My Current Tech Stack #3 [Q1 2024]

A LOT has changed since I last did one of these. I've dropped some major tools from my toolbox, and even lost faith in one of the companies completely... Fair warning this one is a bit heated!

Seems like 2024 is resetting everything I use! Let's just get to it.

My Personal Knowledge Management

I moved last year from Notion, to Obsidian, to Capacities, and once more now to Acreom!

I found that Notion still wasn't performing the level of consistency I needed, and even though Notion Cal is very appealing. It doesn't make up for the changes that the Notion Co have decided to make toward more enterprise, and away from individuals.

Obsidian just failed on many different occasions to do anything I needed it to. Sure the daily note taking was good, and I loved the graph view. The only thing that Obsidian did better than notion was web clipping. For some reason Notion always fails to scape the text from a blog post, my plugin didn't on this tool.

Capacities also had a ton of performance issues, particularly in typing and trying to select items. Constantly not selecting the right selection, when clicking on a textbox you'd have to do it 2 or more times, and databases often didn't refresh to show changes made.

That brings me to Acreom, and while I did have trouble at first. It has been doing great since. There are things just built into Acreom that make it a lot better than Obsidian. While neither have databases, which is pretty imperative to my content planning. I am able to do the same scheduling out reminder strategy I have used in both Capacities and Obsidian, however IMO it is actually working out a lot better. Given how integrated the ToDo's are in Acreom. It also works across devices, and since my internet goes out a lot. Having it on my PC makes it much more usable.

Not to mention the founders are way more hands on, and trying to listen to each user's issues. When I contacted Capacities people, they just essentially told me they were too busy. Huge contrast there.

Social Media Scheduling

One of the first tools I'm dumping is Publer.io, as much as I have championed it. I've had nothing but issues since the beginning. The staff have always been kind and tried to be helpful, but I always ended up having issues when posting my clips.

The only reason I joined up with that tool, was for their BULK scheduling, however I always had performance issues where my tab would freeze, I couldn't open up other pages from Publer's website (even the calendar to check if posts made it through), if I had any posts being uploaded.

Anytime I would share with them any issues they would always just ask for proof or screen recordings. When the issues were just so random that even when I tried to record they wouldn't happen. So frustrating. The founder told me that the bulk scheduler was one of their oldest features, and not one of "main things". I disagree.

It is one of the only things that makes the tool stand out, after I have tried literally over 100 SMM tools.

Thus I will still be using Nuelink like before for some automations, and randomly sharing. Although I don't see it currently useful for scheduling shorts/reels/tiktoks, sorry Bilal.

I'm just gonna have to do it manually, which is extremely frustrating. Given how common of an issue the need for bulk scheduling is. No tool even supports it. No I'm not gonna count the archaic method of CSV uploads. #salty

Recording Tools

Getting to the other tool that I am dumping off of my Tech Stack, and this one was a "brand partner" of mine. Or at least I thought we were. I haven't had contact with the staff in ages. Despite many attempts on my side to communicate. They would take my feedback, and turn it into features, but they wouldn't even tell me the features would be coming.

So I'd have a problem, like multi-track audio editing, and the support would just gaslight me and send me to the help articles. When the feature wasn't even there yet, then a month later I'd see on social that they're finally adding the feature. This happened to me like half a dozen times.

A brand partner is supposed to be updated BEFORE new releases so we can market them as they are released.

Not to mention performance issues too. One of my recent interviews got split into TWO SEPARATE recordings. Another one, the guest's audio was extremely quiet, more than it was in the call. In other situations I'd have issues with the magic editor just crapping out on me, and then I couldn't export. One of my most recent guests her video wouldn't upload. It took over 60 HOURS for it to upload to Riverside. She has high speed internet. When she contacted support? They just sent her to the help article she already read. That was after a restart on the upload btw. It was just ridiculous.

I'm holding out hope that Waveroom is gonna get better. So far I've tried it a few times, and it failed pretty miserably all 3 times.

I'm looking at Podcastle now, as I'm also looking for a new podcast host as well. Since they have everything built in. I'm rather tired of the lack of updates to Podcast.co, even though I have a lifetime deal with them. They sort of locked out LTD people like me from their newer features, when the deal stated it would be getting new features as they came.

Plus I'd like to have my new podcast and old podcast under the same roof.

My LinkTree Alternatives

I don't like even mentioning Linktree, so from any more from this series I'm just gonna say Link Aggregator. Linktrees are just so bland, and overrated. When there are so many greater choices out there. I had Pensight and Mylinks.ai as my tools of choice last time.

However I basically have just moved to Dot.card now, as it seems to work better than Pensight for me. Especially since I don't have a need for Pensight's pricey paid plans.

Making Clips for Tiktok/Shorts/Reels

Now I'm happily still with OpusClip, they have been awesome. Let me be clear, they have had growing pains ever since I started. Last Summer I had to wait a whole month before continuing to make clips at one point.

Why am I still with them? Well because not only did they communicate to me that things were gonna get fixed, new features came out EVERY MONTH, the tool got better at finding clips, and I eventually became a brand partner. Which unlike my other partner, Opus actually told me things that were upcoming. It made me super excited. Even this month there are some insane updates coming.

Full disclosure: I now WORK for OpusClip because I believe in the tool that much.

They are working on supporting other content types beyond just like talking videos, sportscast, and podcasts. However since they don't do gaming yet, then I'll shout out Eklipse.gg or when I'm desperate Crossclip. However the latter hasn't been updated in an extremely long time.

Highlighted Tool of the Week: Rise Calendar

With all the news feeds mentioning Notion Cal, you probably don't even know about this one. It is relatively new, but it feels really nice to use.

Going from Google Cal or the old Cron Cal before, Rise feels at home to me, and more importantly has unique features. At this point it has replaced my need for Calendly or Pensight to schedule out meetings, which is really cool.

🥡 Takeaways

I'm glad I changed this mini series to being once a quarter. A lot can happen in that timespan. I'm really happy with Acreom at this point, and while I had issues with some tools. I think others will take a much better spot.

Notion + Capacities + Obsidian = Acreom

Riverside.fm = Podcastle? Waveroom?

Pensight + Mylinks = Rise Cal and Dotcard

Publer = to just doing it manually