Summary: Bloks is simple AI-powered software I use and recommend to record and summarize meetings. Read on for how it works, how to make the most of Bloks, and a few limitations and alternatives. If you’re a visual person, watch my 4-minute video summary above or on YouTube. How Bloks worksBloks runs on your computer, transcribing and summarizing online or in-person meetings. Unlike other meeting recorders or summary tools, it’s not a bot that joins your meetings. Bloks acts like a small recorder on your computer, so it doesn’t have to be invited or admitted by a meeting host.Wonder Tools is a reader-supported publication. Join 35k tech-curious readers & become a free or paid subscriber.Prepare for your dayIn advance of your meetings, Bloks can brief you on those with whom you’re meeting. After you link Bloks to your calendar, it looks up public info on people you’re meeting with. You then get a summary of the person’s background and focus areas, drawn from LinkedIn. (This functions a bit like another tool I wrote about, Clay). Bloks also suggests potentially relevant questions to ask. For people you’ve already met with, Bloks will draw on previous conversations to give you relevant recent context.Upcoming improvements to briefs: * The Bloks team says they plan to strengthen briefs by drawing on additional sources of info you have access to, like your organization’s customer relationship management software.* Bloks also plans to tailor briefs to show relevant recent action items for colleagues you meet with regularly, rather than repeatedly showing their background info.Streamline your dayDuring meetings: Bloks auto-transcribes and summarizes any online meeting you join. You can add manual notes, or just rely on the AI summary. Alternatively, you can manually turn Bloks on or off.After meetings: Bloks gives you a bulleted summary you can share with meeting participants. It also gives you suggested action items to follow-up on. It even shows you relevant email threads if you give Bloks access to your email. As you work: You can use Bloks’ AI chat function to query individual meetings or your whole notebook. You can review a topic or query an ongoing series of meetings you’ve had with colleagues. How I use AI queries: I’m forgetful, so I like asking Bloks to refresh my memory about various decisions and discussions. For example, I recently prompted it to “summarize my recent discussions about Reddit for research” and “summarize the video repository discussion and decision.” Both responses were instantaneous, detailed and useful. You can also record your own thoughts with Bloks and ask it to draft an email or LinkedIn post, along the lines of how I use Oasis. Why I delegate meeting notes to BloksI used to take detailed meeting notes, but I now try to focus on closer listening. With Bloks, I can delegate summary notes to AI. Knowing I’ll have a good summary and a full transcript allows me to be more present and engaged.How to use Bloks to summarize a meeting Step 1. After downloading the software, set Bloks to launch automatically anytime you join an online meeting. If you prefer, set it to require that you manually hit record. Step 2. The next time you join an online meeting, Bloks will automatically launch and start transcribing. If you’ve opted for a manual start, just hit record whenever you want. Tip: Because Bloks isn’t visible to other meeting participants, ask if it’s OK for you to create an AI transcript of the meeting. Also ask if others would like a summary afterwards. Almost no one refuses, and it’s often appreciated. Step 3. A transcript of the full meeting is available immediately afterwards. A summary follows moments later. It usually features five to 10 sections summarizing the primary meeting topics. Each section has a few bullet points to remind you of key points. The bottom of the summary includes follow-up actions. Note: Bloks doesn’t save audio or video, it just uses the meeting audio to generate a transcript that the AI summarizes. If you need audio or video recordings, consider one of the alternative tools below.  Step 4. You can copy and paste the summary into an email or any other notes tool you use. Or use the AI chat for a follow-up prompt, such as “what were the three reasons she had for recommending the new vendor?”Why I like sharing and reviewing meeting summariesIf you have 15 or more meetings a week, it’s easy to lose track of a secondary point noted in one of them. Because Bloks lets you easily share summary notes, everyone can have a simple shared record of what was discussed. I’ve found this helps prevent later confusion about what was agreed upon. It also helps me prep for follow-up meetings, particularly when there’s a long gap between them.  