I don’t just write about generative AI in my Smart Content Report. I also use these tools myself. It’s a good way to find out what works and what doesn’t.
At the same time, this site would not be possible without the help of my AI assistants. After all, I don’t make any money from it. It’s actually a side project of a side project (namely UPLOAD Magazin).
Having said that, I’m not an uncritical fan of the AI boom, just because these tools have proven to be useful. See the tag “criticism” on this page.
Ultimately, it is very important to me that I, as a human, keep my hands on the wheel at all times. I don’t automate. I utilize helpers.
Let me explain what that looks like.
Researching topics
The first thing I have to do is keep myself up to date. I use NetNewsWire as a feed reader. This allows me to keep track of new articles on relevant websites in one place.
Three sources are currently the most important for Smart Content Report:
- Hacker News. Run by VC investor YCombinator, it has developed an active community with a strong focus on technology, especially web technologies.
- Techmeme. This is a news aggregator specifically for technology topics.
- VentureBeat. There are many sites covering AI, but VentureBeat simply has a very good team.
Another important source is Reddit. I follow these subreddits, among others:
This list changes frequently. In these subreddits I find personal impressions, speculations, examples or even news.
Collect, sort, select
I bookmark what I find in these sources in my browser. I already organize them into their respective categories News, Tools and Background.
Originally, I started going through these links every two weeks, sorting them and preparing them for the newsletter. This has changed with the Smart Content Report website. Now I update the site several times a week and create the newsletter from that.
I use tab groups in the Safari browser both for posting new content and for the newsletter. They open all pages and tools I need for each task in one go. Tab groups sync automatically between Mac, iPad and iPhone. The same goes for bookmarks.
Publishing
The publishing process has changed a lot in recent weeks. I used to have several tools that I had to switch between. I used TypingMind, for example, for my AI assistants with ready-made prompts. For translations, I used DeepL Translator and DeepL Write. Plus the Smart Content Report backend.
There was a lot of copy and past going on.
I have simplified this considerably.
With the help of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, I created a WordPress plugin. Since then I have this input form in my backend:
I can enter the URL of the source article in the top line and Diffbot will return the text. This is more of an emergency solution. It comes in handy when I am working on the iPad or iPhone, for example. On a Mac, I prefer to do it manually because it works more reliably. But it’s nice to have it.
The text of the source article is entered in the “Source Text” input field.
I choose one of the four prompts currently available, which I can customize on a separate page.
I click on “Generate Draft Post” and everything is sent to Claude. A few seconds later, I can view and edit the draft.
I have customized my prompts so that Claude immediately returns an English and a German version. Have a look at the prompts on this page.
Then it’s time to read, edit, improve and correct the draft. There are a few things that need to be done before publication, such as the tags.
So it’s still manual work. But it is much easier than before.
The newsletter is ultimately published in German by UPLOAD Magazin and I publish it in English via LinkedIn. Ultimately, I would like to manage the newsletter directly on the website. It might also make sense to send it out weekly instead of fortnightly. But I’m still deciding on that.
That’s my current process in a nutshell. If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with me: jan@smartcontentreport.com
This post from 19 September 2024 was last updated on 10 December 2024.