Google Notebook LM Tutorial - [Become A Power User in 15 min]

Summary

In this engaging video tutorial by Santrel Media, viewers are introduced to Google Notebook LM, a free and powerful tool that has transformed the creator's workflow. Once a frequent user of ChatGPT, the host now swears by Notebook LM for its versatility and ability to simplify complex information. This tutorial reveals 13 ways to maximize the use of Notebook LM, from creating customized podcasts and study guides to analyzing presentations and complex code. The video emphasizes how anyone can level up their business, education, and personal growth through this innovative platform, while also urging viewers to exercise caution due to Google's history of discontinuing projects.

Highlights

• Discover Google's Notebook LM, a revolutionary tool for managing diverse information sources. 🌐
• Easily generate AI podcasts from documents to listen and learn while commuting. 🎙️
• Create study guides and briefings to boost memory and retention effortlessly. 🧠
• Use Notebook LM for sophisticated analysis of presentations and code to enhance business strategies. 👩‍💼
• Keep your data secure—Google's history shows a trend of discontinuing tools, so be prepared! 📂

Key Takeaways

• Google Notebook LM is a game-changer for organizing and interpreting multiple sources of information, from PDFs to audio files. 🎉
• You can create customized AI-generated podcasts to learn on-the-go, transforming commutes into educational sessions. 🎧
• Notebook LM offers tools like study guides and briefings to enhance learning and productivity. 📚
• Analyze your presentations or complex code efficiently to spot trends and improve outcomes with Notebook LM. 🕵️‍♂️
• Stay organized and safeguard your data externally, as Google often discontinues services. ⚠️

Overview

Ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data you need to process every day? Enter Google Notebook LM, a powerhouse tool brought to you by Google and highlighted by Santrel Media in this tutorial. Designed to handle a myriad of file types—from PDFs to audio recordings—Notebook LM brings a transformative edge to how we manage and learn from information.

In just 15 minutes, the video walks you through 13 innovative ways to leverage Notebook LM, turning it into your secret weapon for productivity. Whether it's generating dynamic podcasts from boring PDFs, automating the creation of study guides, or even conducting deep dives into your presentation performance, Notebook LM is depicted as the ultimate digital ally for geeks and professionals alike.

