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Parker Rex

Google's NoteBookLM is Absurd (No CODE!)

September 29, 2024

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Google's NotebookLM stacks up as a versatile AI assistant for learning and content creation. It can summarize long documents, generate podcasts from articles, and help you repurpose content for social media in minutes.

NotebookLM at a glance#

  • What it is: a research assistant that organizes sources into notebooks and lets you extract, summarize, and generate content from those sources.
  • How it sources content: you can add websites, YouTube links, or PDFs. It can crawl and summarize the material, then generate downstream outputs like articles, podcasts, slides, and social posts.
  • Key capability: generate a podcast from a short article or prompt, and create other content around the same topic quickly.

Quick-start workflow#

  • Create an account and a new notebook.
  • Add a source:
  • Paste a website URL or YouTube link.
  • Upload a PDF or other documents (the example of a long “Huberman” podcast or a 330-page manual demonstrates this).
  • Let it summarize and pull out topics, then:
  • Generate a podcast from the article.
  • Generate a social post (Instagram, etc.) using a prompt you tailor.
  • Save outputs as notes for later use and export to other tools (Canva, Meta platforms) for final formatting.
  • Example prompts you can reuse:
  • Develop a social media post for Brand X that engages the target audience with a clear hook, 2-3 bullets, and a CTA.
  • Explain what each camera mode does (for a product-specific manual).

Example prompt snippet:

Develop a social media post for Brand X that engages the target audience, uses a concise hook, 2-3 bullets, and a strong CTA.

Content generation & repurposing flows#

  • Article to podcast:
  • Paste the article URL, hit go, and NotebookLM generates an audible-style podcast.
  • It can include references to sources and offer questions or prompts for deeper exploration.
  • Article to social post:
  • Use a ready-made prompt or your own variation, generate the post text, tweak as needed, and save as a note.
  • Quick handoff to design/tools:
  • Copy the text to Meta (for distribution) or Canva (for visuals) to finish the post with images and formatting.

Source management and limitations#

  • Source limits: there is a limit on the number of sources per notebook. Community members on the NotebookLM Discord have been sharing workarounds.
  • Workaround idea:
  • Combine multiple sources into a single “mega-source” to keep the notebook flowing (be mindful of overflow limits).
  • Community notes:
  • The Discord community shares best practices and tips, including how to optimize prompts and workflows.

Practical camera-use case (learn-by-doing)#

  • User scenario: upload a long camera manual (e.g., a 330-page PDF).
  • What you get:
  • A parsed summary with key topics and a structured overview.
  • The ability to ask questions like “Explain what each camera mode does” and receive a bulleted list you can reference.
  • Quick rename and organization of outputs for easy reuse.
  • Why this helps:
  • You can bypass long-form videos and get precise, topic-focused explanations and notes.
  • You can generate podcast-style explanations or briefs from the manual.

Voices, training, and future potential#

  • Voice editing: there are early capabilities to adjust some voice options; no full voice training yet.
  • Future potential:
  • Training NotebookLM on your own voice for output that sounds like you.
  • Using your voice to generate articles or podcasts from input material without re-recording.
  • Takeaway: this is a live frontier; expect rapid improvements and new features over time.

Practical tips and caveats#

  • Start simple: use a single source to test the notebook’s capabilities before expanding.
  • Don’t rely on it as a perfect source of truth: always verify references and cross-check critical details.
  • Experiment with prompts: small changes to prompts can dramatically change the tone and structure of outputs.
  • Plan for momentum: save notes, then export to Canva/Meta to lock in visuals and distribution.

Takeaways#

  • NotebookLM can transform how you learn and create content by turning articles and manuals into podcast episodes, social posts, and study notes in minutes.
  • It’s especially handy for breaking down long PDFs and extracting actionable insights quickly.
  • The future looks promising with voice customization and more robust source handling on the horizon.

If you found this helpful, a like or subscribe helps—I’ll keep sharing practical notes on AI tools and hands-on workflows.

