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PODCAST

Wonder Tools

Wonder Tools helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Building on one of Substack"s most popular productivity newsletters, each episode of the podcast includes specific tips on how to make the most of these new tools to work creatively and productively. wondertools.substack.com

technology how to

All Episodes

9:56

My Mobile AI Toolkit 📱

Wonder Tools ·

2025/10/24

15-second summary of this post: Your phone is now a pocket AI studio. Design a presentation, get voice coaching, conduct research, or make a quick infographic. The biggest players — ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude — all offer numerous free features on both iOS and Android. And a growing group of alternative AI apps now offer private AI for free. [See my recommendations for free, private AI on your laptop.] Read on👇 for a guide to the most notable features of the top AI chat apps.ChatGPT: Your

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9:34

🎯 My Private, Free AI Setup

Wonder Tools ·

2025/10/17

Short on time? Read this 30-second summary of today’s post. 👇Download a free, private AI program to run on your computer. Use it offline without any subscription cost and avoid the risk of having sensitive info ingested into a large language model like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. The newest versions of private AI tools like Jan run easily on my 2021 Mac laptop, cost nothing, are easy to use. They’re a good alternative to costlier AI platforms. 🔰 Quick start guide * Download and install the

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8:57

✨ Claude Turns Ideas into Apps

Wonder Tools ·

2025/10/10

Claude feels like a genie to me. With its Artifacts feature I can turn any idea I have into an interactive application, visualization, or graphic. Yesterday I created a Flashcard maker and a breathing app. No coding. Just a short AI chat conversation. No complexity. I dream up an idea, and Claude makes it instantly real. I iterate with chat to make it better. Read on for a guide to making the most of Artifacts with examples and ideas you can build yourself.✨ How to turn ideas into apps (no coding)*

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10:35

20+ Kid Tools for Better Screen Time 🎨

Wonder Tools ·

2025/09/26

Not everything creative needs a prompt. The Web is increasingly flooded with AI-generated images and videos, much of it aimed at kids. Sometimes it’s nice to break free of that synthetic media. As a dad of 10 and 12-year-old daughters, I appreciate resources for kids and families that celebrate human imagination, curiosity, and hands-on exploration. I had a fruitful recent conversation about resources for kids with a fellow dad, Kevin Maguire, who writes the great newsletter The New Fatherhood. If

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16:59

Gretchen Rubin’s Secrets of Adulthood: Live with...

Wonder Tools ·

2025/09/18

Get full access to Wonder Tools at wondertools.substack.com/subscribe

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10:51

What's in My Conference Bag 💼

Wonder Tools ·

2025/09/18

In part one of this post, I shared my conference prep and networking toolkit. But here's the thing: conference value often gets lost the week after. You return exhausted, with a phone full of photos and a head full of ideas that slowly fade. Two things can help. A little hardware — worth its carry-on weight— and a few smart post-event tools. These streamline how I show up — and follow-up.My Conference Gear1. The Digital NotebookreMarkable Paper Pro Move This new digital notebook is like a cross

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7:25

My Conference Survival Kit 📱

Wonder Tools ·

2025/09/15

I go to conferences just a few times a year. To make the most of the frenzied days, I rely on a suite of tools. Read on below for those worth trying, and then read my follow-up post: What’s in My Conference Bag 💼 I. The Week Before1. Mine Your Network GoldmineClay | This personal rolodex enhances your contact list with info from LinkedIn and whatever other social platforms you choose (Instagram, Facebook, X). You can use Nexus, its new AI-enhanced search, to surface contacts in your conference

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9:59

📚 Meet Your New AI Tutor

Wonder Tools ·

2025/08/29

AI assistants are now more than simple answer machines. ChatGPT's new Study Mode, Claude's Learning Mode, and Gemini's Guided Learning represent a significant shift. Instead of just providing answers, these free tools act as adaptive, 24/7 personal tutors. Sponsored Message🎥 Guidde | Create how-to guides with AITired of explaining the same thing over and over again to your colleagues?Guidde is an AI-powered tool that helps you explain the most complex tasks in seconds with AI-generated

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7:33

Weird prompts, better answers 🧠

Wonder Tools ·

2025/08/21

AI assistants are surprisingly conservative by default. Push them to be unconventional, and you’ll get dramatically different results. This updated guide shares my favorite techniques for getting fresh, useful responses instead of predictable pablum.[Editor's note: Are you actually reading these episode notes? If so, I'd love to hear from you. Are they useful? Would you prefer they were shorter summaries of the post, rather than full text? Email jeremy at jeremycaplan.com if you have thoughts or

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8:00

🧠 4 Ways I Use AI to Think Better

Wonder Tools ·

2025/08/15

Bland AI outputs grow stale quickly. Instead of just speeding up routine tasks, what if we used AI to slow down, challenge our thinking, and build new tools, dashboards, and experiments? Read on for creative approaches that are changing how I think about AI.1. Create your own devil's advocate assistant 👿Get thoughtful pushback on decisions. Challenge ideas.The tactic: Use AI as an intellectual sparring partner to stress-test your thinking, explore alternative perspectives, and identify potential

