[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hey, my name is Dan, and I love making everyday tech easy. I worked at Apple for 19 years, and now I am in full-time ministry. Let me ask you a question. Do you take notes? Do you want to be more productive? How do you organize yourself? If you've watched any of my videos, you know that I love Apple Notes, and this thing has just made my life a whole lot easier. Let me show you all about the Plod AI, and it's not a box. It's actually a small device that looks like this. Look how tiny this little thing is. It's about the size of just one or two credit cards, and the best thing about it all is that it's MagSafe compatible, and it just snaps right there to the back of your device. So what is Plod AI, and do I really need it? Well, the question that I ask you now is, do you take notes? I think that taking notes is one of the best ways to be more productive. If you've watched any of my videos up here, you've noticed that you would have come to know that I use Apple Notes quite a lot. I normally start off my day in Apple Notes, and I'll do a mind dump where I just put all my thoughts down onto paper or onto my keyboard, and I can get to organize my notes by folder. I can make executable, to-do list. There's just so many benefits to Apple Notes, and it's part of the Apple ecosystem, so it works everywhere. What Plod AI has created is a small device that has a unique form factor, and it captures your voice. It's like an old school tape recorder. Now, if you are in school, you're a student, or you're a professor, or you're a teacher, or you in your work environment are the one to take the staff meeting notes, or if you go to church and you want to record a class, or you want to record a preaching, depending on what you want to take notes on, this little device is a game changer, because it's not only a unique device where it will capture audio for you, but it has an amazing application to then transform those notes via artificial intelligence, or AI. Let me show you a couple of different models that it has, and then we'll get into the technical side of Plod AI and how I get to use it on an everyday basis. The Plod Note, like the one I showed you, the one that looks like a credit card, or just a little bit thicker than a credit card, retails for $159. Now, it comes in two form factors. You can get the Plod Note, or you can get the Plod Note Pen. I do not have the Note Pen at the time of this. This, by the way, I did purchase on my own. This is not sponsored in any way. I may have an affiliate link down below, perhaps, but not a sponsored video in any way, shape, or form. Now, the Plod Note is a magnetic kind of pin that you would wear on a necklace. You can kind of attach it to your coat, your shirt, if you just want to have something on you. But I love this little credit card size, because in my application, normally I like to take staff meeting notes, and I like to place this in the center of the conference table. It just allows me to detach myself from my device. Now, the Plod Note may work for you if you are a content creator, or you're a professor, you're a teacher, you're someone who is constantly wanting to record themselves. Well, the Plod Pen would make more sense, because you can just kind of attach it to yourself. So let's get back to the different models. So these are the two different models. And then the next question that you may or may not have is, is there an annual fee? Well, yes and no. Let me show you this. There are three different tiers to the Plod Note service. Now, there is a free tier, which is extremely powerful. You get 300 minutes monthly of transcription minutes. And again, I'll show you what this means. You'll get over 15 professional templates. You'll also get a visualized mind map. You'll get speaker labels. You'll get unlimited cloud storage. And again, very safe using the Amazon servers. And that's all under free. And actually, there's even more benefits, but this is all that fit on the screen. There is a pro version, and there is an unlimited version. And what I love about it, about Plod, is that they do give you a seven-day free trial period. So I would sign up for the unlimited, so you can get a taste of all the different features. But really here, what you're paying for, again, just a one-time payment annually. It's not a monthly subscription. You're gaining basically more minutes of transcriptions. You're getting additional templates. You're getting an industry glossary. You're getting additional custom summary templates. And you're getting much, much more. But again, is it needed? Not necessarily. Now, let's get back into the function of this. So why do you need this little AI recorder? As a matter of fact, Apple Notes, you can record using the Voice Memo app. And you can also use Apple Notes to then translate that into a transcript. And as I've shown you in my previous video, Apple is using ChatGPT, which so is Plod. Now, I do think the Plod does a better job, because it does a lot more. So I'm going to show you my device here. Let me connect my phone here really quick. And I'm going to launch the app. And I'm going to kind of give you a quick navigation, if you will. So here is the Plod app. And I'm going to go ahead and launch the Plod app. And it's a very clean, very easy app to navigate. You do have a file system. So you could create folders. Maybe you have one for work. You have one for home. You have different projects that you want to label. You can definitely organize your thought process and make folders and save all those notes there. If you want to start recording a conversation, or a teaching, or a podcast, or whatever it is, it's super easy. By the way, this does not have to be on your actual device. That just kind of makes it easy for you to have it always with you. But you can definitely do what I do and place this in the middle of the conference table, if you will. The actual hardware is very, very easy. There is literally just a push button here. And there is a toggle switch. The toggle switch is, if you have this on your device and you're going to maybe record a conversation, maybe you are in the business of, maybe you're a lawyer, or maybe you're doing adjustments, or maybe you're doing something with a customer where you have to record this two-way conversation for technical proof, or for the data, or maybe it's like a virtual podcast and you're using your device, by flipping that switch, it will record both-way audio. It'll record both your physical audio, plus also the audio coming in on the device. Again, Apple does that on its own now. But this is using the power of AI to give you better notes. The other button that you will see is just a push button. And if I push that, it'll actually get a little turn on, a little red light for me. And if I push it again, push and hold, I should say, it'll start recording. So you see a little red light that comes on. If you look there on the screen, you'll notice that now it's starting to record this YouTube video that we're