Il libro che rivoluzionerà il tuo modo di vedere il mondo

Bankenstein, tutto quello che non avreste mai voluto sapere sulle banche

Chi è Bankenstein? E' un personaggio immaginario, crudele e senza scrupoli, che racchiude in sè tutto il peggio della criminalità finanziaria e bancaria. Bankenstein è un titolo, volutamente provocatorio, per un libro che cerca di spiegare e far capire come il mondo occidentale sia diventato preda della cleptocrazia.
Perché è difficile vincere la battaglia del riciclaggio? Perché i popoli devono pagare il Signoraggio? Dove sono finite le ricchezze del Terzo Reich? Chi voleva la morte di Che Guevara e Kennedy? E molto altro ancora

Come guadagnare in borsa con Internet

Che Internet abbia rivoluzionato la nostra vita, e che ancora di più la rivoluzionerà in futuro, è oramai un luogo comune, tanto comune da corrispondere a verità. Per ciò che riguarda la finanza, la rivoluzione è presto descritta: via Internet, usando il cosiddetto trading online, ognuno di noi si può trasformare in uno scalper, cioè in quella particolare categoria di operatori che entrano ed escono rapidamente dalle posizioni prese sul mercato, e questo grazie al fatto che online è possibile riconoscere la dinamica minuta dei titoli, seguire la struttura della domanda e dell'offerta, ed eseguire transazioni con commissioni molto ridotte. Questa nuova edizione è stata aggiornata alla luce dell'esperienza e delle novità del settore.

Il libro che demolirà tutte le tue certezze

• La bolletta dell'Enel
  
• L'amore in mezzo ai campi
  
• Passaparola - La ruota del criceto - Simone Perotti
  
• Formigoni senza fissa dimora
  
• Nevica, governo ladro!
  
• Viaggiatori del tempo
  

Il libro DEFINITIVO

• What Makes A Great Curator Great? How To Distinguish High-Value Curation From Generic Republishing
  

  Today content curation is 'sold', promoted and marketed as the latest and trendiest approach to content production, SEO visibility, reputation and traffic building. But is it really so? Is it really true that by aggregating many content sources and picking and republishing those news and stories that you deem great is really going to benefit you and your readers in the long run? Is the road to easy and effortless publishing via curation tools a true value creation business strategy, or just a risky fad? How can one tell?

  
  Photo credit: theprint

  Let me clarify a few key points:

  1. Curation can be effective only as much as it effectively provides a quality filtering mechanism that can replace my need to consult multiple sources. When such need is forgotten and a curation channel becomes another broad aggregation and republishing venue, the end result is more content to go through and little or no insight gained.

  2. Shallow curation efforts, where the main goal is to republish selected content with the minimum effort and time, are going to be effective only for the very short term. As soon as quality, value-creation creators start to emerge and gain authority, the gap between them and the others will be very hard to fill.

  3. Curation is an effective means to build a strong relationship with a niche audience of passionate people to engage, not a marketing strategy that caters to gain a broad audience of readers by virtue of quantity and breadth.

  4. The key element that makes curation work is the competence and focus of the curator and of the topic he has selected. Repeated efforts to create curated channels that mix and match broad and highly competitive topics are bound to see a very short life.

  For these reasons, I think that much of the apparent new curation work being done is bound to be soon disappointed by the results it will gain. Though the apparent new curation 'leaders' are working around volume and breadth, I have a strong feeling that within a year this panorama will have already evolved significantly in its natural direction.

  Highly specific news and content channels, curated by passionate and competent editors will gradually become the new reference and models for curation work.

  This article is all about starting to identify some tentative reference points that can be used to anticipate these changes and position one's own curation channel in a way that it will guarantee the greatest return on investment, over-time, possible.

  My goal, is to help you understand how you can start to evaluate and distinguish value-creating content curation, from shallow aggregation, noise-making republication and pure content regurgitation before it is too late or someone else in your same niche will have done it before you.

  Here's is my official checklist, to identify value-creation curation, from everything else.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  How Do You Recognize a Quality Content Curator

  

  If I was asked to evaluate the curation work of different people, without being able to know who these authors are and for which reason they were doing it, I would use the following criteria to identify the best curators among them.

  In my personal experience a good, value-creating curator, can be easily recognized by looking at the work he does. If he does one or more of the following he is likely to be a true, value-creation, sense-making curator:

  • Optimizes

    
    Optimizes titles as to make them relevant to his/her audience. Tites are often still badly written, by using either a classic journalistic approach or by using tricky psychological approaches to make the titles appear more interesting. The curator's task should be the one of make titles relevant to his specific audience-tribe, by making the title highlight and explain what the content is truly about.

    
    
    

  • Edits

    
    Edits / rewrites titles, descriptions and more, to further customize the message relevance, language and focus for a specific audience-tribe.

  
  
  

  • Formats

    
    Formats curated content with microscopic precision by utilizing character styles, chunking, use of bulleted/numbered lists to provide greater legibility and to communicate more effectively the key concepts present in the original content.

  
  
  

  • Selects

    
    Selects and adds relevant images, photos, illustrations that fully complement and reinforce the content they are associated to.

  
  
  

  • Excerpts

    
    Excerpts selected text and passages from the actual content, to help the reader understand as rapidly as possible what the content is about and why it would be relevant to read it.

  
  
  

  • Writes

    
    Writes his/her own intro, to contextualize and explain the relevance of the content to his specific audience-tribe. Brings in a 'personal voice' that threads together news or content coming from many disparate sources. Threads and guides the reader through it like a museum guide.

  
  
  

  • Classifies

    
    Curates his channel and content metadata. Provides comprehensive tags, titles and classification categories for the content curated.

  
  
  

  • Links

    
    Integrates extra links to extend-expand the scope of the article or to provide further reference to specific concepts.

  
  
  

  • Personalizes

    
    Personalizes each curated item differently for each social media channel/audience when needed / appropriate.

  
  
  

  • Vets

    
    Vets and verifies original source for quality and integrity (by reading all of the original content) and exercising a critical role in deciding what to publish and what to censor.

