Content Curation World
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Content Curation World
What a Content Curator Needs To Know: How, Tools, Issues and Strategy
Curated by Robin Good
Author: Robin Good   Google+
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Content Curation Lands on Google+: Introducing Collections

Content Curation Lands on Google+: Introducing Collections | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
Robin Good's insight:



Google has just introduced "Collections", for Google+, a new service which allows any Google+ user to group his posts by topic and to create public, shareable collections of his favorite links, articles, videos and images.


To use Google Collections, simply go to your G+ profile page and then select "Collections" on the drop down menu appearing on the top left part of the page.


"Each collection can be shared publicly, privately, or with a custom set of people. Once you create your first collection, your profile will display a new tab where other people can find and follow your collections."


You can either create new posts containing whatever type of content inside a collection, or assign an existing, published post to a collection you have just created.


You can create as many collections as you like.


Google+ Collections is available on the web and on Android (iOS coming later).



My comment: Google+ Collections adds opportunity for creating additional value to G+ users by letting interests drive community engagement. This is a feature that sooner or later any social network will offer. 


Free to use.


Try it out now: https://plus.google.com/collections/welcome 




More info:


Official Google announcement: https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/7ZpGWeou2sV 


Featured collections: https://plus.google.com/collections/featured 


See also the official review from Techcrunch:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/google-turns-users-into-content-curators-with-new-collections-feature/ 


Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/gtVNkbtS9g8 











Nurita Sánchez's curator insight, January 29, 2016 3:13 PM

Cómo usar las colecciones:

http://www.ilusual.com/como-usar-las-colecciones-de-google-plus-guia

wanderingsalsero's curator insight, November 2, 2016 4:57 AM
This is interesting because it shows how far the concept of 'Curation' has come in the last 10 years. I don't remember much about it but I remember that in the early days of Blogger, perhaps even before Google bought it, they had a tool or bookmarklet or some little button that had certain curation abilities. My first blog was on Blogger and I remember using that tool.

Later, I maintained a Posterous blog for a couple of years...maybe more. I liked Posterous a lot and was very sad when they sold it (Posterous) to Yahoo and then about a year later those jerks at Yahoo closed it down. I thought Posterous was a very nice blog with just the right amount of features to get the job done without getting too technical.


 
Felix Grobe's curator insight, June 9, 2018 10:43 AM



Google has just introduced "Collections", for Google+, a new service which allows any Google+ user to group his posts by topic and to create public, shareable collections of his favorite links, articles, videos and images.


To use Google Collections, simply go to your G+ profile page and then select "Collections" on the drop down menu appearing on the top left part of the page.


"Each collection can be shared publicly, privately, or with a custom set of people. Once you create your first collection, your profile will display a new tab where other people can find and follow your collections."


You can either create new posts containing whatever type of content inside a collection, or assign an existing, published post to a collection you have just created.


You can create as many collections as you like.


Google+ Collections is available on the web and on Android (iOS coming later).



My comment: Google+ Collections adds opportunity for creating additional value to G+ users by letting interests drive community engagement. This is a feature that sooner or later any social network will offer. 


Free to use.


Try it out now: https://plus.google.com/collections/welcome 




More info:


Official Google announcement: https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/7ZpGWeou2sV 


Featured collections: https://plus.google.com/collections/featured 


See also the official review from Techcrunch:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/google-turns-users-into-content-curators-with-new-collections-feature/ 


Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/gtVNkbtS9g8 











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The Best Tool to Collect, Organize & Publish Your Favorite Links - The Google Bookmark Manager

The Best Tool to Collect, Organize & Publish Your Favorite Links - The Google Bookmark Manager | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
Robin Good's insight:



The new Google Bookmark Manager got me impressed. You may call it the Pinterest for Bookmarks or the new Pearltrees

for browser favorites, but notwithstanding your preference this is a true valuable curation tool to take note of.


The new release from Google is not just a great visual bookmarking tool for anyone using the Chrome browser, but it doubles up also as a great content curation publishing tool and under a hood of simplicity it packs lots of great, immediately useful features.

The browser integrated bookmarking manager makes it in fact possible to create visual link collections by adding URLs or by using the associated browser extension while on any site. These can be easily searched, nested, sorted and organized according to your preferences.

Each new bookmark allows you to pick an associated image, is editable in its title, description and URL and can be easily dragged, moved or copied over to different collections.

