The AI Download #016 March 14th, 2025 Greetings from rainy and wet Valencia, where I’ve been deep in research mode for my latest project. This has me thinking about how dramatically our research methods have evolved in just the past year. If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been exploring alternatives to traditional search engines. Today, I want to share why this matters for your business and how early adoption of these tools can give you a significant competitive edge. Let’s get to...
19 days ago • 4 min read
The AI Download #015 March 7th, 2025 Dear Reader, Ever felt like you're getting stuck in circles with ChatGPT (or other chatbots, for that matter)? You're not alone. Despite their impressive capabilities, AI assistants lack something fundamental: human intuition. They don't naturally question their own methods or adapt their communication style to match your needs. This is why your prompting strategy matters more than you might think. Be Direct: Clarity Creates Better Results When I first...
26 days ago • 3 min read
The Download #014 February 21st, 2025 Dear Reader, I spent the majority of time this and last week keeping my poorly kids entertained at home while trying to look for contract work and create an online course, with video. It became clear very quickly that I wasn't going to be able to do everything, but I had nobody else on hand to help me hit my targets. That is, unless you count...me. On one of those days I had an unexpected two-hour gap where there was nobody in the house - that's all the...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
The Download #013 February 21st, 2025 Dear Reader, With more countries blocking access to DeepSeek, an AI model linked to ByteDance, the conversation around AI privacy is heating up. As AI tools become an integral part of our workflows, it’s worth asking: How much control do we really have over our data? Most AI tools—ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini—process your inputs on cloud servers, meaning they handle your data externally. While these companies have varying policies on storage and model...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
The Download #012 February 14th, 2025 Dear Reader, This week: AI web search, OpenAI's Whisper, Qwen AI and more. I've written with relative frequency that AI search is starting to dominate traditional search. I'm a huge fan of Perplexity Search, but this week OpenAI has dropped the sign-in required to access ChatGPT's Search, making it a viable contender for all. If you're only used to traditional web search and haven't tried AI powered search yet, I suggest you give it a try now. Once you...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Download #011 February 7th, 2025 Dear Reader, This week: Notes on DeepSeek, revisiting Make.com automations and more. In the last few weeks, there's been an explosion of activity and releases in the AI scene, due in part to DeepSeek R1’s disruptive impact in the tech, finance and political landscapes. While there remains a lot to digest in all those domains, I find myself resonating most with the following points: Dario Amodei (Anthropic, and previous VP of Research at OpenAI), DeepSeek...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
The Download #010 January 24th, 2025 Dear Reader, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling globally fatigued since the start of this week. Despite all that, I spent some time testing out multi-cam video techniques for some YouTube content. The software I'm using is called LumaFusion, and it lets you add multiple video and audio sources, then syncs them all together. In your final edit you can choose which cameras you want to use in your timeline. I'm looking forward to sharing some of those...
2 months ago • 3 min read
The Download #009 January 17th, 2025 Dear Reader, I'll wager the winter holidays seem very far away, even though we're only two weeks into the new year! I hope you had some time and space to rest and relax. We spent the time discovering new places while geocaching, watching the highly enjoyable new Wallace & Gromit (Netflix) film and The Secret Lives of Animals (Apple TV+) series, and miraculously didn't overstuff ourselves on Roscón de Reyes. This week: I've made a GPT to make your prompt...
3 months ago • 3 min read
The Download #008 Dear Reader, Greetings from @30,000 feet. As I start this final newsletter of the year, I’m returning from a short trip to London, visiting family and taking stock of what’s going to happen in the year to come. 2024 has been an personally transformative year*, but I've been reflecting on what we can do now in the AI and tech space now that we couldn't do a year ago. Some examples: SAP’s Q3 Business AI release reduced manual data processing time from 30 minutes to 30 seconds...
3 months ago • 5 min read