Sold on Mem's AI magic

This video by Srini is worth watching to compare Mem to Obsidian, which I am sold on, and to Notion, which I never got into. Below's my Glasp on it.

Another video by Rafeh is even more noteworthy as it tries to persuade users away from Obsidian. Having watched it, I am extremely tickled and itchy to try Mem. You'll see how much Glasp I highlighted from Rafeh's talk below. This OpenAI funding news on Mem strongly supports Rafeh's excitement.

I don't think I'll stop using Obsidian just yet. I second several users' comments who predict that Obsidian will be able to pull off the same AI magic soon. This should not prevent me from making Mem another active PKM of mine.

Update 2023-07-12: Tana seems to have taken the AI cake:

#Glasp

(336) Why I Switched From Notion to Mem - YouTube

Metadata

• Title: (336) Why I Switched From Notion to Mem - YouTube
• Tags: #Mem.ai, #Mem, #Obsidian, #PKM
• URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-sQDNVmsq4

Page Comment

• bidirectional, network structure vs hierarchical

Highlights & Notes

Cool! Below is a Glasp timed comment with link to the clip.

• (10:55) knowledge is organized inside of a network versus a hierarchy the way it is in notion makes your notes more discoverable it makes it easier to make connections between your ideas and it makes it much easier to retrieve information and ultimately the biggest benefit of all is that it allows you to focus more on the content of your notes and less on the structure

• I had the same thought about Obsidian. Both have the "bidirectional linking" and network structure. The main difference is the interface that might be more user friendly here. For now, Obsidian is my to go App: - No login or account needed - You own your files on your machine - Files are text based (markdown) - Immensely powerful through extensions and scripting - Minimalist philosophy then add only the features you need The only thing is, you need trial and errors before to know how to organize it in an optimal way so it suit your needs (But it's mostly true for all PKM App, and that's a learning curve I'm willing to take, because the payoff are great) I'm on my way to customize Obsidian to make it my all in one productivity / creativity / information database App

• I came from evernote, it took me 6months to transition and finally decided cut my evernote and use noton 100% base from this video. if you are an evernote user and hate it. you can easily transfer to mem without problem. mem is like what evernote should have been for more than 10yrs. it's just the developer and CEO of evernote are idiots. Evernote and mem are for ordinary peeps. you register and start using it. no configuration what so ever. Notion is not for ordinary people. notion is for technical people. people who have "basic programming skills." and guess what. basic education now have basic programming skills in the curriculum. so choosing which is which is simply asking yourself. do you want start right now? or do you want to build a system that will work for you? if you do go get notion. if not go get mem. don't touch evernote.. you will regret it lol

  • Agreed. And you're right that I don't have programming skills. And each tool serves different needs for different people. 4 Reply @KunleOladehin 6 months ago Good points. I actually use both. Notion is my systems tool (project management, client docs, etc) and Mem is my idea generation tool. I've found that Notion isn't a good dumping ground of random ideas. Like you mention, you have to think about how each page fits into the picture. I needed somewhere that I can instantly capture and take quick action without any friction. If an note gets refined in Mem and eventually becomes a common resource, I migrate it into Notion because I've figured out how it's used and what it should connect to. Not sure what future developments might make me completely buy into one solution. Show less 4 Reply @laptoprelaks 5 months ago I love the idea of using Notion because there are so much structure and its beautiful unfortunately it is high maintance for an ADHDer... as an ADHDer Mem is a godsend..because to have those structure you need to have an intact organizational skills which almost all ADHD have least of... I can never sustain using keep,evernote,trello let alone Notion... maybe one can also use Mem as a training wheel for using Notion later on Reply @sciteceng2hedz358 4 months ago (edited) Yeah kinda thought the same thing. You can do Notion good or you can do it bad. Notion has bidirectional linking. But there are some properties in mem that seem interesting. 1 Reply @SpacyPuccy 1 month ago https://youtu.be/t5YAJUbGxLU?t=16 this dude literally built a python script on obsidian (note-taking software more technical than notion) and left for mem Reply @SouravGhoshji 3 days ago ⁠ @maximizeyouroutput  I am not a programmer but technical definitely. After going through August Bradley’s PPV framework on YouTube & understanding how Notion works, my Notion can do everything you’ve mentioned Mem do better than Notion. In fact, I found the Mem interface & workflow confusing. But surely different person has different preferences.