Bookmark collections from other browsers can be easily imported and a feature auto-generates a set of link collections based on common subjects. In addition, if you are logged into Chrome, your collections are synced across all of your computers. 

To curate and publish link collections, you only need to create a folder inside the Bookmark Manager and when it is ready for prime time, click the Share button to make it a fully public page.


N.B.: The new Bookmark Manager is not yet integrated with the Google Bookmarks service - https://www.google.com/bookmarks/ - keeping, for now, your browser bookmarks and the ones stored in the Google cloud two separate entities.


Excellent. A must have tool. 


Chrome extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bookmark-manager/gmlllbghnfkpflemihljekbapjopfjik  


More info: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95714?hl=en 






 

Lori Wilk's curator insight, November 9, 2014 1:00 PM

I love tools that can help me #organize what I've got and to be a more #effective #online #business person.

Mr Tozzo's curator insight, November 28, 2014 6:09 AM

The Best Tool to Collect, Organize & Publish Your Favorite Links - The Google Bookmark Manager

Nedko Aldev's curator insight, April 5, 2015 12:23 PM

 

189
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Future of News: Google Living Stories Still a Great Model for the News To Be

Living Stories provide a new, experimental way to consume news, developed by a partnership between Google, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. In Li...
Robin Good's insight:


Google Living Stories is an experimental project by Google that showcased (over a brief period between 2009 and 2010) how technology could be used effectively to provide a new, richer and more effective way to organize, serve and present news stories online.


In the Living Stories model, each story is a stream that is continuously updated over time with new updates, additional stories, images, and other multimedia resources that are published over time. 


These are organized on the page in a way that provides maximum accessibility to the reader, allowing him to skim, explore, filter or dig in depth into any category or specific item.


Nonetheless abandoned by Google, Living Stories remains a very inspiring example of how automated news aggregation and manual curation, both required in heavy doses to achieve this type of results, could provide a truly innovative mode of producing and offering access to news information.

The greatest news of all is that Google has left the model, examples and infrastructure for using and improving upon it available to everyone for free.


"The Living Stories code is available as open-source for anyone to use on their own sites at: http://code.google.com/p/living-stories/


Must see. 9/10

Free to study, use and adopt.



More info and examples: http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/ 


WordPress plugin: https://code.google.com/p/living-stories/wiki/WordpressInstallation 










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The Six Pillars of SEO-Friendly Curated Content

The Six Pillars of SEO-Friendly Curated Content | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
Content curation could be an extremely risky practice if you don't put a lot of effort in, or it lacks editorial voice or a distinctive point of view. After all, Google already has a curated list of content.
Robin Good's insight:



I really think that Eric Enge of SearchEngineWatch did not have to go out of his way to post such an excellent analysis of what traits curated content should have to be appreciated by Google.


But given the amount of content marketers adopting curation as the latest magic wand, his work provides a very useful warning for the many attempting to substitute curation for good quality content.


As in real-life, when it comes down to giving more exposure to different curators, both humans and Google will attempt to select those that:


1) put a lot of effort into their curation


2) have a strong editorial voice and


3) a distinctive point of view



and which heavily rely on:


4) recognized expert analysis7cmmentary and reviews


5) access to data otherwise not accessible


6) freshness




Rightful. Useful. 8/10


Full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2290885/Content-Curation-SEO-A-Bad-Match 




ManufacturingStories's curator insight, August 27, 2013 10:33 PM

Robin - Another valuable and outstanding summary!

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Curate Your Search Results with Qwant

Curate Your Search Results with Qwant | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
Robin Good's insight:



Qwant is a new meta-search engine, tapping into the best news, web, video, image and social content sources and allowing you to clip and save your favorite results into topic-specific notebooks.


Specifically, Qwant offers for each search you perform, five column of results covering your specified topic:


1) top web results

2) top social results

3) Wikipedia references

4) media results (images and video clips)

5) top products


Each of the column can be filtered according to your specific keywords.


You can also easily save and archive any such result into your personally created notebooks, which can be made private or public.


You can also easily share any content item directly from Qwab to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and you can explore and search public curated search notebooks from other users.


Supports 15 languages including French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Hebrew and Russian.


Free to use.


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


More info: http://www.qwant.com/help



*see similar tools in the "Search Curation" section
of Content Curation Tools Supermap



wanderingsalsero's curator insight, July 12, 2013 10:54 PM

Seems to me this could be used to make some great content for blogs...and the link could be used as Facebook content.