  
  
  

  • Credits

    
    Credits and provides full attribution to all sources used. Goes out of his way to reference and cite personal sources (when appropriate) and credits always for received leads, tips and suggestions as to make of this activity a new virtue (as it truly is, by providing access to new unknown sources and showcasing the transparency of the author-curator).

  
  
  

  • Filters

    
    Spends most of his / her time vetting and filtering out most of the incoming content, not approving and publishing most of the incoming stuff.

  
  
  

  • Taps

    
    Taps frequently into a personally selected circle of trusted curators in related, complementary, or similar topics.

  
  
  

  • Suggests

    
    Suggests and recommends in turn to other curators specific stories for their newsradars.

  
  
  

  • Searches

    
    Spends time looking for more content / context to add to any item when this can help enrich, or make more interesting valuable an existing story. Looks for additional references, reviews, citations or stories that can help complement the existing view.

  
  
  

  • Scouts

    
    Is always looking for new, credible and interesting content sources. Is never happy with the sources he has and loves to discover new ways, tools and networks where useful sources can be found.

  
  
  

  • Hacks Filters and Searches

    
    Engineers filters and specific persistent searches to help himself find always highly relevant and useful content to curate.

  
  
  

  • Is Transparent

    
    Publicly states focus, target-tribe, communication objective(s) and criteria by which content is selected or excluded on his newsradars or curated channels.

  
  
  

  • Recommends

    
    Publicly recommends other newsmasters, curators and specific newsradars.

  
  
  

  • Crowdsources

    
    Crowdsources recommendations, tips and suggestions from his readers always acknowledging their contributions.

  The more of these activities you incorporate in your content curation workflow, the higher the quality and the value that you will be creating.

  I myself strive to gradually master and integrate all of these actions in my daily curation work. It is not easy, nor fast, but it is something meaningful for me and it makes me feel I have truly contributed to 'make sense' of the information and resources available out there.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  How Do You Recognize a Wasteland-Filler - Aggregator - Republisher?

  

  
  
  On the other hand, if I was asked to rapidly identify 'zero-value' curators, such as those who are simply republishing other people's content, have a relatively broad focus, mix multiple topics together, and who provide no other additional value, or those using curation tools to produce a constant flow of blog-like content without much thought about its editorial quality or depth, these below, would be the traits I would use to easily identify them.

  
  
  

  • No Additional Value

    
    Republishes news / content without contributing any additional value. Such curators feel or have learned from others that their job is to aggregate, pick and republish what tickles their fancies. They are happy and content with this and miss to see that the contribution they believe they are making, is in reality a burden for most anyone else.

  
  
  

  • No Editing

    
    Republishes content without editing any part of it. Stories, news, content of any kind is republished 'as is', often officially justified as an effort to act as 'keeper' and 'defender' of the original content as originally published. In reality such 'no editing' approach is son of a drive to use these curation tools to generate some type of new content with the least effort possible. This in reality does not help make greater sense of content originally prepared with a specific goal or audience in mind, or to repurpose it or contextualize it for a specific community of interest.

  
  
  

  • No Selection

    
    Republishes content simply because it includes keywords that are 'on topic' or contain certain keywords.

    The selection is therefore driven by a software aggregation filter, and when the checking and vetting gets also to be very light, then you start seeing regurgitation of content that should not have passed through the largest net. Keywords drive over meaning.

  
  
  

  • No Filtering

    
    Republishes any content independently of intrinsic value. As long as a news story, article or report 'talks' about a certain topic, it is selected and included. Little attention is given in questioning and scrutinizing what's being said or communicated inside of it. The goal appears more one of catching and republishing anything that is 'out there' and which 'mentions' a certain topic, rather than a mission to unearth, distill and illustrate-explain-organize any content - even that which does NOT mention that keyword - that can be relevant to our 'specific' focus of interest.

  
  
  

  • Quantity Wins

    
    Goes for quantity of content published rather than quality. Feels good the more content he is able to 're-publish'. Is unhappy when there is little or no content coming in to 'curate'. The effort / goal is clearly toward quantity, persistence and volume rather than on quality, timing and precision perspective.

  
  
  

  • Time-Saving Attraction

    
    Is in for the time-saving benefits, the amazing ease of doing it and the super-short time-to-publish. Nothing wrong for having those desires. Let's just not call them 'curation'. Time-saving publishing and 'content curation' are actually at the opposite extremes of the same continuum. There can't be no curation when the key goal is to publish 'quality' content in the shortest time possible.

  
  
  

  • Broad Focus

    
    Utilizes very broad newsradar titles often integrating two or more wide topics instead of a specific one.
    Lacks specific, strong focus. Approaches curation as mass media broadcasting, with the idea of trying to capture the widest and broadest audience possible.

  
  
  

  • No Tribe

    
    As a consequence of his 'broad focus' lacks awareness of which tribe he / she is communicating to, and is therefore unable to use a consistent language, or one that has strong affinity with the 'tribe' being served.

  
  
  

  • No voice

    
    Lacks a personal 'voice'. Does not add, comment or write. When he does he does so informally and without making his personal style and views influence it.

  
  
  

  • No Viewpoint

    
    Lacks of opinion, viewpoint. Does not take a position. Acts as a ticketmaster at a movie theater. Takes no risks, and doesn't make string comments. Likes to think he is an 'objective', detached 'selector' of the best content passing in front of him.
  
  

  
  
  

  • No Synthesis

    
    Lacks ability to synthesize the key parts of a curated content. Makes no effort to facilitate the emergence of core ideas, concepts and factual information from the content he curates.

  
  
  

  • No Language

    
    Lacks a unifying, constant, coherent language. The one that he uses is mostly borrowed from the curated content itself.

  
  
  I think this recent article by Forbes clearly highlights the driving force and mentality behind the idea of curation as a smart alternative to blogging and as a shortcut to achieve SEO visibility, traffic and reputation-authority with minimum efforts and time.