A magical way to engage with all your meeting notesOnce you’ve recorded some meetings or made manual notes in Bloks, you can benefit from its intelligence. You can use AI to search through your repository of notes for themes, topics, or specific issues related to your meetings. If you link your email to Bloks, it will soon be able to find patterns and insights from not just your live meetings, but also from your email correspondence. That will enable you to query for all sorts of insights. How to “Ask Bloks” for AI insights* When you’re reflecting on your work with someone over the past year, you can ask Bloks to summarize your collaborations and pull up highlights from your conversations. * When considering the activity of a committee or meeting group over time, you can ask Bloks to summarize its key activities, accomplishments or unfinished tasks. * If you make your own notes in Bloks, you can ask it to summarize your thinking on a subject, draw connections between multiple ideas or projects you’ve detailed, or suggest follow-up actions. More of what I like about Bloks* Bloks can transcribe in-person meetings. That yields summaries of your one-on-one discussions, with the permission of your colleagues. It also can summarize a conference session or lecture. Example: I recently used it at a conference to record a session so I could focus on listening and trying out the ideas shared. Despite not taking manual notes, I left with a summary that I could share with the speaker. * Set it and forget it. I like being able to use Bloks' AI without having to summon it or query it all the time. It’s set to auto-record so I don’t have to think about it until and unless I want to check out a meeting summary or query it on something I’m considering. “I appreciate Bloks' auto-on feature,” Rodney Gibbs told me recently. “Before I implemented that, I often forgot to start the note-taking until a few minutes into the meeting,” said Gibbs, a journalism product consultant. “Now I just trust that it'll be taking notes for my meetings.”* It’s privacy friendly. You can turn it off or on whenever you want, and it doesn’t store audio or video, or send your private info to train AI models. Check out its privacy policy. Caveats * Manual note-taking isn’t as robust as it is with other tools. You can’t edit notes to look nice like you can with note-taking tools like Craft, Notion, Bear or other such services. * Customization options for summaries are limited. You may prefer a longer or shorter style summary and you can't really control that.* Export and import functions aren’t robust or customizable. It’s easy to copy-paste individual notes or transcripts, but not easy to import or export big batches of notes directly to or from other systems.  * Bloks may overemphasize or misinterpret certain aspects of discussions, as with any AI tool. For example, If you're talking about the weather for a couple of minutes, it may add a summary of your discussion about the weather as one of the primary topics of your meeting. You may prefer your notes to focus primarily on the substantive part of your meetings. I don’t consider that a major flaw. In general, I’ve found the quality of the summaries to be similar to other AI meeting summarization tools. * Bloks sometimes suggests action items that aren’t relevant or don’t reflect actual commitments made during a meeting.PricingBloks was free during its beta period, but as of February, 2024 the free plan is more restrictive. Unlimited access to Bloks now costs $19/month on an annual license. AlternativesMeeting summarization services are now plentiful, though most don’t offer the full Bloks feature set. Instead, they focus on letting you customize the summaries or view and share video highlights . Here are a few great options: Supernormal creates excellent meeting summaries, and lets you pick or customize a template for investor meetings, user research or other common meetings you have. That’s helpful if you want your meeting summaries to be consistently structured. Supernormal isn’t designed to link to your email, though, or to enable queries across your meetings. Pricing: Free for up to 10 meetings a month, then $10 to $19/month depending on features.4149 is a creative AI meeting summarization tool that doesn’t require you to download or install any software. It also doesn’t train its AI models off of your transcripts or data. After a meeting you’ve invited its AI bot to attend, 4149 shares a Google Doc with you with a one-page summary. It’s more playful than other services, so sometimes it includes a poem about your meeting. 4149 does a good job of answering questions you ask it about your meetings. For example, I like asking it about a meeting’s most notable quotes. But it's not designed for connecting to your notes, contacts or other elements of your workflow, as Bloks is. One neat feature in development: having the AI send you follow-up info on topics you discussed. Pricing: Free while in beta. Fathom is great for video recording of meetings. It helpfully provides time-coded links to summary moments from your meeting so you can jump to certain parts of a recording afterwards. A handy feature: Fathom has annotation buttons you can use during a meeting to mark a highlight or annotate something to return to later. Pricing Free for individuals, or $24-$29/month per person for teams.Rewind can be used to summarize meetings, but it’s also designed to give you a private record of everything on your screen. That makes it handy for finding anything you’ve looked at. But not everyone will be comfortable with it running persistently in the background. Unlike Bloks, Rewind generally runs all the time, even when you’re