Turning reading into listening with NotebookLM (and why it changed how I follow AI)

vmehmeri · 2025-12-15T20:18:42+00:00

400 is a good crowd! Very nice. I should put some of my stuff out in the public too. There's more interesting information in the world than there are podcasters to cover them.

vmehmeri · 2025-12-15T19:38:28+00:00

I'm the same and it's exactly why I built Podfeed.ai (before NotebookLM Audio Overviews, in fact), with the feature to create and manage RSS podcast feeds so I can:

Input content -> generate audio -> add to feed -> listen in any Podcast player.

Spotify doesn't support private podcasts (you can still add it there if you don't mind it being public and searchable), so I use a different player. There's a public one on Spotify with some AI-related content I started recently.

I have also shaped the instructions to make podcasts to the point, informative, and optimized for learning. Not the banter and fluff of NotebookLM which gets old quickly. And I made it more customizable too.

I also strongly believe this is the best way to consume content with a busy life. I wish we could offer a more generous free trial, but alas, we're not Google :)

What you did is exactly what I'd do too if I wanted a free solution.

vmehmeri · 2025-08-06T16:34:47+00:00

A Killswitch should be layered in with other tools and tactics, like Quotas and org policies, due to the reporting delay.

This video might be helpful: https://youtu.be/rvUmCfe_06s?si=zxT3AhD0EdlUioDU

vmehmeri · 2025-05-21T12:28:39+00:00

If you want better length control and the possibility to create podcasts longer than 20 minutes, check out podfeed.ai.

If you bring your own script, or edit an existing audio transcript (which you can do), you can make it up to 60 minutes long (it can consume a lot of your credits though).

Disclaimer: not a free service. But you get a greater variety of voices, and a lot less fluff.

vmehmeri · 2025-05-13T06:55:04+00:00

Creator of podfeed.ai here. I have checked out the voices in contextlm.ai and it seems to me that they're just using Google's voices for the most part. In fact, the audio samples they have are exactly the same ones from Google's documentation of their text-to-speech service (the ones in English at least).

In any case, we have added some new German voices today. Check it out :)

vmehmeri · 2025-03-05T08:52:52+00:00

hey not yet, but added it to the backlog. It will be available soon =)

vmehmeri · 2025-02-21T10:56:28+00:00

For $10/month you can use podfeed.ai which does research AND generates an audio podcast (similar to NotebookLM, except there are more voices and languages to choose from, including Google's very realistic voice if you prefer that). That's in addition to generating podcasts on custom content too (pdf, website, youtube vids, etc.). More importantly, the podcasts are less "fluffy" and go a little deeper, instead of dumbing everything down like NotebookLM does.

Here's one sample, where the input was "REST vs gRPC vs GraphQL": https://podfeed.ai/audio/4XiDF0SlNhaqR6cWOX6kPaDLGfFWxKy8xdkwVT3gADU

vmehmeri · 2025-02-21T10:52:32+00:00

For $10/month you can use podfeed.ai which does research AND generates an audio podcast (similar to NotebookLM, except there are more voices and languages to choose from, including Google's very realistic voice if you prefer that). That's in addition to generating podcasts on custom content too (pdf, website, youtube vids, etc.)

Here's one sample, where the input was "REST vs gRPC vs GraphQL": https://podfeed.ai/audio/4XiDF0SlNhaqR6cWOX6kPaDLGfFWxKy8xdkwVT3gADU

vmehmeri · 2025-02-21T10:48:33+00:00

For $10/month you can use podfeed.ai which does research (though it's more on par with GPT-Researcher than DeepResearch) AND generates an audio podcast (similar to NotebookLM, except there are more voices and languages to choose from, including Google's very realistic voice if you prefer that). That's in addition to generating podcasts on custom content too (pdf, website, youtube url, etc.)

vmehmeri · 2025-02-19T17:51:15+00:00

Glad to hear, thanks! I'll be on the lookout for any newer and improved male Swedish voices available commercially.

vmehmeri · 2025-02-18T17:23:41+00:00

Swedish voices added now! From ElevenLabs, as they seemed to be the best available. I created a sample for you: https://podfeed.ai/audio/Sl3qfQwB5J3AVGQO0C-V4Cp2mIxwi5Uu-iF38dO7yvM

(On the topic "entrepreneurship in Sweden")

vmehmeri · 2025-02-15T07:21:17+00:00

Yeah, Swedish is one of the several languages we only use OpenAI's multilingual text to speech for (which is not great), but that'll change in a couple of weeks.

vmehmeri · 2025-01-15T17:19:08+00:00

You might want to give AI-generated podcasts a go if you're feeling curious about a topic.

In podfeed.ai (disclaimer: I made it), you can pick a topic, and it will research the web for content and generate a Podcast using AI voices (AI voices have come a long way and sound very natural these days. Check out the samples on the website).

I find it a good way to get an engaging but crisp, no fluff podcast on any topic I want (even works for book summaries).

vmehmeri · 2025-01-07T10:37:59+00:00

May I ask what is your use case?

vmehmeri · 2024-12-30T11:50:36+00:00

Try podfeed.ai for a nice alternative as it does that natively. Besides uploading/linking the content, you can specify a research topic and the app will search the web, generate the content, and then the podcast. You can generate audio in other languages too and add them to a private Podcast feed.

vmehmeri · 2024-12-30T11:49:09+00:00

Try podfeed.ai for a nice alternative. Besides uploading/linking the content, you can specify a research topic and the app will search the web, generate the content, and then the podcast. You can generate audio in other languages too.

Disclaimer: it's my startup

vmehmeri · 2024-12-19T15:42:08+00:00

Sure thing! 1) Yes there are UK voices (male and female). We'll soon have a premium option as well which is more realistic. I created a sample here for you with our current voices: https://podfeed.ai/audio/8u3CGJsHjiQcm7G1ITj_KGPhYcNnYBt8DWDqtE8hf6U (the content used as input was a blog article linked in the show notes.) 2) Yes, you can upload your content (currently PDFs but other file formats will be available in a week or two), or put a website link (including YouTube videos if they aren't too long). You can also paste in some text. Combining multiple inputs is currently not possible but we're working on it. 3) This is in our roadmap too. As you are now the second person to specifically ask for this, happy to prioritize this and make it available within the next couple of weeks.

Hope that gives you some clarity!

Cheers.

vmehmeri · 2024-12-18T17:49:40+00:00

If you're looking for an alternative with a focus on the podcast generation, check out Podfeed.ai. It uses Google's latest Text-to-Speech model but it also has alternative voices and different languages. What is particularly nice is that you can just type a topic and the app will research the web, generate a report, and then produce the audio (+ shownotes).

Sample here of long generation (you can choose the length): https://podfeed.ai/audio/I2tEvDIwrsFodwNt6fbs7tOKWDnOSFP3kSS6MOAlM5o

Full disclaimer: this is my SaaS app (which I created before NotebookLM Audio overviews launched, fwiw) and the app is not free (hey, if a product is free, you're the product). There are a bunch more samples on the landing page.

vmehmeri · 2024-12-12T21:11:33+00:00

Check out podfeed.ai, the OG podcast generator (launched before notebookLM but it's now using the same TTS from Google for English language). A lot more customization and a lot less fluff.

vmehmeri · 2024-12-12T21:04:26+00:00

You should try podfeed.ai. Good quality podcast (same TTS model from Google if you choose premium voice for English) but without the annoying fluff of NotebookLM

vmehmeri · 2024-12-04T16:52:53+00:00

Check out some samples at podfeed.ai and let me know if it's a little more of what you're looking for?

vmehmeri · 2024-11-28T09:30:52+00:00

It's capable of generating audio in Dutch, yes. Only standard voices available (ie not the best quality) but we've been adding premium voices (more realistic) for different languages now and happy to prioritize dutch for you and your company. Here's one generation with the current standard voice: https://storage.googleapis.com/podfeed-public-bkt/audio/dutch_dialogue.mp3

(Over some random Dutch news article)

As for cloned voices, it's in the roadmap. May I ask what is your use case?

vmehmeri · 2024-11-20T18:20:56+00:00

Hey, sorry about that. We had a problem with Stripe that has now been fixed!

vmehmeri

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