  Winning The SEO Battle Through Content Curation
  by Pawan Deshpande - HiveFire

  
  
  On the opposite side stands this excellent video introduction to the type of 'curation' I like to talk about, which clearly explains the difference between those who collect, republish and re-share existing content, and those who take existing content and 'curate' it to generate new, additional meaning and value from it, on very specific topics.

  Why Curation? by Idiocreative
  

  Duration: 8:50

  
  
  
  
  
  

  A Word on Scoring Systems

  Finally a word on 'scoring systems' that attempt to help readers identify supposedly better curation work.

  I am very skeptical that any such system can work, especially when the criteria it utilizes are kept secret, and when some of the users of the system have access to them.

  My advice is this: Beware of any system that attempts to ?score? or rank your curation work unless it transparently states the criteria and formulas it uses. Use your head to look at any curator's work and evaluate personally its usefulness and ability to satisfy appropriately your information needs.

  Most of the reputation scoring systems now available online, tend to measure some parts of your activity and engagement online, with mixed results.

  In my humble opinion the only reputation system that has any value today is the public endorsement by other people, stating specifically why they do appreciate your work.

  It's easy to get thousands of followers, likes or shares, if like it is the case today, there are tons of people wanting to game such systems and many services selling such things for very low prices.

  On the other hand it is very, very hard to get someone that is reputable and respected to openly endorse someone else unless he/she has good very good reasons and motives to do so. The risk is in fact evident, as providing easy endorsements to people or work that is not of true value will only lower anyone's credibility and reputation. And you can't use or buy fake endorsements as even if you did, they are worth nothing.

  I look forward to social networks and curation tools to embrace more credible approaches to authority and reputation scoring soon.

  
  
  
  
  Originally written and curated by Robin Good and first published on MasterNewMedia on November 4th 2011 as 'What Makes A Great Curator Great? How To Distinguish High-Value Curation From Generic Republishing'.

  
  
  
  Photo credits:
  How Do You Recognize a Quality Content Curator - pagadesign
  How Do You Recognize a Wasteland-Filler - Aggregator - Republisher? - malerapaso

• Curated Content Delivery Formats: Beyond News Portals and Magazines
  

  The new frontiers for content curation tools and services are in a) providing advanced collaborative ('social)' features and in b) introducing and integrating new and effective, highly visual, delivery formats.

  
  Photo credit: CaraMaria

  Curating content and news is not just about the selection, editing and contextualization of stories about a specific topic or theme, but it is increasingly about how these information items are (collaboratively) gathered, organized, grouped, displayed and in which ways they can be accessed and browsed by those interested in them.

  For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of this exploding content curation trend, is the speculative exploration of how 'curated' content collections could best benefit from alternative and more effective delivery formats than the classic linear, top-to-bottom, chronological, river-of-news sequence.

  Nothing wrong with this format, but it is a good format only if you want to give relevance to curated news stories in chronological order. Just like most news sources have done until today. The more recent, the higher in the list.

  But anytime you are working to curate content according to non-chronological parameters, you are off into a largely unexplored and uncharted land.

  At least for now.

  As a matter of fact, there are positively more content types than the 'breaking news' and the typical curated list, as much as there are a lot more ways to look at a curated set of information items beyond the habitual following of a linear vertical sequence.

  In this article I lightly explore some of the reasons why I expect an explosion in content curated delivery formats, and then provide an extended list of both existing and new, emerging curated content delivery formats, that I expect you will start to see and use more frequently in the near future.

  Here is what I see:
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Is there a problem?

  

  While there has recently been an explosion of content curation tools , 95% of them, deliver your curated collections as a linear stream of news or a typical top-to-bottom list of content items.

  Some of these new curation tools output content as a newspaper page, others in a magazine-like format, others as lists, with most delivery formats grouped around the generation of page dense of titles and links. Little or no options, besides changing the number of columns, fonts, the background or layout colors are available to the new curators when it comes to selecting an appropriate delivery format for their high-value hand-picked content.

  In other words, new content curation tools offer little or no features or options to help you highlight specific items or groups in your sets, nor tools to aide you in selecting the visual approach / design layout that could be most appropriate for the effective delivery of your curated collection.

  How about 'navigating' a curated collection? Are you offered options and alternatives that would help your readers explore and discover valuable items in your collection more easily?

  Oh yeah, you can sort and move around curated items in a few of these tools, a few have a small set of design templates to play with, but the overall visual paradigm through which the curated content is served, is basically always the same: A linear sequence of information items caged inside a newspaper, magazine-like or vertical list metaphor.

  The great opportunity for curation startups is in providing added value, features and premium options that would allow curators to choose and customize the delivery format of their 'curated' content collections in ways that would enhance readers ability to explore, browse and make sense of what is being accessed.

  This is why I anticipate that developers of curation tools will soon start paying much greater attention to exploring and designing new curation delivery formats beyond the popular newspaper-magazine feed we see most everywhere.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Alternative Views

  

  Curated content collections do not need to be confined to the two-dimensional print-legacy of newspapers and magazines.

  The digital space provides so many more available dimensions, that it would be a pity not to put them to better use.

  For example, a simple consideration I want to make is relative to the fact that readers, rather than publishers of curated collections, could be the ones that could be placed in the position of choosing the type of visual metaphor through which they would prefer to navigate and explore any kind of 'curated' information space.

  Do I want to use an horizontal scrollable timeline (see Memolane) or a fancy and zoomable iPad-like magazine or flipbook, or do I prefer a slideshow (Qwiki and Storify) rather than a visually navigable and zoomable mindmap a-la-(Pearltrees or like I often do with Mindmeister)?

  It would be lovely if my readers could choose.

  Or take 'faceted search'. Couldn't this be one of the new ways of delivering a curated set of information units?
  If you have never heard about it, faceted classification of information units allows 'the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in multiple ways, rather than in a single, predetermined, taxonomic order.

