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/ 

ExpressCurate is a free WordPress plugin which allows you to capture any content you find online, and to edit and curate it directly inside WordPress.

Key features include:
 

• Grab and load any URL content
   
• Provides editable title, image and content areas
   
• Pre-loads multiple key content chunks from original content and meta-data and makes them ready for insertion
  
  
• Offers SEO dedicated fields 
   
• Auto-suggests relevant tags
   
• Can add annotation and text boxes into curated posts
   
• Auto-link to original and personalized attribution text

ExpressCurate also provides:

- a Chrome extension to easily capture and curate content as you browse, which provides an editing interface similar to what Scoop.it provides with his bookmarklet. The extension also adds a cool "curate" link to your Twitter interface which allows you to curate also any content on the 140 character platform. See this screenshot: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/782adzfe036gp2y/vklvggma.png 

- a free WordPress theme for curated news and magazines sites.

A good and easy-to-use content curation tool for anyone using WordPress. Excellent free solution for authors and journalists who only need an easy and effective solution to start curating without needing to learn or adopt a new platform.

Free to use.

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

FAQ: http://news.expresscurate.com/category/faq/ 

Here's a refreshing look at the future of news that highlights the importance of going deeper into creating value for readers by providing more focus, relevance, context and opinion.

These are the characters that properly define what we now refer to as "curation" when it comes to content and news.

The following passages, extracted from the book, The News: A User's Manual, are by Alain de Botton, and have been excerpted from a lengthy article on The Week entitled "The Future of News".

"News organizations are coy about admitting that what they present us with each day are minuscule extracts of narratives whose true shape and logic can generally only emerge from a perspective of months or even years — and that it would hence often be wiser to hear the story in chapters rather than snatched sentences.

They [news organizations] are institutionally committed to implying that it is inevitably better to have a shaky and partial grasp of a subject this minute than to wait for a more secure and comprehensive understanding somewhere down the line.

...

We need news organizations to help our curiosity by signaling how their stories fit into the larger themes on which a sincere capacity for interest depends.

To grow interested in any piece of information, we need somewhere to "put" it, which means some way of connecting it to an issue we already know how to care about.

A section of the human brain might be pictured as a library in which information is shelved under certain fundamental categories. Most of what we hear about day to day easily signals where in the stacks it should go and gets immediately and unconsciously filed.

... the stranger or the smaller stories become, the harder the shelving process grows. What we colloquially call "feeling bored" is just the mind, acting out of a self-preserving reflex, ejecting information it has despaired of knowing where to place.

...We might need help in transporting such orphaned pieces of information to the stacks that would most appropriately reveal their logic.

...it is news organizations to take on some of this librarian's work. It is for them to give us a sense of the larger headings under which minor incidents belong."

The call for understanding how much greater value can be provided by curating news and information in depth, rather than by following the shallow, buzzy and viral path beaten by HuffPo, Buzzfeed and the rest of the gang, is clear.

But beyond context and depth, real value can only be added if we accept the fact that going beyond the classic "objective fact reporting", by adding opinion and bias in a transparent fashion, can actually provide greater value in many ways, as Alain de Botton clearly explains:

"Unfortunately for our levels of engagement, there is a prejudice at large within many news organizations that the most prestigious aspect of journalism is the dispassionate and neutral presentation of "facts."

...

The problem with facts is that there is nowadays no shortage of sound examples. The issue is not that we need more of them, but that we don't know what to do with the ones we have...

...But what do these things actually mean? How are they related to the central questions of political life? What can they help us to understand?

...The opposite of facts is bias. In serious journalistic quarters, bias has a very bad name. It is synonymous with malevolent agendas, lies, and authoritarian attempts to deny audiences the freedom to make up their own minds.

Yet we should perhaps be more generous toward bias.

In its pure form, a bias simply indicates a method of evaluating events that is guided by a coherent underlying thesis about human functioning and flourishing.

It is a pair of lenses that slide over reality and aim to bring it more clearly into focus.

Bias strives to explain what events mean and introduces a scale of values by which to judge ideas and events. It seems excessive to try to escape from bias per se; the task is rather to find ways to alight on its more reliable and fruitful examples. 

There are countless worthy lenses to slide between ourselves and the world." 

Overall, these ideas offer a truly refreshing look at the future of news and at the relevance that context and opinion could play in transforming this medium from a vehicle of mass distraction to one of focused learning and understanding for those interested. 

Must read. Rightful. Insightful. 9/10

Full article: http://theweek.com/article/index/256737/the-future-of-news 

Reading time: 10':20"

Flipboard, as you probably already know, is a great app (available on iOS and Android) which not only allows you to read and keep yourself updated on your favorite topics in a fresh and highly visual experience, but, since recently, it also offers you the ability to become a "curator" of whatever topic you are into.

Your job is simply to pick great stuff you stumble upon and to save it into the appropriate magazine you have created. It's not conceptually much different than clicking a Facebook "like" button and adding your comment, but we the added option of generating in the meanwhile a beautifully laid out digital magazine.

The secret here, to do something that it is of some value, it is to choose on a very specific "theme/topic" and to get picky about what you choose to publish in your magazine(s).

