Content Curation World

"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.

Developed by Kosmaz Technologies, MultiPLX is a truly excellent web-based RSS newsreader, that is worth, together with Feedly, the crown of best Google Reader alternative.

The great thing of MultiPLX is that you don't have to know anything about RSS to be able to extract immediate value from it. For example, by using the available bookmarklet, you can easily subscribe to any web site that you want to follow, without having to find its RSS feed. You click on the bookmarklet as you vist the site that interests you and from that moment on, anytime they publish something, you are going to get it inside MultiPLX.

Just like in Google Reader you can create folders and use them to group together relevant feeds / publications / sites. Better than G Reader each folder and its set of sites / feeds can be visualized as a Pinterest-like dashboard that you can easily browse to scan incoming news. News that you have read get a fade-out look that makes it easier to look for what you haven't read yet.

You can visualize entire folders as a visual stream of news as well as individual feeds by selecting exactly what you are interested into from a drop down menu.

Like Google Reader you can "like", "favorite" or "share" any news story to any social media channel among Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIN, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instapaper or send it directly to any email.

Each story can be read properly in a clean, unclettered interface (whether windowed or in full-screen) allowing the information curator to dive into specific stories without many visual distractions.

It is also possible to add any number of additional RSS feeds by specifying their URLs, as well as importing your full set of existing Google Reader subscriptions directly as an OPML file. Export functions are also fully available for all types of items shared, favorited, liked or subsscribed to.

N.B.: Managing folders and deleting stuff you don't want may still be quite a bit more cumbersome than it used to be in Google Reader, but hopefully this part will be improved soon.

Note: I have just checked again the latest release of Feedly, and - no doubt about it, Feedly interface, backend management, features, display options and UI are a step above the excellent Multiplx good traits, but still, this is a great alternative to be supported.

More info: http://multiplx.com/support/help.html

Coming Soon features: http://multiplx.com/support/google-reader.html

Highlly recommended for serious information scavengers and hunters.

Request an invite now: http://multiplx.com/

Reelsurfer is a web app which allows you to find, discover and clip (in the sense of extracting from a larger item) videos into either a thematic reel, or into a collection of diverse stuff.

ReelSurfer provides a browser bookmarklet to make it easy for you to grab any interesting video clip you find online whether on YouTube, Vimeo or on one of the other tens of sites supported.

PandoDaily reports: "...create reels of multiple videos, either from within a single longer video or reflecting a theme across multiple videos. All ReelSurfer videos link back to the original content source allowing the viewer to watch full length video should they choose. Because ReelSurfer doesn’t host videos, but rather links through to source content, all videos on its platform retain their native advertising such as pre-rolls and mid-rolls."

From my viewpoint, and having seen quite a few of these tools, I have to say that ReelSurfer is the easiest to use. Add to this the fact that ReelSurfer doubles up as a video discovery tool and all of the responsibility for the kind of video that you can produce with it falls onto your shoulders. That is: ReelSurfer is great, but it's up to you to curate and pull together great stuff, that creates new meaning and value for your audience.

Free to use.

Find out more: http://www.reelsurfer.com/

More info: http://www.reelsurfer.com/about

Check these reviews: 

• paidContent - ReelSurfer targets media with newest take on video clipping (2013-04-12)
  
  
• PandoDaily - ReelSurfer beefs up its discovery and video clipping tools, finds surprising success among brands and publishers (2013-04-12)

Update from Giuseppe Mauriello: ReelSurfer is public for all users, but there also is a new program called "ReelSurfer for journalists". It is currently still in private beta. You can request an invite here: http://news.reelsurfer.com

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

Feedwax is an outstanding free service allowing you to create RSS feeds from Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Google and Bing News, Daylife and other sources that comply with specific keywords or jashtags you specify. Additionally you can use FeedWax to generate a RSS feed that includes only stories and items happening around a specific location.

Be that an event, a concert, a festival, a sport event or your own party, Feedwax allows you to intercept all relevant images, clips, messages and stories sent out from that specific location.

The available FeedWax Geocoder (http://feedwax.com/rss.php) can add relevant latitude and longitude info to each and every item in your RS feed.

See also: http://feedwax.com/rss-precise.php

Both for those news curators having a need to generate a persistent search RSS feed on any of the major content publishing services, as well as for those who specifically need to aggregate and curate location-based stories FeedWax is an indispensable tool to have.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://feedwax.com/

Sauna.io is a social curation platform allowing you to easily pick the best content, images and video from your social media connections coming from Facebook and Twitter.

Sauna.io provides Pinterest-like private dashboards in which it surfaces for you the most relevant stories that may interest you, coming from a set of 12 different content themes from which you can elect your favorite ones.

Categories of interest available: http://o7.no/11lB3zp (screenshot)

You can create as many dashboards as you like and feed them with specific Twitter user accounts and/or RSS feeds of your choice.

Sauna.io lets you also comfortably read any potential interesting story by sliding in a side panel in which you can read the content in detail.

You can vote each story, or select to edit / curate it, by working on the title, description, image and tags associated to it, and then easily share it on your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Free to use.

My comment: A good social discovery and sharing tool for anyone interested in having a pleasing discovery experience and an easy way to also edit and curate each story selected.

Categories are still very limited and broad at the moment.

Good UI and usability. Definitely worth trying.

Request an invite here: http://www.sauna.io/