#Glasp
#nsfw

(336) F*ck Obsidian. Learn THIS Instead - YouTube

Metadata

• Title: (336) F*ck Obsidian. Learn THIS Instead - YouTube
• Tags: #Mem
• URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5YAJUbGxLU

Page Comment

1. Spotlight: what Glasp does, but better. Better than Glasp+Obsidian.

2. auto-linking related things such as people ("Frankie" example).

3. Integration with text (texting) as Inbox items.

4. Strong collaboration (project, team, work)

5. Tasks (todo list) with checkbox, reminder.

6. Ultimately, the goal is CREATIVE OUTPUT. Agreed!

7. Killer app: AI.

Rafeh: this AI is revolutionary and different.
comp: chatGPT, Notion AI.
example: ask a question about Mr. Beast. what did he say?

This is: chatGPT trained on your own PKM!

8. Can answer based on text in IMAGES! (CHINESE?) -- Chinese is NOT supported. I know. :-(

Big downside:

9. AI queries cost money! 15 cents per query. (Correction: Craft is NOT free.)

Highlights & Notes

• (15:39) I'll say Frankie says he will produce 20 shorts this month and you can see it automatically 16:12 tagged Frankie I didn't have to put at symbol I didn't have to put you know obsidian style double bracket it I don't have to do the work it does the work for me and so that was a big key thing that was like it can organize for me and it can think for me and it can show me relevant stuff without me having to really do anything and when I think about that over a period of three months six months one year two years five years that's huge because right now yeah I'm excited about obsidian so I'll do all the nerdy stuff 16:44 I'll double bracket everything and you know I'll put everything correctly I'll make my links properly you know in markdown but honestly in the long run will I really do that probably not and I'll just go back to using something just simple to use and even their mobile app is like seems very complicated
• (20:28) there's something called mem Spotlight so I 21:03 could actually use it from anywhere I could just hit command shift um enter space and it not only opens it up but it has it highlighted and even has a source Link in there and I can just say save selection to a new mem and I can just hit enter and I could just hit command enter right there and if I go back to my mem sometimes it takes a second but it'll always show up
• (30:21) now here's the Killer part watch this I can actually say uh what does Mr B say about retention check this out it says figure out how to get to 70 retention on YouTube that should be your only focus now where the hell did it just get this from here's where I got it from so let me go to Mr Beast quotes and there we go okay Mr B's quotes figure out how to get to 70 retention on YouTube that should be your only focus and now going back to our doc that we're working on it pulled 31:04 that out so notice how I didn't even have to go there it could actually leverage the information that's already there
• (33:24) mind-blowing like this is revolutionary that's never been done before I mean this is state of the art AI like we've never as a normal user you and I had the opportunity to take AI artificial intelligence and train it on our own data this is the first time we're able to do that and this is something even you know obvious like Chad GPT you could do to some extent but Chad GPT is only context aware of like a specific chat that you have going on so if you don't have something in that specific chat 33:59 you're screwed here it can search like literally infinitely wide it reads through every single thing so it could study and learn from and study the entire Corpus of my entire knowledge base and then give me a specific answer based on that
• (36:45) now that I've put this book in here it makes the book come to life like wouldn't it be amazing if this book could answer questions for you like about profit if you had questions so watch this okay um let's say I ask it um so questions so let's say I ask it okay let's say what is my current annual Revenue give me one number keep it short okay so let's see if it knows what my current annual revenue is yep there we go that is perfectly right because I had told it before I had told 37:33 it that I have five or six clients and this is exactly how much each client is paying me from five thousand to ten thousand dollars per month and it used that to know that that was twenty five thousand dollars per month and it knows that that's three hundred thousand dollars annually so that is absolutely perfect okay uh now I can ask it um what are my total expenses uh in a month give me one number keep it short okay so it says my total expenses are estimated to be about twenty six thousand five hundred dollars okay so it 38:17 knows and that's from like a different note that I had taken about my expenses so this is from one note about my expenses and this is from a different note
