#readai — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #readai, aggregated by home.social.
-
A lesson in AI transcription: The “play” button in Google Recorder is there for a reason
A little over two months after I canceled my Evernote subscription instead of eating a 92 percent subscription-rate increase, I’m still figuring out how to handle two tasks that app had handled well. One is scanning business cards, a chore I have set aside because I can still see part of my desktop at home; the other is transcribing recordings of interviews.
For the shortest conversations, typing in real-time on my phone or laptop suffices. The same goes for interviews with people so practiced at talking to journalists that they habitually speak at a measured pace and in concise sentences.
But in many other cases, it’s easier to record the conversation and transcribe it later–and over the last several years, machine learning and AI have helped software get good at that. I had used Otter for a while before Evernote added its own implementation and then dramatically improved it; dropping that subscription in favor of Obsidian, which doesn’t seem to offer a comparable tool, required finding a replacement that would ideally come without its own fees.
Google’s free Live Transcribe is built into Android’s accessibility software and so was my first choice. But I soon got grumpy with its iffy word recognition, clunky controls, and limited export options.
My next stop was another Google app, this one reserved for Pixel phones like my own Pixel 9 Pro: Google Recorder.
The single biggest advantage of that free app is that its AI transcription works offline and on-device. That keeps it usable in settings with problematic bandwidth and keeps my recordings private instead of requiring a cloud upload for transcriptions. Recorder also offers multiple export options via its Share menu: saving a .txt transcript file to my phone or other destinations, creating a new Google Docs file, or dumping the transcript into Google’s NotebookLM AI tool.
But after two months of leaning on this app, I have to report that its accuracy also falls a little short of what Evernote did and what I’ve seen from briefly trying such competing apps as Read AI. Recorder often takes a few words to recognize a change in speakers, it sometimes split sentences when it shouldn’t, it can miss brief interjections, and it incorrectly capitalizes enough nouns to make me wonder if it was trained on German source texts.
Whatever the faults, those are usually easy problems to fix. I will open that transcript in whatever editing app I prefer, tap the “play” button on the recording on my phone or its cloud backup, then type in whatever Google’s AI missed. This usually requires only one pass, and since I’d want to listen to a recording of another AI transcript before going with its output anyway, it doesn’t feel like time seriously wasted.
None of this seems seamless. But when you’re trying to turn somebody else’s speech into quotable copy, nothing is–as I was reminded of recently when I opened notes I had hurriedly typed from a meeting that I was sure would be quick enough not to require recording, then wished I had a rewind button on that decision.
#AI #AITranscription #ces #Evernote #GoogleRecorder #interview #LLM #machineLearning #meeting #MWC #Obsidian #Otter #PixelRecorderApp #ReadAI #transcription -
Read AI launches Digital Twin in Seattle: The AI bot named Ada can respond to work emails, schedule meetings, and answer questions using context from meetings, email, files and CRM systems. Users cc [email protected] on threads to get help when busy or out of office. https://www.geekwire.com/2026/read-ai-rolls-out-digital-twin-that-can-respond-to-work-emails-and-schedule-meetings/ #Tech #Startup #News #AI #ReadAI
-
Our insurance broker used this thing called "Read AI" to summarize our meeting. Meh. It's clear it was listening to our conversation, but it doesn't have great filters in choosing what is important, and it skipped things. Not sure if a person would do any better, admittedly.
Do not recommend.
-
Why these startup founders love building in Seattle - From top left, clockwise: Stronghold Labs CEO Pete Schwab; Variata co-founder Jam... - https://www.geekwire.com/2025/why-these-startup-founders-love-building-in-seattle/ #seattletechweek #strongholdlabs #startups #exialabs #variata #vercept #readai
-
Weekly output: IOWN, eSIMs, Android sneak peek, Ranking Digital Rights, Web3, data ownership in Brazil, Elon Musk’s DOGE detour, blanding, passkey adoption, Google’s AI Mode, Read AI bundles two more AI platforms
Even subtracting the posts written in previous weeks (the first and second links below) and the time I spent moderating panels at Web Summit Rio (the fifth, sixth and eighth links below), this was a busy week. And yet I wish I’d had time to write about one more thing: the brutal ruling that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers handed down Wednesday against Apple in the long-running Epic v. Apple case. In that opinion, which essentially destroys a large part of Apple’s rent-seeking App Store strategy, the judge condemned multiple levels of Apple duplicity that included one vice president lying under oath and concluded that Apple thinking “this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation.”
Patreon readers got an extra post from me this week: a recap of how Web Summit Rio highlighted the useful and cringe-inducing-to-outright-offensive sides of cryptocurrency advocacy.