not in meetings, so you can remember other things you work on — though you can customize what it captures and stores. Pricing: Free for basic use, or $19 for pro features.Partner MessageStay ahead of the tech curve with KnowTechie’s Weekly Download, a tech newsletter for the everyday tech and gadget lover. Join over 10,000+ readers who enjoy our weekly digest of the latest gadgets, apps, and technology trends. Subscribe for free today.Catch up with recent Wonder Tools posts: Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Kapwing is an excellent Web-based video editing tool. Its useful new AI features make it easy to convert a long video — like a Zoom recording, an interview, or a presentation— into short, shareable clips. Watch the video above — or on YouTube — to see Kapwing’s co-founder and CEO show me how to do that. Read on for how and why to easily create video clips with Kapwing’s AI, and some limitations and alternatives. Make social video clips with AIThe Kapwing feature I find most useful is Repurpose Studio. Video editing with Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro can be time consuming. If you’re creating short video clips for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or LinkedIn, Kapwing and other new tools like Veed are easier and more efficient. Video demo: Watch an excerpt from my interview with Kapwing’s CEO for her 1-minute overview of how to use AI to create social video clips from a long video. How to create video clips with KapwingStep 1. Go to Kapwing’s Repurpose Studio. It’s a simplified special section of Kapwing’s Web-based video editor. Upload a video recording, like a 20-minute presentation or a 60-minute Zoom recording. Step 2. Wait a few minutes for processing. Kapwing uses AI to analyze the transcript for engaging material. It then suggests several clips, usually about a minute each. Preview the clips and pick one(s) you like. Step 3. Pick your preferred aspect ratio (wide or tall) depending on whether you’re planning to publish clips on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. Optionally tweak the visual style of the captions. Step 4. Export a clip you like, then upload it to a social platform like YouTube. Step 5. Optional: Open Kapwing’s full video editor to make additional changes to a clip before exporting it. You can adjust a clip’s start or end point to alter its length. You can also trim the video by deleting words, sentences or even whole sections from the AI-generated transcript.  Step 6: Optional: Remove background noise. This step is crucial if you don’t have a dedicated microphone or if you’re uploading a noisy Zoom or conference recording. Descript is best for noise removal (see my fuller take), but Kapwing’s audio cleanup is also good.What to use Repurpose Studio for: Recordings people are unlikely to rewatch in full, like long panels or conference presentations. Clips can convey highlights efficiently. Normally, the editing would take hours. Now it can take minutes. What not to use it for: This won’t work well for silent videos or music videos. Caveats* Kapwing doesn’t yet upload directly to social or video platforms, so you have to export your video to your computer and then upload it to share.* For pro video editing features like keyframes, which let you add an effect to a video frame by frame, Kapwing isn’t as powerful as Final Cut Pro from Apple or Adobe Premiere.* AI transcription isn’t perfect. You’ll have to edit misunderstood words. In this post’s video, for example, “Kapwing” was transcribed occasionally as “Kipping” or “Kapling.” * Kapwing doesn’t yet generate video descriptions or chapter timecodes like Veed (see below), and it doesn’t yet suggest or create thumbnails. Hopefully in the future. Create a video in multiple languagesIf you’ve ever dreamed of being able to speak a new language, you might appreciate Kapwing’s AI dubbing. Record yourself in your native tongue. Then pick a language to dub yourself into. Video excerpt: Kapwing’s CEO on how AI enables translating your voice Kapwing lets you clone your own voice or use an AI-generated voice to narrate your video. The tech is from ElevenLabs, which has the leading voice AI models. You can then dub your video so it sounds like you (or an AI model) speaking any of 76 languages. You can also include translated captions. More on dubbing: Kapwing’s overview page and 3-minute how-to video. Caveats: Kapwing’s AI requires a paid subscription. It doesn’t yet work for group conversations. The advanced video editing interface can be overwhelming for novices at first. Expect translation glitches, as with any AI translation tool. Other AI features in KapwingYou can use AI in Kapwing to generate a video script, turn a script into a video, generate a meme, create a slideshow, generate an image, or turn an article or document into a video like this one, which I created by pasting in the text of this post into Kapwing’s AI video generator. PricingKapwing is free to test out to edit videos up to four minutes long, but they’ll have a watermark and be limited to 720p quality. And AI features are restricted, notably voice translation. It costs $192/year for full features, including AI capabilities. Educators and