Content Curation World

Clipzine is a web app which makes it easy to collect images from any website page and to visually organize them into page-based collections.

On each page it is possible to place as many as 24 pieces of content and to decide how large or small each element will be. The user can expand each imported element over two or more tiles and move it around to any position.

It is also possible to use one or more tiles to add custom text and information and to format it professionally.

One key practical use of Clipzine that can be helpful in testing out its capablities is its ability to create a visual magazine of any Pinterest board.

Just go to the selected Pinterest board page, click the Clipzine bookmarklet and select the unique Clipzine option to capture "all" images available on that page at once.

Once captured all the images in a "zine", click on Edit / Syling and then on the Styling button that appears above each page content. Now hover with your mouse on any image in the collection and experiment with the feature buttons that appear around and in the center of each image.

The final collection, called a zine, can be saved, published on the web, shared on social media, embedded on other sites or saved to a PDF file.

My comment: This is one of the very few curation tools that leverages a tremendously powerful variable: control of positioning and size of elements in a collection. This is very useful as it empowers the curator to go beyond the linear top-down list or newspaper/magazine sequence and to create a more varied "equilibrium" between the elements in the collection.

Understanding how to use Clipzine is not as intuitive as one would like, and the UI, thanks also to the presence of unpleasant and distracting ads is not as clean and straightforward as I would like to be.

Promising concept. Powerful visual control in the hands of the curator. A bit disappointing implementation and not so intuitive and simple to use (for now). 

Free to use. Ad supported.

Find out more / Try it out now: https://clipzine.me/

If you are looking for some oustanding examples of curation at work here's one that should not be missed.

A collection of collections, the Typologist is a unique site curated by Diana Zlatanovski, Museologist at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  and Photographer at The Typology, and showcasing interesting objects and photo typologies that she has found around the world.

Check also her print shop at: the-typology.myshopify.com/

Follow Diana here:

• twitter.com/thetypology
• facebook.com/thetypology

Recommended.

Ditto is a FREE, automated weekly backup of Twitter, Facebook and Gmail with integrated search capabilities.

To curate, means also ability to archive, preserve and safely store the data/information/content available in your newsradar/collection/lineup. As a matter of fact, if you decided to follow-up on an academic pursuit of your data-curation interests, you would be immediately confronted with the learning of the best methodologies, tools and workflows utilized to preserve and archive digital data.

In addition, given the times we are in, and who controls our data, you can never know what happens next, and whether you are always going to be able to access both your account and the data that's in it.

For these reasons I think it is relevant for anyone involved in professionally managing content / data, such as a content curator does, to have the ability to easily and automatically backup all of his Twitter / Facebook data as well as his own Gmail.

With Ditto, you can export all of your backed up data from Facebook, Twitter or Gmail, into a handy PDF file.

Free to use. (max 3GB of archive space can be used - if you leave out your Gmail, that's plenty of space.)

Find out more: https://ditto.norton.com/

Try it out now: http://ditto.norton.com/services

Why do you curate content? Are you doing it because you didn't know anymore what to write about or are you doing it because it feels like you can save a lot of time by curating instead of writing?

What drives your desire to republish, mention or introduce other people's content? The ever-growing need for fresh content? The desire to become more visible on seach engines thanks to more content and on-target use of relevant keywords?

What is it really that makes you curate?

Cendrine Marrouat has a short but stimulating article, where she invites you to do just that. Stop and think why curation is something that you value so much?

I don't know what your reasons may be, but I have decided to stop and list at least my five top reasons for curating content as I do.

You can read them in the comments of Cendrine stimulating article, right here: http://www.creativeramblings.com/reasons-content-curator/

Stimulating. Valuable questioning and modelling. 7/10

(Image credit: Thinking man - Shutterstock)

CratePlayer is a web app which allows you to create compilations of video (and audio) clips coming from all your social media accounts as well as from YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Soundcloud or from any other website (a standard bookmarklet allows to easily grab video and audio content you find on the web.)

While it is not possible to upload your own files, it is possible to apply a visual cover, a description and relevant tags to each collection, which can be set to "private" or "public" depending on your needs. Furthermore you can invite additional persons to contribute to curate a specific collection.

Final collections can be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, via email, or can be embedded on any web site or blog.

Free to use.

More info: https://www.crateplayer.com

FAQ: https://www.crateplayer.com/about/faq

Examples: https://www.crateplayer.com/crates

Anthony Kosner on Content.ly analyzes three different news discovery services in order to illustrate the different types of approaches available today to gather and filter streams for a specific audience.

He takes as examples Fuego, Upworthy and Prismatic, which utilize three very different solutions to aggregating and filtering the news in order to provide a relevant stream to their readers.

• Fuego works by curating - manually - a selected group of thought leaders in the field of journalism. Most everything they post becomes part of Fuego.
  
  
• Upworthy is powered by human curators who decide what makes the news and what doesn't.
  
  
• Prismatic is strong on extracting relevant stories based on specific keywords and on your preferences and interaction with the service itself.

Overall, the article tries to illustrate how different can be the approaches utilized to filter and suggest content to a specific audience.

