Wonder Tools

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