Greg Longmuir's curator insight, July 16, 2013 12:55 PM

I guess you can never have enough curating, in this digital age anything that can keep you up to date and help visibility is worth a try. I like the way the simplify everything. I'm not sure but even with all this info I still may feel like I'm missing something and go to the individual sites anyway. But to see what the landscape looks like in a quick view Qwant is pretty cool.

Alfredo Corell's curator insight, July 17, 2013 2:09 PM

A new meta-search engine... deserves a visit

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The Future of Learning Is All About Curation and Search



Robin Good's insight:



If you are curious to know what I think about curation and search and their future, check out this 3-minute audio excerpt from a much longer interview about curating your experience I had with Joel Zasflosky of ValueofSimple.

In it I highlight how inadequate is to expect Google results to fulfill the need that many people have to learn and deepen their knowledge about a topic they are not familiar with.

Google set of very specific, highly filtered and ranked text results represent many, often relevant, individual bites of a larger puzzle that is never shown.

You are provided tons of individual trees in place of the "forest" you have asked about.

That is the greatest limitation for Google… when it comes the need, not to find a specific book, product, event or person, but for learning, understanding, for seeing the bigger picture, then the individual bites, ranked by Google authority or Pagerank, just don't serve our need.

This is why, just like we can't feed our appetites only with Big Macs, when it comes to learning about a topic we're not familiar with, we will increasingly rely on curated search engines, trusted guides and portals who can provide us with a much better and more useful roadmap into learning than Google can.


Audio excerpt: https://soundcloud.com/user458849/curation-and-search-joel


Full interview: http://valueofsimple.com/smart-and-simple-matters-podcast-023-with-robin-good/ 


MP3 full interview: http://traffic.libsyn.com/valueofsimple/023_SmartAndSimpleMattersPodcastFromValueOfSimple.mp3


Subscribe to iTunes podcast: http://valueofsimple.com/itunes







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App Curation and Discovery: Google Introduces Topical Collections of Great Apps with "Apps Focus" in the Play Store

App Curation and Discovery: Google Introduces Topical Collections of Great Apps with "Apps Focus" in the Play Store | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Robin Good: Finding good apps is not easy. iOS or Android hve the same problem on this front. Too many apps and too much effort needed to find out which are the really good ones.


To solve this issue Google has just started collectting and organizing some of the best fashion apps available in its store and it has created a page dedicated just to them called "Apps Focus". This is probably the start of an ongoing effort to curate, pick and organize the very best apps available inside the Google Play Store.


"Google just added another featured area that should provide just a little more discoverability for apps with slightly narrower audiences, in the form of the "Apps Focus" section.


The first App Focus? Fashion and Style - bringing together a collection of some of the best apps for the chic-minded."


Original story: http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/14/google-introduces-apps-focus-on-the-play-store-bringing-together-topical-collections-of-great-apps/


Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/





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The Ability To Extract and Communicate Insight from Data It's Going To Be Huge: McKinsey Quarterly [Video]

The Ability To Extract and Communicate Insight from Data It's Going To Be Huge: McKinsey Quarterly [Video] | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

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 

janlgordon's comment, January 31, 2012 12:27 PM
This is an excellent piece, as always, thank you Robin!
Robin Good's comment, January 31, 2012 12:55 PM
Thank you Jan, much appreciated!
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Curation platforms vs Search engines

Curation platforms vs Search engines | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

This is an interesting comparison  and I think it's a good start....... search and curation continue to evolve and there's lots more to this story, stay tuned...........

 

Intro:

 

Curation platforms vs Search engines Nowadays, search engines like Google are essential tools for every Internet work. But are they the best place to search anything? We believe that a manual...

 

Search engines present a list of content, ranked by a relative relevance between the results. Curation platforms like Bundlr present themed groups of content, usually ranked by popularity, but always highlighting the author of the selection.