students can apply to use Kapwing for free.Partner MessageVolv is an app for high-performing individuals. It curates interesting content across the internet and delivers it in 9-second articles using AI so you can be updated without doom scrolling on social media. It's been featured on the Apple App Store and read by 60k+ users globally. Check it out for freeAlternatives: good AI-powered video editing toolsVeed is an excellent Web-based video editing tool with a simpler interface, similar pricing, and helpful AI features. It can auto-generate a YouTube video description and chapters. I’m planning a future post about Veed. Descript is a great tool for editing not just video, but also audio. AI features allow you to identify useful clips to share and remove background noise. Descript’s filler word removal feature seems to work a bit better than that of Kapwing. Hypernatural is a brand new useful AI-powered editing tool specifically for generating short video clips from audio or Zoom meetings. It uses AI to generate images suited to your audio, yielding short shareable video clips like this. Captions is an AI video editing tool that’s excellent for automated, cool-looking captions. You can also use it to translate videos of up to 5 minutes in your own dubbed voice. I’ve tried the iPhone, Web and Mac apps — Android is coming soon. Read more about the app: 👇I used Captions’ Mac app to clone my voice and translate my 90-second video about AI for educators. See how it turned out: versions in English🇺🇸; Italian 🇮🇹; Japanese🇯🇵; German🇩🇪; and Hindi🇮🇳. What do you think? Lipdub is a related free app from Captions.ai. Record short clips in one language and translate them into another. This 30-second demo video shows someone using Lipdub’s AI to simulate speaking a dozen languages. What’s your take on AI for video editing? Leave a comment 👇Update: Last week I wrote about one of my favorite survey tools, Tally. Here’s a quick summary of some of my initial takeaways from your responses to my survey asking for feedback on Wonder Tools: * A majority of readers who responded were in favor of me including more videos and, where relevant, including step-by-step guidance on tools. * There was also support for curated items, and for inviting occasional guest writers. If you’re interested in writing a guest post, reply to this post.* You had a great range of topic suggestions. I’ll draw on your ideas this year, noting your interest in AI and productivity tools. * I appreciate your input! It’s helpful as I plan for the year ahead. The feedback survey remains open so please still share your feedback! Thanks! p.s. Do you have your own project? This is the final week for applications to the 100-day online CUNY course I lead. Watch our open house video or visit the program page and apply. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Explore the transformative power of ChatGPT in everyday tasks. Discover how to harness AI for enhanced creativity and productivity, from brainstorming to editing. Learn effective prompting techniques with the POP framework to get relevant responses. Understand when to use alternatives like Claude, Bing, and Bard. Dive into practical applications that can revolutionize your workflow. Whether in journalism or content creation, it's all about maximizing technology to enhance your output.

Finding reliable services online can be time-consuming. So to help you strengthen your digital toolkit for 2024, I’m sharing a six-minute take on 7 of my favorites. (Watch on YouTube or above in this post). My aim is to save you hours spent weeding out clunkers. Read on for my preferred tools for journaling, creative interactive documents, exploring the Web, making lists and more. Create interactive documentsCoda is useful for creating simple documents as well as complex project plans. It works just like Google Docs but with additional capabilities. You can embed videos, maps, social media posts, tables, diagrams and buttons. You can link Coda docs to Slack or other services you use to streamline your work. I use Coda to manage projects, organize meeting notes, and sometimes for handouts. The paid plans add helpful AI capabilities — you can chat with your documents.Coda Doc Examples: a revenue database and my free digital teaching toolkit. Read more on how I use Coda.Keep a simple journal Day One is the best simple, easy-to-use, free app for digital journaling. My favorite features: keeping separate personal, reading and work journals; adding audio, video and photos; emailing-in entries or adding them on my phone; getting a printed journal mailed every other year. Alternatives: Other good options include Grid Diary and Apple’s own new Journal app. Read more on why Day One is my favorite + my Medium post: 9 ways to journalExplore the web enjoyablyArc is my favorite browser. It’s clean, simple, and free. You can create separate spaces for distinct projects. I have one for each class I teach, and for my primary research interests. I also like its annotation features for screenshots. Here’s an example. I prefer its appearance and functionality to Chrome, Firefox or Safari with no tabs up top. Just a clean view of the site you're visiting. New AI features allow