. Useful for making less goofy gifs.Generate a detailed caption Get a precise, thorough caption for any image. This can help with alt-text, enabling those who use a screen reader to understand what’s in an image. Preview an outfit Upload a photo or choose a sample image. Then press run to see how the outfit looks on your subject.  Animate an image Upload a portrait photo. Then select a sample (or upload a) video that shows close-up facial movements. Press the animate button to see the portrait come to life with those expressions. Here’s my 3-second Lincoln example.Cut out an object Remove an object from an image with multiple elements. It’s more accurate and effective than generic background removal in that you can specify — with text — which object in the image to pull out, like this lamp.Translate a video Upload a video or audio file — or provide a video link — and request that the audio be translated into another language. Note: it’s processor-intensive and popular, so expect waiting time of at least a few minutes. Alternatives: Captions and Kapwing also have paid tools for this.Sponsored MessageClean up your inbox today and keep it that way forever. SaneBox uses personalized algorithms to quickly learn your email habits and show your most important messages first, while filtering out the noise. Best of all, it works wherever you check email, on all clients and devices.Sign up today and save $15 on any subscription!Do more with Hugging Face 🤗* Join a user community. I joined Journalists on Hugging Face. It hosts resources for journalists and points to special AI applications, like one that injects AI capabilities into Google Sheets.* Measure AI bias Explore potential biases in text-to-image models. The tool generates multiple images from a prompt, then analyzes the resulting gender, skin tone, and age of the generated subject. Useful for running your own bias tests.* Explore AI ethics Thought-provoking explorations of issues raised by AI.* Check out AI leaderboards See which AI chatbots rank highest among users, along with other functional and technical comparisons.* My collection of favorite AI demo tools on Hugging Face.Caveats* Wait time. Not all results will be instantaneous. The models share processing power so you sometimes have to wait a minute to see a result. * Can be overwhelming. With thousands of apps, it’s easy to get lost in the rabbit hole. And it can be hard to keep track of which apps you like. Creating a collection can be helpful. Here’s how. Here’s my collection.* Technical names. Many demo apps have confusing technical names “FLUX.1 Dev ControlNet Union Pro” and other such monikers might not make sense at first. Fortunately, others do have clear names like “Finegrain Image Enhancer,” “Background removal” or “Flux Gifs.”* Made for developers. The Hugging Face community is primarily for those with technical skills in machine learning, natural language processing, and other AI domains. So on some pages you’ll bump into jargon that’s obscure for those of us who lack relevant technical knowledge. If you’re mainly interested in trying out AI apps, stick to the Spaces section, where the apps are on display. Hugging Face MobileYou can use the mobile version of Hugging Face to quickly switch back and forth between all sorts of bots — from storytellers to philosophers, each instructed to communicate distinctly. You can also generate images or pursue ChatGPT-like queries with the best open-source models without any cost. There’s a dedicated iOS app. Or access it from other phones at huggingface.co/chat.Alternative: The Poe app is an excellent alternative for trying out specialty bots created by community members. It doesn’t have as wide a variety of AI apps as Hugging Face, but its thousands of bots are well organized and searchable. Check out my brief guide to Poe for examples and tips.Check out WonderTools.Substack.com for more👇 Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Claude has quietly become one of the most powerful AI tools. Its most surprising and useful feature launched this summer: Projects. I can now train Claude to assist me with anything I’m working on by uploading up to 500 pages of my relevant notes, files, and examples.Read the full published post on SubstackHow to use Claude ProjectsStep 1. Upload contextual materials. After initiating a new project I upload relevant materials. I can provide examples of my past work, outlines, notes, interview transcripts, past feedback, or whatever else might help ensure the relevance and usefulness of AI replies.Step 2. Set custom instructions. I provide Claude with custom instructions for supporting me on the project. I tell it about my project’s context and goals. I specify a role Claude should play. And I detail the desired tone, form, and style of responses Claude should provide in response to my prompts.Note: These overarching project instructions are not specific to any one prompt. They remain part of Claude’s instructions over the course