 

Search engines work better when:

 

We’re looking for definite answers The source long term authority matters The quantity of results is important

 

Curation platforms work better when:

 

Events are recent or on-going (and traditional sources are slow to catch up) There are multiple points of view Concrete example are prefered to definitions

 

http://blog.gobundlr.com/post/8821314660/curation-platforms-vs-search-engines


Via janlgordon
Tom George's comment, August 12, 2011 12:56 PM
Wow Jan,
This is a great one. Notice I commented on this at the end of the post using Facebook. http://bit.ly/nX8ObV If you send me a facebook request, you can comment back anytime you like and also be notified if someone else happens to comment on your curation. I gotta do some training now back for more later Thiis is great. Did you know you can also share any other Scoop you like from another curator??
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You Can Be a Trusted Guide To The Most Relevant Information Online: Not Google

You Can Be a Trusted Guide To The Most Relevant Information Online: Not Google | Content Curation World | Scoop.it



Robin Good's insight:



Matt Rosoff writes on Business Insider UK:

"A lot of people think Google Search is like a map: An objective guide to the best and most important material on the internet. It's not.


Google Search is the most important product of a very wealthy and successful for-profit company. And Google will use this product to further its own commercial ends." (Not to help people find the most relevant info to their own learning needs.)


This is an excellent article that should be read a couple of times slowly to remind oneself of Google key aspirations and limits.


In it, the author illustrates with relevant references how Google uses whatever means it has to further the interest and revenues generated by its search engine ad business (AdWords / AdSense).

 

It also highlights, that like any other dominant, monopoly-like company it risks of being challenged in courts around the world, and this is "what Google desperately wants to avoid. If a government body issues a formal legal ruling that Google Search is an anticompetitive monopoly that needs to be regulated, it opens the floodgates".

Meanwhile Google Search is and will be increasingly challenged by smaller but more relevant, specialist search engines, like Amazon or Yelp.


But Google, hungry by its profit-driven goals, keeps also increasing the amount of information it provides itself inside search results, versus original content and resources that are out there on the web.


In four years time Google has doubled the amount screen real estate that it uses to promote its services or ads.


All of this to say, that Google is a for-profit company and not a humanitarian endeavour built and maintained to provide a true guide to the best information available online. 




For whoever has the interest, passion and skills to search, filter and organise information this is important news. 

There's an opportunity to provide higher quality, better vetted information results than Google presently does. At least in some areas. 

If Google is too busy about serving ads and pushing its own services, there will have to be someone else who can provide to Google, or other search engines, trusted quality search results on specific subject matters. 


As for Google there is one area where it cannot really compete with talented humans: trust. 


True information curators, of the expert kind, may indeed become in great demand in the near future. And personal trust will determine which one you and I will rely on. Whether Google will exist or not.



Right to the point. Informative. 9/10


Full article: http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-is-not-a-charity-2015-3 

Stephen Dale's curator insight, March 24, 2015 4:54 AM

Put simply - Google (and for that matter any commercial search engine) may skew search results to promote their own commercial interests. The question to ask yourself is "are the (search) results good enough?" - I'd say in Google's defence "yes they are".

 

Reading time: 5mins

WSI Digital Wave's curator insight, April 2, 2015 7:22 AM

https://plus.google.com/+PaulMathewsWSI/posts

Nedko Aldev's curator insight, April 5, 2015 12:21 PM

 

167
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The Future of Search May Not Be About Google: It's You In The End Who Will Decide

The Future of Search May Not Be About Google: It's You In The End Who Will Decide | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
There is a evil side of Google which revealed itself in the Filter Bubble, invasion of privacy, the lack of transparency, in the monopoly induction of behavior and especially in what is happening in the search environment.
Robin Good's insight:



The future of search may not just be about Google and Bing. In the future of search, believe it or not, there are going to be a lot of people like you and me who will be providing much more helpful information guidance to specific requests than Google could ever do.


I know this sounds probably unrealistic to you, but I think there are now many good indications that this likely going to happen much sooner than you expect.


One of the key reasons why, human beings will start to reclaim this highly valuable search territory, is the fact that in the last few years we have slowly but deeply surrendered our ability to evaluate, decide and select what is "real" to Google's own algorithms, in ways that can only be detrimental to us.


You have probably read in recent times that Google is moving to use "semantic search" rather than the keyword-based approach it has been using until now. 


Do you know that "in semantic search, the decisions are not based on statistics, but rather on world models"?


"How about searching for "Dictators of the World?" The results, which include a list of famous dictators, are not just the judgment of whether someone is a dictator, but also an implicit judgment of choosing individual examples for the concept of a dictator. 


When building knowledge over concepts such as "Dictator" in the search engines, we are implicitly accepting a set of assumptions."