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6:31

✨ AI Tools Worth Your Time

Wonder Tools ·

2025/07/25

Four new AI tools caught my attention recently for solving specific problems well. They're free to try, quick to learn, and point toward where AI is heading.1. Lovart 🧑‍🎨 Create a brand kit or marketing campaign with an AI design agent Lovart’s conversational interface allows you to generate posters, social posts, branding kits, storyboards — even packaging. Unlike other image generation tools, you can generate dozens of images from a single prompt, then iterate on the results in a chat dialogue

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7:09

My all-in-one productivity tool 🚀

Wonder Tools ·

2025/07/11

If I could use only one app, I’d pick Craft. Craft is my favorite multipurpose document + notes tool. It looks and feels nicer than Google Docs or Apple Notes. It’s easier to use than Obsidian, Coda or Notion. And it’s flexible enough for everything from shopping lists to client proposals. Read on for why it’s so useful, new features, limitations, and more.Craft’s 8 best features 👍 * Visual: Elegant sub-page cards help Craft docs look neater & nicer than Google or Word Docs, which tend to bog down

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7:34

🌟 Tally: Superb Free Surveys

Wonder Tools ·

2025/06/27

Tally is the best free tool for creating surveys. They’re better-looking and more flexible than Google Forms, and they’re just as easy to create in 60 seconds. Use it for any kind of survey, whether you’re getting feedback from clients or students, collecting RSVPs, or gathering ideas. Get Started: Pick a template or a blank page. Add questions: multiple choice, open text, ranking, or many others. You can ask respondents to upload a file or make a payment. To enhance your design, add text blocks,

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10:58

Declutter your Digital Mess

Wonder Tools ·

2025/06/19

Most bookmark tools feel like cluttered digital filing cabinets—full of folders, tags, and organizational overhead. mymind is a minimalist alternative. It’s a clean, simple online hub for saving anything you find online. Create a gorgeous private scrapbook of images, links, articles or anything else you want to save, without the hassle of labeling. It’s an opinionated tool that’s not for everyone — caveats below include no sharing or importing. And I’ve noted a bunch of strong alternatives. But

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10:08

🎯 Perplexity Update

Wonder Tools ·

2025/06/14

The audio for this post was generated by feeding the text of this Wonder Tools newsletter post into NotebookLM's new Audio Overview feature.Read the full post on the Wonder Tools Substack pagePerplexity is the most useful new search tool I’ve used this year. It uses AI to answer your questions using online sources. You get specific citations so you know where the info comes from and can dig deeper. The summary responses are concise and relevant, and the links help you validate the info. Read on for

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15:21

🏗️ Build Better Presentations

Wonder Tools ·

2025/06/05

Chronicle is a promising new tool for creating compelling visual presentations. Prioritizing design and full control over bullet points or speed, Chronicle offers a valuable alternative to PowerPoint and other popular online slide services like Gamma, Beautiful.ai, Canva, and Pitch. Because Chronicle just launched its public beta this week, some of its features aren’t full developed yet, like templates and image editing. But it’s already one of the most exciting new services for creating slick

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8:50

Google's free AI Studio ⚡️

Wonder Tools ·

2025/05/30

Google’s AI Studio and Labs let you experiment for free with new AI tools. I love the way these digital sandboxes — like the one from Hugging Face — let you try out creative new uses of AI. You can dabble around then download and share what you make, without having to master a complex new platform. Read on for a few Google AI experiments to try. All are free, fast, and easy to use. 1. Transform an image 🎨Upload a photo and use Gemini’s AI Studio Image Generation to transform it with prompts

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9:53

🧠 Claude 4 is here

Wonder Tools ·

2025/05/23

One of the best AI models just got even better. Claude 4 launched yesterday and I’ve been using it for everything from analyzing files and planning projects to copy editing and creating visual dashboards. Read on for my take on its most useful features, limitations, and five ways to use it. 🚀 What’s new with Claude 4? 💭 More nuanced reasoning. Claude’s “extended thinking” mode is now even brainier. It more thoroughly analyzes complex queries. 🧑‍💻 Stronger coding. Claude could already produce

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7:42

🚀 Find Your Next Great Job with AI

Wonder Tools ·

2025/05/16

I’ve been curious lately — how might AI help my former students — and so many others looking for new jobs — in a challenging & complicated market? My conclusion: AI tools can serve as patient assistants. They can help you organize your search, reflect on career goals, and convey your strengths persuasively. Whether you're pivoting careers or moving up in your field, here's how to leverage AI to stand out and land a great opportunity.1. Explore career directions Recommended tool: Google’s Career

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15:21

🧠 Deep Research with AI: 9 Ways to Get Started —...

Wonder Tools ·

2025/05/02

The AI search landscape is transforming at breakneck speed. New "Deep Research" tools from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity autonomously search and gather information from dozens — even hundreds — of sites, then analyze and synthesize it to produce comprehensive reports. While a human might take days or weeks to produce these 30-page citation-backed reports, AI Deep Research reports are ready in minutes.What’s in this post * Examples of each report type I generated for my research, so you can form

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