Robin Good: GetVega is a Pinterest-like visual clipping tool, which allows you to create lists and visual collections of commercial products while easily capturing selective info relative to each one (cost, size, weight, price, etc.).
As I have been writing, one of the key next evolutionary areas for content curation tools, is the delivery format. It is on this front that there are lots of marvellous opportunities yet to be tapped. And GetVega is one of the first curation tools to do a great job on this front.
In fact, one key feature inside GetVega is the ability to display curated collections in one of three different visual formats, depending on the type of list and use you want to make of it. One such display format is extremely effective and valuable as it makes it easy to "compare" products and info within one collection.
GetVega provides a Google Chrome extension that allows you to easily clip one or more images from any product page, as well as any specific product info text or video.
Check out for example this curated collection of iPad alternatives: http://www.getvega.com/list/4f030465e91683175200a750-do-i-really-need-an-ipad You can see at a glance the different tools and their key specs.
Collections can be set to be either "public" or "private" and can be easily shared on
Similar "product curation tools" include:
Polyvore, Wanelo, Bagcheck, Curisma, OpenSky, Lyst
Recommended. 8/10
Try it out now: http://www.getvega.com/
Content Curation World
|
Robin Good: The new Storify news curation tool is now available for the iPad, bringing the ease of drag and drop to the curation world. "Founded in 2009, this seven person company has done a remarkable job surviving the market and being one of the major players in the world of content curation. ... [Storify has been adopted by] 22 out of top 25 news sites in the United States... Just like Twitter has their trending topics, Storify’s service allows people to keep track of the relevant social media trending topics. Users are able to tell their own story about these major events (like Whitney Houston or Greece’s economic downfall or even Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance), and embed them on their own website. Be your own crowd-sourced storyteller, by dragging in tweets, status updates, photos, and videos from a variety of social networks in order to help you create a better story and telling experience." (Source: http://bub.blicio.us/storify-launches-free-ipad-app-to-help-content-curation-on-the-go/) Check out this video interview shot yesterday with the Storify team demonstrating the new app: http://youtu.be/u-Ua4LIbzMY The Storify app is free to download right from the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storify/id488223180?ls=1&mt=8 Find out more: http://storify.com/storify/storify-for-the-ipad-is-here Robin Good: Critical thinking is a key strategic skill needed by any serious professional curator. "Critical thinking provides the keys for our own intellectual independence..." and it helps to move away from "rashy conclusions, mystification and reluctance to question received wisdom, authority and tradition" while learning how to adopt "intellectual discipline" and a way to express clearly ideas while taking personal responsibility for them. Key takeaways from this video:
Highly recommended for all curators. 9/10 
Robin Good: Nonetheless Magnify.net founder Steven Rosenbaum states "“I believe in the freedom of innovation", his company has just been awarded U.S. Patent No. 8,117,545 covering hosted video discovery and publishing platforms. The patent description clearly covers any web-based service which allows you to create a topic-specific channel with manually or auto-curated video content. Here the exact wording: "A hosted system provides any Internet user with the ability to quickly set up and customize a video channel, preferably as a web page or site that can be reached from any Internet-accessible device having a web browser. The solution includes tools for use by channel site creators to customize the look, feel, and page design. A particular web page or site may be associated with a given subject. As used herein, a page or site that has such an association is sometimes referred to as “subject-specific...” I don't know what's your take on this, but I personally don't see this as good news for curation and video curation startups, who are presently innovating in this space (like Blinkx, Redux, Chill, Vodpod, Magma, Yokto, Shufflr, Griddeo, Shortform, Mixd.tv, Embedr, Plizy, Vidcaster, Yubby, and many others). Patents, whether in the hands of large or small players are the antithesis of open innovation and it is for me difficult to support who in the name of a better future, choses to utilize the means of his worst enemies to achieve its business ends. While Magnify.net investors may indeed pretty happy about this, I am not. Worrysome. 4/10 (Pass this news on) 
