you found the Best Tech newsletter...

it was the Best of tech, it was the worst of tech; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.

Or something like that.

Chuck Dickens goes on to present a number of dichotomous concepts in his renown opening of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, with its’ direct opening being a variant of how this first issue of the Best Tech newsletter opens as well, with its’ other notable quotable being “it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…” as Sydney, a protagonist, sacrifices himself for the greater good.

So while I neither aspire to be sacrificed, nor to be a protagonist hero per se, I do commit to doing the needful to make this newsletter the best I’ve ever founded, after building two AI newsletters to 6-figure subscription bases, as well as to carry Charles’ legacy as a visionary storyteller rooted in current events, speaking truth to power (2025 version becoming speaking truth to tech), and a writer with a purpose beyond simply delighting a reader.

With that said, my declared goal with the Best Tech newsletter is to teach what tools are out there worth knowing about, giving easy to follow tutorials on how to use them, whistle blowing as needed (to appreciate the Best Tech we must be able to identify and not get caught up by the worst of it), building in public, and helping people of all levels of AI proficiency get up to speed. With that said, I affirm that no one can fully keep up at the moment - even experts I know well don’t know many of the leading mainstream tools, because they’re in their bubbles, and those who don’t think they’re anywhere close to knowledgeable when it comes to AI gaining massive understanding and skill after just reading a few newsletters, watching a few YouTube videos, and just rolling up their sleeves and playing with the tools.

We are amidst a bonafide goldrush, things are primarily equalized as we don’t need to know code, tech, etc. to fully get up to speed to where we can make money, save time, increase efficiency, have fun with and change our lives using the current, available tech. That fact that you’re subscribed and reading this means you’re taking steps, and are in the right place, at the right time. In this publication there may be typos, there may be controversial or debatable concepts, there may be speculations (there will be) and there will definitely be a touch of sarcasm and humor, but there will never (ever) be content written by AI.

This is a human writing about tech, AI and humanity, not tech writing about itself and humanity using AI. To be human without offending any other humans, fup that shlit.

This issue of the Best Tech newsletter is intended as an intro, but also a working, value-add representation of what to expect in this publication, so I’ll jump into some tools and use-cases, some editorial, and then await feedback, requests, and specific ways that I can make this not only The best tech newsletter in general, but your absolute favorite newsletter in your inbox as well - if this weekly doesn’t legitimately change your life, it’s your responsibility to let me know, and then my duty to figure it out, step my game up, and come back with even hotter fire next week. Deal? I’m extending a virtual hand to shake…

Before jumping straight into the tech, however, I must address a question that I’m asked often, if not daily, which is how I am so productive in general. For those who don’t know, I’m currently a cofounding executive in a space tourism R&D company (Ascend), an AI company (LovingIs… AI), a music-tech platform (We J), a H2H social media (VRFD), a venture studio (DCRBN), an advisor to multiple entities (Latitude, GrayCyan, and Joy of Mom), whilst maintaining my role as an EIR (entrepreneur in residence) at the Founder Institute, a viral growth coach on a waitlist, a published author (new book coming out soon as well - I’m a coauthor but my chapter is totally written my me), and I’m editor-in-chief at both Tech For Good and the Best Tech newsletter newsletters, while staying on top of my personal brand as a Top Voice and influencer on LinkedIn pushing 600,000 followers there. So I should be busy, but I’m not. I should be automating everything in my life too, as an expert in-the-know with lots on my plate - BUT I’M NOT. What I am doing, what I recommend, and an impetus of this newsletter, is using brilliant human VAs trained on how to use AI with maximum efficacy, and supplementing with my own usage and brainpower as well. The company I use, trust and love after vetting dozens in The VA Group is my top recommendation, my growth hack, and the model I see working best for humanity moving forward. I highly recommend checking them out, and discovering what they could do for your business as well.

You’ll soon learn about me, if you’re not familiar with my work already, that I’m big on HitL (human-in-the-loop), BaaS (blockchain as a solution - a real and much needed solution to a very real and relevant problem), UBI (universal basic income), agents (MCP - model context protocol, super-agents, and more), interoperability, and ethics in AI. Ultimately, I build, teach, and research with humanity and our sustained future at heart and in focus, and love bringing others into the world of what’s possible, while helping facilitate some of the conversations around and taking action to also prevent against what’s possible.

