Content Curation World

Defcomb is a new interesting web app, which while in full development, already offers some valuable features for anyone interested in monitoring and analyzing specific topics.

The app, which is fully free as of now, allows you to: 

1) Add your selected RSS feeds, OPML file or to tap in Defcomb extensive global archive of feeds to determine your content sources. 

2) Determine keyword-based filters by grouping multiple keywords

into sets.

3) Generate a news feed from your selected content sources filtered by anyone of your keyword sets or their combinations.

4) Publish a public RSS feed for each one of your news feeds.

5) Visualise occurrences of your specified set of keywords inside your sources across time

Applications for this tool may include personalised news and content discovery, topic tracking, text mining and data-visualisation.

N.B.: For novices, watch out. This tool is not difficult to use, but it may not so intuitive the first time around. Best thing to do to avoid wasting any time is to watch the short screencast video available on the home page (is video-only, no audio) and to read this short tutorial: 
http://defcomb.tumblr.com/post/101673641978/introducing-the-defcomb-news-reader  

Great potential. Already useful. 8/10

Free to use.

Update: Due to the high number of requests free signups have been temporarily closed.
** To get an account send an email to peter@defcomb.com with subject: "Interested in trying Defcomb - Recommended by Robin Good"

Try it out now: http://defcomb.com 

Example of filtered news stream: http://www.defcomb.com/public/scenarios/415 

I have included Defcomb in my T5 tools directory:
http://tools.robingood.com and in the experts tools for journalists here: http://experts.journalism.io

Twitter has just announced the availability of a new feature that will be gradually rolled out to all Twitter users and which allows you to create custom curated Twitter channels on any topic you want.

But you need not wait.

To start using immediately Twitter Timelines what you need to do is to head over to https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ and to register yourself for the free web app owned by Twitter.

Once you are logged in, all you need to do is to click on the leftmost vertical icon-bar on the + sign, and then to select Create Custom Timelines from the ensuing dialog box. 

Once you have created a Custom Timeline all you need to do to populate it is to manually drag tweets from your others news/tweets gathering columns into it.

Once created in Tweetdeck any Custom Timeline is immediately visible inside Twitter at a dedicated URL and can be easily shared or embedded inside any site or blog.

My comments: The Twitter Custom Timelines feature opens up a universe of possibilities for curated news channels, and other highly specialized thematic channels. Finally there is the opportunity not to have to consume stories and news that are completely irrelevant to your interests simply because they come from someone you follow. By following highly specific custom timelines it is now possible to consume only the type of content you are truly interested into from your favorite trusted curators.

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ 

Check also: https://blog.twitter.com/2013/custom-timelines-in-tweetdeck