I’ve been trying Microsoft Copilot for the past couple of days. I’ve been jumping around between Perplexity, Kagi Assistant, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Google’s Gemini trying to better understand which may work best for me long-term.

Copilot was recently updated with a simple and friendly UI. It’s nice to use. However, I don’t see any advanced features that power users will certainly want in their AI assistant. No projects, prompt configuration, no option to switch LLMs. The Pro version offers a simple “Think Deeper” button that, when clicked, switches to a more advanced model that helps the conversation go deeper. You’ll also get priority access and other perks with Pro.

There is a Copilot Daily feature that reads today’s top headlines. Today’s headlines included a public service message to turn off lights when not in use, and headlines about the Apex fossil in the NY museum, Trump’s goal to end daylight savings time, MicroStrategy to join Nasdaq-100 Index, Jared Padalecki’s holiday message, and incentives to attract new residents in other countries. Overall, a good mix and summary of each. It was convenient to listen to it the past couple of days. As far as the ongoing content, we’ll see.

It’s obvious Microsoft is trying to make Copilot the “everyday user’s” AI. Since Copilot is included front-and-center, for better or worse, on Windows machines going forward, they want it to be as simple as possible.

I’m not convinced any Power User will want to use it. But, I need more time with it to see if I’m missing anything. The Pro version of Copilot is the standard $20 per month. I’ll certainly need to try more advanced tasks to see if it’s even worth considering.

I’ve been going all in with Microsoft Edge browser. I’ve used it for work, but for my personal browser, I jump around a bit. I always use Safari on my iPhone. Microsoft Edge on the iPhone is surprisingly good. Part of this experiment is to compare Microsoft Copilot with other services.

I gave Capacities a quick look. I like the idea of organizing everything as objects. I don’t think I could stick with it. Too many possibilities and my brain will want to try every one of them.

I’ve been watching Evernote since I stopped using the service a few years ago. During the past few months, Bending Spoons has been cranking out improvements and features, making it look like a great product.

I’m still not comfortable with Bending Spoons as a company. Not enough to go back.

I recommend using a custom domain for your email.

It allows you to switch between services with relatively few headaches.

Also, using a separate email address for different purposed has its advantages. Keeping my bank email separate from social media, from personal correspondence, for example.

While I know it’s not for everyone, as someone who follows only a handful of people on social media and a couple of dozen RSS feeds and YouTube channels, the new Reeder app hits the right spot for me.

I’ve even used it for all of my podcasts for the past few weeks without issue.

I migrated my feeds and accounts over to the new Reeder app.

The UI is outstanding.

I’m curious if I’ll get used to the timeline approach rather than having a more traditional inbox of unread items.

I don’t know if this will be any different, as I’d still keep checking for anything new.

Clew is a web search engine focused content from independent creators. Only about 223k results indexed currently, but that’s a good start if you’re looking for focused content by individuals.

I’m starting to enjoy using the sidebar in Vivaldi. It’s been useful for showing email from Proton, notes from Reflect, RSS from Sublime Feed, Mastodon, Micro.blog, and more. I’m trying to get more familiar with the keyboard navigation and Quick Commands feature as well. Overall, I’m impressed.

This is a test to see if I could use EchoFeed to automatically copy my posts from this Mastodon account to my blog hosted on Micro.blog.

I installed the Unhook extension in Vivaldi. Now YouTube only shows my subscriptions and search. No algorithm, no comments and no distractions.

I also uninstalled the YouTube app from my phone and subscribed to my favorite channels in Feedbin.

Proton now allows automatic backups of all your photos to Proton Drive. I gave it a try. It was extremely slow, which is fine. But then I saw there is a 500 GB cap on Proton Drive storage. I only uploaded a few photos and then turned it off.

I feel there are better backup solutions for my photos.

I’m slowly moving my domains from Cloudflare and Hover over to porkbun. My main domain was successful. Now for the rest. I’ve heard good things about porkbun. Simple and affordable. Hopefully, it’s worth it.

I’m still using Feedbin as my one-stop for RSS, YouTube, and Newsletters. However, I started using the ReadKit app on iOS and macOS to sync my feeds.

I’m enjoying it quite a bit. It’s easy to swipe over to get the actual post, which is great for some types of content, like Micro.blog the timeline.