of a long series of iterative queries. But they’re only for that project, so they won’t interfere with how Claude responds to my prompts related to other projects.Step 3: Begin prompting. I draft prompts for Claude to assist me as I work on the project. I provide these prompts to reduce the time I spend on menial or technical tasks Claude can take care of splendidly. That allows me to expand the range of creative ideas I can consider and ensures I have the bandwidth to do work I would otherwise have to give up on.Benefits of Claude ProjectsI can create as many projects as I need. It’s easy to create separate projects for each area of focus. For each project, I upload materials specifically relevant to that project.For example, for a teaching project, I can upload past teaching plans I’ve created, as well as transcripts of presentations I’ve given. For a new volunteering project I’m working on, I can upload my past notes, ideas, outlines, and drafts to help Claude assist me in developing a new multifaceted project plan.Why this is useful. Rather than tossing queries at ChatGPT with just a short prompt to give it context, Claude can tailor its answers based on extensive background materials, past examples, and detailed instructions. That transforms it into a hyper-personalized digital assistant.Note on privacy. Anthropic, which operates Claude, doesn’t train its model on the material I upload or the prompts I submit. Here’s the policy summarized simply. Exceptions to this arise if material you submit is flagged for safety or trust review, or if you give a response a thumbs up or down. That’s one reason I don’t use the thumbs up/down feature to rate Claude’s responses.Pricing: Claude’s basic AI is free for anyone to use. Projects, though, require Claude Pro, at $20/month. I justify spending that on Claude by observing that it’s performing the role of a valuable digital assistant for a month for less than what it might cost me to hire someone for an hour.The team plan costs $25/month/person and requires at least five members, who can then share and collaborate on projects.Ideas for using Claude’s Projects* Draft project or event plans. Provide Claude with notes, goals, deadlines, project context and any other relevant documents. Prompt it to assist you in creating detailed project plans, timelines, memos, step-by-step task lists and more.Tip: Remind Claude to ask questions whenever it needs additional information to provide targeted, useful responses. Give it feedback after its initial responses to push it in whatever direction you need.* Prepare for workshops or classes. Provide background on the class or workshop you’re teaching, your objectives, and your pedagogical style. Then task Claude with assisting you in generating examples to use in class, provocative discussion or quiz questions, outlines for slide presentations, analogies, anecdotes, jokes or whatever else might help you create engaging sessions.Tip: Ask it to generate multiple possible approaches and instruct it to be surprising, creative and to create intriguing, unexpected materials.* Get assistance on hobby projects. Whether you’re putting together an outline for fan fiction, a visitor’s guide to your plant collection, or an onboarding guide for a new volunteer or club member, you can save hours with Claude’s project assistance.30+ more ways to use Claude ProjectsI created a project with Claude so it could help me dream up a collection of ideas for surprising ways to use Claude Projects.Prompting TipsIn addition to uploading relevant documents, provide detailed instructions about the kinds of responses that will be useful for you. For example, if you set up a project to assist you with a class aimed at students at a particular grade or skill level, note that so that responses will take that level into account. Additional tips:* Define your target tone. Ask Claude to adopt a casual tone or to be concise and direct in its responses or to use whatever style of language you prefer.* Assign a role. Ask Claude to respond to your prompts from the perspective of an expert in your specific industry or job.* Remind Claude to go slow. For complex tasks that have multiple parts, tell Claude to "think step-by-step" and ask it to "explain your reasoning” to ensure it takes into full account the materials and details you’ve shared.Caveats* Claude can’t generate images like ChatGPT Pro or Microsoft’s free Copilot.* The steep $20/month charge only seems worthwhile if you use Projects. Claude’s top model is now available, albeit for limited use, in its free plan. So if you’re just interested in occasional isolated queries, there’s no need to pay.* You can’t upload links into Claude as you can with some AI tools that will parse them for you. Nor can you upload video or audio files, though you can upload transcripts of those files.Alternatives* NotebookLM is a useful free Google tool that lets you create notebooks with your own documents you can then query with AI. Here’s my guide. It’s a great free alternative to Claude if your goal is to observe patterns in your documents or explore connections with your materials. But Claude provides Claude provides a richer, fuller chat interaction based on documents you upload than NotebookLM.