4/28/2025: NTT’s IOWN pitch: long on possibilities, sometimes short on metrics, Light Reading
I wanted to get an outside perspective on the sales pitch I got from NTT at its Upgrade 2025 conference in San Francisco in mid-April (for which the Japanese telco covered my travel expenses), and the one I got from my tech-analyst pal Mark Vena pointed out some non-trivial gaps in NTT’s presentation.
4/28/2025: Why You Should Use eSIMs When Traveling Internationally, AARP
Most of the research for this happened during MWC Barcelona in early March, but various hangups in AARP’s story-assignment machinery held up the piece for a while.
4/28/2025: Why Wait? Google Teases Android 16 Sneak Peek Ahead of I/O, PCMag
This was one of the shortest posts I’ve ever filed for PCMag, owing to the lack of details in this Google announcement.
4/28/2025: More Breakdowns Than Breakthroughs in Latest Big Tech Digital Rights Scorecard, PCMag
The Ranking Digital Rights project posted its first assessment in about two and a half years of the commitments tech companies make to uphold human rights. Spoiler alert: This survey found no heroes.
4/28/2025: Does Web3 represent an opportunity or a risk?, Web Summit Rio
The last panel this conference asked me to moderate came first on the schedule–and then I went from having two fintech investors to quiz to having one, Kaszek partner Santiago Fossatti. My worries that I’d have to improvise at length to fill this timeslot evaporated once I saw how he’d answer my questions at length.
4/29/2025: Owning your own data, Web Summit Rio
I’ve been watching and moderating Web Summit panels about data ownership and privacy for years, but this one–featuring Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation; Rodrigo Assumpção, CEO of Brazil’s social-security firm Dataprev; and Gustavo Franco, former governor of Brazil’s central bank–outlined some real-world steps happening in Brazil to make that vision a working reality that might yield some modest extra income for citizens who opt in.
4/30/2025: 100 Days of DOGE: Is Elon Musk’s Protective Layer of Sycophants Thinning?, PCMag
I wrote up a very good panel featuring New York Times tech reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, in which the authors of the book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter unpacked how Musk has given the federal government the same treatment he inflicted on Twitter.
4/30/2025: AI and the rise of blanding, Web Summit Rio
Title notwithstanding, this panel with Camila Moletta, CEO of More Grls, and Lisa Smith, global executive creative director of Jones Knowles Ritchie, was less about AI than about graphic design in advertising.
5/1/2025: 75% of People Are ‘Aware’ of Passkeys, But Are They Actually Using Them?, PCMag
I wrote up an embargoed copy of a survey about passkey adoption that had some stats that confused me, so I e-mailed the publicist to get more context and then quoted his explanation in the post. After publication, the PR guy asked if we could take his name out of the story because he works for an outside PR firm; I replied that my editor would probably be fine with that (which was true), but that he needed to make that request upfront instead of incorrectly assuming some default setting of anonymity for PR types.
5/1/2025: Google Drops AI Mode Waitlist, Adds Shopping Tools: Here’s How to Try, PCMag
I filed my last copy for April from my hotel room in Rio a little before midnight on April 30. Being able to put one last bit of work on a monthly invoice can be a powerful motivation.
5/2/2025: Why Have One AI Service When You Can Have 3? Read Bundles GPT-4.1, Claude, PCMag
I didn’t have this on my story-possibilities list for Web Summit, but I got into a conversation with the CEO and publicist of the AI service Read on a shuttle from the convention center back to the hotel, which led to the publicist asking if I’d like cover Read’s imminent announcement of it bundling two other AI services, which led to my quizzing Read CEO David Shim in the speaker lounge Wednesday.
#advertising #AIMode #blanding #Brazil #cryptocurrency #dataOwnership #Dataprev #DrumWave #eSIM #eSIMs #GoogleAISearch #IOWN #NTT #owningYourData #passkeys #photonics #ReadAI #Rio #WebSummitRio #WorldPasswordDay
-
Weekly output: IOWN, eSIMs, Android sneak peek, Ranking Digital Rights, Web3, data ownership in Brazil, Elon Musk’s DOGE detour, blanding, passkey adoption, Google’s AI Mode, Read AI bundles two more AI platforms
Even subtracting the posts written in previous weeks (the first and second links below) and the time I spent moderating panels at Web Summit Rio (the fifth, sixth and eighth links below), this was a busy week. And yet I wish I’d had time to write about one more thing: the brutal ruling that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers handed down Wednesday against Apple in the long-running Epic v. Apple case. In that opinion, which essentially destroys a large part of Apple’s rent-seeking App Store strategy, the judge condemned multiple levels of Apple duplicity that included one vice president lying under oath and concluded that Apple thinking “this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation.”