recording. I'm going to go ahead and open up my app there. And you can actually see the wavelength forming on my device. Again, that's pretty cool, because if you're placing this in the front of the classroom for your professor, obviously ask for permission first, or in the center of a room in a meeting, from afar, from your device, from your iPhone, you can monitor to make sure that the audio is still being captured. So I'm going to let this run for a little bit. And this may not be a perfect example, because I'm just rambling, kind of giving you product detail about the Plot AI. But I want you to see it in action. Now I'm going to go ahead and pause this. And let's say I were to be done. I would just hit Save. And this is going to now translate this. I'm sorry, transcribe this very, very fast. And here it is at the very, very top. As you can see, 2025, today's date, and the time. I can see this. The cool thing about this is that I will have an actual audio recording. I'll hit Play now. Hopefully you can hear this. Let me just check my settings here. It'll start recording. So you see a little red light that comes on. And if you look there on the screen, you'll notice that now it's starting to record this YouTube video. So hopefully you heard that. But number one, it will physically record the audio. So if you just want to sit there and listen to the recording, you can. Then at the bottom, it'll kind of give me a couple of different options. If you look there, right where it says Summary to the left, if I tap there, I have an overview. I have an actual transcript. The cool thing about this, if you can kind of see there, if there are multiple speakers, it will identify speaker number one, speaker number two. Maybe you have more than one speaker, people that are speaking. One, two, three, four. And you can kind of go back and identify them. Hey, that was Dan. And that was Bob. And this was John. And you can categorize them. And every time that individual will come back into the recording, their name will be labeled up on top. You have a transcript. You have a summary. And then you have a mind map, which is at the end. One of my favorite features is the summary. So if you notice at the bottom, it says Generate. So I'm going to go ahead and tap Generate. And basically, here's where all the magic starts to really come alive. I have one called Key Points. I have a training module. Oops, sorry, and I accidentally clicked on it by mistake, or tapped on it. We'll wait for this to transcribe this. But it'll give you basically different flavors or different styles of how you want your transcription being broken down. So we'll let this finish off here pretty fast. And that's that I am hardwired to my computer. And here I have just a simple, again, this is not the perfect example because we just recorded for a little bit. But it'll give me key identifiable words, so YouTube video, plot AI, audio capture. It tries to identify and use a summary of what the recording was all about. And it says here, the speaker demonstrates a process of recording a YouTube video using the plot AI. And it'll kind of go on through. I can give it a thumbs up. I can give it a thumbs down if I wanted to improve. And then I can actually name the speaker. I'm going to go back. And I'm going to pick one of these demo files that the plot AI includes. And we'll go ahead and tap on the first one that says Try It Out. So let's do this together. It says, click here to get started. So I would have already recorded an audio. I would tap Generate. It has Choose a Summary Style Template. And again, you can modify this. And you can see all the ones that are available. I'm going to go ahead and choose Key Points. It says more settings can be adjusted here. And I'm going to go ahead and generate it now. So it's going to go and make a recording. It says I'm all done. It's going to, I'm sorry, transcribe the recording. And now, we can easily add another import. So we won't do that right now because we just did this. But I'm going to go ahead and tap on this first one. And if you notice, it says here, a historic flashback reminiscing on the revolutionary iPhone launch. And this is obviously the demo file. It gives me a synopsis or a quick recap, a quick summary. It gives me basic device information talking about the actual launch. And then it goes and gives me a detailed summary of what it was able to capture from the recording. This is amazing. I'll tell you, from a work standpoint, we now use this for staff meetings. It gets categorized properly from a learning perspective. I love this. I'm back in school. And I'll go ahead and I'll record my professor. And even though it's online, I'll record the teaching. It'll give me a detailed, broken down menu of the teaching. This is amazing. It went ahead and broke it down in all these different summaries. Now, one of the most powerful features that I think it has is that it has something called mind mapping. And mind mapping, not everybody uses it, but maybe you do. And this will basically draw you out a chart of what it is that it recorded and then how it gets broken down by subject or by determination. This is powerful. If you deal with mind mapping, then you're probably looking at this. If you've never heard of Plot AI, and then your mind is probably blown right now how easy this was generated. And then from here, I can easily tap the Share icon all the way in the top right hand corner. I can share a link to this file. I can copy the transcript. I can copy the summary. I can even just export the audio. I can export the mind map. I can do a whole bunch. Let me tell you, this is by far a game changer. Now, I know the next logical question is, does this work better than just using my Apple Notes and using my iPhone to record and using the iPhone to transcribe? I would say, yes, it does. As a matter of fact, I'm going to do a detailed comparison. If that's something that would interest you, let me know. Drop me a comment in the feedback if that's something that you would like to see it compared. But if you are heavy into note taking, this is a must. I hope that this has just scratched the surface and intrigued you on something new AI. AI is a powerful tool if we take advantage of it in a proper, proper way. Hey, if you have any questions, let me know down below. If you have not seen my other video on the smart glasses from Meta, you want to check these out. These have now become part of my everyday carrier, my everyday tech. Definitely game changers. Again, listen, do me one last favor. If you found enjoyment or just a little bit of knowledge, if you got out of this quick video a little bit smarter, do me a favor. Give it a thumbs up and make sure that you have subscribed to the channel. But then also share it. Invite a family or friend. I cannot believe that we have just crossed over, I believe, the 800 follower mark on this channel. That is just like mind blowing for me. I am so incredibly thankful for each and every one of you. I hope to see you on the next one. Until then, peace.