My Favourite Recommended AI Tools Over The Last Year (Cool Tools)

Today marks a year of cool tools Tuesday because it's number 52, but what's been my favorite tools

that I've recommended over the last year? Let's discuss.

Welcome to the In a nutshell podcast. This is the Daily 10 Minute Podcast where I take out

all of the techie talk around Generative AI and focus on what day every day person, content creator

and marketer wants to hear. Now, if I only got 10 minutes, I can only focus on one subject.

And as it's Tuesday, yes, it's cool tools Tuesday, the day of the week where I talk about free

cool tools on a Tuesday. And I've been doing this for a year. This episode alone, I've been doing

for a year. And I would say it's the episode that I get most feedback from. When I speak to people

or they contact me on LinkedIn, it's always cool tools Tuesday. That's usually the one that people

mention. There's a cool tools Tuesday. And then they'll they'll say are free cool tools on a

Tuesday. I've had a few people say that to me. But I've been doing it for a year and that means I've

given you 156 tools. So usually free, yeah, free tools over 52 weeks, 156 tools or features within

tools as well. So it's not just every single time there's been a new tool. Sometimes I've

mentioned a tool, but I've gone into different features that they might have. So for example,

chat GPT. They've got this feature, that feature, that feature. And over the weeks, I've mentioned

different features. But what are the main tools that over the last year have been my favorite ones?

Either ones that I've used or ones that people have used and are doing well. I'm going to split

this into two sections because one of the sections is going to be popular tools. And then the other

section is going to be tools that's not so popular. You might have heard of them, but when I say

popular, I'm talking chat GPT mid journey 11 labs popular. I'm not talking like some of the

smaller ones. So I'm going to kind of split it into two because I've mentioned some very popular

tools. Some of them were popular by the time I mentioned it. And some of them were not so popular,

but I mentioned it earlier and they became popular. But tools that I've mentioned or features within

the tools that I've mentioned include chat GPT, Claude, perplexity, but it was perplexity on what

SAP which you can't do anymore. 11 labs and there are effects. So that's a good effect. Hage in

and building avatars because you can do avatars for free or at the time you could.

Done a lot on Google and different features, whether it be in an open honor, whether it be AI

studios, which to me is still the best free AI platform you can use. Talked about stylization

and mid journey, which is I'll be honest, if mid journey doesn't do a big update for version 8,

stylization is the only reason why I keep it and the fact that I paid for a year. So I can't

really get out of that contract. Apart from that, I don't really go to it. It's not my go-to tool

for editing. Definitely not. I prefer the other platforms like nano banana or chat GPT.

But obviously I spoke about mid journey. So that's another tool that I've mentioned.

Now some of the other tools that I've mentioned that were not necessarily big at the time,

but they've even become big or I still think they're very, very handy. Now I can say every single

tool that I recommend, right away. It's not just like I'm just coming up with any tool because

this has just happened to be the free tool this week. Now I do do my due diligence. I do look at

the tool and I think to myself would this benefit you. Also sometimes from training, people

will recommend tools or I show something on training. First, see the reaction. Do you like it?

Yes, no. And then I'll recommend it here as well. So it's not just random tools, but here are just

some of the tools over the year that I've mentioned that. If you haven't tried them, or you didn't

hear the episode or you're new to the podcast, here are just some of the tools that still to this day

are really good. So one, I did a gram. I mentioned this early. Well, before I started call tools

Tuesday, I was always recommending tools. That's something I've always been doing. I just branded it

call tools Tuesday a year ago. So when it's been branded call tools Tuesday,

idea gram was one of the tools I spoke about, but it was also a tool that I spoke about before

because it still is. Actually, no, I can't say it still is. It was one of the first image generators

that would get your text spot on because AI image generators for years had a problem with words

and hands. They're the two things that had a problem with. And idea gram was always the platform

I would go to if I needed some text on an image. So I did gram was something I recommended. And I

still would, to be honest, it's a very good tool. It has great features, new features all

to the time. And it has a good editor. So I did gram was something I recommended. Schumer prompt.

Now this tool here was how to prompt better. So if you're having problems with the prompts,

if you want to make it from going back to the belt system, white belt level prompt into black belt

level prompting, Schumer prompts will be a tool where you can put in your prompt and it would

optimize it to get the best result. Chat PDF. This was good because it helped you chat to YouTube

videos. So I could put a YouTube video link in I could type in whatever question or anything

like that I would have and it would do that. Now you can do that on notebook LM as well. So I might

have mentioned this early, like it might have been cool tools Tuesday 11 or something like that.

But notebook LM kind of covers all of this. The reason why I actually still prefer chat PDF is

because a notebook LM, if I've just got a random video, I don't like using that because I have

it quite organized or a folder that just does this, a folder that just does that or a folder that

just does this. If it's just random stuff, I would have to delete it every time and I would just

use chat PDF to do that. Things which is spelled THIINGS. If you want to get vector diagrams,

this is the this is my go-to tool. Yes, I could get it from nano banana and chat GBT, but I actually

go to things first just to see if someone's already done it and then I'll just use it that way.

If not, then I'll create it. Mini-max. Now mini-max is quite a big tool, like ideogram is quite a

big tool, very, very popular tool. What, I'll say very, very popular, but it's an all-in-one beast.

So large language model, it's got a, well, it's a very good large language model. It's a very good

audio generator. It's a very good image generator and it does very good videos. It's a tool that

covers a lot and I've mentioned those are different features. This is one of the tools that I've

mentioned quite a lot over the 52 episodes. It's doing this encoding, it's doing this in audio,

it's doing this in special effects, it's doing this in video. So I've done features within. So I

definitely would recommend that tool still. When it comes to music, Napster. I spoke about Napster.

Remember Napster? I spoke about Napster being an audio generator and then recently, as in,

might have been last week episode. I think it was last episode. If not, it might have been

called to choose day 50. I spoke about one called Son Auto, which was scary because you can mimic a

voice. In fact, I played at M&M rapping about this podcast. So check that one out. Episode

52 or 50. I can't remember which one. I think it might have been 52. But that was a tool that I would

recommend to play with just to see what's possible. Not necessarily a good thing. It's not

necessarily a good thing. I just want you to see what's possible. But Napster is a good tool as well.

I like that one. Now, two tools that I use all of the time mentioned it on the podcast. Two tools

I love. One of them I pay for. One of them I want to pay for but I can't justify paying for it.

That one is called Granola. A note taker tool. Yes, I use Favom. Yes, I've recommended other

note taker tools. But this one I like because one, you don't have to invite it to meetings.

Obviously, get somebody's, let somebody know you're recording them. But for me, it helps me because

if I'm recording something, let's say I've got a, my personal trainer on Zoom.

Rather than record the whole thing, sometimes I just want the audio. So I can record the audio

and then I can ask it questions. So it's really, really powerful tool. And it does other things as

well. But check it out. It's called Granola. And the other tool, which is one of my tools,

what look, one of the tool I use the most of all AI is Whisper. Whisper flow, which is a voice

dictation tool. I use that more than even chat GPT or any of the large language models.

And they're just some of the tools that I've mentioned. But I would say these are the main tools

that if you had to go back and play around or what tools to focus on, these will be some

of the ones that I would look at. So in a nutshell, they were the tools that really stood out

over the last year when it comes to Call Tools Tuesday. And as I said, this episode is something

that I'm going to be doing every single Tuesday. You're never going to have a shortage of tools.

And I'm never going to have a shortage of things to say about.