* Perplexity lets you create Pages based on search queries to organize summary material on topics you’re exploring. Helpfully, the information you curate in Pages includes citations, so you can trace the info back to its original sources. Rather than deriving these pages from your own material, though, Perplexity’s Pages assist you in organizing information its provided through its AI-powered searches. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Discover a toolkit of innovative tools designed to transform teaching! Explore how Coda can create interactive syllabi with embedded videos and live polls. Learn about Craft for elegant one-page resources and discover alternatives like Genially, Padlet, and FigJam that enhance collaboration among students. Dive into user-friendly platforms such as Kahoot and Pear Deck for fun engagement. Unlock the potential for creativity and interactivity in the classroom while keeping costs low!

Pens. Pencils. Typewriters. Computers. Wordstar. Word. Google Docs. Writing tools continually evolve. That evolution has brought us hundreds of writing apps to choose from. Read on for recommended tools for various writing challenges.For the full written post online, visit https://wondertools.substack.com/p/writing-tools-for-busy-people 🤩 If you’re easily distracted — iA WriterThe simplest writing interface. Too many writing apps have cluttered, distracting interfaces. I know I’m procrastinating when I find myself exploring styling options. iA Writer is the purest app I’ve found for streamlined composition. All I see are the words I’m typing.Highlight writing issues: An optional setting points out cliches and filler words. The software can also spotlight your syntax by color — adjectives in brown, adverbs in purple, verbs in blue, etc. Mostly I appreciate the clean interface.Pricing: 2-week free trial, then $50 for Apple devices, $30 for Windows or Android.🧐 If you get stuck with writer’s block: LetterlyGet past the blank page problem by talking out loud about your ideas without worrying about precise wording. With Letterly and other AI dictation apps like Oasis ($50/year), it’s easy to convert spoken thoughts into drafts. Until late August you can get a lifetime license of Letterly for $59. Normally $10/month.Letterly and Oasis transcribe what you say then convert it into a variety of formats like an outline, summary, social post, or a draft blog or journal entry.Desktop Alternative: The Oasis team just launched a useful new Mac AI app called TalkTastic. It lets you dictate, transcribe and transform text into any writing app. You can use it with Google Docs, Word, or any other software.When I’m stuck looking at a word count of zero, I like opening up one of these apps and talking to myself about a few ideas. It’s a form of oral freewriting. Within a few minutes I have sentences to build on.If you’re working on a book project — ScrivenerWhen you’re working on a long writing project with multiple parts, try Scrivener. It gives you multiple ways to see and edit the sections of your work. I like the index card view, which allows for dragging cards around to reorder material.Pricing: After a monthlong free trial, it’s $60 for a one-time purchase for Mac or Windows ($51 for educators). Or $24 for iOS.💌 If you’d like to write with others — EtherpadEtherpad is an open source writing tool I like for collaborative live brainstorming, writing and editing. You can use it online for free at sites like Framapad and pad.education, or set up your own instance with a little coding. Here’s an example of a collaborative doc I started. Add to it to try out Etherpad.🤖 If you like experimenting with AI — LexThe AI in the Lex writing and editing app points out cliches, passive voice, hedging (I think, probably, etc), missing citations, and repetition. It also lets you customize a writing issue to watch out for. You can also select a phrase you’re struggling with and Lex will suggest a rewrite option.Pricing: It’s free for basic use. Pay $12/month billed annually for full features.Alternatives: For additional edit options, I like pasting a clunky sentence into DeepL Write for alternative phrasing ideas. It now works with English, French, Spanish, and German. I use the free version, but you can upgrade for $11/month.🧪 If you like to experiment…I’m continually trying out new apps. Here are a few I’m looking at these days.* Butter Docs is a Google Docs alternative that lets you see your research as you write, with built-in space for notes and outlines.* Leaflet is a super simple, early version of a new writing app from the team behind Hyperlink, a collaborative space I like for group work online. Here’s a rough early example of a simple doc made with Leaflet.