Interesting. Informative. 6/10

Full article: http://contently.com/blog/2013/04/29/the-evolution-of-curation-puts-tools-in-marketers-hands/

If you are still looking for a Google Reader alternative, I have put together a growing and useful reference of all the tools I have identified myself, that could be valid replacements when, on July 1st 2013, Google Reader will be retired.

So far there are over 30 tools that I have identified as valid alternatives to the original Google Reader.

I have not yet provided additional information, specs or comments for each tool I have put aside, as I have simply collected, after having verified each, those that were active and interesting enough for my needs.

P.S.: Google is closing down Reader because in my view, Google Now and Google+ replace fully all of the services offered by Reader while building the foundations for a social, community-based information ecosystem.

Full list: http://clipboard.com/RobinGood/boards/google-reader-alternatives-rss-readers

P.S.: Feel free to suggest additional tools that should be part of this list in the comments.

Harold Jarche has a good post about curation and PKM on his blog. Nonetheless is from a year back or more, it is definitely worth a read.

The short relatively post has been inspired by a somewhat misleading tweet by Cristina Milos (where she says that "curating is different than aggregating and that's why she is not a fan of Scoop.it pr Paper.li).

The tweet is misleading because, while Paper.li is indeed an aggregator for most, Scoop.it does not automate the process of selecting and publishing a curated magazine, though, I must admit, plenty of its top viewed channels do not go much beyond what Paper.li does, basically reposting other people content "as is". So I definitely sympathize with this issue.

And the key point Harold Jarche wants to make, is that, anytime there is some kind of human intervention to pick, select, re-title, contextualize or introduce some information, then, we are actually "curating" something. Not so, when we strive to automate, simplify and abbreviate the time needed to produce some valuable info.

He writes (read the word "PKM" as if it said "curation"): "...sense-making, or placing information into context, is where the real personal value of PKM lies. 

The process of seeking out information sources, making sense of them through some actions, and then sharing with others to confirm or accelerate our knowledge are interlinked activities from which knowledge (often slowly) emerges.

...The act of writing a blog post, a tweet, or an annotation on a social bookmark all force you to think a bit more than clicking once and filing it to an automated system. Other sense-making routines, like a weekly review of Twitter favourites and creating Friday’s Finds, encourages reflection and reinforces learning.

Automating sense-making is antithetical to the rationale behind PKM."

Rightful. Insightful. Useful. 8/10

Full post: http://www.jarche.com/2012/03/the-pkm-value-add/

Carrie Whitehead, Product Manager at Zappos Labs writes about curation in the online retail shopping space, while providig some very useful examples of companies already using it effectively.

She writes: "The largest online retailer, Amazon.com has a vision to be the ‘Earth’s Biggest Selection.’ But is this vast selection too overwhelming for shoppers? A search for ‘black dress’ in Clothing & Accessories on Amazon.com brings back 65,529 results! For consumers, this large number of choices can lead to confusion, exhaustion and dissatisfied purchases, or worse, no purchase at all."

...Zappos recently launched Glance, a shopping experience allowing users to discover the most exciting products from Zappos through curated collections...

...Niche retailers such as Warby Parker (retro-inspired eyewear) and Frank & Oak (quality menswear) are providing a boutique experience with a price tag that’s accessible.

...Social shopping site OpenSky taps celebrities and influencers to select the products they love. Fancy, a social photo site similar to Pinterest, puts curation in the hands of the community."

Informative. Resourceful. 7/10

Full article: http://www.psfk.com/2013/04/online-retail-curation.html

A great collection of key articles on curation prepared by David Kelly to support his ASTD 2013 session on Curation: Beyond the Buzzword.

The curated list includes nearly 40 selected articles divied into four groups:

a) Specific Session Resources

b) Curation-Themed Writing
c) Curation Examples
d) Additional Resources

Very useful. Good selection. 8/10

Full resource page: http://davidkelly.me/2013/05/curation-beyond-the-buzzword-resources-shared-at-astd2013/

Presentation on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidKelly3/curation-beyond-the-buzzword-astd2013-21430067

Here's an inspiring short article by Elia Morling on the role of curators in storytelling.

Elia reports of a discussion he has had with netnographer Olga Kravets, in which she suggested that: "...curators serve their tribe like dumpster divers.

They dive into containers to rummage through heaps of garbage to find useful stuff that can be re-purposed. When they are done they bring forth their scavenged gifts to their tribe."

But here, is the most compelling part as Elia really seems to have distilled and illustrated here the three key and most valuable traits of a modern content curator:

a) Curators represent a new type of tribal leadership that operates bottom-up and peer to peer.

b) As a member of a tribe, curators will always be more native and relevant than any outsiders will ever be.

c) Within a tribe they are not only appreciated for leveraging their insider skills, but for sustaining and developing their culture."

Definitely worth reading. Inspiring. 8/10

Full post: http://tribaling.com/blog/2013/05/15/curators-and-tribal-currency/

"Give me the cheeses that matter, offer me a wine list that's manageable. And put all the information that's raining down on us from cyberspace in a convenient, easy-to-handle form."

