Content Curation World

PressForward is a free open-source, WordPress plugin for curating most any type of content within the standard WordPress publishing workflow.

PressForward is in fact a full-fledged RSS feed reader and aggregator which can capture content coming from any site while allowing full editing and curation abilities. It is an ideal tool for news curators wanting to have a news gathering and discovery tool integrated into their standard publishing and editing environment.

PressForward is designed to be used by multiple users, like in a distributed newsroom, where several individuals or even a small community suggest and submit and others edit, approve and post selected content.

To gather content PressForward offers a standard bookmarklet to capture any content you find on the web, and can also import OPML files to allow you to aggregate and filter all of your favorite RSS feeds. 

Last but not least, PressForward keeps close tabs on the sources you utilise, by automatically creating attribution links for any content you curate and allowing you to have your posts optionally auto-redirect to the original source. 

Free to use. 

• Download plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/pressforward/ 
   
• Tutorials: http://pressforward.org/the-pressforward-plugin/screencasts/ 
   
• FAQ: http://pressforward.org/documentation/faq/ 
   
• User Manual: https://github.com/PressForward/PressForward/wiki 
   
• Who is behind the project: https://github.com/PressForward/PressForward/wiki 
   
• Check also this excellent in depth review of PressFoward: http://opensource.com/life/15/4/how-to-use-pressforward 

A project of Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media

N.B.: Of note the partnership initiative offered to any organisation interested in develop high-quality, collaboratively-sourced and edited publications, which offers up to $10,000 in funding and 

• A dedicated technical support channel;
• Workshop and training support for start-up personnel;
• Consultation for the first year of publication.  
• Deadline is April 30 2015. 
• More info here: http://pressforward.org/become-a-pressforward-partner/ 

If you are looking for a reliable, efficient and easy-to-use RSS feed reader, I do suggest that you give a look to FeedBunch, a free web-based solution that does everything you expect a good feed reader to do.

Feedbunch can easily import RSS feeds, OPML files (collections of RSS feeds), can group your favorite feeds into dedicated folders, and export all of your feed subscriptions for use in another feed reader.

For anyone in need to follow and monitor systematically a great number of sources, a RSS feed reader remains an indispensable tool. Feedbunch offers a no-friction entry to RSS feed reading and content discovery for anyone moving his first steps in this direction. 

Free to use. Requires registration.

Try it out now: https://www.feedbunch.com 

Find more alternative RSS readers here: https://content-discovery-tools.zeef.com/robin.good#block_3280_rss-news-readers 

Refreshbox offers a good opportunity for anyone wanting to warm up to content curation without needing to invest a truckload of time.

The new free service allows you to easily pick any webpage or resource you find online, and to add your personal title and description /commentary to it, while saving to a draft newsletter that will be sent out to your readers once a week.

Contrary to what is suggested on the "What's This" page on the Refreshbox site, I strongly recommend that you do not just pick but also introduce and contextualize the gems you find, that's the real-value you can provide, while Refreshbox takes care of providing free-of-charge:

1. a web page for your curated newsletter(s),

2. a searchable hub where others can find it and

3. an easy-to-use subscription and distribution service without asking you anything in return.

Refreshbox allows you to place up to 5 links in each newsletter edition, and to hook up to other services (e.g.Product Hunt) to pick up your likes and preferences automatically and add them to your curated newsletter draft.

Excellent tool to warm-up to content curation by picking and collecting great resources to distribute via email.

Try it out now: www.refreshbox.co 

Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/refreshbox-add-links/ilbegopaglacdlahboheibkofipgmgno/reviews 

MonitorBook is a new free web app which allows you to track changes to any piece of content on any web page available online. 

MonitorBook is very easy to use. You just install the bookmarklet available in the Instruction section of the site and then as soon as you are on a page where you want to track changes to something, you click the bookmarklet and then select the piece of content on the page that you want to track. That's it.

If you go back to your web account on MonitorBook you will find inside the section called Trackings the page element you have selected to track and any possible changes that have happened to it.

I look forward to see RSS output and more advanced options to decide every how long to check and what to report.

Handy for anyone needing to keep a page under tabs though without an alerting system the key benefit may be lost.

Free to use.

Pro version available.
Pricing info: https://monitorbook.com/#pricing  

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

Check this short clip to see how MonitorBook works: http://vimeo.com/104398714 

Unmark is a web app which allows you to easily bookmark any web page you deem relevant, and to assign to it a to-do labels, a description and the option to permanently archive it.

Unmark keeps track and displays all of your bookmarks in an elegant vertical timeline and can manage hashtags utilized in the note/description field allowing easy categorization.