To be, or not to be… that is the question.

Ooops, wrong author (point of conversation: perhaps Shakespeare wasn’t the real human playwrite behind his seminal works - back then provenance was a matter of which human it was, now it’s if it was a human or an AI). I digress.

So now, lets jump into a taste of what’s to come, and elucidate some true Tech For Good in this first issue of the Best Tech newsletter.

First off, if you’re not using AI agents yet - you need to change that. After reading the follow several paragraphs you’ll be fully empowered, so the excuses for not doing so are about to disintegrate. MCP can be a difficult concept to grasp, but basically its just a framework that lets different AI tools access different tools that are outside of its ecosystem. Anthropic, makers of Claude, pioneered the concept and protocol, and now have made it available within their Claude model both for Pro users ($20/mo can use MCP with your google drive, gmail and g-cal) and for Max users ($100/mo can sync to virtually any site and tool). I’ll dig into the latter in a moment, but it’s also important to know that several platforms such as Manus, GenSpark and others have aggregated MCP and given it an interface to make it super easy, intuitive and powerful as well. These super agents can do research, generate presentations and marketing assets, can build websites and applications, can scrape the web, and much, much more. More on that in future issues - but today we’ll focus on the Claude Max MCP capabilities, as it’s “the one” to at least understand.

So here’s the “deal”, if you add PayPal, Stripe, Canva, Instagram, YouTube, Replit, Zapier, LinkedIn, Intercom, Fiverr, Amazon, and Reddit (plus any others you use or can think of) to your Claude using MCP you could now, conceptually, prompt it to research a problem many users on Reddit are complaining about, write a survey to poll users on LinkedIn, Instagram etc., take the data to build a website, app, and social media copy for the ICPs experiencing the problem and their look-alike audience, create and post social media posts to generate signups, site traffic, etc., make faceless YouTube to link to and generate leads with, start billing customers, building the solution for them, and scaling the business with email marketing, customer support bots and much more. I suspect you’re starting to get the idea. This is a great way to create your own agents, or just go to GenSpark, Manus, n8n, Gumloop or any other number of capable sites and give agents a try if you haven’t already.

Cognizant that I’m already 1,400 words into a first issue, I’ll seek to start winding it down, but knowing me, this issue will end up at least at closer to 3,000 characters, so I hope you’re enjoying it thusly. For brevity, in case that ship hasn’t already sailed, I’ll do some rapid fire of amazing tools I use regularly, and endorse wholeheartedly, along with a few pointers on what they’re great at, how to use them, etc., then will leave you with an actionable tutorial that I do believe is a game-changer, although we can’t use that phrase anymore (any of us, ever, again, lol) so I’ll simply say is amazing (spoiler alert, its Notebook LM, but if that doesn’t immediately make you say “uhuuu” then you’re in for something!).

First up, if you love music and aren’t using AI to create your own yet - you’re missing out, plain and simple. Some tried tools a year or two ago, and think that’s still the state of the art, but the reality is that g-AI music tools such as Udio and Suno are nothing short of incredible, and generating some of the best music in the history of humanity for those who know how to use them well (Suno is my personal favorite and go-to). As a recording artist, musician, singer-sonwriter and avid fan myself, it pains me that it often ‘hallucinates’ real human artists’ works, can be tricked into totally stealing voices, melodies, lyrics (blatant copyright infringement), but the brutal reality is that the outputs are so good, and that these AI generated tracks are here to stay. Furthermore, as a user, when you generate something you have commercial rights to it, and can use it in marketing, for fun, and beyond. This is, however, problematic when we realize we can “own the rights” to other artists’ work that they’re not getting compensated for.