"It is needed to question and monitor these models, for in the past, the significance was only in the human mind. Now, it is also in the mind of the engines that forward us information. 


The search bears an editorial point of view, and its results reflect this point of view. 


We can’t ignore the assumptions behind these results. The invisible judgments will frame our conscience."


Here is a must read article by Zeh Fernandes, that wants to ignite an open discussion about "how the Google monopoly is affecting the way we search for and receive information on the internet".


I think that this is a topic deserving the highest attention and I highly recommend to read in full this excellent article, especially to content curators, information librarians and any other individual concerned with our future ability to vet, organize and make sense of the ocean of information surrounding us.


Alternative search tools and content curators are the future.



Good reminder of what we are eating daily. Insightful. Eye-opening. 10/10


Read this: http://zehfernandes.com/the-evil-side-of-google/ 








Claude Terosier's curator insight, January 13, 2014 2:44 AM

"we should worry about search engines becoming the arbiters of truth." De l'importance de comprendre comment on accède à l'information et de reprendre la main.

Stephen Dale's curator insight, January 13, 2014 5:58 AM

People who use Google are given the impression that they are interacting with the data out there, but they are actually interacting with Google and its view of the world.

 

"They are prediction engines that constantly refine a theory about who you are and what you are going to do or want next. Together, they create an universe of data for each one of us."

"In a 2010 paper published in the Scientific American journal, Tim Berners-Lee warned about companies developing ever more “closed” products and “data islands”.

"Morville, in his book Search Patterns, says that the first and second results receive 80% of attention. The vertical approach suggests to the user the idea of a single result that fully answers the question, enclosing possibilities and preventing alternative realization."


Or in other words, is our acceptance of what we see in search results eroding our ability (or willingness) to consider alternatives and employ critical thinking?

Mrs. Dilling's curator insight, February 13, 2014 11:52 AM

My favorite statement, "we must always be aware and well informed about the intentions of companies, and never stop having multiple options for any service."

 

This article was an eye opener for me. I had never questioned Google before.

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The Curated Google Search Result Page: The Mega-SERP

The Curated Google Search Result Page: The Mega-SERP | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
Robin Good's insight:



A good example of how you can provide a lot more insight to others by painstakingly curating a specific topic by collecting, organizing and juxtaposing effectively all of the relevant pieces.


Dr.Pete. also known as Peter J. Myers has curated an insightful visual montage that showcases all of Google search engine result page features in one page.


The result is a pretty amazing view, that, at least in my view, would be much more welcome than the existing results. Much more so, if it was me, the user searching, being able to decide which one of these features to turn on or off depending on my needs.


The time has come for me and you to decide how we want to slice, view and rank search results and this wonderful user-generated montage points to how much more could be seen if it was me or you to decide what to display inside your SERPs.



Inspiring. Instructional. Informative. 9/10


Original story: 

http://moz.com/blog/mega-serp-a-visual-guide-to-google 


Interactive illustrated image: http://www.thinglink.com/scene/444884388539269122

*hover your mouse on the different sections to see a descriptio of that feature





Halina Ostańkowicz-Bazan's curator insight, October 20, 2013 5:45 AM

Thank you for sharing.

Lila Hanft's curator insight, October 30, 2013 3:25 PM

This could be really useful for documenting successful SEO or for setting benchmarks.

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How Google Could Really Help To Reward Original Image Authors Online | Wired.com

How Google Could Really Help To Reward Original Image Authors Online | Wired.com | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
The battle for fair use is unfair to anyone who plays by the old rules and tries to share with the artists because human creatives can’t compete with the automated services that aren’t sharing with the artists.
Robin Good's insight:



Peter Wayner on Wired ponders the issue of fair use from a small, independent publisher point of view and asks some really good questions about what Google could actually do to encourage and reward those who create and bring new insight to the internet — not just those that remix it.


He writes: "What if the researchers at these companies could improve their bots enough for the algorithms to make intelligent decisions about fair use?


If their systems can organize the web and drive cars, surely they are capable of shouldering some of the responsibility for making smart decisions about fair use.


Such tools could help identify blogs or websites that borrow too aggressively from other sites. The search engines that are crawling the net could then use that information to flag sites that cross the line from fair use into plagiarism.


Google, for example, already has tools that find music in videos uploaded to YouTube, and then shares the revenue with the creators.


...


