Content Curation World

"Wonder was built to bring human-centric guidance back to the pursuit of knowledge on the web."

in other words: "Away from algorithmically sorted lists of links, and back to human-guided curation, evaluation and advice for those who don't need just a store address on a map".

Wonder is a new free web service which touts to be your online personal research assistant. Behind its minimalist website there's a crew of human beings that actually goes out to gather and bring back to you valuable answers and resources to your questions.

How does it work?

You just register via FB, Twitter or with your own email and then you are presented with a very simple screen in which you are asked "what are you wondering"?

You type in a question, and within a very reasonable amount of time (in my cases, in always less than 30 minutes) you receive a hand written email answer by a person with a first and last name. Not only. The person provides you also with multiple links to relevant resources that can help you find out and discover more about the topic of your interest.
 

Why it's relevant: Independently of the quality of the results that Wonder may initially bring to you, this new service highlights a growing trend toward trusted guides, expert curators of information, and their human voice and away from algorithmically sorted list of results like Google offers.

P.S.: In my initial tests a reply for a very specific question in one of my areas of expertise didn't bring back particularly valuable or useful suggestions as this knowledge would require an expert in the field, but less specialistic questions brought back useful responses written in a very human-style and supported by very high-quality relevant links and resources.

Here is one such question - answer as an example for you:

My Research Request:
How can I trust the answers provided by those behind Wonder if I know nothing about who they are?

Mike Smith reply:
Let me assure you, I am no robot. The resources curated by Wonder are compiled and collated by real human beings (such as myself) who take the time to sort through the vast amount of information available on the web.

I view the task of the Wonder researcher as being rather similar to that of your local librarian. And any good librarian isn't going to tell you how to think: they will present you with what knowledge and information they have available and arrange it in such a way that you must come to your own conclusion. Do you demand the librarian's credentials? Do you peruse their degrees and certifications? No, because her/his credentials lie in the quality of the work they have laid before you. Even if you detect bias or prejudice in what has been presented to you, then the curator's task has already been accomplished: you have assessed, for yourself, the quality of the information you have encountered and have honed your critical faculties that much more.

View Research

- Content curation (i.e. Wonder) is similar to consulting a librarian for literature on a particular subject

- Content curators (e.g. librarians) have empirically improved critical thinking skills in students

- Content curators (e.g. librarians) are tasked with fostering critical thinking in the evaluation of information sources

This is the future in preview.

Try it out and see what you think of it.
 

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://wonderlib.com/ 

zResearch is a curated, collaborative next-generation search engine, allowing great customization and filtering of results, clustering and auto-categorization, some truly stunning alternative data visualization options, and the ability to collaboratively curated and organize search results into multi-level collections.

Once you are registered inside zResearch you can start immediately to curate your own "search spaces" in which you can save both any relevant results as well as any web page you run into on the web, by using the dedicated bookmarklet.

Within a search space you can create as many folders as you like and multiple search sapces can be joined into "groups". 

zResearch offers two alternative ways to visualize results in  visual clusters. One is a treemap-like display and the other is a circular diagram which make it very easy to see at a glance the forest(s) from the trees. Navigating among such different forests is extremely fast and easy and doesn't require a reload of the page.

zResearch offers also the opportunity to invite other individuals to collaborate and contribute to a specific "search space" or "group", to make a search space private, or public, accessible by anyone and even embeddable elsewhere.

In this fashion subject matter experts, trainers and guides can set up and maintain specific custom re-search spaces that can be used by anyone out there.

zResearch offers also "alerts", which can monitor specific topics and keywords for you, and can search across texts, images, video, educational materials, books, products, the deep web and custom repositories.

My comment: zResearch, brainchild of an already effective curated search engine named SearchTeam, is a truly effective, easy-to-use and useful search engine, which puts the re-searcher in fully in the drivers seat.

The set of categorization, editing and search curation features is from my viewpoint very good and using zResearch to create a reference search space for other people interested in a topic is extremely valuable.

I highly recommend zResearch to anyone interested in following, monitoring and maintaining an effective reference catalog of categorized info on any topic.

Free to use during Beta.

Try it out now: http://research.zakta.com/

More info on how to use it: http://research.zakta.com/help.php

FAQ: http://research.zakta.com/faq.php

Search space example I created: http://research.zakta.com/search_1_148_1673_Content_Curation?query=&type=Web+Sites&view=Map

Video tutorials: http://research.zakta.com/video.php

*Added to the "Search Curation" section of the Supermap of Content Curation Tools.

Pricing: Sundar Kadayam, in response to a timely request by Marjolein Hoekstra has sent me this additional info about the cost of the service. His message reads like this:

"...we are providing tailored versions of Zakta to enterprise clients to meet their specific needs.