you to get a quick summary of any article or site you visit. Read more about the 9 most useful Arc features Share lists of your favoritesListy is a simple mobile app for making lists. Type in your picks and the app automatically pulls in related images, like book or album covers. You can share a link to your visual lists. Examples: Bill Gates’s favorite books, Rolling Stones’s best 100 albums. Read what I like about the simplicity of Listy. Listium is more powerful free service online for compiling lists you share and publish — favorite books, games, or whatever else. Examples: Things to do in Sydney and the 100 highest-rated comedies on Netflix. Alternative: Glide also works well for making and sharing lists as little apps, like my favorite podcasts or journalists and publishers on TikTok. Build a timeline for a presentationThe Knight Lab’s TimelineJS makes it easy to create a compelling, interactive timeline you can share online. Include text, photos, and embedded YouTube videos or Wikipedia entries. Examples: The history of wine and The life of Whitney Houston. The service isn’t new, but still works well. Great alternatives: BeeDocs 3D (Mac), Genially and Venngage all have stellar timeline templates. More on why I recommend TimelineJS and when to use each alternativeBrainstorm with your voice Oasis is a useful AI-powered app that records, transcribes and cleans up your short voice memos. It’s one of the most fruitful $5 a month subscriptions I pay for. I use it to get raw ideas out of my head to avoid the blank paper problem. I just ramble on into my Airpods for a few minutes as I walk around the park. Oasis magically transforms my verbage into a neat summary, a helpful outline, and drafts of a newsletter post, a video script, or whatever else I’m working on.Read why I rely on Oasis and six ways to use it Backup, organize and share photosGoogle Photos is a classic and remains my tool of choice for photo backup, search, sharing and printing. It’s faster and more flexible than Apple’s photo service, which I also use. I like being able to find any of my photos by typing in a name, place, or even a detail like “NYC,” “skiing,” or “pizza.” I use GPhotos to edit and share photos. I’ve even used it while teaching, having students create shared albums for a live photo sharing project. My wife orders printed family photo books twice a year and the quality is good.What are your go-to apps at the start of 2024? Leave a comment 👇p.s. Make something new this spring! You’re invited to apply to join the 2024 cohort of the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program. This is the 100-day fully-online program I direct at the City Univ. of NY’s Newmark Grad School of Journalism. Participants join from all over the world at all career stages. RSVP to join a live open-house Jan 10. Read more and apply by Feb 2. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Happy Thanksgiving 🦃 to those celebrating today. I’m with family taking a couple of days off, so I’m sharing an updated version of a prior post. I hope you have a chance to take a pause too. Read on for a 5-minute guide to the Google Docs features for which I’m 🙏 thankful. Google Docs is the bicycle of digital work. It’s simple, functional and ubiquitous. It’s so reliable — and has so many capabilities — that I still use it even after newer, fancier challengers have emerged. I’m not alone. Google’s suite surpassed Microsoft’s in 2023 global market share, according to Statista. Read on for the GDocs features I find most useful. Save time on your documents 🕰️1. Create a new doc instantly Type doc.new in your browser’s address bar and you’ll have a new document. This works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Arc. * Bonus: You can also type sheet.new, slide.new, form.new, site.new, drawing.new, or cal.new to create instant Google spreadsheets, slides, forms, sites, drawings or calendar events. 2. Translate your text automaticallyShare your doc in another language. Your original is preserved — GDocs creates a translated copy. It’s not human quality, but it’s good enough to convey the gist of your message. Note: For a good translation alternative, try DeepL. How: Go to Tools > Translate document. 3. Add a table of contentsFor long documents, add a clickable outline at the top to make it easy to jump immediately down to any section. How: Go to Insert > Table of Contents4. Display a live word count Show a persistent count at the bottom left of your editing window. How: Go to Tools > Word count— or Command-Shift-C — and check the box for “Display word count while typing.”5. Type with your voiceThis works well when you’re tired of typing. Instead of facing a blank page, think out loud, then edit your dictated draft. How: Go to Tools > Voice typing6. Type @ to quickly add elements to your docThis new feature lets you more quickly add checklists, numbered lists, and bulleted lists. Or insert images, tables, and charts. How: Type @ for a keyboard shortcut to insert whatever you need, rather than hunting through menus with your mouse.7. Add email drafts and project trackers inside your docInspired by Notion & Coda, GDocs now lets you insert “building blocks.” These include mini-templates for meeting notes and tracking content. One block lets you create an email draft. You can collaborate on it in a doc, then send in Gmail. How: Type @ and choose the block you want. Improve your doc’s appearance 🎨8. Add a gif to show how something worksGifs are a nice way to get around not being able to embed videos in a doc. Make gifs with Giphy or use Zight to record a screen capture as a gif.How: Go to Insert > Image and select your gif to add it to your doc.To see an example of a gif in a Google Doc, or to try adding one of your own, visit my 🐈 cat jibberish public doc. 