A new class of products called content curation tools has appeared in the highly volatile search service segment.
This edition of NetSpeak discusses yet another trend blooming in the cyberspace.
Current information retrieval tools can be broadly categorised in terms of tools based on computer search algorithms and the ones linked to human expertise. As you are aware, search engines (Google et al) belong to the former category.
Here the search index/database is populated by computer programs (crawlers) and in response to your keywords, based on a search algorithm, the search service displays a set of web pages, supposed to contain most relevant/authentic content.
This model can easily accommodate any kind of content explosion.
However, as the final search output is based on a set of rules, webmasters capable of mastering the fundamentals of a search engine's algorithm could cheat on the service easily and make his site rank better in the search results pack.
One natural alternative is to manually create a Web database with the help of knowledgeable people and organise its content into meaningful categories.
Web directories, subject gateways and the like are instances of products in this stream.
The obvious limitation of this model is its inability to keep up with the staggering growth of content.
Despite such inherent limitation, the human-powered information retrieval model still thrives and Net entrepreneurs regularly respond with new products based on this model.
In addition, the popularity of crowd based content creation has given a new lease of life to this model. The appearance of a variety of services incorporating the ‘crowd' component attests to this observation.
Bookmarking services
Popular social bookmarking services (such as Diigo), Twitter and the vast array of services based on it, Aardvark, that helps you seek advices from real experts spread across the globe ( > http://www.hindu.com/biz/2009/07/20/stories/2009072050071500.htm ), popular question and answer search engines (like Quora, discussed in the past) are some of the instances.
New tools
The latest class of products in this realm is known as content curation services.
Content curation involves a few tasks that include aggregation/manual filtering of content pertaining to a specific subject and making it easily available to public.
Like the curator of a museum the content curator scans for resources pertaining to a niche topic, filters out the high-quality ones and arranges them in an easily viewable fashion.
Of course, this is not a new concept. Subject gateways, topic-specific blogs, subject-specific tweets and the like are a few examples of curated content. In fact, in this parlance even NetSpeak qualifies to be a content curator.
Thanks to the sudden burst of new content curation tools, the concept of content curation is getting redefined.
Besides facilitating the curation process by offering feature packed tools, the new content curation services add a social dimension as well.
Now, let us have a quick look at some of the new tools in this segment.
Pearltrees
The curation platform ‘ >Pearltrees ' offers several tools that enable you to aggregate content pertaining to a topic of your choice and share it with others.
The aggregated content is displayed as a tree of pearls. Here, a pearl is nothing but a web page/document with text, audio, or video content. You can combine several pearls into a big pearl (like a folder with several files/sub-folders) and such a combination of one or more big pearls constitute a pearltree. The branches of this pearltree could represent different topics or sub-topics.
One advantage of Pearltrees is that you can view all the aggregated content in a single graphical window.
The pearltree created by you can be shared with others. Also, you can pick others' pearltrees as well.
To facilitate the content aggregation process Pearltrees offers browser extensions and bookmarklets too.
Specific to the subject
Apart from acting as another information retrieval tool, Pearltrees could be used in other ventures as well. For instance, a teacher can create a pearltree specific to the subject being taught in the class and distribute it by embedding it on her blog. Besides embedding it on a blog a pearltree can be shared via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and the like.
Another platform
Another curation platform tested by NetSpeak is >Scoop.it .
This tool allows you to create a separate page for each of the topics being curated.
You can populate the content either through Scoop.it's bookmarklet or directly from the site.
In addition, the service suggests content related to your topic by culling them from disparate sources such as Twitter and YouTube.
In case you are not content with the sources provided by Scoop.it, it lets you add new sources too. Several topic-specific pages are already available on this site (like this one on classic movies: > http://www.scoop.it/t/classic-movies ).
In addition to the ones discussed above several similar curation tools have appeared. Curated.by and >Keepstream etc are some of the tools vying to make a presence in this highly volatile segment.
Mind map
Mindmap technology helps us represent related concepts in a graphical fashion and this enables the students to comprehend/remember the concepts with ease. As mentioned in an earlier column the concept of mindmap or memory map is increasingly being used in many collaborative educational ventures( > https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article963720.ece).
>PhysicsMynd , a free e-learning service that attempts to incorporate ‘Mindmap' technology into their content stream is a good instance of this trend.
The service, which hosts valuable content on Physics (mainly for students appearing in the IIT entrance examination), has attempted to insert mindmaps along with some of its notes.
Although they have tried to use mindmap concept to enrich the content, it has ample scope for betterment.
He can be contacted at >jmurali@gmail.com