In this useful article Sue Waters collects and curates some of the best tips, video tutorials and techniques to make the best of your Flipboard curation experience in a step-by-step guide.

Useful. Resourceful. Media-rich. 8/10

Full guide: http://theedublogger.com/2013/06/12/flipboard/

RebelMouse may be one of the best free tools out there to do news, social or content curation for your personal brand, company or organization.

Beneath the appearance of a social media aggregation app, lies a super-powerful curation and publishing infrastructure which allows you to aggregate and monitor any social media stream from Facebook to Instagram and Pinterest, and lets you import RSS feeds and add specific filters to get exactly what you want.

While most reviewers will see RebelMouse as a tool to "quickly assemble a Web page populated with links from your Facebook and Twitter streams, using a slick graphical presentation that looks quite a bit like Pinterest" (source: HuffPo), I think this social aggregation and publishing has indeed a lot more to offer and it has all of the required features to become a great content curation and publishing solution.

With RebelMouse you can do seven key things. You can:

1. pick any content you find on the web and you can curate it and post to your rebelMouse site by using the freely available bookmarklet
   
   
2. aggregate any number of Facebook and Twitter streams, including specific searches, users and hashtags, as well as any RSS feed you want.
   
   
3. filter this content according to your own rules
   
   
4. auto-publish any of this content, or
   
   
5. set individual sources to be manually "curated" by you. 
   
   
6. "embed" your RebelMouse generated site on your website or "map" (by paying a small fee) your own domain to it.
   
   
7. create multiple sub-pages with RebelMouse and a dedicated navigation system that can point also to your own existing web properties. Each of these sub-sites can be customized to focus on a specific topic or event.

On the design and "look and feel" front, RebelMouse provides a set of alternative templates, but the look is basically the same across the board with variants relating to the font styles and colors.

It is also true that you can personalize your RebelMouse site and alter the design however you'd like with the custom CSS option that is already available.

But it is certain, that providing a set of advanced, professional-looking templates, where users could for examples decide manually the size of certain tiles, would provide enormous added value to users who would see RebelMouse as a possible direct gateway to publishing their own site.

Rebelmouse site examples:

• http://garyvaynerchuk.com/
  
  
• https://www.rebelmouse.com/digitslam/
  
  
• https://www.rebelmouse.com/WSJ/
  
  
• http://graphics.wsj.com/fashionweek/?mod=e2tw
  (Wall Street Journal for Fashion Week)
  
  
• http://graphics.wsj.com/davos/
  (Wall Street Journal for Davos)
  
  
• https://www.rebelmouse.com/KING5Seattle/
  
  
• https://www.rebelmouse.com/MediaReDEFined/
  
  
• http://rebelmouse.com/RobinGood/
  
  
• https://www.rebelmouse.com/rebelmouse/the_12_best_rebelmouse_pages_o-87372661-0.htm

Check also these other RebelMouse reviews:

• http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/203595/how-news-orgs-are-using-rebelmouse-for-blizzard-fashion-week/
  
  
• http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/rebelmouse-for-content-curation-review-0419851
   
• http://www.business2community.com/social-media/rebelmouse-twylah-or-scoop-it-whats-your-pick-0426837
  
  
• http://pandodaily.com/2012/06/08/rebelmouse-is-the-social-media-aggregator-weve-all-been-waiting-for/
  
  
• http://www.businessinsider.com/this-2-months-old-startup-is-the-most-promising-to-launch-in-a-while-2012-7

Free to use.

For $9.99/month you can also "map" your RebelMouse pages to your own domain, so that your RebelMouse content stays on your own site.

https://www.rebelmouse.com/rebelmouse/power_your_domain_with_rebelmo-119834938.html

In addition you can also further customize the RebelMouse page look, by being able to remove the "Following" and "Featured" modules from your pages.

Here is how to embed Rebelmouse in your site: rebelmouse.com/faq/id_like_to_have_rebelmouse_pow-62050623.html

FAQ: https://www.rebelmouse.com/FAQ/

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

*Highly recommended to all would-be curators out there.

Newspeg is Pinterest for the news. Interface, dialog boxes and most of the superficial stuff you interact with on NewsPeg is 99% identical to what you are used to on Pinterest, making it easy for anyone already familiar with the visual pinning giant to start pinning news in no time at all.

As expected, there is a standard browser bookmarklet, allowing you to capture news content on the fly. Like on Pinterest you can create as many thematic boards as you like and easily add stuff to them with a click of your mouse. All content you pin on NewsPeg can also be easily shared on Facebook and Twitter.

My comment: Supereasy to use and adopt, provides a news curation format that provides more view and less depth than other competitors, and which can have its advantages in many vertical niches. Definitely a good practicing and experimental ground for anyone needing to get his feet wet with news curation. 

P.S.: One small weakness I have run into with NewsPeg is that, news articles, often don't have much in terms of images or video, but NewsPeg, just like Pinterest, won't let you pin something that has no readily available visual content inside of it. I appreciate the value of visuals, but if I need to curate the news, is the tool that you should provide with some alternative solution for when I run into situations like these.

Free to use.

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

Read more about it: http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2014/01/introducing-newspeg.html

Added to News Curation Tools section of Content Curation Tools Supermap