  ...for example, a collection of books might be classified using an author facet, a subject facet, a date facet, etc.' (Source: Wikipedia)

  Kipcast, a company who has been a pioneering leader in the real-time automated news curation space, is making some notable progress in this direction by working on multiple fronts to gather and interlink related information items inside large information streams. See the Toronto Inside Chronicle beta for an idea of what is to come on this front by exploring the tags inside specific news stories pages.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  The Opportunity

  

  The scope of curation work, can be seen as somewhat similar to the one of an artist: helping you discover what is not self-evident, obvious, accepted. The artist highlights unique elements in his artwork and shows familiar things from a new perspective. SHe guides you in seeing things through a new light.

  Curators have much affinity with some of these traits, and as soon as there will be more content curators outside of the news area, the need to utilize different and more effective curated delivery formats will be felt more intensely.

  Such curators do not need to pick and choose from the stream of a multitude of news sources what to put in their curated newsradars, but rather need to create finite 'bundles' or 'collections' of content items around a specific topic or theme, unbound from chronological, time-bound, sequential linear displays.

  Take for example the need to curate the best and most interesting written pieces of content that exist already on a certain topic to create some kind of an introductory digest-guide to it. How do I go about curating this collection in a meaningful format?

  An infographic? A map? A diagram?

  A mindmap may bring the best of all these three formats into one. A mindmap in fact allows me to group inside a small visual space a lot of information, as well as some of the relationships between the items in my collection. A mindmap also allows me to zoom in and out of information items and, in some cases, to add links and multimedia objects, such as images, maps or videos to each information node.

  But mindmaps, as they work now, are badly conceived to do this kind of work.

  I have tried to bend them to this need and to awaken those making them to look with more interest in this direction, but with no positive results so far.

  This is where the opportunity is.

  Making visual communication tools, such as mindmaps for example, serve as new curated content delivery formats, by integrating features that would specifically support both the curator's gathering and organizing tasks, the social-collaborative aspect, as well as the navigational and discovery features for the reader-viewer.

  Curators crave for the ability to search, collect, clip and edit content way before thinking about how they are going to organize it and deliver it. So this is an important aspect of any curation tool, and one that makes most mindmapping tools yet not mature for this task.

  ...but they are, like some other curation tools, getting closer... and this is where the opportunity is.

  Visual communication tools, like mindmaps or presentation tools, do not see themselves yet as potential vehicles for curation work, while on the other side, curation tools have not yet understood the potential of utilizing highly visual delivery formats as a key competitive edge in their future development path.

  P.S.: In strict theory, Google could be the one company whose mission and market perception could gain a tremendous boost from launching a service that helps its users organize and curate information and content sources in effective and useful ways. As a matter of fact, it has already developed several parts of this puzzle (Google Search, Google Books, Google bookmarks, Google lists, Google Maps, YouTube lists, G+, etc.) and I would not exclude the possibility that Google may indeed surface soon such a system.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  The Expanding Universe of Curated Content Delivery Formats

  To help you see and explore what I am envisioning, I have spent some time exploring - beyond what I have already done here - the many different existing content curation formats as well as some of the possible new ones.

  Here below, I have listed some of the most popular content delivery formats, alongside some of thse that I think will be the new and emerging ones. I hope this list can serve as a starting inspiration point for anyone involved in exploring how to deliver curated content in more effective ways.
  

  1. Curated News Portal

     

     An aggregated information / news web site sourcing and curating stories from many different sites.

     (Alltop, Techmeme, HuffPost, etc.)

  
  
  

  2. Newsradar - River of News

     

     A linear, chronologically ordered, curated news digest on a specific topic.

     (Techmeme, see also some of my curated news channels on Scoop.it)

  
  
  

  3. Superguide

     

     A curated selection / collection of best content on a specific topic from various authors - sources.

     (Smashingmagazine - Responsive Web Design Tehniques, Tools and Design Strategies has many of these)

  
  
  

  4. Directory of Tools / Services

     

     A curated list of tool / services with basic information about each one.

     (RSSTop55, Free Images Resources, Best Online Collaboration Tools, Newsmaster Toolkit.
     Oneforty is an example of a tool to create such directories.)

  
  
  

  5. Mixtapes

     

     Curated collections of audio and music tracks, including compilations, thematic podcast channels and DJ mixes.

     (Check the MasterNewMedia's music playlist guide for tools that allow the creation of such mixtapes such as Jampri, check iTunes mixed DJ sets such as e.g.: Bria Project and the Deep House Cat Show), Dubster), check out also Huffduffer as a great tool to curate different podcasts into a channel.)

  
  
  

  6. Twitter Lists of People

     

     Curated lists of individuals having a Twitter account and characterized by a common interest or skill.
     (Listorious)

  
  
  

  7. Curated Video Channels

     

     Hand-made selections of video clips ordered and sequenced into a specific video channel or compilation.

     (Shortform, Magnify, YouTube Playlist)

  
  
  

  8. Web Pages Showcase

     

     Sequence of hand-selected web pages on a specific topic.

     (Diigo and Pearltrees)

  
  
  

  9. Visual Maps of Industry Tools

     

     A visual mindmap identifying - through different groups - the best online collaboration tools available today.

     (Best Online Collaboration Tools) - Nonetheless the difficulties of navigating such a map, it still offers some advantages over traditional linear lists. In case you want to see another very rich industry tools map, check out the newsmaster toolkit map covering all kinds of curation tools and services too.

  
  
  

  10. Comparison Review Tables

      

      Scrollable and embeddable table of comparison for tools of all kinds.

      (Socialcompare)

  
  
  

  11. Collaborative Toolkits

      

      Lists of tools, products or services created and curated collaboratively by multiple authors.

      (Oneforty - now Hubspot)

      
      
      

  12. Curated App-sets, Suites, Packs and Toolkits

      

      These are curated collections of plugins, portable apps, or other software tools, pre-selected and packaged for a specific need or use.

