Hey, welcome to my newsletter for curious marketers, content creators, and entrepreneurs. Content and tool curation as a service, that’s the mission of this newsletter. Expect stuff about social media, design, marketing, and tech. If you like these newsletters, forward this to a friend! If you received this from a friend, subscribe. Stay fresh! Rolf
⚒️Tools & Apps & Services
Image annotations for your image
Do you remember when Instagram was offline for a few hours and instead of images we saw a text description of the image? That got me interested in how good that technology for analyzing images is.
Tech giant Google is providing a simple drag & drop tool to put their Google Cloud Vision API to the test.
I have uploaded a few images from Unsplash and the results are pretty good. What I also like is the “dominant colors” section. That information can be useful when you build content around that image.
Your schedule on autopilot
Everything is AI these days. Like software or apps that manage your calendar. You connect a tool called x.ai to your Google or Microsoft calendar, and you start saving time (that’s the promise). A personal AI assistant is taking over the task of sending emails and meeting invites back and forth with your buddies.
I haven’t used x.ai or the recently announced calendar.help (from Microsoft) for my own calendar, but I was emailing back and forth with x.ai to organize a short call. I ended up reaching out to the owner personally to organize the confcall, but I am sure those services will be very common in 2-5 years.
x.ai also integrates with Slack and Zoom, tow services I use daily. I will soon give it a try.
Another cool app for recording your screen
I have lost track of all the screen-recording and screenshot tools I have tested in the last 12 months, but here’s another one!
Loom.com is a screen recording app. It comes with a desktop client app for Windows and Mac, and of course a Chrome extension. The feature set is complete, with options to trim, edit or share your video to name some. Here is an example I recorded using the Chrome extension.
Reading tip: About technical writing
I recently was invited to host a blogging workshop at a client (software company). When preparing the slides I also created a list of reading material for the workshop attendees. One of the articles that stood out was Advice for Technical Writing. The article shares lots of tips and tricks that can be considered not only for technical writing but blogging in general.
Fun Retro Logo Tool
I discovered this retro logo creation tool by accident. It reminds me of WordArt. You choose a style you like, type in your brand name and a logo in the chosen style is generated. The preview does not always work but the download does.
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