The fair-use algorithms could also honor what the artist wants — for instance, some artists want to be copied. In these cases, a markup language that enumerates just how much the artist wants to encourage fair use could help provide that choice.


That way, those who want rampant copying could encourage it while those who want to maintain exclusivity could dial back the limits."


I can't but agree 110% with these suggestions.


As a curator I feel that there is a strong need for policing fair use and for greater transparency by those who choose to re-use other people content.


I am not for laws, and fines, but yes I am for tools that could tell me who is being fair in re-using and crediting / licensing other people's work, and who is not. Such tools could also motivate me to create more original visual work without fearing that other people would just steal it and re-use it as theirs.


Excellent suggestions. Recommended. Good questions being asked. 9/10


Full article: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/some-arguments-about-fair-use-pit-humans-against-machines/




Asil's curator insight, August 18, 2013 3:43 PM

I love the idea of fair-use algorithms, programmed to respect the meta-data tags of uploaded content. 

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Why Google, Yahoo and Others Are Making You Think RSS Is Dead: Lockdown

Why Google, Yahoo and Others Are Making You Think RSS Is Dead: Lockdown | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
Robin Good's insight:


Marco Arment the creator of Instapaper, has an excellent and provocative piece on why Google is closing down all of its RSS appendages (they just closed also the RSS feeds in Google Alerts) and the logic behind this strategy.


He writes: "Officially, Google killed Reader because “over the years usage has declined”.1 I believe that statement, especially if API clients weren’t considered “usage”, but I don’t believe that’s the entire reason.

The most common assumption I’ve seen others cite is that “Google couldn’t figure out how to monetize Reader,” or other variants about direct profitability. I don’t believe this, either. Google Reader’s operational costs likely paled in comparison to many of their other projects that don’t bring in major revenue, and I’ve heard from multiple sources that it effectively had a staff of zero for years. It was just running, quietly serving a vital role for a lot of people."


"The bigger problem is that they’ve abandoned interoperability. RSS, semantic markup, microformats, and open APIs all enable interoperability, but the big players don’t want that — they want to lock you in, shut out competitors, and make a service so proprietary that even if you could get your data out, it would be either useless (no alternatives to import into) or cripplingly lonely (empty social networks).


Google resisted this trend admirably for a long time and was very geek- and standards-friendly, but not since Facebook got huge enough to effectively redefine the internet and refocus Google’s plans to be all-Google+, all the time.4"


Provides better perspective on RSS, Google, FB and Twitter and your future relationship with RSS.



Must-read article. 9/10


Full article: http://www.marco.org/2013/07/03/lockdown


(Image credit - RSS logo - Shutterstock)



Ashish Rishi's curator insight, July 4, 2013 11:49 PM

Love you Marco!!!  Agreed  and couldn't have asked for more. Internet to me was the ultimate democratization tool , a leveler, a ground playing field that challenged all institutions that had unnecessary walls around them - say educational institutions , you loved them, but they were for a fortunate few. Internet platforms  ( including google) were formed for the love of internet, they have milked it enough and why not ? but now these guys are trying to become to old school walled gardens, I just hope that in doing so , they don't lose the charm that defines them.

Laura Brown's comment, July 6, 2013 2:43 PM
This is like the AOL model of the Internet which they offered years ago. People thought they were online but they were only online via AOL which mean AOL controlled what they say, how they saw it, etc. Many people were fine with the AOL version of the Internet. People who just wanted to look at email and use chat forums for personal reason and put up a personal home page, etc. However, the people who did not like being restricted or confined choose to opt out of AOL and use other ISP's (Internet Service Providers). I'm not surprised Google wants to take several steps back and go that way, take control of what people are allowed to see and make sure the ads are featured versus having the option to block them. They have already gone several steps backwards in bringing back pop up ads. No one seems to protest those, or the video and other bulky ads which take up a lot of bandwidth. People had a large voice against all that when it was still the artists, scientists and other geeks who ruled online. Now it is the marketers and the Internet reflects the change in a big way. It's like one big ad soup. Google just wants to tie it all up in a neat bundle.
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What Are You Going To Do with All of Your RSS Feeds if Feedburner Shuts Down?

What Are You Going To Do with All of Your RSS Feeds if Feedburner Shuts Down? | Content Curation World | Scoop.it
A lot of us around here have blogs and a lot of us use FeedBurner to "host" our RSS feeds. I thought it was worth talking about what might happen if we los
Robin Good's insight:



If you are a curator or web publisher using RSS feeds an Feedburner here is something that you definitely want to pay attention to, as Google may soon close down this service.


