tech& Social Media: Camp Tech resources: 1)Anthropic opens up its Claude Cowork feature to anyone with a $20 subscription; 2)View Camp Tech’s Instructor Sara Norton’s List of Favourite Free Low-Cost, Beginner-Friendly Tech Tools; 3)How to Fix Your Wi-Fi

1)Anthropic opens up its Claude Cowork feature to anyone with a $20 subscription

Courtesy of Contributing Reporter, Ian Carlos Campbell, Engadget: January 16, 2025

Anthropic

Anthropic has opened up its Claude Cowork feature to anyone with a $20 subscription, and we highly recommend checking it out. Camp Tech owner Avery Swartz was able to build a website using Claude Cowork, which she detailed in this post on LinkedIn:

Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s AI assistant for taking care of simple tasks on your computer, is now available for anyone with a $20 per month Pro subscription to try. Anthropic launched Cowork as an exclusive feature for its Max subscribers, who pay a minimum of $100 per month for more uses of Claude’s expensive reasoning models and early access to experimental features. Now Claude Cowork is available at a cheaper price, though Anthropic notes “Pro users may hit their usage limits earlier” than Max users do.

Like other AI agents, the novelty of Claude Cowork is its ability to work on its own. If you have the macOS Claude app and a Pro subscription, you can prompt Claude Cowork to work on tasks on your local computer, like creating documents based on files you have saved or organizing your folders. The feature is an evolution of Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding agent, and can similarly use connectors and the Claude Chrome plugin to work with other apps and the web.

As part of this expanded rollout, Anthropic has included a few fixes inspired by early user feedback. You’ll now be able to rename sessions with Claude Cowork (“Tasks” in the parlance of the Claude app) and the company says the AI assistant will offer better file format previews, more reliable use of connectors to other apps and confirmation messages before it deletes files.

Coding agents top the list of applications of AI that have gained real traction in the last year, so Anthropic applying what it learned with Claude Code to a more general collection of computer tasks makes sense. Claude Cowork is still limited to macOS and Anthropic’s paid subscribers, but assuming the AI agent continues to be popular, it wouldn’t be surprising if the company brought it to other platforms.

2)View Camp Tech’s Instructor Sara Norton’s List of Favourite Free Low-Cost, Beginner-Friendly Tech Tools

Speaking of tech tools, Camp Tech instructor Sara Norton has recently overhauled her entire list of her favourite free, low-cost, beginner-friendly tech tools that she recommend for small business owners, including tech for: starting your business, contracts & invoicing, managing client data, organizing projects, plans or people, marketing your business, and automation & AI. View Sara’s list of tried and tested fav tech tools here: https://www.reply-all.ca/tech (see below)

SOME TRIED & TESTED FAVES:

For starting your business

☁️ Access your everything, everywhere: Google Workspace for your gmail, calendar, cloud storage, files, slides at $15/month for business account

🔖 Register your business in Canada with: Ownr* starts at $40 for sole proprietorship

🔒 Get business insurance: Zensurance starting at $19/mo

Most small business’s first app is their invoicing/finance app go there next ⬇️

For sending contracts + invoices

$$$

The big 2 accounting apps are Quickbooks vs Xero. But there’s a cheaper one…

WaveApps is $0-20/mo + payment processing fees

If you’re 🇨🇦 and need business banking, check out Venn, Float, or the BMO Digital Small Business account

Contracts & Legal Stuff:

TIP: some document signing apps aren’t actually legally binding in Canada.

✍🏾 Send contracts via e-signature.io at $1.39 per document

For managing clients

TIP: If your customer relationships are simple, stick with an email marketing tool instead of a CRM (client relationship management tool)

😃Folk*: if you love Notion but know it’s CRM abilities are limited, meet folk. Looks like Notion, operates like butter, can pull contact info from gmail, Linkedin, and any browser. Starts at $0-24/mo.

💊Capsule*: The only CRM I know with a decent free plan. Starts at $0-21/mo.

📮 Copper CRM: Made for gmail users. Starts at $12-24/mo.

For organizing your projects, tasks, or team

TIP: Project management tools almost always start with a free plan, so don’t pay until you need to!

🧠 Notion* my favourite second brain – dump all ideas and plans into Notion.

🧘‍♀️Asana: a classic,

☑️ Todoist: a simpler project & task management tool.

🏕️ Basecamp: best for if you want your clients to be able to submit files, see progress, and communicate with you in one simple dashboard.

📮 Monday* the most robust project manager, with tons of automations and integrations.

For marketing – design, email, social + more

🕸️ Build your first website on: Wix or Squarespace, starting at $16/month

Need something cheaper? Check out readymag.com or carrd.co for a simpler site

🖼️ Canva: for all of your creative and branded assets. $0-18.99 and I have to say the upgraded plan is worth it for the AI features, easy resizing, and free stock photos, videos and audio.

Buffer ($0-6mo) to schedule your social media content and get ideas, inspiration and analytics.

✉️ Mailerlite* ($0-9/mo) for email marketing and automation to nurture your leads.

For automations & AI

Our favourite AI tool is Claude instead of ChatGPT. Claude claims to be more ethical, more inclusive of diverse perspectives and information, and a better creative writer.

Our favourite tool for integration tools, automating workflows, and creating simple AI agents is relay.app

It’s a Zapier alternative! Though we still definitely use Zapier often, as it integrates with more tools than relay.app does.

NOTE: These are general recommendations for solopreneurs and tiny businesses with simple needs. For more custom recommendations for your specific business, industry, or unique workflow, book a call. That’s what we do!

3)How to Fix Your Wi-Fi

Courtesy of Camp Tech (original article by WIRED Magazine

If your WiFi network is giving you trouble, there is a brilliant list of systematic step-by-step things to check in this WIRED magazine article: How to Fix Your Wi-Fi