• (40:08) take a look at that page and you can see here it's linking to that image it also understood that that was the image that I needed and so I don't have to search for my image I can just ask it questions it can look across my entire knowledge base and using AI genuine AI give me the stuff that I need to know and so now with in this way my book profit first notes have come to 40:45 life it's not just this passive thing that's sitting there I can reason through
• (42:40) don't get me wrong look obsidian is great but the only incentive that I have there to store more information is so I could get like nicer graphs you know which there's nothing wrong with but honestly it's not something I use all the time I mean it's cool but it's not something 43:09 I'm using like all the damn time right so if I actually go here you see this whole thing like yeah it's cool when you see it all and right now I'm animating it's all gonna like you know happen form it's gonna look cool but for my knowledge to work like this where it can pull from my knowledge and then tell me things and then calculate if I ask it to calculate
• (45:27) so there's honestly so freaking much but that book one impressed the hell out of me that was probably one of my most favorite ones when it happened I was just shocked I was like holy hell like I can't even imagine once I have 10 books or 20 books or 50 books that I've read in there with all my 46:03 highlights and all my notes and then I ask it about hiring or profitability I don't have to look for hashtag hiring and then look for a graph what connects to hiring oh I could just say I'm about to hire this person man should I hire him right now or no and it will go based on the book rework you should not hire this person right now because they currently don't have this skill set but also based on the book profit first you shouldn't hire right now because you're not profitable yet so one look 46:38 for somebody with XYZ criteria as mentioned in book rework and two become profitable first and then once you've hit those two steps then you can hire you know so and so person and it's like oh my God that is beautiful it's all that knowledge being baked in coming out to help you and I think that's the truest way we learn as human beings we ask questions I'm not going to my mentor being like hashtag books hashtag collections
• (47:13) it fills it out from you not from 47:44 random garbage online but from your own curated heavily curated crystallized thoughts and data so to me this is the epitome of capturing fast synthesizing your thoughts into something that make into something that makes sense and honestly sense making and connection making of your thoughts and notes beyond anything I've ever seen before I don't know any other tool that does this or even comes close to doing this craft notion everything else has only they can only read from one document kind of like Chad GPT this is the very 48:23 first time we've experienced this and to give you guys a little bit of insight into this too open AI is behind mems Team mem dot a I open AIS behind them an open AI had 100 million dollars to invest in any startups AI startups and they were very selective and they're not even going to choose probably more than 10 it's going to be less than 10. 48:44 and their first startup that they went up went with was mem Ai and this invested about 23 million dollars into this because they believe in this technology and what it has to offer and so watch out for this I think it's only going to get better
• (49:19) you have every query costs you one credit and that's annoying so on top of the eight dollars per month if I want to use the AI queries they cost me so 49:55 since I'm kind of I I'm refilling my meter with this essentially cost me like 15 cents per AI query so like if I wrote six queries that's like one dollar for me um and so I keep refilling it you know I'll pay for it but that's the only thing I kind of hate about it it's like seems ridiculous like okay half you know I I had 250 queries that I signed up for and out of them like out of them a hundred were probably errors like a hundred were either I didn't like the result or I put something you know that was just 50:37 like a small thing and I was just I just kept refining and refining it and so that was kind of annoying part for me and then monthly subscription is um coming soon which is a good part so I'm looking forward to if they can switch this credit thing to a monthly subscription so wouldn't have to pay some crazy amounts like we could just pay a monthly subscription of like 10 20 bucks a month 30 bucks a month and then you could just kind of use it unlimited but just keep in mind that nothing else has this ability like nothing else