"...I want to point out that people with better PKM skills, an ability to create higher value information, and a willingness to share it, will become more valued members (nodes) in their professional networks." (Harold Jarche) Robin Good: In this short article analyzing the PKM (personal knowledge management) process it is interesting to note the strong affinity it has with curation. "The critical part of PKM is in personalizing information and experience, or to use a business term, adding value. Ross Dawson shows five ways to add value to information (my examples/descriptions follow): 1) Filtering (separating signal from noise, based on some criteria) 2) Validation (ensuring that information is reliable, current or supported by research) 3) Synthesis (describing patterns, trends or flows in large amounts of information) 4) Presentation (making information understandable through visualization or logical presentation) 5) Customization (describing information in context)." More info and examples presented in the article do not seem to include yet the appearance of a trusted news curator as a means to develop such PKM, which although is defined as "an individually created process", it could rely in the near future not just on tools, but also on the filtering and curation work of other humans. Or not? Full article: http://www.jarche.com/2010/03/sense-making/ 
The Yahoo!'s Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.) creates 13 million story combinations a day on Yahoo!'s home page. Check out this data visualization: http://visualize.yahoo.com and explore what readers in different age and demographics groups, or with different interests or locations are reading on Yahoo. A great interactive visualization example that show how curating existing data and presenting it in an accessible and interactive way can create extra value. Check it out: http://beta.visualize.yahoo.com/core/ 
From the article: "What retailers need to understand is that there is no direct path to online consumer sales. Consumers desire to broadcast and share their lives, and their web behaviors therefore strike out on a non-linear path to purchase. The whole concept of social commerce is now realizing that every platform and network is a potential lead for an online sale. Social discovery platforms are developing cult followings because they allow users to establish their authority in a certain subject area and to showcase their ability to create inspirational collections of products, items and even destinations. Simple self-expression through the curation of products should be considered every retailer’s dream. As a retailer, all you have to do is supply images and ideas in a way that’s accessible to the online user/consumer and sparks their desire to do all this work for you. In one swift addition to a consumer “pin, post or add,” retailers can build brand awareness, increase online engagement and create direct links to product pages that lead to purchase conversions. ... The future of e-commerce, search, social marketing are now tied to consumers attempting to curate experiences that represent their personalities." Find also in this excellent article by Macala Wright thirteen product curation sites reviewed. Very good. 8/10 Full article: http://fashionablymarketing.me/2012/02/social-discovery-product-curation/ 
Robin Good: Jim Love, writes on his blog "Change the Game", a long article about curation and its reason d'etre. Interesting thoughts overall, but the most valuable part, is in a few paragraphs, that distill clearly three important characterizing traits for quality curation. An intelligent agent goes through the volume and the clutter and brings us a distilled version, reduced to it’s essence. Great curation does three things. I call them the “3 Rs” - short for reduced, relevant and reliable. Curation reduces the volume information from a particular domain to make it more manageable. It distills things to their essence. It ensures that the information is relevant. Does it fit our interests and our needs? This is more difficult than it seems. Especially where the topic is new or unfamiliar we don’t always know what is valuable or how to describe it. It can also be intensely personal. We all have slightly different levels of need and the nuances of those needs are sometimes subtle. Lastly, information must be reliable. Accuracy is critical and in the current world, difficult to establish. Is the story correct? Is the source reliable?" Rightful. 8/10 Full article: http://changethegame.ca/2012/02/05/cutting-through-the-clutter-curation-and-the-new-3-rs-of-content/ 
