Don't Study Without Google's New AI Study App

Okay, so a few days ago, Google released a mobile application version of my favorite tool that they made, which is called Notebook LM. And it's now available on iOS and on Android, and it's previously been available on the web as well. So basically, if you don't know what it is, it's a tool used to understand anything. And you can upload your own sources, so PDFs, YouTube videos, slides, audio files, and everything into notebook. And then it uses Google's models for free to basically come up with like study guides, briefing documents, and most importantly, audio overviews. So you can listen to like a audio podcast style description of what the sources are about. So you can understand the bigger picture before diving into specific questions. And one of the nice things about it is they don't use your personal data that you upload to train Notebook LM. So all your files are kept private. And I do have a previous video about it which you can watch over here somewhere. But basically one of the drawbacks previously with Notebook LM was that when you made an audio overview or summary, then you would have to download it and drop it to your phone and then you would have to like use external player to then play it. But now with the mobile app, you can just log into the same Google account and you can access all your notebooks quite easily and continue the conversation there. Now I have a notebook open on a book called $100 million offers by Alexi and basically what I did is I uploaded a copy of the book and then I also pressed discover and I wrote in $100 million offers and then it found many more articles and resources about it. And I generated an audio overview. And previously what we would have to do is download a copy of the audio overview and then airdrop it to our device and then use like an MP3 player on the device some kind of app to listen to the audio summary. But now you can just download the notebook LM app which I have open over here. And then you can see all the notebooks that you have available. So like the creating offers 100 million offers. I have most of my notebooks on account but this account that I'm using is mostly for videos. So I can go to notebook crafting offers and then I can ask questions about the sources and I can also press play directly from the recent screen. So if I just press play over here then it will say loading takes 10 to 20 seconds and now you can hear the audio summary of all the sources and you can also download it for later so you can listen to it whilst on the go. So I think that's pretty convenient and because they speak quite slowly you might want to listen to it two times speed but basically you can also do the same thing where you can interact with the actual hosts of the conversation. So, I don't know about you, but basically when I listen to podcast, I usually remember the ideas much better. And the fact that Notebook L makes this in a podcast style format where you have two speakers discussing the idea. It helps me remember the content or the information much better than if I was just reading it on its own. And I think a way of remembering the information even better is to engage with the speakers as well. So, I can go to a notebook that I have and then go to studio over here and then I can play the same conversation that I was playing before, but I can use interactive mode. So, if I say allow to my microphone, then it will take a few seconds. And now, basically, it's playing the exact same stuff that it was before in the audio overview, but now I can join in with the conversation instead. So, I can press the join over here. Oh, wait. So, what was the join? Hey, go for it. Hey, so why is this book actually useful? Like, what is the big deal about it? Why is everyone talking about it? Oh, that's a fantastic question. Thanks for jumping in. Yeah, it cuts right to the heart of it. Why this book? And you can see which notebooks have been shared with you. And you can also see the ones you have downloaded as well. But I don't have any notebooks shared. And if you want to share a notebook, you can't actually do it from the mobile app yet. So you're going to have to go to desktop version and then press share and then select the names and emails of the people you want to share it with. But anyway, right now because it's an early version of the application, you can do some of the same stuff, but not all the same stuff. So you can go to sources over here and then you can add your own sources, which is a PDF, website, YouTube video, or even text that you've copied to your clipboard as well. And if I press PDF, I can select the one that I have. Website, I can put in a website URL or I can go to YouTube. And then you can view all the sources that you have available and the source guide as well. Anyway, now you can ask the same questions that you do have about the sources. But unfortunately, you can't do the like study guide, briefing document, FAQ, and timeline just yet. But you can still ask the same question. So I can ask a question like how would this apply to a SAS business perhaps and then press enter and then it will come up with a response. And you can see it just gave the full response instead of like streaming it back. And I hope that in the future they have like a streaming version as well where you can see it being written out right in front of you. And you can see it has the same feature where you can see where in the sources it came from. So I can press one over here and then you can see the actual segment of the PDF where it was extracted from. And another pretty useful thing you can do is you can go on YouTube and then you can find a video and share the video straight to Notebook LM. So here's a video by Alex Herosi about the book. And if I just press share and then I go here and press more of options and then I can find NoBookm from this list over here. So I think it's more again and then scroll down and I can probably pin it as well to the top or if I use enough times then it will appear on the top and then I can select which notebook I want to share this video to. So I can either press like a new notebook or select the existing one and then you can see the video is importing and now it seems to work. So I guess it still is a tiny bit buggy but I think they will fix this in the coming weeks and months. And I can do the exact same thing from websites as well. So I have this website over here open and I can just press share in the top right and then go to more again and then select notebook element again and then I can just select the notebook

that I want to open. Select this and then it will import it into the notebook again. So you can see this page is now imported as well. But competitive desktop version is still lacking a few features. So when you press discover over here it's lacking this whole discover sources area. And if you press add, you can see the desktop version accepts text, markdown, and audio files. But the mobile app version only accepts PDFs and then links to websites and also YouTube videos. But I think the nice thing here is entire process has now been simplified or streamlined. So you can be learning on your computer and find some sources and like be asking questions and whatnot. And then a question comes to mind whilst you're out on the go and you can ask a question to same sources using the mobile app. And you can also import sources whilst you're on the go and learning about the same topic as well. And of course, as an additional nice feature where you can listen to audio overviews without having to airdrop it onto your phone. And I think this whole reduction in friction will make me use it much more often. So, for example, when commuting on a subway, it's pretty hard to get your laptop out and start doing work or open up Notebook LM, but it's much easier to do on your phone. So, you can continue learning about something on your phone, importing sources, and then listening to audio overviews and so forth. And I think compared to Chad Beauty, there's a nice active mode and a passive mode as well. So you can be passively listening to some audio overviews and then when you want to actually engage then you can start engaging. Otherwise you can just let it play and then still be learning and understanding the topic. Whereas at least with Chad GPT you always have to be thinking and engaging. And if you're on the voice mode, you always have to be thinking about questions, which is much harder to do in places such as on the subway, where you might not want to be talking and you just want to be listening instead.