      (Even Wikipedia recognizes this specific groups of curated bundles of apps and lists a few of the best ones. Popular ones include: AccessApps, Ceedo, MojoPac, LiberKey, PortableApps.com, U3, WebLaminarTools, WinPenPack. Such bundles can also include software tools for specific uses such as conversion and decoding codecs for audio-video applications like the Downloadable video-audio Codec Megapack or the many others you can find at Free-Codecs

      Also of interest are new mobile apps that offer a curated 'visual map' of relevant and similar apps on any topic like: Discovr Music, Discovr Apps and other tools from Discovr Info )

  
  
  

  13. Multimedia Digital Magazines

      

      A magazine-like format giving emphasis to images and titles over content. Easy to browse and scan.

      (Montage, Flipboard, Paper.li, Scoop.it)

  
  
  

  14. Curated Report Pages - News Story Page

      

      These include special online magazine or newspaper pages where multiple investigative articles, reports, video clips and other information is organized together under a specific topic.

      (Le Inchieste di Repubblica)

  
  
  

  15. Visual Itineraries

      

      Curated visual maps and itineraries offering unique, personalized approaches to explore a certain travel interest or travel need.

      (Google Map Maker, Tripline, MapBox, MapBuilder)

  
  
  

  16. Curated Slideshows

      

      Curated collections of tweets or news stories delivered as a sequence of slides.

      (Like Storify or Qwiki)

  
  
  

  17. (Animated) Data Maps

      

      Data charts providing the ability to see data overlaid on maps, and / or being animated over time

      (Google Data Public Data Visualization Tools, Public Data Explorer, Google Chart Tools.

      Also interesting: Google Fusion Tables, IBM Many Eyes)

  
  
  

  18. Curated Guides - Learning Sites

      

      Similar to custom-created textbooks, these are sites that focus on curating and organizing taccess to the very best courses and tutorials for a specific industry, topic or application.

      (Lynda.com - Please suggest other relevant examples)

  
  
  

  19. Visual Timelines

      

      Collect an organize images and notes along a visual timeline.

      (Memolane)

  
  
  

  20. Teacher Curated Textbooks

      

      The time for what SafariU from O'Reilly tried to do over 6 years ago has probably come. Tools will allow teachers to curate and put together their own custom textbooks using the best and most relevant content already available out there.

      (DynamicBooks, FlatWorldKnowledge MIYO, Flexbooks)
      

  
  
  

  21. Curated Color Palettes

      

      Curated color palettes and swatches.

      (Adobe Kuler)

  
  
  

  22. Curated Films

      

      A film or movie created by curating user-contributions (crowdsourced) on a specific topic or theme.

      (YouTube Life in a Day)

  
  
  

  23. Live Video Curation / Live Music Curation

      

      Live platforms allowing to 'curate' live, like a DJ does, music or video selections.

      (Turntable.fm, Chill VJ set)
      

  
  
  

  24. Summarized Open Questions

      

      A synthesized overview of multiple answers provided in an open forum or Q&A site.

      (Quora example)

  
  
  

  25. Curated Social Books

      

      A book created by aggregating / curating personal social content posted online.

      (Picplum, TweetBookz, Facebook Books: 7 Ways To Print Your Social Media Memories)

  
  
  

  26. Curated Infographics

      

      A 'curated' collection of infographics, created by picking and organizing different types of information and organizing them into a custom visual, or by bringing together related infographics to get a bigger picture of a specific topic.

      (CVgram is a supercool curated infographic service capable of generating a custom curated infographic of your professional profile.

      Daytum allows you to curate an create infographics out of any data you have.

      These instead are some good 'curated' infographics collections: Awesome LinkedIn Infographics, 35 Cool Infographics for Web and Graphic Designers, SEOMoz Essential SEO Infographics
      

  )

  
  
  

  27. Curated Visual Compositions and Galleries

      

      These are visually galleries and image pinboards where curators can organize, manage and publish visual sets around a specific topic or theme.

      (Polyvore, Pinterest, GimmeBar, Imagespark)

  
  
  

  28. Curated Search Channels

      

      Curated search engines and channels do not rely exclusively on software algorithms but make large use of user-driven selections and preferences.

      (Blekko, Kikaros)

  
  
  

  29. Curated Books

      

      The idea is not new, but the time has come now for it to become a viable reality. Anyone can put together a new book by utilizing licensed content from other sources and authors and organizing and formatting in completely new ways.

      (BookRiff, Blurb)

  
  
  

  30. Curated Calendars

      

      A curated set of events on a specific topic or theme, organized on an easily to navigate visual calendar.
      (no tools yet available - please suggest)

  
  
  

  31. Curated Offers and Coupons

      

      This just came to mind as I was about to close this article. I have not seen this one yet, out there in the 'wild', but I surely have no doubt that this will be another good one very soon.

      (Appsumo, Startups)

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Conclusions

  New curated content delivery formats are rapidly emerging to support the increasing demand for collecting, organizing and republishing-sharing information collections of all kinds.

  Due to rapid surge in the amount of information available under all forms, from news stories, to photos, videos, reports and scientific info, it is only inevitable that new roles and tools will emerge to help us filter, organize, and make sense of all this information available to us.

  If you are a web publisher or author, I suggest you familiarize yourself with these new curated content formats as well as experimenting and introducing new ones.

  If you are a startup or a company developing visual communication services or tools to help people curate content and information of all kinds, I recommend you strive toward trying to integrate features that allow the delivery of such curated content collections in new and effective ways, by taking inspiration from the samples I have listed above.

  The above are some of the reasons why I expect a blossoming of new and innovative curated delivery formats, allowing a much broader application of the curator skills to many more content contexts beyond the typical curated news or link digest.

  
  
  
  
  
  Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on September 5th 2011 as 'Curated Content Delivery Formats: Beyond News Portals and Magazines'.

  
  
  Photo credits:
  What is the problem? - Aliaksei Lakamkin
  The Opportunity - Leli456
  Collaborative Toolkits - Aha-Soft
  Curated Report Pages - News Story Page - Carl Wood
  Visual timeline of events - I Love Free Software
  Other Icons - Icon Finder

• Web Design: The Emergence Of Page Apps
  

  A web designer creates beautiful layouts for the web content of his customer. The customer is happy at first, but as he grows more knowledgeable about the web and its possibilities, he starts asking new layout changes, integration of new features and more.

