NextSlide recently announced that it’s joining OpenAI, with the presentation startup’s team members now working on ChatGPT.

The NextSlide website currently displays a note from founder Ahmed Beshry describing the startup’s product as one “that could turn prompts, notes, documents, or research into a polished, editable presentation.”

The ultimate goal, Beshry said, was “to make visual communication more accessible and help more people express their ideas clearly.” So by joining OpenAI, the team will “continue pursuing that same mission: building AI products that help people create, communicate, and turn their ideas into meaningful work.”

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a note on LinkedIn, Beshry said the announcement is coming “a few months late,” as the acquisition took place “earlier this year.”

Beshry was previously a co-founder at Caper AI, a smart cart/cashier-less checkout startup acquired by Instacart in 2021.

X, the social media platform now owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is shaking up how it pays influencers and creators.

In announcing the change, the company said it will be winding down its existing Revenue Sharing program and replacing it with something called Original Content Rewards. X will stop accepting new Revenue Sharing participants, while existing participants will continue earning money through September 7.

Then, starting on September 8, they’ll be able to apply for the new program. Participants will still need to subscribe to one of X’s Premium tiers, and there will be qualifying thresholds for follower count (500 verified followers) and impressions (500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in 90 days), but it sounds like the big change is the emphasis on originality. 

What counts as original content? X said it can include original reporting and analysis, photos and videos created by the poster, or memes and graphics they’ve designed themselves. Commentary also counts, but “if your content regularly incorporates material created by others, you’ll need to contribute meaningful original value for it to qualify under our original content guidelines.”

The company also included examples of posts that won’t count as original, such as those just copied over from another account, downloaded from one account and re-uploaded to your own, or reposting content “without meaningful transformation.”

This announcement follows repeated attempts by X to reform the Revenue Sharing program, for example reducing payments to aggregators and “clickbait” accounts in April. But these efforts have also prompted complaints from popular accounts profiting from the current system; Musk even reversed some of those changes (giving a creator’s local audience more weight when calculating payouts) after a backlash.

In a post about the new changes, X’s Allegra Jacchia wrote that the existing program “had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned.”

“Creators should be focused on bringing net new content to the platform instead of maximizing payouts,” she said. “We could have kept adding more rules and exceptions, but ultimately the better decision was to start fresh and build a program designed from day one to reward originality.”

Jacchia added that X be “continue refining the program, improving our models, and raising the bar over time.”

After testing the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft for two months, I found that it was made for a very specific kind of note-taker and reader. While the device is pretty and lightweight, it’s not something the everyday person needs due to its hefty price tag and size. 

However, for those who have been waiting for a color Kindle that doubles as a digital notebook, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is worth considering. 

The device starts at a steep $630 and is available in two colors: Black and Fig, a pretty purple shade. It weighs just 400 grams and features an 11-inch display that makes it similar in size to a traditional sheet of paper.

Its thin design is impressive, but its larger size means it’s not exactly something you can hold comfortably with one hand. I found it most comfortable to use when it was propped up against my knees while sitting on a bed or placed flat on a desk.

One thing I like about e-readers is that they’re usually quite portable, so I can easily pop one into my purse when I’m on the go. That wasn’t the case with the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft because its size meant I never ended up taking it out of the house. However, if you’re an avid note-taker or researcher, I could see why you’d want to put it in your work bag to take with you to the office or to a coffee shop to get some work done. Beyond those situations, it’s not a device I’d reach for during a quick trip in an Uber or while waiting at a doctor’s office.

The larger size does mean that there’s more room for writing and note-taking, or even sketches and diagrams. And of course, the larger display makes reading PDFs and other documents easier.

When it comes to reading, the larger screen has both benefits and drawbacks, as the extra space is helpful when reading books with charts or maps, but the size also gets rid of the cozy feeling that makes smaller Kindles appealing.

What I liked about the larger size was that I was able to create an easy-to-read color-coded digital planner and reading journal, especially since the device comes with templates for daily, weekly, and monthly planners. And as someone who normally has a physical reading journal, I found it quite efficient to be able to finish a book and then open up a digital notebook on the same device to log my reading. 

The device comes with a Kindle Scribe Pen that attaches magnetically to the side of the e-reader. The pen feels nice in your hand and can be programmed for various actions. The eraser works smoothly and responds almost instantly. 

While the color display is fun, it’s important to recognize that colors look more like soft highlighter shades rather than the vibrant tones you see on a regular tablet. That’s not necessarily an issue for note-taking, but it does mean that comics and other visual content won’t look as rich as the original colors.

The device’s color options were useful when highlighting books because I could assign specific colors to different types of notes. For example, while reading a twisty thriller, I used blue to mark details I thought I might need to remember later and red for quotes I enjoyed and wanted to note. It’s also easy to quickly switch between the different colors thanks to the device’s fast refresh rate. 

As for battery life, I found it to be excellent. I only had to charge the device twice over the course of two months. It is worth noting, however, that writing uses more power than reading.

All in all, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft makes the most sense for students, researchers, and journalers who want one device for reading, annotating, and organizing handwritten notes. For everyone else, the steep cost is hard to justify.

If you’re simply looking to upgrade an older Kindle, I don’t think the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is worth the investment, as you’d be better off with the more reasonably priced Kindle Paperwhite, which starts at $159.99.