🐱9. Create a highlighter effectMake important text stand out by adding a color to it. How: Select text, click the highlighter button & pick bright yellow, as in the gif above.10. Use bigger fontsBigger text is easier to read. People will appreciate the readability of your docs. Use size 14 if you can get away with it. Look at the second page of the cat jibberish doc to see the difference a larger font makes.11. Try Georgia, Raleway, Proxima Nova or Oswald These fonts are easy to read, elegant and professional. Tip: Use WhatTheFont or WhatFontIs to identify nice-looking fonts on other sites.How: For more font options in GDocs, click the font button on the tool palette and then More fonts to add alternatives. To learn more & try out styles: Google Fonts.12. Break text into sections Use horizontal line breaks to clean up long docs. How: Use Insert > Horizontal lineMore on Google Docs 📃Alternatives ✨* Google Docs isn’t as powerful as Notion or Coda, which to me is the underrated tool of 2023. Notion & Coda both enable embedded media, interactive tables and more.* GDocs isn’t as well-designed as Craft, which I love using to make handouts. With Craft you can tuck content inside elegant visual cards, streamlining pages. * GDocs lacks many of the AI features of Lex or other AI-enhanced editors. Lex suggests titles for your writing and gives you feedback. * GDocs doesn’t have organizational features for managing bigger projects. For your magnum opus, try Scrivener. (Read my post about how it helps keep writing projects organized). A Simple Option 🌱If you’re easily distracted by menus and options, consider Bear, Ulysses, or iA Writer. My favorite streamlined app for deep-focus: iA Writer. It works for macOS, iOS, Windows & Android. I find it to be the simplest way to write. Other clean, simple apps for writing include Calmly Writer and Drafts. Each offers a minimalist interface to help you focus more on writing than on tinkering.What’s your favorite GDocs feature? Leave a comment👇See this newsletter’s most popular postsUpcoming Live Opportunities Join my AI masterclass to catch up on AI 🤖🔔 Join Nikita Roy & me for Generative AI for Media Pros MasterclassA Wonder Tools + Newsroom Robots collaborationFind out more and reserve your spot — starting soon!I’ll co-lead this live cohort-based course alongside Nikita Roy, journalist, data scientist, media entrepreneur and host of the Newsroom Robots podcast.Live Demo of AI for Email​Join me November 28 at 3pm ET for a live AI demo. See how Shortwave AI saves time on routine email. I was impressed with Shortwave CEO Andrew Lee’s email tool so I invited him to demo how it can help you write email, edit drafts, search past emails, and translate text. RSVP for free Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

In this week’s Wonder Tools I’m experimenting with an audio post.Nikita Roy recently interviewed me for her Newsroom Robots podcast. I’m sharing the conversation with you to give you a window into the AI tools I find most useful with explanations of how and why I use them.During the conversation I share my AI experiments and thoughts on:* How Claude offers a powerful alternative to ChatGPT for long documents (~5:55 in the audio)* Why I tried Woebot & Personal.ai to stretch my thinking (~3:54)* My four Fs checklist for testing new AI tools (~20:45)Interview excerpt audiogram made with Hypernatural, an impressive new AI tool I’ll write about in a future post. https://youtu.be/FehWNSvpq2g?si=07l6U7kbE5LDn1hWTools used in making this audio post* Squadcast for recording the interview. (I also like Riverside.fm for recording)* Shure MV7 microphone* Adobe podcast for recording the opening supplemental audio clip* Audacity for merging audio clips* Hypernatural for generating the audiograms* Claude for identifying potentially interesting moments in the transcript* Substack for newsletter and audio delivery10 Takeaways on AI* Alternatives to ChatGPT are worth exploring. Personal.ai and Woebot are in a growing category of new AI assistants that can serve as conversational partners. They aim to provide comfort or companionship and to get to know you over time. Update: Woebot recently announced that its app will no longer be available after November 30, 2023. (~3:54 in the audio)* Claude’s superpower is ingesting giant texts I find Claude's ability to analyze large uploaded documents (up to 75,000 words) useful. I can have Claude summarize key points from a research paper to help me learn from it more efficiently. (~6:01)Below is the post I wrote about this: https://wondertools.substack.com/p/claude* I made a little French bot... I created a simple FrenchGuru language bot with Poe to explain French grammar and phrases. (~8:02)Other Poe bots I created you can use for free: - 6WordSummary sums up anything in six words- MemoryAid gives you a mnemonic device for whatever you want to recall.