Content Curation World

Google has just introduced "Collections", for Google+, a new service which allows any Google+ user to group his posts by topic and to create public, shareable collections of his favorite links, articles, videos and images.

To use Google Collections, simply go to your G+ profile page and then select "Collections" on the drop down menu appearing on the top left part of the page.

"Each collection can be shared publicly, privately, or with a custom set of people. Once you create your first collection, your profile will display a new tab where other people can find and follow your collections."

You can either create new posts containing whatever type of content inside a collection, or assign an existing, published post to a collection you have just created.

You can create as many collections as you like.

Google+ Collections is available on the web and on Android (iOS coming later).

My comment: Google+ Collections adds opportunity for creating additional value to G+ users by letting interests drive community engagement. This is a feature that sooner or later any social network will offer. 

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://plus.google.com/collections/welcome 

More info:

Official Google announcement: https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/7ZpGWeou2sV 

Featured collections: https://plus.google.com/collections/featured 

See also the official review from Techcrunch:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/google-turns-users-into-content-curators-with-new-collections-feature/ 

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/gtVNkbtS9g8 

In my humble opinion, Clipboard is the best capture and clipping tool for curation work that you can use today.  This is the real Pinterest on steroids. This free web app allows you to easily grab any text, image, area or full web page from any web site and to save it in your collection.

To be specific "you can clip text, photos, animations, videos, or all of the above mixed together. You can clip entire web pages or strip them down to just text. You can drag-and-drop images and text files from your desktop to Clipboard. You can create your own notes directly in Clipboard and save them as clips. You can also - if you are using a Google Chrome browser - bookmark entire PDF web pages (but you cannot clip sections of PDF files)."

The Clipboard browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox and the generic bookmarklet which can work on any browser is a little technology gem, making the capture work an absolute breeze.

Clipboard allows your collections to be set for public or private use, and it makes it easy to invite you other people that you want to contribute to your curation work.

Clips can be tagged, commented, annotated and shared with specific users (via mentioning their name handle). Clipboard collections can be easily shared on all major social networks, or embedded in any web site or blog.

On the display and navigation front good news too. Collections can be viewed in one of three possible modes (tile, item and list view).

Free to use.

Profile example: http://clipboard.com/LHSMediaCenter/boards

Board example: http://clipboard.com/LHSMediaCenter/boards/epicpoetry

More info: https://clipboard.com/

FAQ: https://clipboard.com/help

WordPress Plugin: http://clipboard.com/downloads/clipboard-wp-1.0.5.zip

Also available in the App Store: http://itunes.com/apps/clipboardforclipboardcom

INK361 is a free web app which allows you to view, organize, filter and aggregate Instagram pics into "albums" that can be shared on all major social platforms as well as be embedded on any site or blog.

At its basic level INK361 gives the opportunity to create a Gallery which contains all of your Instagram pics and which you can share as a web collection with anyone or embed in your site.

When instead you want to create a "curated collection" of Instagram pics on INK361, you head to the "Albums" section and you specify a combination of @username and #hashtags (up to 5) that you want to use as filters. At this point INK361 aggregates for you all of the pics matching your specifications and gives you the tools to pick and select the ones you prefer, letting you position them in a digital album.

Curated albums can be shared in one-click on Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and more, or you can choose to grab a highly customizable embed code for your site.

My comment: While this is a web service clearly designed to support those looking to get some great prints from their Instagram pics, the "album" creation tool to curate, collect, organize and share/publish images from any account or hashtag while being able to manually pick, select and position   it's really great and it's the first serious tool I have seen to do effective Instagram curation.

Free to use.

Find out more: http://ink361.com/

Example of a curated collection of my favorite clouds pics from my own account: http://ink361.com/app/#!/albums/robingood/clouds*

Example of my embeddable Gallery: http://my.ink361.com/robingood

*If you're not yet registered and you get an annoying dialog box obscuring your view, simply click on the last few words in the text notice that appears and, voilà, it will go away.