The tutorial, while singing praises of the tool, also gives a word of caution: Google is known for axing services, so it's wise to save your stuff externally. Dive into the future of learning and organization with Notebook LM, but remember to have a backup plan just in case it meets the common fate of many Google products.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Notebook LM The introduction discusses a shift from using ChatGBT to Notebook LM, highlighting its power and utility. Notebook LM is praised for its accessibility and effectiveness, having become a favorite internet tool for the speaker. An example of its functionality is provided: the speaker uploaded four long PDFs about an investment into Notebook LM, which then created an AI podcast for easy consumption during commutes. The chapter also mentions that Spotify utilizes Notebook LM for its services. This marks a transition to using innovative tech for more efficient information processing and consumption.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Getting Started with Notebook LM The chapter 'Getting Started with Notebook LM' introduces the tool, Notebook LM, and its potential benefits. The speaker expresses enthusiasm for the AI functionalities within Notebook LM and outlines 13 key uses for beginners to enhance various aspects of their lives, including business, education, and investments. The chapter also includes a real-time demonstration of using Notebook LM, starting with accessing the website, signing in with a Google account, and ensuring everything is saved in The Notebook.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Uploading Multiple Sources Creating a notebook and uploading multiple sources is emphasized. The Notebook LM is highlighted for its capability to interpret various sources such as PDFs, website links, videos, copied text, Google Docs, slideshows, and markdown documents. This functionality distinguishes it from other platforms like chat GPT or Gemini, which typically allow uploading a single source for querying.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Specific Queries and Source References The chapter discusses the capability of a tool that can interpret different files, such as MP3 audiobooks and PDFs, by transcribing their content and answering queries based on them. The example given involves uploading three PDFs about investing in Timberland. The tool is described as allowing users to ask specific questions, similar to other large language models (LLMs).
• 02:30 - 03:30: Creating AI Podcasts The chapter titled "Creating AI Podcasts" discusses a specific tool or method that facilitates searching and retrieving information from large documents. It highlights a feature that allows users to input specific questions related to uploaded information and references different files to provide answers. This is presented as a superior alternative to the traditional Control+F method, offering a more effective way to find information even if the user doesn’t have the exact wording needed for a direct search. The tool or feature not only finds the information but also provides the sources, making it ideal for jobs that require extensive document search.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Podcast Customization and Playback The chapter discusses how to access and navigate information from multiple sources, such as specific codes from townships or details from quarterly earnings reports, within a podcast setting. It mentions the ability to customize podcasts for learning purposes by utilizing up to 50 different sources, providing numerous options for content personalization. An example of customization given is the creation of a podcast focused on earnings reports.
• 04:30 - 06:00: New Notebook and Podcast Customization The chapter introduces the concept of customizing content in a new notebook and podcast platform. It highlights an example using earnings reports, where users may not want to listen to the entire report but prefer a summary. Users can upload transcripts or complete reports in PDF format. Additionally, the chapter discusses functionality such as generating a podcast through a 'Notebook guide' where users can start by generating content from their uploads, even for a limited number of documents like three PDFs.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Presentation Analysis with Notebook LM The chapter discusses the strategy of using PDFs for creating podcasts. It suggests that typical podcasts range from 10 to 12 minutes, with shorter ones being around 3 to 4 minutes. By adding more content, one can significantly increase the podcast's length. A preferred approach highlighted is the creation of multiple podcasts by asking various questions. It also emphasizes customizing podcasts to focus on a single topic or question to maintain a consistent theme throughout the episode. The speaker acknowledges a misjudgment regarding the length, noting that this particular podcast is thirty minutes long.
• 07:00 - 08:30: Study Guide Creation The chapter discusses the advantage of using AI-generated audio for learning during commutes. The AI can create natural sounding dialogues with occasional pauses and filler words, making it an effective way to digest large amounts of content that might otherwise be time-consuming to read. Despite not being perfect, it offers a convenient learning method for busy individuals.
• 08:30 - 10:00: Timeline and Briefing Document Creation This chapter discusses the evaluation of Timberland and Farmland investments as alternative asset classes for a portfolio. It starts with a general introduction and then delves deeper into the key differences, notably the income potential between the two, where Farmland is noted for generating more consistent income through mechanisms like lease payments.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Notes and Organizational Features The chapter "Notes and Organizational Features" discusses utilizing podcasts effectively for learning by listening during otherwise unproductive times like driving. It covers various functionalities such as changing playback speeds, downloading podcasts, and the potential to upload them to platforms like YouTube or Spotify, while considering platform terms related to AI-generated content. The chapter emphasizes the ability to customize the podcasts being created.
• 11:00 - 12:00: Analyzing Code and Software Updates The chapter discusses the process of creating new notebooks in Notebook LM. The speaker emphasizes the importance of starting fresh to preserve the quality of their podcast project. They guide listeners through the process of creating a new notebook by selecting 'Create new' and choosing new sources. In this example, they discuss a personal interest in learning how to build a tiny home and mention having four sources downloaded, which they add one at a time. The functionality of viewing the entire source on the left and a summary on the right in the notebook guide is also highlighted, which assists users in managing multiple notebooks and recognizing their contents.
• 12:00 - 13:00: Conclusion and Cautions The chapter discusses the importance of summarizing content for better organization and understanding. It mentions tools that provide summaries of each source and combined summaries, aiding in quick comprehension. There's a focus on customization, allowing users to tailor summaries for specific audiences, such as creating a podcast targeted at a niche group rather than a generic overview.