To get the most out of Suno will be a much longer conversation, but for now know that it’s free to use, has both custom and simple mode, and is great at following production notes. I find it works best when you’re able to either write your own lyrics, or to use multiple AIs to write and refine lyrics and then still to put your personal touch on it rather than letting it simply use ChatGPT to write lyrics which are almost always corny, inauthentic, don’t resonate and can lead to an inferior quality song output. It’s also helpful to add “anti-prompts” to have it avoid sounds you're not wanting in your masterpiece. Suno always gives two options, and you can add post-production to any, really making them shine. You can also reuse style to “try again”, and can even sing words, melodies etc. into the engine and have it turn them into songs. Although this isn’t a best example, here’s a very good song I made with a mediocre video called Linkedin Influencers Love (Our Haters) that showcases what it was capable 6 months ago - to hear some of my current masterpieces follow me there at @wejcoryconnects. Have a banger of your own? Please submit it here, and maybe we’ll feature it here or in Tech For Good.

Many people ask me about using AI to create videos, and that will also be a deeper dive, but the short answer is that there are some great tools available depending on what you’re wanting to create. The agentic systems such as GenSpark and Manus can create videos too, and OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo both generate decent short video clips, but the “real ones” to know right now are InVideo, Runway ML, and Captions (and there are many more - HeyGen, LTX Studios, and more). Here’s a quick breakdown:

• InVideo is great to create videos for social media, especially faceless YouTube videos and shorts, Instagram reels, and more (LinkedIn too). It does research, writes scripts, animates with stock videos or generate AI videos, adds voiceovers, and is great with edits

• Runway is great for making short cohesive video clips that can have consistency between generations (cohesion), are very realistic looking, have great producer type features and functionality and is great with animating from still pics

• Captions (also HeyGen) is great for creating avatars of yourself or using others’ for social media clips, product reviews, and much more

Now that we’ve discussed movies and music, let’s talk design. Canva has new powerful AI, as does Adobe - and ChatGPT’s new image generation is highly capable, but for next level websites, presentations and more there are many options, but I’ve been loving Lovable, Bolt, and also just using the super-agents like GenSpark just do their thing. In addition to making websites and presentations, AI is now great to make web apps and interactive software as well like video games and beyond. Replit, Cursor and Firebase are all great starting points for this no-code “vibe-coding”, and the results can be stellar.

Although I’m eager to discuss test-time compute, inference, fine-tuning, process-based-rewards, the assertion that AI has passed the legendary Turing Test, to review new tools and methodologies, etc., I’m now hyper-sensative that you signed up for a newsletter, not a novel such as Dickens’ or Shakespeare, so I’ll end with Google’s notebook LM, a bit of patented “Cory insanity”, and then will ‘leave you to it’, only to see you again next week - same bat place, same bat channel. We will also cultivate a community here, which may serve as a back channel as well.

If you haven’t played with Notebook LM yet, its amazing and you should. One thing I love about it is that you can give it any links, files, KB and have it turn it into an interactive podcast you can listen to, interrupt, ask questions of, etc., and the podcasts themselves are great - think of turning any book, course, or google drive into a chat you can listen to, learn from, and have a chat with. I encourage you to try it with this issue, or give it the link/s to my other newsletter - Tech For Good or my first, AI Logs, and have it summarize them for you, allowing you to go down any rabbit holes you wish, to ask it questions about the content, and more. Also use it for quarterly reports, favorite book series, YouTube channels and more.

Staring 2,500 characters down the barrel, I’ll sign off by saying that in addition to having The VA Group as my secret weapon (again, check them out at https://thevagroup.com), the other two ways I’m able to stay so abreast on all things AI from the tools, how to use them, what to be mindful of, rumors (and their validity) etc. is two fold - I watch AI influencers on YouTube such as MattVidPro, Matthew Berman, The Startup Podcast, Matt Wolfe, AI Andy, Goda Go and others, and then I actually play around with the tools and techniques they discuss. Learning by watching and reading is one thing, learning by doing and making mistakes is another all together. I hope this newsletter has inspired you to play around with Suno, Notebook LM, Claude, GenSpark, and other tools for yourself if you’re not already. If you already are, thanks for reading to the end as well - I hope you found some nuggets herein to be valuable in any regard. Please do provide feedback on this publication as well - I will always listen to my readers (you!) and deliver upon your needs and requests.

Until next time,

Cory Lopes-Warfield, in gratitude and awe.