* Blaze is an AI tool that aims to simplify the process of drafting social content. A new feature lets you upload a podcast or video you recorded and convert it easily into a draft for other formats/platforms.* Letterloop enables collaborative newsletters for a family or friend group. ($5/month). It’s a creative way to build — or re-energize— a writing habit by collaborating with a small group of people you care about. Create a limited-run newsletter for family members or friends.* Alternatively, use Substack to make a free, private newsletter. Theme it around a milestone, project (“cooking experiments”) or whatever else interests you. A tiny, friendly audience can lower the stakes for experimentation. You choose the subject matter, style, and collaborators.p.s. You’re invited to join me for a talk I’m giving this Saturday, August 17 at 2pm ET as part of Medium Day—a free online conference. My 20-minute talk, followed by a short Q&A, is on “5 Tiny Steps for Super Busy People To Build a Writing Habit.” Register free for Medium Day. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Raindrop is a terrific free tool for organizing bookmarks. I use it to save links for classes I’m teaching and topics I’m researching. I also save link collections to share with friends, colleagues and readers.Read the online version of this story for links to all the tools mentioned. In this audio version I'll share its best features, suggested uses, caveats, and alternatives.Raindrop’s best featuresEasy and free on any platformDownload the Raindrop app for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, or any browser. Once you’ve installed the browser extension, it’s easy to save a link to any Web page and optionally add a note or tag for future reference. Bookmarks can have as many tags as you’d like for easy searching. Links you save can also be placed into a collection, which is basically a folder.Pricing: I recommend the free plan, which allows for unlimited links, collections, highlights, devices, public sharing, collaboration, and integrations. It has the primary features most people need and there’s no pressure to pay.Pro: The $3/month option ($28/annual) adds a few fancy features, including:* Find duplicate or broken links in your collection* Search the text of all sites you save* Preserve automatic copies of each Web page you save in case the original site goes offline* Upload 10GB of files each month to store your own files, images, PDFs, videos, etc.Share links and collaborate on collectionsAll your link collections are private, and you can share them at will. Display your links in a list, as cards in a gallery, or as a visual moodboard.* Add collaborators to a collection for a team or family project.* Publish collections of links that anyone can freely access without needing to use Raindrop or to sign up or register.* Embed link collections to host them on a website.Examples: Public link collections I’ve saved* Revenue streams for niche journalism ventures. A curated collection of ways to make money.* Pandemic-era online events platforms. A catalog of the flurry of apps that launched to help people gather online.Use AI to assist with organizing your linksA new AI organization tool helps with organizing your links. It will suggest a collection or tag for unsorted bookmarks, or a tag. That's especially helpful if, like me, you sometimes forget to tag or file what you save.Integrations: Automatically sync links across platformsYou can connect Raindrop to other services so you can access links you’ve saved later wherever and however you need them.* Raindrop can log links automatically to a Google spreadsheet or a Notion page. You don’t have to manually add them.* Sync links you save in Raindrop to Readwise, Instapaper or Pocket for reading later. You can also import links from those services to Raindrop.* Raindrop works well with IFTTT, Zapier, and Make, services that link together multiple apps. [Here’s my take on IFTTT’s usefulness]. Pairing one of those apps with Raindrop lets it automatically collect links to the songs you favorite on Spotify, Tweets you like, or videos you like on YouTube. There are more than 2600 total possible integrations. That makes Raindrop a useful hub for gathering and organizing all your favorite links from whatever services you use.Sponsored MessageToo many podcasts, too little time? Check out PodSnacks - The Blinkist for Podcasts!PodSnacks offers the most efficient way to keep up with your favorite podcasts.Select any podcast and receive an informative AI-generated summary of every new episode straight to your inbox. Never miss an update of the top tech, news, and business podcast again!Check Out PodSnacks!Export and importIt’s easy to import and export links with Raindrop.Export: Instead of dumping out your whole treasury of links, you can export just a relevant batch of links with a particular tag. Or export a link collection (folder). You can export the links as a CSV file for a