Google Notebook LM Tutorial - [Become A Power User in 15 min] Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so I used to use chat gbt a lot for work but I pretty much never use it now there's a new tool that I started using it's free to use and it's become one of my favorite and honestly one of the most powerful tools on the Internet it's called notebook LM it's from Google and check this out last week for example I wanted to learn about an investment I had four PDFs totaling over a 100 pages I just uploaded these four PDFs to notebook LM and it generated an AI podcast that I listen to on my commute and I'm not the only one who uses this Spotify use notebook LM to power Spotify
• 00:30 - 01:00 wrapped this year which had a ton of AI in it so in this video I want to show you what notebook LM is why I like it and 13 things you should be doing with notebook LM to go from beginner to power user and level up your business your education your Investments or honestly just your life in general so to start off I'm going to show this all in real time on here we can go to notebook lm. goole.com I can put a link in the description as well but when you first land here you just click on a little popup and then you want to make sure you signed into your Google account that's how it saves everything in The Notebook
• 01:00 - 01:30 here and we can create our first notebook so just clicking on that it'll tell you to upload some sources and that brings me to number 13 on this list of 13 different things you should be doing with this and that is uploading multiple sources we already know on chat gbt or Gemini for example you can upload a source and ask some questions about it and that's very useful but notebook LM specifically is designed to interpret a lot of sources and it can handle a lot of different kinds of sources as well PDFs website links videos copied text Google Docs slideshows even like markdown doc documents a lot of
• 01:30 - 02:00 different files can be interpreted here so if I have like a full Audi book and it's an MP3 file I can upload that it'll interpret the entire thing transcribe it all and then it'll have answers for me that we'll use later in this video so you can see we have a bunch right there up to 50 different sources I'm going to choose a file right now so I just selected three PDFs that are about investing in Timberland for example you can upload them and then what we're able to do as you can see on the bottom very simply like we see on a lot of other llms like this you're able to ask questions so I could just say like what
• 02:00 - 02:30 are some risks of investing in Timberland hit enter and it's going to answer that question and that brings me into number 12 which is you can ask very specific questions in the text field about the information that you uploaded and it references different files the source files here which is way better than contrl F so if you have a job where you're doing control Eon you're always looking for something in a large document this may be a great alternative where you can simply upload the files here and if you don't have the exact wording that you would need for contrl f instead you could search for it here it'll find it you can see the sources
• 02:30 - 03:00 like Source number three Source number two and if I click on that it'll show me where in the source it actually got that information and so again if you want to find exactly like one specific code from a Township or uh you know anything like that from maybe a quarterly earnings report you can do all of that right here moving on to number 11 you can actually make a podcast to learn from up to 50 different sources that's kind of what I I showed in the beginning of this video and there's really a lot of Endless Options we'll talk more about how to customize this but one example I like as I kind of mentioned earlier is for earning earnings reports so we'll do it
• 03:00 - 03:30 with this example right here with Timber but earnings reports is a great example where you don't want to listen necessarily to the entire earnings report but maybe you want to get like a summary of how your favorite company's doing you can upload the earnings report either the transcript or just the entire report as a PDF here and then on the bottom if you click on Notebook guide let me make sure you can actually see that here so just click on Notebook guide and here you can see generate a podcast so we're going to get into some more interesting ideas on how to do this just to start you can click on generate and for something small like this like just three PDFs that they're not small
• 03:30 - 04:00 PDFs but they're all on a pretty similar topic usually it's about a 10 to 12 Minute Podcast shorter subjects might be like three or four Minute Podcast and if you add a lot of information you can get a significantly longer podcast on here or what I like to do is make multiple podcast you can ask different questions which brings me into number 10 so WS is generating number 10 is to customize the podcast to focus on one topic or one question as a common thread for that podcast all right well um I was wrong about this one I thought it'd be about 10 minutes this one's thir minutes which
• 04:00 - 04:30 is pretty great we can just play a sample right now and you'll see kind of the setup it's a bit like um just two voices they sound pretty natural and the AI does a good job of making it like genuinely sound like people talking like there's a lot of pauses sometimes much like any other podcaster there is kind of some filler talk in there so it's not perfect but if you're driving it's a great way to summarize you know contents from a huge library of content that you're trying to digest that would normally be readable or just take you a lot of time so I like to do this for my commute typically just a cool way to learn but let's give it a listen and see what this one sounds like all right