Existing bookmarks can be easily imported from your favorite web browser, Pinboard, or Delicious. Supported browsers include Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 11. 

An available bookmarklet makes bookmarking any web page only a click away and with the Unmark Chrome Extension installed you can search your links directly from Chrome’s Omnibox (the place you type in your searches or the URL you want to go to). Also, you can add all of your open tabs to Unmark with a single click. And, if you want to skip the labelling process altogether, you can right-click on a page and add it to Unmark without seeing a window (speedy speedy).

The basic version is free, open-source and immediately accessible by anyone after registration.

A "Pro" version, costing $12/year adds the capability to search through all of your bookmarks.

An elegant and easy to use tool to more effectively manage anyone with an intense bookmarking activity.

• Try it out now: https://unmark.it/ 
   
• FAQ: http://help.unmark.it/faq 
   
• Overview: http://help.unmark.it/ 
   
• Bookmarklet: http://help.unmark.it/bookmarklet
   
• Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unmark/cdhnljlbeehjgddokagghpfgahhlifch/related 

N.B.: Unmark has been created by Plain, the same guys who made the outstanding in-line editor for Wordpress: Barley.

Blendspace is a web-based content curation tool, designed specifically for educators and teachers. Blendspace sits somewhere between Pinterest and Storify as its power and simplicity make it easy to search multiple sources, import content and visually display it and organize it into boards.

Its unique strength resides in:

1. Multiple layout pre-sets
2. Presentation-mode
3. Collections are embeddable
4. Easy drag/drop reorganization of boards
5. Team collaborators (upcoming feature)
6. Works across all computers and devices

Very easy and intuitive to use, makes the research and collection task intuitive, and organization, presentation and publishing very effective.

I really like how Blendspace works and the results it produces. If you are looking for visual tool to create collections of resources on a specific topic for your class or training program, I'd give Blendspace a try.

Try it out now: https://www.blendspace.com/ 

Added to Curation Tools for Education inside Content Curation Tools Supermap 

Zimilate is a new content collection and organizing tool that allows you to create Pinterest-like boards containing files of any kind, documents, PDFs, newly created text notes as well as images and full web pages that can be easily captured with a dedicated bookmarklet/extension.

Content items can be tagged, manually ordered and collected into "spheres", which can be set to be "private" or public.

It's very easy to drag and drop items from one collection to another and to re-order items in any way you want.

Team collaborators can be invited to contribute content to any of your collections.

All contents collected in Zimilate are fully searchable.

Zimilate is a powerful content curation app, similar to Pinterest but with added functionalties (more content types supported and powerful web page capturing) and more flexibility (reordering of items in a collection) which make it a potentially valuable alternative. At the same time, since it is so new, it lacks Pinterest core feature that allows you to easily select any image from a web page and to pin it to a board. With Zimilate, for now you need to click and save the image and then import it.

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://www.zimilate.com/ 

Check this review: http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/14/webware/zimilate-free-website-save-organize-web-content-notes-images.html 

Added to Content Curation Tools directory.

Thanks to Francesco Guglielmino for finding it.

Pluto.tv is a new web service which curates the best video clips available online by organizing content coming from YouTube and many other video sharing sites into thematic programs of 30 minutes each.

The interface is very similar to the one utilized by program guide viewers on standard cable TV.

Pluto.tv offers already more than 100 thematic video channels all curated by human beings.

My comment: An effective approach to surface great video content 

while delivering it in a familiar and consumable format.

 Available also as an app for iOS and Android.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://pluto.tv 

Resurrect Pages is a free Firefox Add-on that allows you to instantly find archived and cached copies for any dead page or broken URL.

Specifically, Resurrect searches through these cache/mirrors:

• CoralCDN
• Google Cache
• Yahoo! Cache
• The Internet Archive
• MSN Cache
• Gigablast
• WebCite

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ 

Wepware is a new web app which allows you to capture any web page or portion of it and organize it into Pinterest-like boards which can be easily published and shared on social media channels.

Unique strengths include the ability to capture dynamic information boxes (flight schedule, sport scores, etc.) that will continue to be updated even when they are inside your curated collections. In addition, such live dynamic info snippets can be easily pasted on any web page you want and kept there as a live reference.

My comment: Powerful dynamic capture feature allows the creation of unique dynamic dashboards that collect and organize information from various sources in real-time.

Available as a Chrome browser extension.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://www.wepware.com/ 

More info: http://www.wepware.com/web/landing 

Scissorsfly is a great new web app which allows you to "photograph" any screen or part of it and to collect and organize these pictures into Pinterest-like boards.