Chris Coyer has an informative and useful article analyzing what is going to happen, and what you can do now or later to handle this likely event.


From the comments, Maxime Valette writes: "...sign that FeedBurner is shutting down soon is that the “permanent redirection” on delete is a new option since October. Before that it was only a “30-day redirection”. Update an outdated service like FeedBurner just to improve the deletion service is generally not a good sign."



Useful, informatve. 7/10


Full article: http://css-tricks.com/lets-say-feedburner-shuts-down/



Stephen Dale's curator insight, March 27, 2013 7:36 AM

It's as well to be prepared, and this article gives some useful tips should Google decide to shut down the Feedburner service (and the omens are not good, following the announcement about the shut down of Google Reader). 

Asil's curator insight, March 29, 2013 10:18 AM

I moved all my RSS to Feedly when Google nerfed their reader last year, a sacrafice to the Google+ initiative.  Feedly is, in many ways, superiour to the old reader if you are only using it for solo-reading, It doesn't have a social media component.

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Google Lost Its Mojo: Content Curation is the New Search

Google Lost Its Mojo: Content Curation is the New Search | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Robin Good: Though I had seen and scooped this article before, I must have not done a very good job of really reading it from back to back. Paul Kedroski, who wrote this over a year and half ago, really captured the historical essence of content curation on the web.


This is an absolutely must-read article for anyone wanting to grasp what is happening with content curation on the web, hwile seeing things in proper perspective.


He wrote: "What has happened is that Google's ranking algorithm, like any trading algorithm, has lost its alpha.


It no longer has lists to draw and, on its own, it no longer generates the same outperformance -- in part because it is, for practical purposes, reverse-engineered, well-understood and operating in an adaptive content landscape.


Search results ...so polluted by spam that you often started looking at results only on the second or third page...


...


There are two things that can happen now.


a) We could get better algorithms, which is happening to some degree, with search engines like Blekko and others.


b) Or, we could head back to curation, which is what I see happening, and watch new algos emerge on top of that next-gen curation again.


Think of Twitter as a new stab at curation, but there are plenty of other examples.


Yes, that sounds mad. If we couldn't index 100,000 websites in 1996 by hand, how do we propose to do 234-million by hand today?


The answer, of course, is that we won't -- do them all by hand, that is. Instead, the re-rise of curation is partly about crowd curation -- not one people, but lots of people, whether consciously (lists, etc.) or unconsciously (tweets, etc) -- and partly about hand curation (JetSetter, etc.).


We are going to increasingly see nichey services that sell curation as a primary feature, with the primary advantage of being mostly unsullied by content farms, SEO spam, and nonsensical Q&A sites intended to create low-rent versions of Borges' Library of Babylon.


The result will be a subset of curated sites that will re-seed a new generation of algorithmic search sites, and the cycle will continue, over and over.


In short, curation is the new search. It's also the old search."


Must read. 9/10


Full article: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-search-algorithm-is-spinning-out-of-control-2011-1



Robin Good's comment, July 11, 2012 1:10 AM
Thank you Ishak.
Stewart-Marshall's comment, July 11, 2012 11:40 AM
Excellent - a very prophetic analysis - wished I'd read it a year and half ago :-)
Beth Kanter's comment, July 11, 2012 12:34 PM
I only use google like a phone book -when I'm looking for a specific reference. But if I'm doing research on a topic, my strategy for years has been to go to the key sources (curators) and look through their libraries. I find the lack of context that search returns - makes me want to throw up. It is a much better experience to see it in context through the yes of someone who knows the content area.
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In Selecting The Best News, Humans Beat Robots, at Last!

In Selecting The Best News, Humans Beat Robots, at Last! | Content Curation World | Scoop.it

Lots of people might know about this, some do not, no matter what, it's still good to see it in print.  Human curation works and will play a significant role on the web.

 

Excerpt: After almost a decade, Google is somewhat sheepishly admitting that humans are, well, useful after all.

 

What Google is embracing -- finally -- is the emergence of human curation as a central and critical editorial effort in the increasingly noisy web. Curation, it seems, trumps robots when it comes to both interestingness and editorial tone and voice.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-rosenbaum/google-news-humans-beat-r_b_926641.html


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