Daily Magazine

Robin Good: CurationTraffic is a new WordPress plugin that allows anyone to curate a newsradar, a thematic channel or any other type of curated format directly from within Wordpress.

 

The first thing that stroke me about CurationTraffic is its output template similarity with Scoop.it own magazine format. Very close. See it here for example: http://www.youbrandinc.com/marketing-news/ ;

 

CurationTraffic utilizes a bookmarklet to allow the curator to pull in any content from any web page article, video or even pin. The curators dashboard resembles very much the typical Scoop.it editing panel, though there are now many tools and services using that very same approach. The CuratorTraffic dashboard has a few extra neat features from what you can find in Scoop.it including the ability to automatically integrate specific content you have pre-selected in an article, or the ability to post to multiple channels/sites at once.

Sharing functionalities have been integrated by utilizing providing a link to Hootsuite, AddThis and Pinterest from within your dashboard, and scheduling ones with a link to Buffer. Much more complex than Scoop.it but ingenious and - although more time consuming - effective.

 

CurationTraffic offers a lot more control in terms of design and customization of your final layout, by providing several base templates that can be further personalized to the last detail.

 

Very useful is the integration of custom modules in the basic templates that allow curators to integrate an email subscription form or specific promotions. Also effective and useful is the integration of both a topbar that is always visibile as you scroll through the page - and which can be customized any way you want - and a main menu, which is also completely customizable. 

 

By comparing it to Scoop.it, CurationTraffic has a few strong key advantages in its favor. These are:

- Your own platform, your own site, your own RSS

- Highly customizable design and look & feel

- Good backend editing dashboard

- One-time cost

- Publishes straight to WordPress

 

Scoop.it on the other hand maintains its leadership thanks to:

- Immediate search visibility, traffic and audience

- Advanced news discovery tools

- Integrated one-click social sharing and scheduling

- Cooler look and feel out of the box

- Community of curators

- Co-editors

 

Nonetheless the many advantages that Scoop.it offers I must admit that CurationTraffic appears to have many excellent features and an interesting business model that make it a serious content curation platform contender for those already using WordPress.

 

If you are willing to make some extra effort in finding and sharing content, already have an established audience and do not need the extra exposure that Scoop.it can give, then CurationTraffic may be a serious alternative to consider.

 

Pricing: $97 one time. 

 

More info: http://bit.ly/CurationTraffic ;
(note: the above is an affiliate link - I will get a commission if you decide to buy CurationTraffic - thanks for supporting my curation work)

Via Robin Good

Robin Good: Surfmark is a new content curation service introducing some innovative and forward-looking features.

 

Surfmark in fact provides not only standard capabilities to easily capture, collect and organize content from any web page, but it adds intelligently alternative display formats to allow the exploration of such collections in multiple ways.

 

Another key innovative feature of Surfmark is its ability to generate bibliographies and summaries of content collections.

 

Surfmark allows social collaborative curation, history of all edits made, and the ability to share publicly or keep a collection private.

 

Collections can be downloaded in PDF or text formats and all pages saved in a collection are fully preserved with all the formatting and links intact so that you can refer back to exactly what you saw. 

 

Free to use. 

 

FAQ: http://blog.surfmark.net/surfmark-help/ ;

 

Try out and more info: http://www.surfmark.com/ ;

 

(thanks to Ana Cristina Pratas for discovering this) 

Via Robin Good

Robin Good: If you are looking for a content curation, mindmapping and presentation tool rolled into one, I strongly suggest you give a good road test to Mindomo.

I have been a passionate fan of mindmaps since 2007, and have created tons of them to curate my many collection of "best tools" in specific niches or learning maps on dedicated topics. You can see some of them here: http://www.mindmeister.com/users/channel/RobinGood

 

But with time, and the increased size of my collections, I have been searching for valid alternatives which provided greater speed, better ways to display and view the mapped info and more options to extract value from my collections.

 

Mindomo, which I have been heavy-testing for the last six-months, is my new reference tool not just for mindmapping but for a) curating large collections of information into a navigable cohesive whole, b) creating prezi-like presentations without needing to become an engineer.

 

Specifically, Mindomo integrates lots of unique and very valuable features to the basic mindmapping toolset, including:

 

- Capture content via browser bookmarklet

- Navigate and zoom in-out easily

- Search and embed video clips
- Search and embed images

- Search and embed audio clips

- Automatically credit all media sources utilized

- Customize look of maps in many ways

- Create presentations from your mindmaps

- Import and export to different formats + embed

- Works and syncs on iPad and Android

- Collaborative editing

- Cross-platform offline desktop app

- Custom URLs for your mindmaps

- just to name a few.

 

Here's a good example of what I have been able to "curate" with Mindomo:

 

1) http://bit.ly/ContentCurationUniverse

a very large collection of content curation tools

 

2) www.mindomo.com/mindmap/content-curation-for-education-98ccaad217074a07b9bff8b76effab8e ;

a navigable "presentation-map"

 

MindMeister and other mindmapping tools still provide good value, but in my humble opinion Mindomo, with its own limits and idiosyncracies, has earned my trust as being the most effective, powerful and feature-rich visual curation tool.

 

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

 

 

Pricing plans: http://www.mindomo.com/pricing.htm

 

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

 

 

 

Via Robin Good

Handpick is a great new service which allows you to curate a set of selected links to send out each day/week to your favorite groups of fans.

 

Though the use of a simple browser bookmarklet you can easily pick and save all of the most interesting resources and then have them sent out to your relevant subscribers.

 

How it works: "When you find a link you want to share, you click it, and it pops up a simple form for a title, link, description and a checklist of recipient groups you've created.

 

When you click 'share,' it doesn't buzz all your friends' phones right away. It collects links for you all day and sends an email digest to each group in the evening."

 

"Recipients of your Handpick links only get one message, and it arrives late in the day, when there's more time for thinking.

 

You create groups of contacts using whatever criteria you choose, and each group gets one message around 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

 

It has support for desktop and iPhone browser bookmarklets, a Chrome extension, and it can link with Instapaper."

 

Read the full review from ReadWriteWeb here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/handpick_selective_social_sharing_without_the_nois.php 

 

Sing up for the beta here: http://handpick.me/ 

Via Robin Good, kostasgeorgioy