- BotanyBlair gives you interesting info about any plant + a two-line poem. - EthicalJourno responds to queries based on the ethical principles of the Society of Professional Journalists.Here’s the post I wrote about this: https://wondertools.substack.com/p/poe * AI can be useful as an experimental email assistant. The AI reviews my past writing to understand my style. When I lack time for a from-scratch response to every cold email, I can provide phrases and have Superhuman AI stitch together a draft, allowing me to spend time editing rather than composing all email from scratch. (~14:52)RSVP to join me on November 28 at 3pm ET for a live demo of Shortwave, another email tool incorporating AI creatively: https://lu.ma/novshortwave * Multimedia AI tools are worth exploring. Tools like Runway ML, Kapwing, and Descript use AI to streamline video editing and creation. Why I find Descript so useful: (~23:12)* AI tools should provide clearer guidance to users. Until recently, services like ChatGPT and Claude basically gave you a blank box and invited you to figure out what to do. (~25:20)* New AI tools like 4149.ai have creative features that can summarize classes and allow students to 'query' the AI with questions about session content. It's like having an assistant who memorized every word. (~31:40)* I use an AI app called Bloks to generate meeting summaries and notes on conference sessions. This allows me to focus on listening and thinking rather than manual note-taking. (~34:12) p.s. I also use and recommend Fathom (as a reader/friend you can skip the waitlist) for time-coded meeting summaries: https://fathom.video/invite/tq29sg * AI can eventually help provide more customized journalism education. I see AI as helpful for creating adaptive learning materials tailored to each student's language, culture, interests, and project work. (~36:16)* AI can reduce some of the sting of menial tasks. AI can help with manual tasks in the journalism workflow — like analyzing datasets, scanning notes to find mentions of a topic, and more. (~37:37)Join Nikita and me in an upcoming AI masterclass🔔 Introducing the Generative AI for Media Pros Masterclass A Wonder Tools + Newsroom Robots collaborationFind out more and sign up for one of the limited spots. It’s hands-on, small-cohort with one-on-one guidance: https://maven.com/nikita-roy/generative-ai-for-media-professionals I’ll co-lead this live cohort-based course alongside Nikita Roy, the journalist, data scientist, media entrepreneur and host of the Newsroom Robots podcast, who interviewed me for this audio post.Check out recent Wonder Tools posts on AI: https://wondertools.substack.com/t/ai … And check out the Newsroom Robots podcast for more from Nikita Roy: https://www.newsroomrobots.com/ I’d love your feedback on this audio post. Hit reply to reach me or email jeremy at jeremycaplan dot com. Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

Shortform gives you concise summaries of books you haven’t had time yet to read. In 15 minutes you’ll grasp a book’s core ideas. You can then decide to read the full book if it resonates. Shortform covers 30+ genres but focuses on business, tech, self-improvement, spirituality, history, and politics. My summary take: I appreciate the thorough, smart summaries weaving in ideas from related books, but given the alternatives, I wish more books were covered and that the app and site were more robust.Smart summariesThankfully the write-ups aren’t automated. Shortform hires smart people to read and reflect on these books. I find the summaries to be clear and well-written. Start with a one-minute quick guide for a book you’re curious about. Then optionally dig deeper with a 15-minute full summary.See how a book is connected to othersOne of the things I like best about Shortform is that the summaries tie together related books. I recently read the summary of Decisive, by Chip and Dan Heath, a book I read several years ago. I wanted a reminder about the key ideas. I appreciated the summary’s references to several other books on decision-making, from The Art of Choosing and The Paradox of Choice to Thinking in Bets and Thinking Fast and Slow. Other summary services focus on the book itself but don’t bring in parallel helpful references that show how a book fits into the broader field of thinking.Short activities to apply books’ ideasAnswer short questions the platform supplies within its summaries to apply the ideas in a book to your own life. In the Decisive summary, for example, I was prompted to consider an upcoming decision and to analyze various aspects through the lens of the book’s frameworks. As a teacher, I appreciate this extra step to help me retain the information and ideas.Mobile, Web and exportable highlightsI like reading the book summaries on my phone, but you can also read them on the Web. You can make highlights within a summary and sync these to Notion or Readwise. Here’s why I love Readwise for my book and online reading highlights.Articles, not just booksIn addition to book summaries Shortform publishes short explainers on diverse topics — from cryptocurrency to psychedelics. The summary pieces are smart, authoritative and reference numerous academic and media sources. But I don’t consider these to be comprehensive — they’re usually primers to help you get started on a topic.