Content Curation World

Robin Good: It's true, when you create a "curated" collection, it's generally done in one of two possible approaches:

a) the "sprint", where due to time-sensitive issues lots of elevant items are collected in a short period of time. 

b) the "marathon", where relevant collection items are slowly but steadily collected over time.

This short article on the Bundlr blog acknowledges this typical behavior, as well as identifying some relevant examples and characteristics. 

Insightful. 7/10

Blog post: http://blog.bundlr.com/post/25508438993/there-are-two-types-of-curation-sprints-vs-marathons 

Robin Good: Surfmark is a new content curation service introducing some innovative and forward-looking features.

Surfmark in fact provides not only standard capabilities to easily capture, collect and organize content from any web page, but it adds intelligently alternative display formats to allow the exploration of such collections in multiple ways.

Another key innovative feature of Surfmark is its ability to generate bibliographies and summaries of content collections.

Surfmark allows social collaborative curation, history of all edits made, and the ability to share publicly or keep a collection private.

Collections can be downloaded in PDF or text formats and all pages saved in a collection are fully preserved with all the formatting and links intact so that you can refer back to exactly what you saw. 

Free to use. 

FAQ: http://blog.surfmark.net/surfmark-help/ 

Try out and more info: http://www.surfmark.com/ 

(thanks to Ana Cristina Pratas for discovering this) 

Robin Good: Facebook has introduced a new curation feature designed to allow its users to collect and organize their favorite "products" into so-called "Collections".

According to Hubspot "the new feature called 'Collections,' allows marketers to add “Want” or “Collect” buttons to news feed posts about products."

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33698/Facebook-Tests-Pinterest-Style-Feature-Called-Collections.aspx

The new FB "Collections" is publicly available to everyone, and it is being tested "with 7 retail partners -- Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Victoria’s Secret, Michael Kors, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics, and Fab.com."

(you need to go to those FB brad pages to test it).

It also seems that the feature can be activated in at least three different ways by one of these three upcoming action buttons:

a) "Want": adds the product to a Timeline section of a user's profile called “Wishlist”

b) "Collect": adds the item to a Collection called “Products”

c) "Like": a special version of the standard "Like" button that also adds the item to “Products”

N.B.: While Collections are free for business pages to use, they're only visible to the page's fans. You have to "Like" the page in order to see these types of posts.

Find out more here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33698/Facebook-Tests-Pinterest-Style-Feature-Called-Collections.aspx

and here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/08/facebook-collections/

Robin Good: Cloudscapes are collections of "clouds" about a certain topic. A "cloud" can be anything of relevance to learning and teaching clike an essay, a presentation, a resource, tool or event.

A cloudscape is therefore a user-driven collection of learning materials/resources pulled together for a specific need.

A cloudscape contains multiple elements:

1) Content - the actual text content

2) Cloudstream - tracking all the editing activities in the collection

3) Clouds - individual information objects

4) related Tweets

5) an RSS feed

6) a discussion area

Cloudworks, the platform where cloudscapes are born, is an open repository of educational and learning materials that motivates participants to share, find and discuss learning and teaching ideas.

Although the word "curation" is never used on the site or in the related documentation, this is yet another example of how the convergence of open repositories, open content and sharing platforms like this one, provide a natural and fertile ground for spontaneous curation approaches.

On this platform users can create topical learning collections by bringing together a selected set of existing content resources.

Cloudworks is developed by the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University in the UK and it is part of the Open University Learning Design Initiative (OULDI) project.

Example of a cloudscape: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2035

More info: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/

Robin Good: If you need to do research on a specific topic or need to easily collect and organize notes, web clippings and other content from the web into shareable "public" collections, you may want to consider Evernote (and in particular its Chrome extension and its Web Clipper feature).

Den Nicholson, has a short but useful tutorial just on this, with a couple of short video clips that can give you immediately an idea of whether Evernote could be a good addition to your curator's toolkit.

Useful. 7/10 

http://www.contentcurationdesktop.com/content-curation-tools/using-evernote-content-curation/ 

Evernote on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/app/evernote/id406056744?mt=12 

Check out the Evernote Web Clipper here: http://evernote.com/webclipper/ 

More info: http://evernote.com/ 

Robin Good: NotesCloud is a new curation service which allows you to collect, organize, and share any type of content you have into beautiful magazine-like layouts.

“Imagine a tool that is always at hand when you stumble upon or dream up something interesting,”

NotesCloud uses the metaphor of a multi-section notebook to organize snippets and notes. People can create their own hierarchies of notebooks, sections, and pages as they curate their topics.

Unlike Pinterest or Evernote, NotesCloud’s structured storage metaphor encourages some organization, so it’s not just a “shoebox” full of random clippings."

(Source: Venturebeat)

Notescloud is equipped with a set of browser-based clipping tools for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, that make it possible to easily grab and save any content you’re looking at online with just two clicks.

The content curated and organized with NotesCloud can be accessed from tablets and smartphones as well as desktop browsers.

Free to use. 

Check this video: http://www.notescloud.com/LaunchVideo 

More info: http://www.notescloud.com/