The capture functionality allows you to not just to pick images available on a web page as you would do with Pinterest but it allows you to clip any part of a web page or a full visible screen as you may see fit.

Differently than on Pinterest, the collected items can be easily arranged, positioned and resized on the board.

Scissorsfly provides a Chrome browser extension (Firefox and Safari coming soon) that once clicked provides a small toolbar with all of the key commands available.

Free to use.

Excellent capture and collect tool, provides lots of the original functionalities available in the now defunct Clipboard.com. Unfortunately there is no ability to capture a full web page, from top to bottom, but outside of this, I really found Scissorsfly to be an excellent tool for capturing and curating ay type of content available online.  

Try it out now: https://www.scissorsfly.com/ 

Chrome app store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scissorsfly/hjhmkhdbecgcmhohojlcjddicnbgahcp/details 

Archive.is is a free web service which allows you to capture, store and archive permanently any web page you submit. 

Archive.is permanently stores a double copy of your selected web site: one that is an image snapshot of the page, and another which contains the full text of it. Archive.is also provides a download link that contains a zipped copy of all the files making up your selected page, and which can be opened offline in any web browser. 

Archive.is can save most any type of web page including Facebook pages and it allows you to easily search and see all of the pages already saved for a certain domain.

There is no registration or login required and you don't need to install anything. 

A free dedicated bookmarklet makes it easy to capture and archive any web page you happen to be on.

If you are looking for a free, simple and easy to use service to archive any web page permanently, I recommend Archive.is.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://archive.is/ 

Useful info on blog page: http://blog.archive.is/   

Added to Permanent Web Page Archiving Tools section of the Content Curation Tools Directory

"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/ 

If you are a documentary enthusiast like me, you will find plenty of great videos, curated and organized into categories and lists by visiting DocumentaryAddict.

The site, which is completely free to use, offers organised free access to nearly 5000 free documentaries already available online and keeps itself alive by using contextual ads from Google on its content pages.

Aside form the Google ads, which are not very intrusive, the site is extremely well designed and offers multiple ways to find the type of documentary you may want to watch, through 26categories, several compilation of top titles and a full search function.

Users can also rate and comment on each documenrary page providing a useful space for learning and exchanging from other fellow watchers.

A great example of sustainable content curation at work. By simply organizing and making more accessible what is already available out there, great value can be created as well as a community of passionate followers.

Free to use.

Check it out now: http://documentaryaddict.com/

Added to Great Examples of Content Curation.

Startupery is a new online resource which organizes and curates best-practices, strategy advice, tips and methods for business startups.

The present library currently comprises over 500 hundred resources organized under 372 topics by 12 selected "experts", which include, among others, Fred Wilson (Vevnture Capitalist), Eric Ries (The Lean Startup), Chris Dixon (Investor) and Brad Feld (Early Stage Investor / Entrepreneur). 

For each expert you will find a page outlining his profile and presenting, in a categorized fashion, a selected number of sources suggested by him.

"For years, and now more than ever, startup founders, investors and operators have been sharing advice on how to succeed in business. From personal blogs to up-and-coming publications, this advice has been scattered and often hard to find when you need it most. Startup{ery is a library for this advice, giving each resource and the important topics that they cover a home on the internet."

An excellent and well-organized resource hub for startups, Simple, easy to navigate and staffed by a highly reputable set of subject-matter-experts / curators.

A great example of the value that content curation can bring to just about any field, where there is lot of precious information scattered around and which can greatly benefit from competent and trusted "organizers". 

Free to use.

Startupery: http://startupery.com/ 

Added to Content Curation Examples board.

Happy Friends is a new free tool created by Dave Winer which allows you to closely follow those Twitter accounts for which you don't want to miss a beat. 

Happy Friends makes it easy for you to add (but not to delete for now) any Twitter account you want and to easily expand it to see all of its most recent tweets. 

The result is a simple interface which lists your favorite Twitter sources and allows you to check rapidly what each one of them has posted. 

What may escape anyone not reading this, is that by clicking on any of the headlines displayed inside Happy Friends you get to see the full Twitter card display, just as it was intended to be seen on Twitter with integrated images and video. 

Happy Friends fulfils for me a true need, as with Twitter typical readers and tools (including lists) it is very difficult to track specific sources postings without doing a few click acrobatics. 

I hope that in one of the upcoming versions, the formatting of the tweets will also be improved as to make it easier for the eye to rapidly scan the information presented. The twitter grey icons on the left do to little to quiet down the noise created by all the the tweet texts and links appearing on the Happy Friends page. Vertical spacing between items and separating text from links would significantly improve legibility and rapid eye-scanning of the content.