That's the essence and the relevance of content curation in today's world.

To put it down in such simple and clear words is Simon Kelner on the Independent, who provides some great real-world example and reminds us later of the total non-personality of search engine results,

He shares this wonderful short story: "Opposite my office is one of Britain's most celebrated cheese shops. Once through its doors, you are greeted by the cheeses of the world.

The varieties of sheep's cheese are in double figures, and there's Cheddars of all sizes and provenance.

It is completely over-facing, to the extent that a colleague of mine has been to the shop three or four times and has walked out without buying anything, so baffled was he by the complexity and range of the offering."

He concludes his article by writing: "I'd like the sense that someone of taste and discretion and experience has already whittled down the choices.

(That's the problem with search engines, by the way - no taste!)

The world needs editing..."

To the point. Great examples. Easy to understand. 7/10

Full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/dismiss-ye-olde-newspapers-if-you-will-but-curation-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-undervalued-commodities-8614154.html

(Image credit: Cheeses from Shutterstock)

What's the difference between "collecting" and "curating"? How can Twitter be used as a "curation" tool?

What are some examples and ideas to put real-time news curation to effective use for those working as educators?

In this good article by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano (published 1/2012) of Langwitches.org, you can find lots of useful info about the use of Twitter as a curation tool.

Here for example are a few key benefits of using Twitter for picking, selecting and organizing content on a specific topic:

"

1. Taking advantage of a network of curators working for you (building your own customized network), consuming their curated information
   
   
2. Collecting, organizing, connecting, attributing, interpreting,
   summarizing the vast amount of information that comes across your desk/ feed /books/articles/etc. for YOURSELF
   
   
3. Becoming consciously the curator for others for a particular niche, area of expertise or interest. Disseminate resources, add value, put in perspective, create connections, present in a different light/media/language.
   
   
4. Real time curation allows you to be part of an event, that you physically might not be attending or being on the opposite end allows you to be the bridge for others to participate at an event where you are present, but your network is not."

I think that she's right on the mark.

Well presented article and info. Useful. Good examples. 8/10

Full article: http://langwitches.org/blog/2013/01/03/twitter-as-a-curation-tool/

PDF file reference: http://langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Twitter-Curation-Tool.pdf

If you are interested in what could be a good workflow and set of tools to use to curate content on your own WordPress blog, Nathan Weller has a must-read article for you.

In it, he dissects and explains the tools he uses to curate content on WordPress, from how he aggregates and browses RSS feeds, to how he filters, edits and actually curates the content of each post.

Interestingly his focus is on quality, not on having his site populated by lots of "somewhat relevant" content pulled in automatically by one of the many "content marketing"-oriented curation tools available today.

I think you will find several interesting ideas that you may have not considered on how to approach your curation workflow, let alone checking the several insightful comments at the end.

Lost of valuable information, resources, examples and advice. 8/10

Full article: https://managewp.com/wordpress-content-curation

Paul Mihailidis, has an interesting essay on "Exploring Curation as a Core Competency in Digital an Media Literacy Education" in which he offers "a prospective attempt to build curation into the media literacy conversation..." by analyzing the analyzing effective curation practices, and six highly relevant teaching points for using a news curation tool like Storify in the classroom.

His essay "seeks to encourage instructors, particularly on secondary and tertiary education levels, to bridge the gap between informal learning outside of the classroom with formal learning to create a more dynamic place for students to advance critical inquiry, dialogue, and engagement through new forms of content creation, curation, and dissemination."

He writes: "Through student-driven, creation-driven, collective and integrated teaching approaches to curation, the framework aims to build towards savvy media consumption and production, critical evaluation and analysis, and participation in local, national and global dialog.

The framework also addresses the ability to see diversity and civic voice as core competencies in the curation process.

As students learn to build cohesive stories and ideas from a wide variety of sources, they can learn about the diverse types of content that inform a story, and the avenues they have-through social media tools and platforms-to be part of the discussion."

Curation can be an extremely effective approach to develop critical thinking skills and practices, as it forces students to evaluate, vet, verify and decide what really matters.

"When students develop a credible list of professional and personal sources around an issue and/or event, they must acknowledge how much subjective weight they place on a tweet, a blog, or a Facebook post and in relative comparison to an advocacy group, cable television operation, or news service. Arguing for the credibility of a myriad of voices online forces students to build valuable justifications for what they choose to believe, and why."

Informative. Examples-rich. Educationally useful. 8/10

Full essay: http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/jime/article/viewArticle/2013-02/html

Thanks to @LutzFinger who kindly motivated me to update and share my video discovery tools list, here is a brand new and more comprehensive collection of the best free video discovery tools available out there.

From the newest ones such as Waywire and Moziy, to the classics such as Topsy or Devour, you'll find here 20 alternative video discovery tools that you can start to use right now.

If you want my personal advice go first to check out Frequency and you will not be disappointed.

Full collection: http://clipboard.com/RobinGood/boards/video-discovery

P.S.: If you know of additional dedicated video discovery tools that are not listed here please feel free to suggest them in the comments section.