NotebookLM is one of Google’s lesser-used AI products but it introduced a feature that’s becoming increasingly popular — Audio Overviews. The company already brought it over to Gemini and plans to add the feature to Google Docs in the next few months too. Until now, Audio Overviews has been an English-only tool but as of this week, it’s available in over 50 languages.
The NotebookLM platform is all about putting together notebooks of information and different sources and using LLMs to interact with them. Audio Overviews is basically a fancy summary tool — it lets you generate audio summaries of your selected sources that are presented in the style of a podcast with two AI hosts.
Though you could always use source material in any language to generate an Overview, the audio content was previously only available in English. Now, you can easily switch to Spanish, French or any of the 50+ languages Google has added this week.
This will make it really easy to consume just about any content without having to search out translations in your preferred language. You can listen to an Audio Overview of a brand-new Japanese research paper that hasn’t been translated yet, or consume super-niche English content that hasn’t been translated to Spanish. This also combines the feature’s original benefit of summarizing and simplifying content so you can get the gist of something really long or complex in a much quicker and more accessible format.
Since NotebookLM is marketed primarily as a study tool, it also occurs to me that this feature could be great for language learning. Consuming familiar content in your target language is a really accessible way to start boosting your comprehension skills.
For reading, for instance, it’s really common for people to pick up the “Harry Potter” books in their target language because everyone knows the story. For listening, you can take whatever kind of written information you’re familiar with and convert it into a podcast in your target language to listen along to. A new “Output Language” option has also been added so you can easily switch between languages at any time and create multilingual content.
Google’s blog post about the update focuses on NotebookLM specifically, and it seems the additional languages aren’t available for Gemini yet. If you don’t want to wait, NotebookLM is available for free and anyone on Google’s One AI Premium plan also has access to NotebookLM Plus.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.