  
  Photo credit: Peshkova

  What happens next is that the designer grows angry to the customer instead of rejoycing for the new work, knowing that changes and adjustments are more of a pain in the ass than an opportunity for extra revenue.

  At the same time the customer slowly develops a feeling of frustration and imprisonement by having to depend so much on his web designer / agency to get what he wants.

  So, everyone loses in this equation.

  But then, how can the typical freelance web designer or small web agency scale itself if the complexity of the technology behind a web site then binds them to the customer for any little change or request?

  Small clients in turn, need to operate rapidly and independently and do not enjoy at all the idea of having to depend on someone else to make changes or improvements to their web site. Worse than this, they don't expect and don't easily accept the idea of having to pay extra money to get these small changes done.

  It's really a negative vicious loop.

  How can it be solved?

  Read on and see what I think is about to happen.
  

  
  
  

  What Is the Problem?

  

  Web designers can do less and less, while being stretched way too thin by their customer requests, so much so that the idea of having more customers becomes many times a dreaded problem.

  The paradox is that while many a web designer are more than 'willing' to help out his / her many customers with their small requests, on the other hand, accepting to work on these many little changes and revisions prevents them from being able to accept and handle new design work, which is the one that 'pays'.

  Customers grow frustrated and unsatisfied with their inability to control, modify and edit their own web sites, 'just in the time'.

  Even technically-savvy customers grow frustrated as well, because even though they can make adjustments themselves, they often result in less then optimally designed and usable results.

  It is a vicious loop that slowly kills the web designer and his passion, while leaving often a customer frustrated and unsatisfied of his inability to modify and improve independently his own web site.

  This is the problem.

  Web designers do not want to succumb under hundreds of small technical requests and their customers need to be able to create 'professionally designed' web sites, without having to depend constantly on them to maintain and edit them.

  How can this problem be solved?

  It may actually be that the solution is already well underway.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  What Is The Real Need?

  

  Let me step back for a second and analyze more specifically what the actual need of the user-customer really is.

  The problem-need of the user-customer / web publisher is the one of being able to create, and then then update / modify / review, specific content-application formats on his web site.

  He may have a home page, a landing page to sell a product, a subscription page, or a directory of services he maintains. There may be a small shop, a newsradar or even a blog. The list could go on extensively.

  The point is that most professional web publishers and entrepreneurs will want not just a container for text, or a simple blog, but something which integrates, several different content functionalities / formats and which looks outright 'professional', 'slick', 'usable' and 'user-friendly'.

  While the functionality part may be satisfied in many cases by the vast number of plugins, and add-ons for web sites and blogs available online, the simple addition / integration of these is not without pain and it often results in a 'patched-up' solution, where you can see that many new elements have been added without having been designed to be together.

  Even the many templates galleries available on the Web do not provide a solution to this issue, as the vast majority of them provide a pretty standardized approach to web site design, mostly based on blogs and traditional web site architectures. The functionalities provided in these templates are limited to providing the basic building blocks to integrate any video, audio, text, image or feed into a page, but much less on providing specific in-page functionalities, devoted to take on specific 'value creation' tasks.

  Let me give you again some examples of such type of 'page-apps', as I would tentatively call them:

  • Download PDF page with subscription/squeeze functionality
  • Sales / Landing page for new product or service
  • Catalog - Showcase page
  • News and feeds page on a specific topic
  • Infographic
  • Step-by-Step Tutorial
  • Gallery of interviews
  • Catalog of special custom itineraries
  • A Manifesto-declaration page
  • Job exchange service
  • News radar magazine and so on...

  These are in my opinion, just a small sample of the type of content value components that individuals and companies operating on the web are increasingly demanding.

  These individuals want better tools to produce 'professionally looking' valuable content, without needing to keep a web designer on their payroll and without needing to call the webmaster every time they want to make some little change.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Existing Solutions

  

  The available solutions today, do go beyond standard web site templates, but without solving the issue. The possible alternatives to design a web site without using a web designer today include:

  a) Templates Themes (see my Top40 Templates Design Galleries map)

  d) Blog platforms

  c) Web site builders

  d) CSS Design Frameworks
  

  Each one of these alternatives, provides some unique specific advantages, but as I have pointed out, none really solves the issue. Let's look at each one and see why:
  
  
  

  • a) Templates
    Existing design templates tend to be very standardized and supported functionalities are limited to providing the basic building blocks to integrate any video, audio, text, image or feed into a page, but much less on providing specific functionalities and in-page 'value creation' tasks.

  
  
  

  • b) Blog Platforms
    Tools like WordPress are a great solution and act as powerful enablers for all those who have some technical skill and who enjoy tweaking configuration files, learning new software and in general dealing with technical aspect of things. If you are not so technically-inclined, these consumer-CMS tools like Wordpress and its competitors, do not really provide a solution, as they demand competence in areas that have nothing to do with actual communication, the presentation of information or the delivery and packaging of it.

    As a matter of fact, even those who command such technical skills and choose to use one of these consumer CMS do then need to rely on some 'design template' to give a professional appearance to their online communication vehicle.

  
  
  

  • c) Web Site Builders
    Limitations of existing web site builders is that, in general they tend offer a lot of easy to use tools to build rapidly and at very low cost a web site at the expense of providing a) good quality designs that can be easily customized, b) support for specific needs and functionalities that go beyond basic article publishing.

  
  
  

  • d) Frameworks
    Frameworks, such as ...... are super-powerful tools that simplify the work of the web designer in preparing and modifying web site layouts. Unfortunately, the complexity, technicalities and knowledge required to use these tools effectively, makes them uninteresting for the average web site publisher, who would need a course about DIVs, CSS and HTML5 before being able to take full advantage of these.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  What We Actually Need

  

  What I think is needed is a new breed of tools and services that allows entrepreneurs, marketers and web publishers of all kinds to easily customize, pre-set, 'intelligent' design, which go beyond the aesthetics of creating a neat home page or article layout and into providing a very specific function.