📖 2 brief excerpts from Shortform summariesSprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden KowitzElement #3: Building Your Team — “According to Knapp, Zeratksy, and Kowitz, your sprint team should have no more than seven members. Having more than seven hinders the decision-making process and makes it difficult to maintain the group's attention. Start by picking two essential roles, which they call the Decider and the Facilitator. For clarity, we'll call them the team leader and the sprint coordinator…“A World Without Email by Cal NewportOur Current Approach to Work: The Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow — Newport argues that most knowledge workers structure their work days around responding to unscheduled emails and instant messages rather than around the knowledge work they were hired to do. A 2019 study showed that the average employee sent and received 126 emails a day, and another study showed that employees check their instant messenger app once a minute on average and their inboxes 77 times a day. A third study indicated that many knowledge workers can only perform about an hour of uninterrupted knowledge work a day. The rest of their day is spent responding to a barrage of incoming emails and messages…”Limitations and ConsiderationsLimited book selectionThe service is still young, so the library of summaries isn’t yet robust. Because they cover a wide range of subjects, no topic is comprehensively covered. And because they work methodically to create thoughtful summaries, the production process is slow. A handful of new books are added weekly. There are many books I’d love to have summaries of that aren’t available, both contemporary and classic. Shortform works best if you enjoy discovering new books, not just searching for specific book summaries.Opinionated writeupsThe summarizers aim to position each book among others. That results, sometimes, in summaries that are a blend of summary and analysis. In summarizing A World Without Email, the team omitted a section of the book about the history of email because they decided it wasn’t crucial to the book’s primary message. I generally don’t object to these excisions, because anyone summarizing has to make such decisions. But if you prefer a straightforward section-by-section textual summary with less independent analysis and fewer external references, you might prefer one of the alternatives below, like Headway or Uptime.Minimalist app and siteThe app and site are functional but simple. You can search for books and read summaries, but don’t expect much more. A neat audio feature means you can now listen to some of the summaries, but otherwise the app and site are basic. In comparison with the flashy visual summary apps below, Shortform is vanilla. But if you’re focused on depth of thought and analysis, the visuals may matter less.CostSummaries are expensive to produce, because humans make them and it takes lots of time to read deeply and write well. So Shortform costs $24/month, though they’ve agreed to a Wonder Tools reader discount, which brings the price down to $12.97/month for an annual subscription. For some people that’s still a lot, and other options below are cheaper.AlternativesBlinkist is the most famous of the summary services, claiming 23 million users, with an average rating of 4.76 stars after >100,000 app store reviews. A vast library means I was able to find summaries of many of the books by Alain de Botton, one of my favorite authors. And there’s some original learning material here, like an audio guide to slow productivity by YouTuber Rowena Tsai. Two other features I like: I can share my account free with a friend or family member. And I can send summaries straight to my Kindle. Cost: $100/yearHeadway This service’s visual explainers are its strength. Tap through a series of cards to grasp core book ideas or complex concepts. I like that the 15-minute book summaries are broken into 10 easy-to-digest cards, with short quotes pulled out as “insights” that you can save, share or add to your notebook in the app. Note that the summaries aren’t as thorough as Shortform’s at incorporating references to other books. The 39 question onboarding online is a bit too much. Cost: $60/yearUptime offers 5-minute “hacks” for getting a quick sense of books, podcasts, online courses, and documentaries. Like Headway, the app mixes in visuals in an appealing way, so you feel like you’re swiping through an educational Instagram, rather than reading dense text. You tap through screens just as you do on social platforms. You can switch audio on or off to listen to the summary. Occasionally a short video pops up, like a 30-second clip of author Mark Manson talking about concepts in his book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Cost: $56/year Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe