new techy tech
I am a magpie when it comes to tech. I see a new shiny thing and immediately start working out how I could use it.
A few people, recently, have been using GitHub to publish digital gardens. They look so nice, so minimal and pared back. I've been there before. I've had stuff on GitHub and spent inordinate amounts of time tweaking and redesigning. And publishing - that wasn't always a quick, straightforward process when something glitched.
I know the score but, still, I get drawn back in and it's taking all my resolve not to dive back down that rabbit hole.
This morning an email landed from Dan Koe about Eden. Formerly Kortex (a great tool), Eden has gone through a few iterations (and crashed and burned along the way). Out of that process a new tool has evolved and stablised. Every time there's a new notification about the latest update, I log back in (I'm on a grandfathered account until November). I like the idea of Eden but I barely use social media and I'm not a content creator any more. But, still, I check it out.
I look at the pricing (more reasonable these days) and mentally tot up the numbers to consider whether it's worth it. Then give myself a talking to, and log out again.
By chance I came across Recall. A bit like Kortex in the good old days, I like it a lot. For me, the Recall team has got it right.
Adding new references, links, uploads to Recall is easy. I'm saving a lot of research, resources to Recall - from my phone as well as from my Mac. Recall links together related material. It has an AI chat that researches your notes, the web or a combination of the two. I like having two windows side by side - Chat on the right, and my content on the left.
I've connected the MCP to Claude so that Obsidian pulls in a summary of my research every day into my Daily Note, and saves any notes I've written in full.
I have some big research projects going on and Recall is managing those for me. Even some very random and tenuous connections which add another depth of flavour.
What's especially great about Recall is the way it summarises - concise or detailed. I often drop in a link to a YouTube video or podcast and Recall outputs a summary. I can decide if I want to watch the video or just focus on a section. Later, I can go back to any relevant timestamps straight from Recall.
I'm gradually building out a Second Brain, backed up in Obsidian. There's something very easy and intuitive about Recall. Where Kortex/Eden became complex, Recall has all the essentials.
My toolkit has shrunk a lot over the past year. I'm trying to focus on creating rather than getting sucked in to customising. I can't guarantee how long this will last but I'm doing OK at the moment!