spreadsheet, as an HTML file, or as text.Import: Import links you’ve saved easily from other services. Bring in links you’ve saved to browser, Evernote, or apps like Diigo, Dropmark, Goodlinks, etc.Sponsored MessageWordcab OneTranscription, speech intelligence, and summarization, all in your VPC. Wordcab One is the only voice stack built for private clouds. Automatic fine-tuning and unlimited custom dictionaries included. Find out more here💡 Suggested ways to use Raindrop📁 Organize project researchPark project materials in a Raindrop collection as you conduct research online. Save links into a neat Raindrop collection rather than printing out piles of paper or stuffing links into Word or GDocs. You can even annotate links as you go. It’s a simple, free, fast way to create a private or shared digital project file box.🧶 Gather and collaborate on hobbiesUse it to gather links with friends. If you're part of a club, team, hobby or fan group, you can collectively drop in your favorite links, with or without annotations.👩‍💻 Share resources for a presentation or workshopIf you teach or give talks, Raindrop is useful for sharing presentation links or resources. Share one link to a collection and attendees can see all your materials in one spot, including all your links, videos, and a PDF of your slides or handouts.Note: I usually prefer Craft for resource sharing after presentations because it allows me to create a complete visual document, rather than a resource list, but Raindrop works well when you’re mainly sharing links.🎨 Create a mood boardFor planning an event, party, or a renovation, Raindrop can be useful for saving inspiring images or links. The moodboard layout option gives you a nice visual view of your links with cover images. It also automatically pulls in the description from any link you save.Caveats* Mobile app visuals. Images in articles saved to Raindrop — particularly in paywall publications like the NYTimes — may not show all show when you read on the mobile app. I prefer to read saved articles in Readwise Reader (see alternatives below).* Packrats beware. As someone who saves more than I find time to consume, I confess to a digital packrat tendency. Adding yet another storage hub like this can lead you to overwhelm yourself with an avalanche of saved stuff that you lack time to review.* Avoid duplicate hubs. No need to add another digital sock drawer if your organization system already works well. If you have a well-established system in Notion, Coda, Airtable, Obsidian or somewhere else, stick to what’s working. Those platforms allow you to create your own custom organizational structure with advanced filtering.* Tiny team. Raindrop was envisioned, built, and managed by one person - Rustem Mussabekov, a 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan-based designer/developer. It’s been around for more than a decade, but its progress relies heavily on Rustem.Notable Alternatives* Readwise Reader is my preferred app for catching up with online reading on the subway or airplane. (Why I like it). If you’re mostly saving reading material, Readwise is well-designed for both online & offline reading & highlighting. Tip: It’s also good for watching + highlighting YouTube videos.* Instapaper, Pocket and Matter are also good options specifically designed for saving articles to read later, though none are ideal if you’re saving other kinds of links, like product pages or images.* MyMind is a much more visually appealing visual storage hub for saving materials online. Here’s why I find it useful.* Fabric is a new tool I’ve been testing for clipping notable material I find online. It’s aiming to create an AI-powered way to search all your materials.* Eagle just launched version 4.0. It’s best for saving and organizing images and screenshots you find online. Here’s what I like about Eagle.* Dropbox has a new feature to save links and screenshots. That’s useful for streamlined organization if all your files are already stored in Dropbox.What’s your preferred way to save and organize links? https://wondertools.substack.com/p/raindrop has the full post online Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

For the full, up-to-date post this audio connects to, visit https://wondertools.substack.com/p/notebooklm Google’s NotebookLM is a new free service that lets you apply AI to your own notes and documents. You can use it to find connections between your own ideas and see patterns you hadn’t noticed. Read on for how I’m using it, what I like most about it, its limitations, and interesting alternatives.How to start using NotebookLMSign up free at notebooklm.google.com Upload up to 20 documents into a collection of material you want to explore. You can add PDFs, Google Docs, or other materials you’ve either written yourself or gathered as part of your research. You can create multiple collections for different topics.Tip: I recommend creating separate collections for your own writings and for research that you’ve