  If web designers can invest their time into 'virtualizing' their skills into sets of functional templates / apps for very specific needs, then they can also provide, rent out or sell the tools, assistance or know-how required to edit and maintain them independently.

  In other words: designers should gradually become creators of design tools that 'enable' non-designers to produce effective solutions and to make them in turn distributors of design knowledge and skills to those that do not have it.

  Designers need to express higher-value through their skills while being able to scale themselves.

  That is: the publishing-communication tool without the design component is worth nothing. We need both the function and the design. Integrated into one.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  From Static Content Pages To Page-Apps

  

  Today, the name of the game for who wants to be effective in communicating and marketing online is engagement. To get your message across or to get people to support your cause you need to engage them. To have them discuss, to have them provide you feedback and ideas, to have them act as your best marketing agents, you need to engage them.

  This is why going beyond the traditional blog post or the basic article approach is so critical in today online ecosystem.

  Readers are looking for unique, high-value experiences, and especially for those where, beyond informing or entertaining themselves lightly, they can also contribute, share, participate deeply.

  
  
  
  
  
  

  The Emergence of App-Pages

  The good news, is that such new breed, as I would call it, of page-apps is already out there.

  In essence, 'page-apps' are web services or software tools designed to provide entrepreneurs, business people and web publishers with the ability to add, design, modify and integrate new content and web site functionalities, without ever needing to sacrifice on quality, precision, and without needing to hire a designer and a webmaster to do it specifically for them.

  To best describe such page-apps it would be good again to refer to the shortlist of web site building tools I have mentioned above, as these new apps combine some of the unique traits and features of:

  1. Templates
  2. Website builders
  3. CSS Design Frameworks

  while adding the characteristics of:

  4. Content Wizards
  5. Interactive Visual Canvases
  6. Specific Application Use

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Characterizing Traits of Page-Apps

  

  These new emerging page-apps are recognizable by these traits:

  1. Do not require coding or tech knowledge beyond knowing a URL or an RSS feed
  2. Are very easy to use
  3. Are simple and intuitive
  4. Do not require manuals or tutorials to be used
  5. Work as simple wizards or fill-in-the-blank forms
  6. Can leverage both fresh new content uploaded as well as existing published content
  7. Integrate 'design' intelligence across their features
     - Integrated design intelligence means that the user-customer can do no harm.
     - Integrated design intelligence means that the user can select and personalize within pre-established boundaries
  8. Provide professional-looking base designs to start
  9. Provide user-independent editing and customization
  10. Can be easily integrated into existing web sites

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Examples of Page-Apps

  

  Many of the 'Profile Page' services provide what I would consider a page-app. Here a few:
  Flavors.me
  About.me

  Curation tools are a good example of page-apps that have a very specific function and which, in some cases, start to show some integrated design intelligence.
  Scoop.it
  Montage
  Webdoc

  Custom landing page builders, squeeze page and video-squeeze page building systems:
  Here is a reference map pinpointing some of the tools in this space.

  But there are tons of examples in all possible areas:
  FAQme
  Postano
  Kajabi

  Here are some web site design tools made for designers which are already moving in the right direction:
  Map of custom application builders.

  Tools and services to create elegant photographer or web designer portfolios.

  Shopping and e-commerce examples:
  Godsie
  MadeFreshly www.madefreshly.com
  Blomming

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Benefits

  

  Benefits to Designers - Developers

  The benefits to designers is the ability to scale themselves by 'virtualizing' their design skills and providing a much greater number of individuals with the ability to use and create professional designs.

  Designers get also the opportunity to move beyond static, aesthetically pleasing designs into functional designs that allow their customers to go beyond average content publishing chores and into specific value creation offerings. While this may be considered a challenge and not a benefit, it offers designers the opportunity to build a reputation not based just on design skills but on their application to specific uses, applications and profiles/targets.

  Further such tools and services free up designers from having to constantly assist customers for small changes and refinements while providing them with the opportunity to reserve their extra energies to share and divulge their design skills to their fans and customers.

  
  
  

  Benefits to End Users

  End users benefit from these new custom designed web apps by having access to 'functional' and 'professionally-looking' components that allow them to provide real value to their readers and potential customers beyond the typical articles, news and blog posts.

  End users benefit by having the ability to edit and update this content value modules independently without needing to resort to a web designer or to a webmaster and therefore saving time and money to their operations.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Conclusions

  

  I have a very strong feeling. The CMS and publishing tools we have been using over the last 10 years or so, are about to give way to a new breed of communication tools.

  These new publishing instruments and tools will differentiate themselves from the traditional CMS and blog publishing platforms by allowing non-technical individuals and non-designers to create professionally-looking content-pages-with-functionalities for their web sites.

  Specifically these new publishing tools:

  1) will integrate a muh higher level of design 'intelligence' making virtually impossible for authors and publishers to create amateurish layouts and compositions.

  2) will provide the ability not to be just'content containers' but to utilized for interacting and providing a specific function, app or service to the user such as showcasing a gallery of images, displaying a directory of services or tools, comparing different softwares, curating a thematic newsradar, and so on.

  3) will be easy to use, highly interactive, will contain many great presets, and will be economically accessible to most web and mobile publishers.

  
  
  In more general terms:

  a) We can't expect web publishing tools, however sophisticated, to solve all of our problems as such tools are not aware of our objectives, nor of the type of message we are trying to communicate.

  b) A web publishing platform / tool without integrated design 'intelligence' is worth nothing. We need both the function and the design 'intelligence'.

  c) Design-wise, we are improvising too much, and relying excessively on highly expensive designers and web agencies, instead of realizing the importance of building new publishing tools that integrated both design intelligence and valuable functionality. (Considering also that this would be also a huge opportunity for web designers and agencies to scale themselves and increase their revenues).

  d) The goal is to innovate and improve; not to repeat the print media approach on the web. If this is a medium that does not require readers to stay passive and read only, let's start building the tools that will empower publishers to do so, while freeing them from web designers enslavement and allowing them to produce stunning results.