This is an excerpt from a Mike Shatzkin article published in 2009 and entitled: "Aggregation and curation: two concepts that explain a lot about digital change." If you are into curation, aggregation or into understanding why traditional publishers, record labels and newspapers are struggling so much in this digital era to keep their traditional services and products sustainable, you will likely find some eye-opening answers and explanation in here. Here the key takeaways I have found inside it: "Aggregation is one of the core concepts of content presentation and commercialization. Any analysis of what happened to the record business, what is happening to newspapers, or the future of books and bookstores and magazines and TV that does not feature this concept prominently is almost certainly flawed. Aggregation, of course, simply means pulling together things which are not necessarily connected. Curation is a term that has always referred to the careful selection and pruning of aggregates, such as for a museum or an art exhibition. But the concept in the digital content world means the selection and presentation of these disparate items to help a browser or consumer navigate and select from them. Aggregation without curation is, normally, not very helful." The music album, the CD, the newspaper. "...one thing has been common to all of them and to all other newspapers: they cover the waterfront. (I have called that being “horizontal.”) They aggregate news of the world, the nation, and the city with sports, weather, stock quotes, advice to the lovelorn, and many other things. They sell almost all their advertising against the aggregate and against the brand, not against any specific item or interest being aggregated. And the competition for each paper is against other curated aggregates. Newspapers sold the curated aggregate to people who didn’t want most of it because the total price was a good deal for the parts they did want, just like the album was a good deal even if you only liked some of the songs. And now they are suffering precisely the same fate as the record album. The unit of appreciation is smaller than the [aggregated] whole. ... So the long story short on newspapers is this: a business model of selling a horizontal (many-subject) aggregate, curated by something other than subject, was based on the economics of a physical world where aggregation produced efficiencies of production and distribution. The Internet changed that. It is no longer necessary for an aggregator to provide news to deliver me sports, or to provide a whole newspaper to deliver me the weather or a stock quote. The importance of curation becomes more prominent. ...the more horizontal is the collection, the less likely it is to work in the digital world." Must read. 9/10 Full article: http://www.idealog.com/blog/aggregation-and-curation-two-concepts-that-explain-a-lot-about-digital-change (Unearthed by Peter Hoeve - Curated by Robin Good) "...20blinks gives content curation a heady, Dutch twist. If Pinterest opened people's eyes to the joys of content curation, 20blinks unleashes their souls. Supposedly, 20Blinks is a place for sharing and appreciating the finer, funkier things across cultures. Like an ambient content curation platform, 20blinks is dedicated to sharing all things hip. Many of the collections are a delightful trip. It's a mind-blowing place for sharing and discovery of: - New music and classic grooves Try it out now: http://www.20blinks.com/ 
Robin Good: If you are a librarian, an information scientist or someone who has been trained to sift through lots of information and to extract valuable insight, you will enjoy reading this article by John Warrier published today on Library Journal. Mr. Warrier, who is information librarian, has two jobs. The first is as a librarian at a community college. The second as a content curator at Neatorama.com where he "highlights" neat, odd, and fascinating bites of amusement, from the latest breakthroughs across hundreds of topics. In the article he shares his insight and advice about content curation and on what it may take for newbies to break into this field. "...content curators focus on the news needs of particular professions and industries. Professional News Curation Examples 1) The staff of PRDaily.com, for example, provides public relations professionals with the latest and the best news about that industry. 2) DesignBoom.com keeps track of the newest and hottest trends in art and industrial design. 3) BusinessInsider.com highlights news about world markets. ... Getting Started You can get started in content curation quite quickly. a) All you need is a social media platform, such as a blog, Twitter feed, open-access Facebook page, or Google+ profile. b) Find the best content and add new items daily. c) Focus not on your own interests, but those of your readership. d) Prove that you can draw readers as a trusted source and keep them coming back for more. e) Then you should try to secure an internship. Many content curation firms, such as Mediaite, Gawker and Flavorwire, offer internships that will give you hands-on training in the field. They’ll train you to examine your audience, compile potential sources and pitch your content to the audience in an attention-grabbing way." Useful. 7/10 
Robin Good: Punchfork is recipes' lovers paradise. Not only you can find the best and most interesting recipes being discussed / shared / talked about now from a shortlist of cool recipe sites, but you can also pick and "love" the ones you like and save them in your collection.