gathered from others. That way there will be clear demarcations between your own material and what comes from others.I have a collection about entrepreneurial journalism, for example, with a variety of notes and materials I’ve created over time. I’m building another one focused on the history of classical music, with articles, research and notes I’m gathering from others.What to use NotebookLM forAnalyze your own materialOnce you have a collection, NotebookLM creates asummary for each of the documents in it. It also add subject matter tags based on the content. Anytime you want to remember what’s in a particular document you’ve added to your collection, you can select it to see the AI-generated summary and the subject tags. You can then query a particular document, a subset of the documents in your collection, or the full collection. That’s helpful if you want to analyze material from a particular source that you’ve added, or just documents on a narrow subject.Suggested queriesNotebookLM will also suggest a few queries you can start with, based on its analysis of material you’ve uploaded. For example, in my collection of entrepreneurial journalism notes, it suggested queries about best practices for presenting startup projects.It suggested that because I had written extensively about presentation tactics in the documents I uploaded. When I clicked on that query, NotebookLM drew from various strands of materials in my notes and created a summary of some of my key points. To help me identify where it was sourcing the material in that summary, NotebookLM provided a a list of 10 citations from across the 9 documents I had uploaded thus far to that collection. I could click through to see those original sections it was drawing from to understand how the AI was sourcing its material. I could later add to the collection new materials.Ask your own questionsIn addition to using suggested queries that NotebookLM provides based on its analysis of your materials, you can pose any question you want. I could ask my own notes, for example, about the highest potential — and most challenging — revenue streams to pursue for those producing independent podcasts. Rather than searching across the Web, or digging into some an abstract AI predictive data model, as other AI tools do, NotebookLM scours its analysis of my own notes to pull together an answer and citations.While chat AI services like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are useful for a wide range of queries, your responses may be hard to trace back to any particular source unless you’re using a custom AI trained on your own material. That’s what’s most special about NotebookLM: you benefit from the power of AI applied specifically and narrowly to analysis of your own notes.Building on your own notesAfter querying NotebookLM you can save its responses and build on them to make new notes. If you’re preparing a presentation, a report, or analyzing trends or patterns, you can use NotebookLM as a partner in exploring your materials. You can have a dialogue with your own notes in a way that goes beyond searching for keywords or simply re-reading individual documents.Limitations* It’s not available to everyone yet. I can’t use it with my work account, only with my personal Gmail. It’s not open to people in all countries yet.* There’s no mobile app, though the mobile Web version works well for simple queries.* The design still feels a bit clunky to me. The interface includes multiple panels — one for your source documents and another for your queries, alongside various notes you save or create. Given that this is a new kind of tool, it may take some time for the service to shed clutter and provide a more streamlined view.* Google doesn’t train its models on your material, which remains private to you, but if you are skeptical about the company, you may not want to upload private material.Alternatives* Mem.ai is a tool for digital notes that also brings AI to your own materials.Unlike NotebookLM, which is free, Mem has a TK cost and works on TK platforms and unlike NotebookLM, is available everywhere CheckTK. When you start typing a note, its AI can helpfully surface related notes. And the helpful chat function lets you ask natural language questions to surface notes. I wrote about why Mem is like a next-generation Evernote. I don’t use it as my primary notes tool because the design and interface no longer appeals to me.* AnythingLLM is a promising new software tool you can download to create a private repository of material to analyze with AI on your own computer. I'm still testing and will be able to share more in the future on this. Final thoughtAI flavors are expanding. AI for multimedia, AI for search. What’s exciting about a new tool like NotebookLM is that you can apply AI with a narrow lens to your own material. What are your thoughts on this new direction for AI, how are you using it, or what other AI tools are you most excited about? Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Summary: Strengthen your Google Slides with new templates that make presentations look better, plug-ins that add interactivity, and AI to help draft decks quickly. For even more polished presentations, pick from six of the best alternatives to GSlides. 🪩To see the full post and all the links, visit: https://wondertools.substack.com/p/7-ways-to-spice-up-google-slides 1. Turn your notes or writing into slides with AI 🤖SlidesAI can turn text into a Google Slides presentation draft. Paste in text, select a template style, then edit the generated presentation. Pricing: free for 3 presentations/month or $10/month for 10 monthly presentations.Compare: I converted a draft of a Medium post I’m working on into a presentations with Gamma, Beautiful.ai and SlidesAI. Bottom line: For higher-quality AI generation, use Gamma or Beautiful.ai.2. Add cool visuals with AI images 🌠Join Google's Workspace Labs to generate free images with Gemini AI inside Google Slides. Write a prompt and get four image options. Then pick your preferred style, such as photograph or sketch. See a gif of this.3. Make your slides interactive with polls + activities ❤️‍🔥Slido for Google Slides lets you insert live questions into a presentation. (See a video demo). Respondents can use a QR code to answer on their phone, or they can visit slido.com and use a code you show on your slide. When I present or teach online, I paste the poll link into the chat. My favorite poll type: word clouds for ice-breakers. (e.g. “What’s one word that describes your view on X”). Poll results update live on your slides. Here’s why Slido is my pick for polling.Poll Everywhere for Google Slides is another good interaction option. One of its cool features: people can respond to questions on your slides via SMS. Poll Everywhere also has a wider range of poll questions. You can ask people to annotate an image, for example.Nearpod for Google Slides is also useful for live interaction, and has a useful variety of activities for classes and workshops. It was designed for K-12 educators, but can work well in other settings as well.Pear Deck is a free add-on that’s great for teaching or leading workshops or meetings. People watching your presentation can answer questions on your slides or add annotations on their own screens. Here’s how and why to use it.4. Explore new designs with template galleries 👩‍💻Google Slides’s biggest limitations: a clunky editing interface and weak templates. Many feature small fonts and overemphasize bullet points. These lead novices to draft death-by-Powerpoint presentations overflowing with bullets and tiny text. Fortunately, there’s a vibrant ecosystem for well-designed free templates.Slides Carnival Try this timeline template or a good yellow-and-black explanatory theme, or this customizable Jeopardy game.* Slidesgo Use a dark, minimalist marketing template* Slidecore has a nice game show template, ala Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.* Slidesmania Start with a colorful, clean template or make a simple resume5. Jazz up your slides with apps 🎺Slides add-on apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace. Try these:* Creator Studio Export a gif or a video of your slide deck. Simple and free.* Unsplash Search for pro photos you can add free to your slides.* Noun Project Find icons that accentuate your message.* Slides Toolbox Add new features to Google Slides. e.g. Turn a collection of photos into slides, or convert a Google Doc into a slide deck.6. Try these advanced tricks ♠️🎛️ Blend your slide decks While working on a slide deck, you can import slides from any deck you’ve ever created in Google Slides. Copy over an entire deck or individual slides. Mix and match as you would playlist songs. 🎶🔗 Link slides Create master slides for oft-used company stats, quotes, team members or metrics. Insert those master slides as linked slides into other presentations. Then, whenever you update one of these linked master slides, it’s updated everywhere. So you don’t have to update the same information in every single slide deck separately. Here’s how. Most other slide tools don't enable this.🤳 Present from your phone. Android & iOS versions of Google Slides let you present online or with a projector via AirPlay or Chromecast. Alternatively share a link to your slides or download a PDF.↕️ Go vertical Change the slide canvas dimensions to make a handout or poster.7. Check out these public Google Slides presentations 👀Heystack curates notable public Google Slides decks, including:* Mr. Beast, a Creator Breakdown — Not a pretty deck, but informative* Remote Work Starter Kit — Well-designed, with useful frameworks* Data & Narratives — 101 slides with insights about data visualization* The ChatGPT Prompt Book — A guide with examples for mastering ChatGPT* Out of Office — Explaining the origins and impacts of Internet memes* Jason’s Machine Learning 101 — a now-classic explanatory resourceGot a Google Slides trick, tip or tool? Leave a comment 👇The 6 best alternatives to Google Slides* Gamma is the best new presentation tool. I’m writing a full post on it soon.