Very useful.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://happyfriends.camp/ 

See also: http://happy.smallpict.com/2014/06/24/welcomeToHappyFriends.html 

and: http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/06/28/happy-friends-turns-twitter-mailbox-select-friends/ 

BuzzSumo is a powerful web app which allows content curators to find trending top content highlighted by social media shares and key influencers on any subject you specify.

Content can be filtered by "type" (including articles, guest posts, infographics, videos and interviews) and by *time" with the ability to see just the last 24 hours, the past week, month or six months of data.

Influencers can be filtered by bloggers, journalists, influencers, companies and regular people. 

An excellent tool for curators to find valuable new content and key contacts, influencers or prospective customers on any subject.

Free to use and test even without signing up.

.

Try it out now: 

• http://app.buzzsumo.com/top-content 
• http://app.buzzsumo.com/influencers 

If you find tracking news on Twitter a difficult task due to the amount of stories showing up, and the often missing context helping you understand the value and relevance of what is being shared, here is a new tool that may help you quiet down the visual noise and find more rapidly what is really important.

Vellum is a new free web app born out of a quick experiment at the New York Times R&D labs which allows you to see all of the most relevant Twitter stories coming from the people you follow, stripped of their commentary and showing their original title, description and source.

Vellum filters out text only tweets that contain no links and surfaces only those tweets that have already been retweeted by multiple people in your network.

"Vellum acts as a reading list  for your Twitter feed, finding all the links that are being shared by those you follow on Twitter and displaying them each with their full titles and descriptions.

This flips the Twitter model, treating the links as primary and the commentary as secondary (you can still see all the tweets about each link, but they are less prominent). 

Vellum puts a spotlight on content, making it easy to find what you should read next.

We also wanted to include signals about what might be most important to read right now, so links are ranked by how often they have been shared by those you follow on Twitter, allowing you to stay informed about the news your friends and colleagues are discussing most."

An excellent news discovery tool for content curators.

Useful. Easy. Free. 8/10 

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://vellum.nytlabs.com/mylinks 

More info: http://blog.nytlabs.com/2014/04/25/vellum-a-reading-layer-for-your-twitter-feed/ 

See the etymology of the word Vellum

Google Research is a little-known sidebar available inside Google Drive documents and presentations which allows you to do just-in-time Google searches and to easily curate relevant results, including images, videos, text excerpts, links with full automatic attribution references, into the document or presentation you are preparing.

The Google Research sidebar facility can be called at anytime up by simply going to the Tools menu and selecting "Research" or by selecting any word in your text and then typing Ctrl+Alt+Shft+I.

Once in view, the mini Google Research sidebar, is ready to search across not just the Google standard web results, including news, images, videos and Google Scholar databases, but is also able to instantly filter and sort for you relevant Quotes, Dictionary items, as well as stuff from your own Google Drive documents and tables.

To identify more rapidly relevant resources inside this search sidebar, Google offers the option to "preview" any result, by opening an additional sidebar showcasing a resized view of the web page in question).

Once identified a relevant resource you can either drag and drop it right into your open Google document / presentation (great for images which will also automatically credit)*, or "insert the resource as a link", or "cite" it (by being able to select between MLA; APA and Chicago citation formats).

I have found the Google Research Tool extremely useful, handy and simple to use. If you are researching, writing or curating any kind of article, presentation or report in Google Drive, I highly recommend you try it yourself and let me know what you think of it.

Free to use.

http://drive.google.com 

*I am not suggesting to freely re-use images of others simply because they are accessible via the Google Research Tool. Generally, It is not a good idea to re-use other people images without appropriate authorization from the author.

If you are a blogger, news reporter or better yet a content curator, you are certainly familiar with having so many tabs open in your browser, with interesting stuff to check out later, that your computer slows down to a crawl. 

To avoid this common situation a new free Chrome browser extension comes to the rescue. It is called OneTab and it allows you to instantly memorize and save all of your open tabs into an orderly page in which they are listed, and re-openable at any time. 

In the OneTab page where your tabs are all saved, you can re-order them in any way you want, group them, export them to other systems or even share them as a public web page.

Extremely useful. 9/10

Try it out now: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall/reviews?hl=en 

More info: http://www.one-tab.com/ 

Help: http://www.one-tab.com/help 

A curated selection of the best search engines organized according to what you need to find.

Useful. Great example of how to create a useful, curated information resource. 

Free to use.

Full resource: http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html