The AI slop peaks the contrast. The lack of rigor, creativity, thinking or profoundness hides in profuse prose or visual overflow. Bad scripts were compensated with bigger action scenes in Hollywood.

New tools produce volume. The default AI prompt outputs the average. This is the trademark of AI slop: the verbose email, social media post, presentation or document. The glitter or the length is not a sign of quality.

The weak reasoning, lack of creativity or consistency tells the story. It always has. The new powerful dazzling tools have not changed the people using them. They replace previous sloppiness with more of a uniform slop that is easy to recognise, reminiscent of how diverse car colors have flattened into 80% shades of gray.

What took effort, rigor and months if not years to produce can be done in minutes. This is digital richness. The previous hard effort became effortless. The mindset behind it did not update. The signal value is adjusting. Scarcity removed reveals the same as before.

Convenience did not upgrade you. It made the lack louder.

Listening to a podcast is a personal experience. The speakers are in my ears. It can be disturbing or distracting when the audio takes away from the message.

When you don’t find the solution, it’s time to build it. Nuotit is a podcasting app that gives the listener the power to customise the audio while listening. You can remove background music, fix audio noises, or enhance the sound to your liking, surroundings, or headset you’re using.

Nuotit is a local, in-device-only app that does not have ads, does not track your usage, or has any server-side to send your data. You can import any podcast RSS feed or import your local files. You can listen to any audio source, whether it’s an audiobook, music, or spoken audio.

The audio profiles can be set to each show and shared for others to enjoy from them. Audio settings can be tweaked while you listen to your show, or you can ask AI Assist to come up with the best configuration for you. The quickest fix is to tap “Voice isolation,” and you’re done with it.

The app has advanced audio options, but it’s a podcast player that has powerful playlist features. Drop a few shows to a playlist, and it will keep the list updated with the preferred amount of latest episodes. Or mix-and-match with individual files, episodes, and dynamic show updates. Filtering allows you to keep the lists short and topical if that’s the way you want to organise your catalogue.

What do you do when the host dumps tens of links to the show description? The app collects them and gives you link previews for cleaner purview.

I built Nootti for cross-posting, and Nuotit is my solution to a better audio experience.

What comes next to Nuotit is waiting for user feedback. Podcasting 2.0 has advanced and new features, but many of them are not widely adapted. There are more to do with audio and making it easier to use.

How would you like to shape your sound?

Social media is one way to use your voice. We are in the middle of a disruption from centralised top-down news sources to a model where everybody has the means to speak and reach out to everybody else. No state-sanctioned mass media required.

We let the opportunity slip away with Internet 2.0 where the large platforms captured the network effects and monetised the users. We have another try but can we do better this time?

It’s always time to build

I noticed there was no easy way to share posts to decentralised networks. I built an app to share content to Bluesky, Mastodon and Nostr. If you can’t decide why not post to all?

Nootti is an iOS / iPad and M-series Mac app that makes posting and customisation easy for each network. AI content has started to flood all the channels. Real people with real messages become the exception.

You have a voice, use it

Freedom of speech needs to be exercised. If you have it today you may not have it tomorrow. If you take it for granted, don’t care about it or are too ignorant to use it you will notice when its gone. It’s harder to gain back once its gone.