  
  
  Suggested reading: The CMS Is Broken by Erik Hinton

  
  
  
  
  Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on July 26th 2011 as 'Web Design: The Emergence Of Page Apps'

  Photo credits:
  What Is the Problem? - Cyril Hou
  What Is The Real Need? - tomeng
  What We Actually Need - Vacuum3D
  From Static Content Pages To Page-Apps - AmbientIdeas
  Characterizing Traits of Page-Apps - Davide Guglielmo
  Examples of Page-Apps - Michelle Gibson
  Benefits - Stephen Aaron Rees

• The Complete Guide To The Social Media Exchange: Empire Avenue - Part 2
  

  Is Empire Avenue just a fad? Is EAv just another social network and maybe a fascinating new type of news reader (like Robert Scoble writes), or is it really - like I think - a whole new ball game?

  
  Photo credit: JGraphic, Empire Avenue, mashed by Robin Good

  And assuming one wants to start playing it, what are the best strategies and approaches to make it work?

  In this second part of my Complete Guide to Empire Avenue (Part 1) I have brought together some of the best resources, videos, articles and tools, that I would recommend you to look at if you want to get good at EAv.

  Find out:

  • Will It Take Off or Is It a Fad?
  • Who Can Play
  • How to Start Playing
  • How to Make Good Investments Inside EAv
  • Valuable Reading Resources on EAv
  • Recommended Facebook Groups and Pages
  • EAv Tools: Plugins, Extensions, Software

  Find out more about this new fascinating universe, at the crossroad between social media analytics, social network marketing and cooperative online gaming.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Will It Take Off or Is It a Fad?

  

  Before deciding whether or not you will invest time into Empire Avenue, I guess you may be wondering whether my excitement and passion for it may not just be the fruit of my love for new technology toys and ego-stroking game mechanics.

  And you would be right in doing so. Given the shrinking amount of free time we are faced within our daily activities, any new addition, especially if of the game kind, should truly provide some tangible enjoyment, the opportunity to learn something valuable and to gradually build new relationships.

  My personal impression, after having played now for just over a month, is that EAv is a truly valuable and highly innovative mix of gaming, social networking and stock market mechanics. In my experience EAv does provide enjoyment, learning and social networking benefits well beyond what I have seen elsewhere online.

  I don't have a crystal ball, nor I am an official analyst for this industry sector but, while I may be certainly wrong on this, I have developed a strong sense that EAv is unlike the typical game for many reasons. EAv introduces the online public for the first time into a realm where the physically real influences the virtual and vice versa.

  This is a game in which winning is a highly collaborative effort, and where adopting low-level game tactics does not pay back over the long run.

  The key factor - and again I may not see this properly - in my humble opinion, that sets Empire Avenue completely apart from any other gaming and social networking experience I have been exposed to until now, is the fact that unless you truly master the art /science of helping, supporting and cooperating with others toward a mutually beneficial growth, you are doomed.

  Solo plays for the sake of having the highest stock value or dividends accrue much less overall return to those who play them, as this game provides so much more than the score or dividends you are able to rack up.

  At least, this is what I see.

  Given the many different opinions that exist on EAv, I think that the best think you can do to find out who is really right, is either to play it now or to wait a year and half and see what happens to it.

  Here, some interesting EAv mentions, thoughts and comments, which may help you further understand what this game is all about.

  
  
  

  'The stock market aspect is a window dressing gimmick, to what could become a very valuable introduction to this diverse ecosystem of players and thinkers.

  Whether we are able to get past the window dressing and wander in to a rich store of relationships, thought leadership, collaborative learning, and more... well, that depends first on where the EA designers, strategists, and engineers are currently investing their resources and talents...

  and then it will depend on how many of us are willing to stop playing the popularity game and return to focusing on the development of selective and truly rewarding relationships... just like in the 'real' world!'

  Source: Nicholas de Wolff on Quora

  
  
  

  'Empire Avenue's getting traction I think because it has the potential to create a kind of contribution economy built out of social connectivity.

  A contribution economy is the evolutionary 'next step' in terms of investment effectiveness and efficiency and reliable return.

  It plays to the valuing of information flows as opposed to stocks, so in that sense EA has latched onto something very significant.

  We're beginning to appreciate that there is an intangible asset value in highly connected and influential people and businesses.

  As this becomes increasingly obvious, we can see that people and brands that are liked and that create social dialogue possess above average worth within in a network.

  It makes a lot of sense for Empire Avenue to create a fun and enterprising way to mine this.

  Just because it's fun doesn't mean it's entirely trivial.'

  Source: Anne-McCrossan on Quora

  
  
  

  'While it's easy to compare to Facebook games like Farmville, EA is different in that it lets you continue growing in value without visiting the site.

  Just keep active on your social networks and your share price slowly goes up.

  This is nice for people who don't want to get consumed by the buying and selling portion of the game, but dangerous for EA if they want to keep people engaged and coming back.

  Casual people will check every few weeks or so, or just forget about it completely. If your EA value can get constant visibility the way Klout does, then there'll be a lot more long term interest.'

  Source: Jay Baron on Quora

  
  
  

  'I've been on EA for almost a year now and seen it grow from a niche community to this point where it's gaining some sort of traction.

  What I take away from EA is that the game element is almost secondary compared to the great networking value the site provides.

  I've met a lot of like-minded individuals and peers from my profession apart from others who share common interests. THIS is what makes the game exciting and imho will make it a success.'

  Source: Yashvir Dalaya on Quora

  
  
  

  'There are many reasons to like Empire Avenue but I also have some concerns. I?m not crazy about the 'shop' as part of the monetization strategy... yet (but I understand you have to pay the bills, and I?m sure servers aren?t cheap). My thoughts are that EA should be focusing on building their user base first and the money will typically follow.'

  Source: 5 Reasons Why Avenue Empire Could Be the Next Big Thing in Social Media (part 2)