Free to use. Try it out now: 
Robin Good: Redux has recently revamped its curation features especially in the direction of providing a unique platform to curate thematic video channels. Anyone can easily sign-up, create a custom channel, and add URLs of video clips that they like to add to their video channel. The TV-like interface REDUX has created is very cool and allows you to watch any channel in full screen mode with clips in your channel that play back-to-back. You can test out and watch this full screen video channel I have curated exclusively with "curation-related" video content: http://bit.ly/curationtv Check out the channel content here: http://redux.com/stream/channel/ContentCuration N.B.: There is not yet a browser bookmarklet that facilitates the clipping of new video content as you browse, the ability to delete a channel, or to scan other video clips to watch as you watch a channel, but these are likely upgrades coming soon. Robin Good: The age of curated UI design for portable devices is already here. But I had never thought of it this way. Until I ran into this interesting video clip from Sarah Rotman (back from May 2010) that made me think about curation in the realm of UI and content delivery design. "Forrester Research Analyst Sarah Rotman Epps talks about how Apple's iPad and other tablet devices will usher in a new era of personal computing. Forrester Research calls this "Curated Computing"-- a mode of computing where choice is constrained to deliver less complex, more relevant experiences. There's more at stake here than just tablets: Curated Computing will be the dominant design principle behind future form factors like wearable devices. Product strategists that don't want to cede the future of devices to Apple should start thinking like museum curators and editors: Sometimes less is more." Is this really about "curation"? What's your take on this? Read more on the original "curated computing" Forrester concept here: http://blogs.forrester.com/sarah_rotman_epps/10-05-14-curated_computing_designing_for_the_post_ipad_era |
Robin Good: The new Bottlenose makes it easier and more effective to ride the incoming news wave while suggesting and offering relevant content and new sources. The new version of Bottlenose relesed yesterday is now capable of filtering "Twitter, Facebook, and RSS, creating a unified stream that puts those networks in one place." "The goal, though, is not only aggregation, it’s about understanding what each message is about at a granular level so that it can build a robust profile about you and your interests to help you discover relevant information you might have missed, new friends, articles, and so on. The cool thing about Bottlenose is that it gives you the opportunity to set sophisticated alerts and uses action-based rules to help you get on top of the noise, regardless of whether or not you’re actively engaged in the app or not. ... The app is still in somewhat limited beta, but for those looking to get access (I recommend checking it out), head over to the homepage, sign up, create an account, and if you’re prompted, use “Getsonar” for the access code. Oh, and if you have a Klout score over 30, you’ll get in automatically." (Source: Techcrunch) Find out more: http://bottlenose.com/ 
Robin Good: Back in 2010, Mahendra Palsule, wrote an interesting article on the "role of curation in the attention economy". In it he wrote: "When you share something on any network, you are telling your social circle – “Look at this, this is something I think you will find interesting.” In essence, you are asking for attention from your followers. Your followers distribute whatever attention currency they have budgeted for you among the things you share. The attention each item receives depends on the total number of items you share. If you overdo it, you are reducing the value of each shared item... What the formula doesn’t take into account is that by blindly and indiscriminately increasing one’s ‘give and take’ in social media, one is decreasing the relevance of one’s shares to one’s followers. By ‘giving back’ to certain people, you’re at the same time ‘taking away’ from your other followers. When the relevancy of your shares decrease, your reputation and trust declines." Unless you are a ruthless relevance evaluator of whatever passes in front of your eyes, with an investigator attitude in researching and looking beyond the surface of each news story, the idea of gaining reputation, authority and visibility through curation may be only a trendy illusion. "Social media tools might indicate you have a large number of followers, your ‘influence’ is ranked highly in terms of numbers, and you become popular as a friendly person. But your followers may not be clicking on the links you tweet or buying the products or services you recommend." So, rule number one is to have focus and to share only what is truly and verified to be relevant for your audience. "Curation is such a buzzword these days, that some have gone so far as to dub every act of social media sharing as ‘curation’ – from Foursquare check-ins to Blippy purchases, to Yelp reviews. I consider some of these examples as annotations or adding meta data to a crowdsourced database. Considering each act of social media sharing as an act of curation is like considering all sex to be an act of love. The one way I’ve seen true reputation and influence increase on the social web is when one’s shares are relevant to followers. This necessitates a brutal and ruthless evaluation. Is this content relevant to my followers? Irrespective of which influencer wrote it, irrespective of which ‘guru’ endorsed it, the relevance question is of prime consideration in deciding whether I endorse, share and propagate it to my followers." Good. 8/10 Full article: http://www.skepticgeek.com/socialweb/role-of-curation-in-the-attention-economy/ (Image credit: www.spreadshirt.it) 
Mind IT is a free online graphical bookmark manager, uses mind map techniques for rapid bookmark management and access.