* Pitch has a terrific array of professional templates. Why I use it so much.* Beautiful.ai is excellent for visual slides and charts. I like these features.* Typeset is fun to use and gives you flexibility to focus on slides’ design.* Canva has the richest library of visual elements for sprucing up slides. Check out my collection of Canva posts.* iA Presenter is superb for converting scripts into slides. Why it’s unique. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Summary: AI outputs can be disappointingly conventional. To avoid predictable responses, I like instructing AI engines to be strange. Unexpected, radical ideas can be useful for creative inspiration. Odd perspectives stretch my thinking. Read on for specific ways to prompt AI to break beyond its bland boundaries. For the full post online, with visuals, visit: https://wondertools.substack.com/p/surprising-ways-to-prompt-ai Give me strange and surprising feedbackWhen I’m in a creative rut, I paste in a section of writing and prompt AI to be bold and unconventional:* “Offer five surprising, unexpected suggestions for specific ways to improve the following piece of writing. Along with each suggestion, include a detailed, creative explanation with the rationale for the observation.”* “Act as an unpredictable, brilliant writing coach who offers strange, bold, creative suggestions. Provide specific, granular input.”* “Detail novel topic ideas or peculiarly provocative questions I could answer to help me disrupt the conventionality or predictability of the following outline I've begun.”* “Point out blindspots that others with radically different perspectives from mine on this subject might identify if they were to read this work with a critical eye. Include examples of ways in which these could be remedied.”Create a bold, unexpected image for meTo create distinctive illustrations I rely on DALL-E 3, an image generator included with my $20 monthly ChatGPT plus subscription. It understands natural language, so I don’t have to master prompting lingo to get results that surprise me.* Tip: Prompt for wide images. Those tend to look better than square images when laid out in newsletters, blog posts and other wide-format pages.Good free alternatives for creative imagery* Microsoft’s Designer lets you generate distinctive images for free, with the same DALL-E 3 engine a ChatGPT subscription offers. You get four images to choose from each time you write a prompt, increasing the likelihood at least one will suit you.* Adobe Firefly is also useful for envisioning wild images. You can alternatively use it to edit existing images. You can select part of an image you want to change and explain what you’d like instead.10 odd AI prompts to get radically new results * Propose 5 questions a reader would be surprised to find answered on [your topic X] * What are 3 quirky, unusual analogies to explain [your phenomenon of interest]. Here’s an example prompt and result.* Who are 7 surprising, odd historical figures to cite as examples of [X]. For each individual include a detailed explanation. Here’s an example.* What rarely discussed, counterintuitive insights on the subject of [X] might startle readers accustomed to bland observations? * Give me 5 lively, colorful, unusual words to use in a description of [X]? * Provide 3 extreme, surprising examples of [X] or silly, ridiculous instances.* Share 5 counterintuitive ways to address situation [X] * Imagine I shocked people with a one sentence answer to the following question: [X]. Give me 10 versions of that one-sentence reply. * I have [X challenge] in [Y situation]. Assume I want to surprise people with a wildly creative solution. Describe three solutions that would stun people while addressing the root of the issue. * For a syllabus I’m creating on [X], imagine seven radically different people teaching the same course. Provide three bullet points representing each teacher, explaining the surprising and distinct learning outcomes each would aim for in their version of the class. How to make the most of these provocative promptsStep 1: Pick an AI chat tool to experiment with: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Microsoft Copilot.Step 2: Initiate a new chat by typing in a role for the AI to adopt for the prompt you’re going to give it. For example: “Act as a bold, experienced, expert who provides distinctive, unusual perspectives to push my thinking in creative new directions.”Step 3: Pick one of the unusual AI prompt templates above and adapt it to fit the specifics of your own work.Step 4: After you get an initial response, write a follow-up prompt to build on the first result. That iteration allows you to tailor subsequent answers. Consider asking for even more radical suggestions, or for more depth on a particular detail. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe