Smart for Work
OneNote → Notable → Genspark
I didn’t jump to AI notes in one step. The path was OneNote, then Notable, then Genspark — and each step only moved when I hit a real wall.
OneNote was my first choice for meetings and events. Same UI for typing and recording. The note is even a timeline: click a phrase, hear what the room was saying while you typed it. Brilliant on the desk.
On phone and tablet, I couldn’t record and take notes at the same time. After I dropped the Surface project — another story — OneNote stayed strong at the desk and weak on the move.
Then Notable. Every form factor. Templates, auto-calculation, drawing, handwriting to text, auto-align, select-copy-move, PDF in and out. One of the best drop-notes apps. GoodNotes is close. I still did most of the structuring myself.
The next wall was the role. I’m often both in the meeting and on stage. Deck plus notes on one screen is hard. Even MacBook Pro plus iPad wasn’t enough.
In the video-call years I recorded in OBS and replayed after. Three hours to prepare a one-hour meeting, then another hour for notes. Too slow.
OpenClaw — my assistant Holiday — could draft minutes, but TTS was weak, and the runs were slow and expensive even with sub-agents.
A former supervisor pointed me to Genspark. People use it for apps and slides. I mostly use Speakly: speech to text, summaries, voice separation, Cantonese, Mandarin, English — also Indian and Singaporean speech. Upload or record in their UI.
Here is where it stopped feeling like “just another notes app.”
With Genspark I can keep materials in one project — like episodes of the same series. Minutes from meeting one, two, three… I can look back, see what changed since last time, and follow a project, a meeting thread, or the same client’s requests more cleanly.
When several clients ask for the same product or the same kind of solution, I can do a light crossover: what are the common asks in the market I’m actually hearing? That helps me build the deck — and in the live meeting I can reflect it back: others are asking for this too; here’s how we might follow up. That used to wait until after the call. Now more of it can happen inside the meeting.
Also practical: I keep Genspark open on the computer as a web or app session for continuous meeting recording, while I still pull other materials on the side. Sometimes I can even push a quick demo or a rough prototype through Genspark live, so we confirm something with the client in the room — instead of ending on vague “we’ll come back later.”
I’m not covering every Genspark feature today. A later note may walk through what it can actually do, so you can decide how you’d use it.
One clear note: I am not paid by Genspark. If you try it, match it to your own needs. Don’t buy because someone on the internet sounded excited. A one-month trial is usually wiser than a year upfront — and you only know if it fits after you use it on your real meetings.
So this is not “switch apps for fun.” It’s when capture is enough, when formatting helps, and when AI earns a seat by organising — across meetings, across clients — not merely storing.
OneNote → Notable → Genspark. That’s the path for me.