Get started in 3 easy steps: 1. Create a user account here To view your list of linkmaps, press on the "My Maps" button on the MindiT menu. ... "MindiT is a free online graphical bookmark manager. ...specifically designed MindiT to promote rapid collection, management, and access to online information."
To learn more, check out the short video tutorial
The common trait to all the tasks above: they all require massive online research. This is where MindiT comes in. Collect - Organize - Access - Retain MindiT is built on the premise that a clean, concise, colorful graphical representation of bookmarks is much more intuitive and useful than the standard list or tree based solutions commonly available.
More info: http://www.mindit-bookmarking.com/ Via evangelina chavez, Heiko Idensen Robin Good: Chill, the video sharing and discovery site, has just introduced a new feature that allows anyone to clip and share, on a Pinterest-like thematic board, all of the video clips he finds on the web. The new Chill bookmarklet works very much like the Pinterest one. When you click it, a page shows you all of the video clips found in that page and offers you to clip and "post" the one you want, with your comments. It's as easy as that. The generated "curated" Chill video boards are easy to scan and browse, though, in my view, a great boon would be the ability to check a few of those videos and to click a play button that plays them full screen back to back. This way I have the best of curated content, my own selection, and the final lay-back and watch gratification option. Very promising. Go try it out now: http://chill.com/bookmarklet 
Robin Good: Amber Naslund, at Brass Tack Thinking blog, has a great article touching on the importance of curation and on the danger of easily selling personal self-expression and serendipitous re-sharing of other people's content with true content curation. And she is so damn right about this. Here a few key highlights from her article: " 1) To me – and by definition – curation requires conscious thought with the purpose of adding value, context, or perspective to a collection of things. It’s deliberate work, gathering things together for a reason and lending a keen editing eye to those assets, whether it be pieces of art or pieces of writing. ... 2) Turning your Twitter feed into a clockwork-scheduled stream of all the stuff you find in your RSS feed is not curation, it’s distribution. And since collecting and redistributing content is arguably easier than creating it, everyone does it. Which serves to create a great deal of noise, and as we’ve lamented for some time now, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and home in on information resources that are consistently valuable, and favor mindful selection and sharing over optimizing a feed to populate a bunch of links and drive traffic or gain fans and followers. 3) Can curation be accomplished online? I think so. But it’s rarely what we actually see happening when we immerse ourselves in social networks, and it’s not what we’re doing when we click the “share” button over and over again. ... 4) The business case for curating content has long been that you can become an expert resource for others, a trusted source of information or expertise that sets you apart. But becoming a trusted source of information implies a willingness and ability to apply filters, to have exacting standards, to discern the good from the simply popular, the valuable from the gimmicked and hyped. Which requires work. A lot of it. Not just an app and the ability to put your collection and distribution on autopilot." Thank you Amber, you are so damn right. Insightful. 9/10
(Image credit: http://Streetfilms.org) 
Robin Good: If you are curating a specific topic you may find yourself often wading through tons of useless content and wondering where you can find some good stuff. One option is to start using some good news discovery tools which can greatly help you filter out some of the useless spammy content that fills in most unfiltered searches and feed streams. Here is my mindmap on news discovery tools which can help you in finding your best crop of interesting stories on the specific topic you are interested in. It contains over 30 news discovery tools and services all with a direct link. Direct map link: http://bit.ly/bestnewsdiscoverytools (Thanks also to Beth Kanter for featuring me and this list in her recent live presentation in NY - find out more in her curated report here: http://storify.com/kanter/what-can-nonprofits-learn-about-content-curation-f ) Robin Good: That's what I suggested back in 2008 to those who wanted to stay ahead of the game while doing breaking news coverage. Once again it