• 04:30 - 05:00 let's take a look at this research you sent about Timberland and farmland Investments it looks like you're trying to decide if these alternative asset classes are right for your portfolio Okay so first 10 seconds sounds like a podcast let's jump a little bit later into it maybe like 8:30 we'll go to like 8:30 and see what that sounds like key difference is the income potential okay Farmland can generate more consistent income than Timberland MH through things like lease payments all right so he's comparing it to Farmland things that I would genuinely be interested to know about it's just going to pick up more
• 05:00 - 05:30 information and hopefully take time that you'd otherwise just be wasting while you're driving listening to music and you could you know choose exactly what you want to learn if we click on the drop down here we can also change the playback speed you can download it so if you wanted to have a bunch and string them together or maybe you wanted to you know upload them to YouTube or Spotify or whatever obviously look into like the terms for whatever platform you're doing if it's allowing AI generated content but it's something that I think is really quite interesting you could do here but moving on to number nine you're able to actually customize the podcast that you are creating so I'm going to close out of this I want to make a new
• 05:30 - 06:00 note let's just do a totally new one I don't want to lose this podcast it's pretty good if we just click on Notebook LM at the top you'll see we have our first notebook right there we can say create new and make an entirely new notebook with new sources maybe this time I want to learn a little bit more about say how to build a tiny home so I have four sources that are downloaded I'm just going to add one at a time and you'll also notice that every source that you upload if you just click on the source on the left it'll show you the entire source and on the right side in the notebook guide it gives you a summary of what the sources are so if you have a lot of different notebooks and you don't recognize the file name for them of course you can open them you
• 06:00 - 06:30 can see a summary of each source so this will tell me a summary of that right there key topics in there you know and we can also see a summary of all the sources combined over here just to kind of keep your not your notebooks more organized kind of also helps you to summarize it in case you want to get a quick glimpse of what actually what something actually is so let's say we want to make a a podcast for this one right here how to make a tiny home but we don't want it to just be a generic summary of all the content we uploaded instead you can click on customize and we can add a lot of details here to really Target a specific a audience maybe so you could say you know make a
• 06:30 - 07:00 podcast as if I were you know an expert in the field or make a podcast as if I were you know a child and it's is really you know a very high level summary of the content so they give you a couple examples of what you could do here all right so I have that I'm going to say generate and this is going to generate a podcast for that as well so once it's generated we'll play back a sample of that moving on to number eight you can actually use notebook LM to analyze presentations or calls that you were involved in so this would be a great business move if you have maybe you presented something you have you know this the slideshow you have your audio recording you can upload that and tell
• 07:00 - 07:30 notebook LM to analyze the language patterns the consistency and overall messaging to kind of help you analyze yourself give it you know it could pick up on some patterns maybe and uh hopefully find some hidden trends for you so for example if you have like 25 successful videos or calls and maybe 25 that failed you could upload all 50 of them and ask to see if there's any kind of Trends in there and hopefully help improve your sales success ratio in the future number seven you can have notebook LM create a study guide uh to increase your memory retention this is
• 07:30 - 08:00 very easy to do with a single button on the left side so if I just click on create study guide the way notebook LM is set up is within each notebook you have notes it's not my favorite uh ux right here but you'll see we have this is going to show up as a note we can add other notes and these all kind of show up in a in an array a grid right here that you can click into each of them and kind of manage them like that but it's going to create a study guide right here now it's not going to it's going to take a second to do this because it is also generating that podcast as at the same time you can see the new note it shows us right here essentially the study guide so what are all the questions we
• 08:00 - 08:30 can go through them and try to answer them so if you're studying for an exam maybe and you have like you know your textbook you can have it make a study guide based on a certain chapter or you could do the same thing with you know a lecture or any anything that you have that you're going to upload as a source down here we have the answers then so that I think is kind of a useful way to study if you don't want it you could always just delete that but we have quite a few other things we can do as far as notes go as well we can add a blank note and just kind of add whatever you want typical note creation right there I'm going to close that and we could also convert all the notes to a
• 08:30 - 09:00 source I don't really use that particularly often number six though we can have notebook LM create a timeline which is very interesting if you have like a lot of events going on a huge project or if you're just you know learning a lot about history and you have you know some autobiography of JP Morgan and you want a timeline of everything that was talked about in the book the way we do that is again going down to notebook guide and simply just click on timeline now that doesn't really make a lot of sense on this um but I'm going to click on it and see what it's able to come up with maybe it's going going to show me like how