Transcript

Google recently released its research assistant and it's called notebook LM and it's Game Changer it's going to be helpful for marketers for coders for researchers analysts people trying to figure out how to use their camera and today by the end of the video you will understand how this thing will be helpful it can literally generate a podcast of an article so for the content game totally game changer for understanding any concept for trying to learn a new topic for school or for work for coding whatever it is it's just crazy so let's jump in and uh make sure you stay till the end because it's going to be very very helpful so let's cover a couple different use cases just Google up notebook LM I don't need to teach you how to Google but we're going to take an article we're going to make an Instagram post and a podcast in like 3 seconds that's crazy um then we're going to go through a use case I have which was I want to learn how to use some settings on my camera so in here you go to notebook LM create an account it gives you some example notebooks notebook are the home for the different sources that you have so if I want to create a new source I'll click new notebook I can give it a link so a website or YouTube link that's crazy I could feed it in a huberman podcast there like six hours and ask questions against it have it generate a bunch of different articles out of it it will site all the sources I can do that for a website if the website's properly set up then it will sweep through that find out all the relevant information summarize it and then generate stuff past textt Google doc slides Etc there's a source limit on here you can get around that if you join the Discord there's a bunch of nerds in there that have gotten around it and the way they basically do it is just put every Source into one source and at a certain point it'll overflow but that's one way to get around it um so yeah upload a source do that and then it creates a notebook I'm already going to just show you one so let's say I have this uh article about orange juice orange juice is better for hydrations and water why well let's find out I just pasted it in there I went to uh YouTube pasted it or sorry website pasted the link hit go it generate this podcast okay so you know how everybody's always on about like stay hydrated drink more water well somebody sent me um this link about orange juice and it's an 11 and a half Minute Podcast about a one paragraph article that is insane and it makes references and it's crazy and it can have suggestions questions so this was basically for me just pasting that in then I hit generate then I can create other stuff um if I wanted to like generate a you know an Instagram post I can do that I can grab one of these prompts so in this case it's like develop a social media post for a brand name that engages you know target audience y y yada yada y you don't need to watch me do that if you need that uh can be in the description but it's super simple and then and you kind of tweak it so it gave me this I hate emojis but I would basically just tweak that so the way I would do that is I paste in the prompt I hit go and that opens the chat you can see the chat here and that's it and then if I wanted to save those I hit saved a note and then I jump over to meta I paste that in the text I can jump into canva take whatever the caption was or you know some sort of image and then boom I have a piece of content and a podcast crazy so that's that use case now let's cover the camera use case so I just did this and I just downloaded this uh PDF 330 Pages crazy right not for Google so upload that by going to PDF dropping it in and then it gives you the summary it tells me the topics so this would be really good for like keyword stuff if you're targeting those and then it gives me I mean I'm not going to scroll but you can see that tiny little thing it's all the text that's parsed so I already asked a question um The Notebook guide has stuff in here if I wanted to make a podcast about a 330 page manual I could do that I don't know why I would but I could um obviously the summary then suggestion questions so if I hit view chat explain what each camera mode does because in my case I'm new to this content game and like if you've ever used a camera there's a bunch of stuff on the top and a lot of the YouTubers that you know I typically go and I type this in on YouTube to answer my question this replaced that for me because I don't want to listen to Somebody Yap for like 48 minutes like that's the the death of me is when I see like 48 minute video about the thing that I'm trying to learn and it's literally buried somewhere in there or not even in there at all because it's a niche question about the product or the service that I'm trying to understand and it's just an awful experience so that just deletes that whole headache and what I did was I just asked the question I said hey explain what each camera mode does give me bold of list then I'll just rename this Canon manual cool done uh that's pretty much it you can join the Discord if you want I'm not you know Affiliated at all with Google but what I did find out was that you can edit some of the voices so that's going to be really interesting they don't have voice training yet I imagine it's coming soon but there's a bunch of Google people in here that are actually like walking through Best Practices so that's pretty helpful where you can imagine that this will quickly become a phenomena where people are you know in my case like I could take this video of me talking right now and give that to notebook say hey make an article about this hey make a podcast about this and I could also train it on my voice so that I could take any input material like a 330 page camera guide I mean this would be an awful podcast but it would be you know Parker talks about the Canon pow shots g7x Mark III for 40 minutes there's people on that Discord that are making 40 minute podcasts so that's it for now if this is helpful make sure you like the video before you leave you click the button one two three click the button thank you and then subscribe to the channel I'll be making more videos like this they're typically around like Tech stuff and everything that I'm learning because I'm on the frontier of it and have a good day