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Following last week's introductory episode, this second screencast delves deeper into the various apps and services being built around ChatGPT. As well as subscription-based web services, Don looks at MacGPT, an excellent native Mac and iOS app that integrates fully with ChatGPT using the inexpensive pay-as-you-go API. You get to see the app in action using both spoken as well as written out prompts from Don.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is accelerating at an unheard-of pace, with new apps and services being released and updated almost daily! It's all too easy to become swamped and not even know where to begin.

In this episode, Don starts your AI journey with an introductory look at one of the most popular AI services: ChatGPT. From creating an account to generating your own prompts and building on them, you are guided through some real-world examples to whet your appetite and give you an appreciation of the potential of this amazing technology.

Daily Prompt offers a fresh take on building a creative writing habit. Instead of just sending you notifications and pestering you to write like many other apps, you’re given prompts in the form of small writing challenges or images that act as a starting point. This way you never run out of inspiration to write, and can simply focus on being creative. Darcy shows you how it all comes together in this tip.

Safari Extensions are extremely popular at the moment, with developers filling the App Store with a wide variety to suit your needs. Apple Mail extensions, however, are more difficult to find. ReplyCube is a solid entry in this space that allows you to create canned (template) emails and access them from the Compose window, making repetitive batch jobs a lot easier. Lee shows you how it all works in this short tip.

Following on from the recent Mastodon tutorial, this update show brings a new announcement from ScreenCastsOnline plus a look at some new innovative clients for iOS and the Mac.

ScreenCastsOnline members can now join a safe, moderated Mastodon instance run by ScreenCastsOnline - you'll find an invitation link in your member profile on the ScreenCastsOnline website. In this episode, Don takes you through accessing the new instance as well as giving optional instructions on how to migrate if you so desire. In addition, Don introduces you to three Mastodon clients: Mastonaut for the Mac along with Ice Cubes and Ivory for iOS.

Following on from the recent Craft Update show (1225), as promised, Don brings you information on the Craft AI Assistant. This is a tool based on GPT-3 artificial intelligence that "helps you write faster, generate ideas, proofread your work, translate text into any language, summarize documents, and find information contained within your Craft space, in seconds."

In this tip video, Don takes you through some of the standard options as well as exploring some of the extremely powerful features of the built-in Craft AI Assistant. 

Craft is your ultimate writing companion. It's an intuitive, customisable tool that works hard to help you craft any document and keep it organised with ease - perfect for those creative projects!

Lee Garrett originally covered Craft in 2021, not long after receiving an Apple Design award. The application was impressive then, and it's continued to improve and add additional functionality ever since. In this week's tutorial, Don refreshes the basics of Craft on the Mac, focusing on the new features rolled out over the last 24 months.

With the recent updates across its operating systems, Apple have finally released Freeform, a new way to collaborate and brainstorm ideas on all devices. Don takes you through the basic concepts of adding and organising the various objects available on your Freeform board.

OmniOutliner from the Omni Group is widely regarded as the premier outlining tool on both macOS and iPadOS/iOS. It is both easy to use but also offers advanced features for those who need a bit more power and flexibility. In this second video of a two-part series, Lee shows you how to style your documents to make them both easy to read and impressive to view. You also learn how to save a custom template to use as a starting point for future outlining documents, as well as OmniOutliner's flexible printing options.

Due to recent changes to Twitter, many people have started looking for alternative social media platforms. The one that looks to be most popular is Mastodon. In this introduction, Don takes you through the basic structure of Mastodon, how to set it up and how to use its standard features. You also learn how to discover people to follow and configure your notifications so you get the most out of your experience.

The Omni Group's OmniOutliner is widely regarded as the premier outlining tool on both macOS, iPadOS and iOS. Currently on version 5, it is popular due to its impressive ability to be both easy to use, yet complex enough for those who need to get that bit more power and flexibility. In this first video in his two-part series, Lee covers the pricing model and compares the two versions of the application. Using the Mac, he then runs through building your first outline from an existing template, explains rows and columns and their many parameters, as well as how to use to toolbar effectively and search for content across your outline.

Darcy brings Scrivener to life on iPad, showcasing its robust digital binder and cork board features. Add websites, photos, documents, organise your research and above all, write! This tip video shows you how to master organising your novel or screenplay and get it ready to share with the world.

Apple's iOS 16 has added new features to the Messages app. In this tip, Lee shows you how to unsend a message, how you can edit one you've already sent, as well as recover deleted conversations. He also revisits how pinned conversations and links work.

GoodNotes is a phenomenal note-taking app for iPadOS with stellar Apple Pencil support for handwriting, that has improved a lot since we last covered it a few years ago. In this episode, Mike takes a look at the added tools, the collaboration and sharing features, and goes over a few GoodNotes workflows. He concludes by taking a brief look at the improved Mac app.

Bike is a fast and fluid Mac app that combines the powerful features of a top-tier outliner with the freedom of a text editor. It can handle any size of text file you throw at it, and in this screencast Mike demonstrates how and when to use the outlining and text editing modes, how to navigate your document swiftly using keyboard shortcuts, as well as several other useful features Bike offers on the Mac.

There are a number of Twitter clients available these days, and one of our favorites is Tweetbot from Tapbots. In this screencast Todd shows you many of the features of Tweetbot 3 for the Mac, including Lists, Columns, and Search, and he shows you how to connect multiple Twitter accounts right within the app.

In this screencast, Judy introduces you to Jacquie Lawson and her online greeting card service. Each one of Jacquie's cards is a work of art that combines painting, animation, and music. Using the Jacquie Lawson Ecards app on iPad, Judy shows you how to create and send a card, and shares her favorite one, along with a bonus iPad tip.

Writing in plain text using Markdown formatting has become increasingly popular, and is now supported by a wide variety of text editors and apps, and even some web services. We thought it would be a good idea to have Lee go over Markdown syntax basics to get you going if you're new to it, or perhaps as a refresher if you're already using Markdown in your everyday writing.

Great utility applications on macOS are abundant, however ones that are completely free are in short supply, so we were really pleased to discover Esse by Ameba Labs, a text transformation tool for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. It works as both a menu bar utility of a full stand-alone application and in this video, Lee walks you through how to use both versions on Mac, using a variety of examples.

Obsidian is more than just a text editor. By using the app's powerful plugin infrastructure, you can extend the capabilities of the app in some pretty amazing ways. In this episode Obsidian Power User Mike Schmitz walks you through installing and setting up the Daily Notes core plugin, which he uses to introduce three popular and very powerful community plugins: Calendar, Kanban, and Review.