You may know Steven Johnson as an author. He has written a number of books, many of which focused on the science of our way of thinking and the history of innovation. But he is also a googler who worked on the Notebook Team at the start of the project two years ago. “In simple terms, Notebooklm is a tool to understand things,” explains Steven. Consider it as your notes and virtual research assistant: NoteBooklm takes information, digers and analysis so that you can glean more. It is designed for this “deeper dive” that you may have to tackle a subject – or more subjects at the same time.
With Notebooklm, you create individual notebooks dedicated to a subject or a project. You can download up to 50 “sources” with up to 25 million words – all things like PDF, Google documents, websites and YouTube videos. Then, Notebooklm uses the multimodal capabilities of Gemini 1.5 to assess and establish links between the sources you have added. You can ask questions about the content or ask Notebooklm to format it in a specific way – it will even provide quotes that will connect the most relevant original passages from your sources. And along the way, your private information is never shared or used to form the model.
If you don’t just start, try these eight Steven tips to get the most out of notebooklm.
1. Experience your recent documents – even if they are random
One of the first things Steven suggests that new laptops make users is to download their 10 most recent documents to a laptop and start to experiment by asking questions. Even if your most recent documents are unrelated and completely random, it is a great way to test the execution of what Notebooklm can do. Whether you know the equipment in the documents to the letter, or all of this is new enough for you, Notebooklm will help you discover interesting ideas.
2. Create a main notebook, then identify the notebooks based on the subject from there
Steven suggests keeping what he calls a “notebook everything you charge with sources that include the general knowledge with which you work most days. Sources could be inspiring books that you read, or the basic documents that describe the company for which you work, or all your brainstorming ideas that you have captured over the years. “I do a lot of open reflection and exploration of ideas in my” all “notebook,” says Steven. But it is also important to also create notebooks based on a subject or projects. “I have a notebook devoted exclusively to the work we do under construction notebooklm,” explains Steven. “He has all the press releases, the new descriptions of features and the important internal documents that we write in a team.” Keeping all these related sources in a single notebook, Steven has a personalized AI which is almost like having another member of the team. “I can go there and type something like”, write the outline of a blog article for this feature we are talking about last week “, and the notebook knows exactly what to do.”
3. Use Notebooklm to connect points of different materials
Notebooklm is extremely useful for situations where you must manage, connect and synthesize information from several sources. “We all have this problem where we are working on something, and the information we need is dispersed on office files, tabs and everywhere,” explains Steven. This is why Notebooklm is designed, he explains: connect all these scattered points.
This can be particularly useful as the next step after using Gemini And Jewels. After thinking or having other conversations open in these tools, Notebooklm can take the results and transform them into something easy to follow. Steven offers the example of work on a slide. Perhaps you start the process by reflecting on Gemini, which leads you to open a few tabs of items, save design inspo images and put notes in a Google document. You can then feed all of this in Notebooklm, which will synthesize the information in an easy -to -digest format so that you can reference everything in one place when you arrive at the construction stage of your presentation in Google slides.
4. Start with the suggested questions
Once you have added content to notebooklm, it’s time to start asking questions – which could leave you perplexed. In a similar way to Advice that we have shared on the use of the side panel powered by Gemini In workspace tools, Steven says that the suggested questions of notebooklm are an excellent resource. “The model will actually help you ask questions that guide you through the equipment for a while until you think of something you want to ask,” he explains. You can find start -up questions in the “notebook guide” that appears after downloading your first sources. In addition, when you start asking questions, Notebooklm also suggests tracking requests, depending on what you have already asked for and what you have downloaded.
5. Ask Notebooklm to provide information in different ways
Something that came out of the first tests, says Steven, was the need for notebooklm to display information in various formats. “Everyone treats information differently, or even prefers to see the information presented in different ways,” he explains. Using the book guide function, Notebooklm can transform your content downloaded into FAQ, an information document, a chronology, a table of contents, a study guide – or the new audio overview, Who really transforms your information into an attractive conversation between two AI “hosts”. Try different options both to see what works best for your own learning purposes as well as to present information to others.
6. Do not divert yourself from creative uses
Notebooklm is an incredible resource for work and school projects (the team has just launched a pilot program for the notebooklm company to collaborate in a workplace). But it is also an excellent tool for many creative uses outside the office or the class. “We see a lot of people using it to get help to write fantasy and science fiction novels or develop games where they work on world construction and complex stories,” explains Steven. Maybe for your scenario, you noted a few notes in a document, recorded various web pages and taken photos and videos as inspiration. “There is all this information that can be difficult to keep directly,” says Steven. “You can put all this kind of things in a single notebook and ask for things like:” What was the problem with this character? ” Or “Remind me what characters live where?” »»
Steven particularly likes that you can ask notebooklm a creative contribution with questions such as “What characters do you think that are the most convincing?” Or: “What are your favorite games?” “It’s like being able to control F for” interest “!” he said.
7. Transform your sources into audio previews
You should certainly transform each of these 10 documents with which you start, or everything you download in a Audio previewSaid Steven. “After waiting for a few minutes for it to generate, you will have a very entertaining and breathtaking audio conversation on everything you have downloaded!” Steven says. And the team just published a new feature In audio previews, allows you to adjust the format of the conversation. Simply press “Personalize” in the audio preview panel and enter a brief description of what the hosts want to concentrate from your sources. “You can also direct them in terms of approaching the level of sophistication you want from overview,” explains Steven. “I downloaded my own writing and asked them to give me constructive criticism of my work.”