21 Oct 2026

🧰 Gemini gets a home page for small business owners

Google is adding a Gemini landing page, brand style and finance tools for small business owners.

Four-minute read. In today’s issue: a Gemini home page built for small business owners, Perplexity’s agent working entirely on your Mac, stock counts inside Shopify admin, an automation assistant that asks before it builds, and a periodic table that sings.

TOOLKIT

Gemini gets a home page for small business owners, linked to Shopify, Xero and Canva

What changed. Google said on 20 October that the Gemini app is getting a business landing page for small business owners, with new marketing and finance skills. Gemini can connect to Google Business Profile, Google Ads and Workspace, plus Adobe, Canva, Dropbox, Shopify, Wix, Zoho and Xero.

What it means for you. Upload your website, brand kit, fonts or colours once and Gemini keeps that style when it makes posts and ads. It can also turn messy spreadsheets, receipts and purchase records into charts of where the money went.

The first step. When the landing page appears in your Gemini app, connect your Business Profile and upload your logo and colours. Ask for three posts for this week and compare them with what you would have made.

The limitation. Google says the tools are “beginning to roll out in the coming days globally” for all Gemini app users and lists no plans, prices or limits. Check any finance chart against your own books before acting on it.

Google on new Gemini tools for small business owners (blog.google)

PRIVACY

Perplexity’s AI agent can now work entirely on your Mac

Perplexity said on 20 October that its Computer agent can now run fully on an Apple silicon Mac, model and agent both. With your permission it works with local files and apps such as Mail, Notes and Numbers, and Perplexity says personal data is not sent to the cloud during fully local tasks.

It is for Pro, Max and Enterprise subscribers, and Perplexity recommends 36 GB of memory or more. Check your Mac’s memory under About This Mac before planning client work around it.

Perplexity on Computer running fully local on Mac (perplexity.ai)

Just shipped

Shopify now lets you create, schedule and review stock counts inside Shopify admin, Shopify said on 20 October. Staff scan barcodes or enter counts in admin or POS, several people can count at once, and you review the differences before stock levels change.

Set up one count for your busiest shelf this week instead of the spreadsheet. (changelog.shopify.com)

The rest of the day

⚙️ Make’s AI assistant, Maia, now has a Plan mode and memory, and “nothing is built until you approve,” Make said on 20 October. Ask Maia to plan one job and read the plan before you approve it. (make.com)

🎙️ Zoom released connectors that let Claude book Zoom calls, fetch meeting summaries and draft proposals and invoices in Bonsai, Zoom said on 20 October. Everything is created for your review before it reaches a client, and Claude needs its own separate account. (zoom.com)

📊 Google Workspace showed how to use Sheets canvas to plot a list of ideas or requests onto an interactive effort-versus-impact grid, dragging items between quadrants as priorities shift. Try it this week on your own list of projects or customer asks to see what is actually worth doing next. (x.com)

🔒 WhatsApp’s own help pages carried hidden instructions telling its AI assistant never to recommend a regulator, a report from Redact found. Check what instructions ship with any AI chat widget you add to your own site or support desk, not just what it shows on screen. (redact.dev)

🛠️ Built with AI

An independent Schlotzsky’s and Cinnabon franchisee used ChatGPT Work to reprice menus and reconcile cash, cutting reconciliation time by 94% and repricing time by 95%, in OpenAI’s own figures. Pick the one spreadsheet chore you redo every week and give ChatGPT the first pass. (openai.com)

🧰 The Open Source Toolshed

What it is. Ollama is a free app that downloads AI models and runs them on your own computer, with a simple chat window.

Who it’s for. An owner who wants to try a private, offline assistant for drafting and summarising before paying for a bigger local setup like Perplexity’s.

How hard it is. Install the app for Mac, Windows or Linux, pick a model in the chat window and wait for the download; no account needed.

MIT licence. (github.com)

📈 The AI Odometer

Google Workspace bar chart of organisations by AI stage, 2025 versus 2026: early stages fall from 72% to 63%, scaling rises from 18% to 27%, mature holds at 10%

Source: Google Workspace, “Bridging the gap between AI ambition and readiness”, 21 October 2026, Derek Snyder, from Google’s survey of 2,638 people in six countries.

…just 10% of organizations have transformed how they work, identical to last year’s rate

What it means for you. More firms are scaling AI, but the share that changed how work gets done did not move. Pick one weekly job, such as the Friday sales report, and move it fully onto an AI tool you already pay for, start to finish.

Too early

Airtable’s own account posted that “big things are coming to Airtable later this month,” alongside a new certification path for building systems where AI agents handle real work, Airtable said on 20 October. Airtable hasn’t said what the bigger changes are or given a date beyond “this month,” so there is nothing to act on yet. (x.com)

🧪 One for the road

Google DeepMind’s team used Gemini 4 Argon to build a playable 3D periodic table that syncs to Tom Lehrer’s old comic song “The Elements,” with electrons orbiting each atom and its light spectrum animated in time with the music.

It’s science homework turned into a jukebox. (x.com)