Patreon readers got an extra post from me this week: a recap of how Web Summit Rio highlighted the useful and cringe-inducing-to-outright-offensive sides of cryptocurrency advocacy.
4/28/2025: NTT’s IOWN pitch: long on possibilities, sometimes short on metrics, Light Reading
I wanted to get an outside perspective on the sales pitch I got from NTT at its Upgrade 2025 conference in San Francisco in mid-April (for which the Japanese telco covered my travel expenses), and the one I got from my tech-analyst pal Mark Vena pointed out some non-trivial gaps in NTT’s presentation.
4/28/2025: Why You Should Use eSIMs When Traveling Internationally, AARP
Most of the research for this happened during MWC Barcelona in early March, but various hangups in AARP’s story-assignment machinery held up the piece for a while.
4/28/2025: Why Wait? Google Teases Android 16 Sneak Peek Ahead of I/O, PCMag
This was one of the shortest posts I’ve ever filed for PCMag, owing to the lack of details in this Google announcement.
4/28/2025: More Breakdowns Than Breakthroughs in Latest Big Tech Digital Rights Scorecard, PCMag
The Ranking Digital Rights project posted its first assessment in about two and a half years of the commitments tech companies make to uphold human rights. Spoiler alert: This survey found no heroes.
4/28/2025: Does Web3 represent an opportunity or a risk?, Web Summit Rio
The last panel this conference asked me to moderate came first on the schedule–and then I went from having two fintech investors to quiz to having one, Kaszek partner Santiago Fossatti. My worries that I’d have to improvise at length to fill this timeslot evaporated once I saw how he’d answer my questions at length.
4/29/2025: Owning your own data, Web Summit Rio
I’ve been watching and moderating Web Summit panels about data ownership and privacy for years, but this one–featuring Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation; Rodrigo Assumpção, CEO of Brazil’s social-security firm Dataprev; and Gustavo Franco, former governor of Brazil’s central bank–outlined some real-world steps happening in Brazil to make that vision a working reality that might yield some modest extra income for citizens who opt in.
4/30/2025: 100 Days of DOGE: Is Elon Musk’s Protective Layer of Sycophants Thinning?, PCMag
I wrote up a very good panel featuring New York Times tech reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, in which the authors of the book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter unpacked how Musk has given the federal government the same treatment he inflicted on Twitter.
4/30/2025: AI and the rise of blanding, Web Summit Rio
Title notwithstanding, this panel with Camila Moletta, CEO of More Grls, and Lisa Smith, global executive creative director of Jones Knowles Ritchie, was less about AI than about graphic design in advertising.
5/1/2025: 75% of People Are ‘Aware’ of Passkeys, But Are They Actually Using Them?, PCMag
I wrote up an embargoed copy of a survey about passkey adoption that had some stats that confused me, so I e-mailed the publicist to get more context and then quoted his explanation in the post. After publication, the PR guy asked if we could take his name out of the story because he works for an outside PR firm; I replied that my editor would probably be fine with that (which was true), but that he needed to make that request upfront instead of incorrectly assuming some default setting of anonymity for PR types.
5/1/2025: Google Drops AI Mode Waitlist, Adds Shopping Tools: Here’s How to Try, PCMag
I filed my last copy for April from my hotel room in Rio a little before midnight on April 30. Being able to put one last bit of work on a monthly invoice can be a powerful motivation.
5/2/2025: Why Have One AI Service When You Can Have 3? Read Bundles GPT-4.1, Claude, PCMag
I didn’t have this on my story-possibilities list for Web Summit, but I got into a conversation with the CEO and publicist of the AI service Read on a shuttle from the convention center back to the hotel, which led to the publicist asking if I’d like cover Read’s imminent announcement of it bundling two other AI services, which led to my quizzing Read CEO David Shim in the speaker lounge Wednesday.
#advertising #AIMode #blanding #Brazil #cryptocurrency #dataOwnership #Dataprev #DrumWave #eSIM #eSIMs #GoogleAISearch #IOWN #NTT #owningYourData #passkeys #photonics #ReadAI #Rio #WebSummitRio #WorldPasswordDay
-
Weekly output: IOWN, eSIMs, Android sneak peek, Ranking Digital Rights, Web3, data ownership in Brazil, Elon Musk’s DOGE detour, blanding, passkey adoption, Google’s AI Mode, Read AI bundles two more AI platforms
Even subtracting the posts written in previous weeks (the first and second links below) and the time I spent moderating panels at Web Summit Rio (the fifth, sixth and eighth links below), this was a busy week. And yet I wish I’d had time to write about one more thing: the brutal ruling that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers handed down Wednesday against Apple in the long-running Epic v. Apple case. In that opinion, which essentially destroys a large part of Apple’s rent-seeking App Store strategy, the judge condemned multiple levels of Apple duplicity that included one vice president lying under oath and concluded that Apple thinking “this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation.”
