Hand-Picked Content
25% of Web Traffic Going Away
Article, 10min
Gartner predicts that traffic to websites from search engines will fall by 25% due to AI-generated answers displayed directly on the Google Search Results page. While predictions can be wrong, content creators already see declining site traffic because of Google’s AI-generated summaries. Naturally, creators aren’t earning anything from this. For more on these developments, check out the Washington Post.
- Announced earlier this week at Google I/O:Â Google wants to do the googling for you
Crushing it!?
Article, 2min
Apple is known as a brand loved by digital creators, so pushing out an ad that destroys all the tools creators love to work with was a bad idea. It’s interesting to see that such an ad bypassed all approval processes and that the team behind it didn’t anticipate the backlash—they miscalculated the audience’s feelings.
Claude AI over ChatGPT?
Blog, 1min
Seth Godin prefers Claude AI over ChatGPT because, according to him, it’s “more effective and less arrogant.”
Design Rules
Blog, 1min
This handy guide is useful to know next time you’re invited to give feedback on design proposals of any kind.
Hack your workflow
Swap contact details like a pro
It took 25 years and a pandemic for the QR Code to make its way into the mainstream. With this website, you can create your own custom QR Code tailored as a lock screen image for your smartphone. Next time you meet someone, let them scan the QR code with the default camera app on their phone (both iOS and Android). It triggers the creation of a new contact in the address book. Potential bonus effect: If you leave your phone somewhere, the finder could easily get your contact details. (Example)Â
Tools & Apps
Desktop App from OpenAI
AI Productivity
OpenAI announced a desktop app for ChatGPT. It is still in alpha and not available worldwide. I managed to find a download link and got it to run with a VPN connection (United States, of course). A key feature announced is voice chat: Instead of typing, you can talk to ChatGPT and get instant responses. It’s crazy how well it works. The feature is gradually being rolled out to ChatGPT Plus users first. The desktop app makes it easier to start conversations but has no access to other LLM models. Overall the desktop app offers a similar user experience to using it in the browser. The app is Mac-only at the moment.  App download link | Voice Chat Demo
Meta AI Text2Image
Gen AI
Meta is joining the club and launched their own web interface to interact with their LLM model. What stood out to me is their text-to-image feature: While typing your prompt, you instantly see the image being adapted. Meta AI is only available in the US at the moment –accessing it via VPN works, at least at the moment. The AI Chat feature gets added to their products, from Facebook to Instagram to WhatsApp. Try it out.
AI-free search results
Productivity
Google Search Tip: Using Google, but annoyed with AI-generated responses? Add -ai to your search queries to get a puristic search results page.
CapCut on Desktop
Video Editing
The highly popular mobile video editor app CapCut is also available as a desktop app—free if you use the basic features. It’s perfect for casual video creators like me. Screenshot
Fresh Reflections
Logging back on
Some impressions from my 3-week-camping trip in southern Italy recorded with Ray Ban Meta Glasses. Watch on LinkedIn | Threads
Off-Topic Links
Totally Fake
Blog
A story about a forged Apple employee badge sold on Ebay.
Solitude
Article
A fun video about the positive impact of living without a smartphone (or at least a dumbed-down phone).