is all about sifting through everything and gathering the best for a specific audience. It's all about quality, and nothing about speed. Original video 4':31": http://youtu.be/f5KO24k9A9c Robin Good: Curtis Bonk, professor emeritus at Indiana University, shares in this interview I did with him two years ago, what he thinks are the new skills required to teachers of the 21st century to leverage the power of the Internet for learning. And curation is among them. Original video: http://youtu.be/WgM2nyCt-jU Robin Good: Great advice for curators of all kinds from Henry Lowood, curator of the history of science and technology/ film and media at Stanford University libraries. Here my key takeaways [my own words]: "Sometimes things are not what they seems to be. Avoid terrible mistakes by going beyond the surface and thinking "like a detective". If you include in a collection things that may not seem what they look to be, because you have not explored them enough, you run a big risk of losing your reputation as a "trusted" curator for that topic. Those who are "experts" in that field, will easily spot those inconsistencies as they pay great attention to such details. It's therefore important to "slow down", and to look in depth at the context of the item you are "curating". Go and look well and make sure it really is what you think it is." Must watch (especially from 12':25"on): (Spotted by Beth Kanter) ![The Ability To Extract and Communicate Insight from Data It's Going To Be Huge: McKinsey Quarterly [Video] | Content Curation World | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/JhPPX2ck-2VX3w7sz-h8Gjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
Robin Good: In January of 2009 the McKinsey Quarterly published a video interview and a full article entitled "Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers" in which Google’s chief economist told executives in wired organizations how much they needed a sharper understanding of how technology empowers innovation. In the video, Hal Varian says something that if you are trying to understand the emerging curation trend, is as relevant (if not more) today as three years ago when it was first published: "The ability to take data - to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it's going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it. I think statisticians are part of it, but it's just a part. You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively. But I do think those skills - of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis - are going to be extremely important..." Video interview: http://bit.ly/googlehalvarianoncuration (go to the section "Workers and managers") You will need to register to read the full original article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286
Robin Good: GetVega is a Pinterest-like visual clipping tool, which allows you to create lists and visual collections of commercial products while easily capturing selective info relative to each one (cost, size, weight, price, etc.). As I have been writing, one of the key next evolutionary areas for content curation tools, is the delivery format. It is on this front that there are lots of marvellous opportunities yet to be tapped. And GetVega is one of the first curation tools to do a great job on this front. Collections can be set to be either "public" or "private" and can be easily shared on Similar "product curation tools" include: Recommended. 8/10
Robin Good: If you are looking at content curation from the perspective of a large company, you may want to read this article from Josh Sternberg on Digiday, which provides some valuable recommendations. Here a few highlights I have extracted from the article: "Curation is the vogue digital term for the ability to not only aggregate and distribute carefully selected information, but also to provide a unique voice on top of the original pieces of information. ... “The best way to do it is to identify a high-interest topic that you want to be perceived as an expert in,”...
“Curate that topic and provide some context around it. If you’re curating a lot of content in a topic area, over time that leads to expertise and credibility. ... **There can’t be articles that make the reader question why a brand is sharing it. **Also, brands need to make sure they’re not just regurgitating content, but instead offering readers/followers valuable information, as readers will quickly determine the curated content — and thus the brand — is not worth their time." Rightful. 7/10 Read the full article: http://www.digiday.com/publishing/brands-apply-for-content-curator-roles/ |
| Previous |
|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |  |
35 |
|
Next |