• 09:00 - 09:30 long it takes to do different parts of a project or I'm not sure exactly what it'll come up with but if it was a historical document that would make a lot more sense to show you the actual dates for certain things okay wow this actually did come up with a timeline about tiny homes and how large homes were in different years and when they were used and stuff like that so that's that's very fascinating that's not what I expected at all number five you can create a briefing doc so again going back to notebook guide right here briefing Doc is another example so this would be great if you're onboarding new employees and you have you want to create a document about how to do
• 09:30 - 10:00 something maybe you have a training video already maybe you have you know just a lot of resources on the topic you can go and create a briefing dock to get them up to speed on how to do something or similarly if you are trying to just summarize an entire project and present it to a manager maybe you can upload all of your files here and create a briefing dock based on that this could really be useful in many different situations leave a comment if you have any other ideas honestly for any of these of where you would apply them but just kind of something that I think in many businesses would be quite useful number for you can add multiple notes to your
• 10:00 - 10:30 notebook I kind of showed that a little bit earlier right here so let's click on Notebook guide and hide that we have a lot of notes in this notebook and all of them are going to be showing up right here if we create new ones of course they are going to show up here and you can rename them and change a lot about them um but the other ones that personally I use are just saved responses so notebook guide and really these right here are going to be the primary ones I use or anytime you have responses and conversations down here those are going to be something that I would also save in notes if you find that it's something you want to come back back to number three speaking of
• 10:30 - 11:00 different notes you can select multiple notes so if I select two of them right here I can combine them to make study guides to create outlines to just create a combined note as well or suggest related ideas or even summarize them as well so again you're just going more and more layers deep on the same information something that just is a little bit different than you're able to do on Gemini or chat gbt where you kind of start going you know too many prompts down and it kind of loses track of the whole process you're doing but this is a really interesting way to organize all your thoughts and all the ideas that in
• 11:00 - 11:30 the and the answers into a very visual display number two then you can use notebook LM to analyze complex code this is great for you know summarizing projects or adding notes into your code projects hey guys this video is ready to go live but Google launched an update already like this is a really fast changing software so I wanted to show you two new things first change is the layout so you can see we no longer have a little bubble on the bottom the podcast is over on the right side now so you can see if you click on this little panel up on the top right there that's
• 11:30 - 12:00 where you access that and the second thing is that you can actually interact with the podcast now uh it's a feature that's rolling out from Google right now so I can't demonstrated yet I don't have access to it but from Google's own demo you basically just like raise your hand or call in kind of like on a radio show you can think of it like that uh and you're able to uh just ask questions and kind of change the direction of the podcast a little bit uh using your own voice and then number one you can use the AI podcast to help you make a decision maybe to help you like feel better about your mental health or whatever it might be like I I've seen people use this to upload like their
• 12:00 - 12:30 journal entries and then you know ask it to kind of make a podcast and then you're just listening to people kind of talking about what you're already thinking about but maybe in a different light maybe just kind of making you think it think about it a little differently and hopefully helping you to sort things out so ultimately this is a tool this is not going to be something that like comes up with new information or really makes decisions for you but the idea is to kind of Shuffle information around present it to you differently help you learn more quickly and uh hopefully help you make better decisions to really amplify things or
• 12:30 - 13:00 like I said before if you just want to use this to make podcasts and publish that as content you could totally do that as well a couple cautions to be aware of Google does like to discontinue things so I recommend using this tool but proceed with caution like you don't want to save all of your information in here it might be a good idea to download a lot of content and save it to another drive just in case Google decides that hey this is a great tool but they're going to like discontinue it in a couple years you never know Google does do that quite a bit other things to note that this is really being used in a lot of different platforms as I said already
• 13:00 - 13:30 Spotify used this for Spotify rap this year and I suspect it will be bundled into many other Integrations into the future but let me know how you think you'll be using notebook LM if you enjoyed the video consider liking and subscribing I'm Michael Brian with santal media and I'll see you in the next video