I’ve been playing with NoteBookLM for six months or so. I’ve been really impressed with the product since its launch. Using your own documents as AI’s only source to pull from to answer your questions is powerful. Citations to AI’s pinpoint sources are provided in the responses, so you can fact-check. It’s like having a second, more powerful brain, which I love.

The product took off like wildfire when Google rolled out the audio overview feature, with which you can create a podcast featuring a conversation between two people based on the notes you upload. Last week, the company released a paid version, NoteBookLM Plus, for $20 per month and NoteBookLM Plus enterprise for large companies. Many other updates were also made.

One of my action items on this week’s accountability update is to evaluate the updated product and paid features. I’ve been playing around with it this week, and overall, I’m impressed with the updates. I think Google has a smash hit on its hands with this product. It’s going to bring personalized AI to the masses.

One thing I’ve been looking at hard is the UI update. The screen is divided into three sections: sources, chat, and studio. Sources and chat are straightforward—just what they sound like. Studio allows you to access the functions you can use to generate content (such as audio overview).

I wasn’t sure what to make of the UI at first glance. But after playing with it, I like its functionality. Because it shows the three-pane window on one screen, the product is much easier to use. I don’t have to switch between screens. I can minimize or expand each section as needed. And I can choose to expand information from all three sections if that’s helpful to my workflow.

The UI might not win style awards, but it wins on function. I think the NoteBookLM team is on to something with this new UI, and I bet we’ll see more AI applications borrow from it.

In case you’re interested in learning more about this UI change and seeing the UI in action, here’s a tweet from one of the founding NoteBookLM team members.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a great holiday!

Happy July 4th!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday!

I hope everyone had a great Easter!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a safe and healthy holiday!

This weekend I had the opportunity to listen to friends discuss the topic of public disagreements. To be clear, a disagreement is a calm expression of a difference of opinion or differing viewpoint. “Public” means at least one person other than the two disagreeing is observing. An example is two people disagreeing in a meeting at work attended by five people.

It was interesting to hear the various views on this. People have different comfort levels when it comes to conflict, and that’s reflected in their views on disagreements, especially in a setting with others watching. Those who are less comfortable with conflict are less likely to disagree publicly. They prefer to chat with the other person one on one. Those more comfortable with conflict are more likely to disagree publicly.

I’m a fan of constructive conflict. I’ve been part of and seen the result of getting smart people with different viewpoints together. The process of listening with the intent to understand someone else’s perspective can lead to amazing outcomes. The insights or solutions that result can be great and wouldn’t have been reached absent the conflict and listening to understand.

To be clear, conflict for the sake of conflict isn’t a good thing. It can create a toxic culture. Nor is conflict that doesn’t adhere to the golden rule. But constructive conflict in a public setting where people are (1) trying to understand other perspectives and (2) focused on getting to a solution (not being right) can lead to powerful outcomes.

I’ve been using a particular software tool for several years. I pay an annual rate based on the number of seats (i.e., licenses) I need and pay the full amount once a year. At renewal time, the price has always been the same as on the original contract I signed, and I’ve happily renewed for another year of the service.

I recently received a renewal notice, and it included a cost increase. It points to a clause in our agreement that gives the company the option to automatically increase pricing annually. I’m fine with the increase, but I became curious. Why enforce this clause this year after not enforcing it in past years?

A SaaS entrepreneur I talked to had a hypothesis. During the last few years, the company grew quickly. Its product is quite good and has been popular. (I personally referred a few companies to it.) It probably added new customers easily. The entrepreneur believes the company’s revenue growth from new customers was so impressive that it didn’t need to enforce the contractual price increase (or didn’t think to).

 Now, in 2023, it’s a different story. The product is still good, but many of the technology companies it sells to have cut employee headcount and budgets. He suspects this led to a material reduction in the number of seats companies renewed for and that, in some cases, companies declined to renew their contract at all. The company likely wants to show revenue growth (or mitigate revenue decline as much as possible), so that’s why it’s exercising the contractual price increase option.

It’s an interesting hypothesis. I have a call scheduled with the company to discuss my contract. I’ll end up renewing, but I’m going to ask if that hypothesis is true.

Happy Labor Day!

I hope everyone had a safe and healthy holiday!

I read a quote recently that stuck with me:

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

                                               ~ Dale Carnegie

Simple, but thought provoking.

Are you successful, happy, both, or neither?

All last week, I thought about how to solve a problem. I felt like I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what I was missing or how to solve the problem.

I called a good friend from college to vent and get his opinion. He’s in a totally different field than I am and sees things from a different perspective, which I value. Over the next hour he gave me feedback on my thinking, and we talked through various ideas. Eventually, we landed on an insight that felt significant. We searched for data to support or contradict it. The data supported our thinking, and we realized that we’d uncovered what could be an important insight. Now I’m excited to dig into this key insight this upcoming week.

Knowing credible people with diverse perspectives whom I can call is helpful. These sounding boards can accelerate good thinking, highlight flawed thinking, or help me formulate unique insights.