Patreon readers got an extra post from me this week: a recap of how Web Summit Rio highlighted the useful and cringe-inducing-to-outright-offensive sides of cryptocurrency advocacy.
4/28/2025: NTT’s IOWN pitch: long on possibilities, sometimes short on metrics, Light Reading
I wanted to get an outside perspective on the sales pitch I got from NTT at its Upgrade 2025 conference in San Francisco in mid-April (for which the Japanese telco covered my travel expenses), and the one I got from my tech-analyst pal Mark Vena pointed out some non-trivial gaps in NTT’s presentation.
4/28/2025: Why You Should Use eSIMs When Traveling Internationally, AARP
Most of the research for this happened during MWC Barcelona in early March, but various hangups in AARP’s story-assignment machinery held up the piece for a while.
4/28/2025: Why Wait? Google Teases Android 16 Sneak Peek Ahead of I/O, PCMag
This was one of the shortest posts I’ve ever filed for PCMag, owing to the lack of details in this Google announcement.
4/28/2025: More Breakdowns Than Breakthroughs in Latest Big Tech Digital Rights Scorecard, PCMag
The Ranking Digital Rights project posted its first assessment in about two and a half years of the commitments tech companies make to uphold human rights. Spoiler alert: This survey found no heroes.
4/28/2025: Does Web3 represent an opportunity or a risk?, Web Summit Rio
The last panel this conference asked me to moderate came first on the schedule–and then I went from having two fintech investors to quiz to having one, Kaszek partner Santiago Fossatti. My worries that I’d have to improvise at length to fill this timeslot evaporated once I saw how he’d answer my questions at length.
4/29/2025: Owning your own data, Web Summit Rio
I’ve been watching and moderating Web Summit panels about data ownership and privacy for years, but this one–featuring Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation; Rodrigo Assumpção, CEO of Brazil’s social-security firm Dataprev; and Gustavo Franco, former governor of Brazil’s central bank–outlined some real-world steps happening in Brazil to make that vision a working reality that might yield some modest extra income for citizens who opt in.
4/30/2025: 100 Days of DOGE: Is Elon Musk’s Protective Layer of Sycophants Thinning?, PCMag
I wrote up a very good panel featuring New York Times tech reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, in which the authors of the book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter unpacked how Musk has given the federal government the same treatment he inflicted on Twitter.
4/30/2025: AI and the rise of blanding, Web Summit Rio
Title notwithstanding, this panel with Camila Moletta, CEO of More Grls, and Lisa Smith, global executive creative director of Jones Knowles Ritchie, was less about AI than about graphic design in advertising.
5/1/2025: 75% of People Are ‘Aware’ of Passkeys, But Are They Actually Using Them?, PCMag
I wrote up an embargoed copy of a survey about passkey adoption that had some stats that confused me, so I e-mailed the publicist to get more context and then quoted his explanation in the post. After publication, the PR guy asked if we could take his name out of the story because he works for an outside PR firm; I replied that my editor would probably be fine with that (which was true), but that he needed to make that request upfront instead of incorrectly assuming some default setting of anonymity for PR types.
5/1/2025: Google Drops AI Mode Waitlist, Adds Shopping Tools: Here’s How to Try, PCMag
I filed my last copy for April from my hotel room in Rio a little before midnight on April 30. Being able to put one last bit of work on a monthly invoice can be a powerful motivation.
5/2/2025: Why Have One AI Service When You Can Have 3? Read Bundles GPT-4.1, Claude, PCMag
I didn’t have this on my story-possibilities list for Web Summit, but I got into a conversation with the CEO and publicist of the AI service Read on a shuttle from the convention center back to the hotel, which led to the publicist asking if I’d like cover Read’s imminent announcement of it bundling two other AI services, which led to my quizzing Read CEO David Shim in the speaker lounge Wednesday.
#advertising #AIMode #blanding #Brazil #cryptocurrency #dataOwnership #Dataprev #DrumWave #eSIM #eSIMs #GoogleAISearch #IOWN #NTT #owningYourData #passkeys #photonics #ReadAI #Rio #WebSummitRio #WorldPasswordDay
