Robin Good: Algorithms as Glue Between Content, Data, and Insight

IO Tools
Robin Good
Robin Good

Algorithms as Glue Between Content, Data, and Insight

Lutz Finger, reports from SxSW on the topic of algorithms, curation and the future, as the skills of content creators, data analysts and code programmers are seemingly converging for the first time.

Among others, he reports Steve Rosenbaum (founder of Magnify.net) significant own words at SxSW: “a wise combination of human judgement enabled by algorithms will become the new king of content.

But while there are great new tools, startups and ideas leveraging the great potential of big data and human curation, there is a big, invisible danger, still looming on us.

The danger is that any algorithm might fall prey to someone trying to influence it.

This might be the ones programming the algorithm or the users. We for instance saw governments trying to skew algorithms by introducing fake online personas (Learn more about the US government persona-management software).

But the biggest and realest danger lies in us.

If we believe that there is only one truth and that is the one generated by a black-box algorithm we might be deceived easily.

Continue reading “Robin Good: Algorithms as Glue Between Content, Data, and Insight”

Nik Peachey: NowComment Tool Turns Documents Into Conversations

IO Tools
Nik Peachey
Nik Peachey

This looks like another useful tool for creating flipped learning.

NowComment makes it easy to have rich, engaging discussions of online documents no matter how large (or small) your class or collaboration group.

  • NowComment is fast, powerful, and feature-rich: you can sort comments, skim summaries, create assignments, hide comments, reply privately, and much more
  • It's free, a project of public interest group Fairness.com LLC. Take 60 seconds to get an account now!

Learn more.

Berto Jongman: IO Tool for Public Records – Scout

IO Tools
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Transparency Tip: Scouring Public Records with Scout

If you do any kind of shopping online, then you’re probably already familiar with the concept of a metasearch engine—a search engine that searches other search engines. When you’re looking for airline tickets or a used copy of The King in Yellow, you might use a metasearch engine to find out which online retailer is offering the best price.

There is also a metasearch for public records: Scout. Created and lovingly maintained by the Sunlight Foundation, Scout will take a search query and run it through six different continually updated databases of documents. The site also allows you to create email and RSS alerts and track search terms and legislation through a user account.

EFF currently maintains a public page that tracks NSA reform, including congressional bills and speeches, official notices, and court opinions. You can visit it to see current reform efforts and subscribe to our alerts.

Read full article.

Robin Good: Content Curation Has Been Hijacked by Content Marketing Evil-Doers

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, IO Tools
Robin Good
Robin Good

Content Curation Has Been Hijacked by Content Marketing

Curation adds value. Marketing does not add value.

Many content curation startups, and many of the people using curation tools will probably not like what I have written in this article, but I have a hard time behaving as if I couldn't see a cardboard façade that's been sold for a real destination.

Content Curation has been hijacked and has been sold as a cheap and easy solution for content marketers plagued by the growing problem of getting greater attention from their readers and therefore of how to produce more quality content within tighter and tighter time constraints.

The façade is the promotion of the idea that by “adopting” content curation tools and “techniques” (like picking, selecting and showcasing “best of content” to others) you can actually rapidly gain the same benefits and rewards that true, highly reputable curators and experts in any field have conquered after years of hard work.

Continue reading “Robin Good: Content Curation Has Been Hijacked by Content Marketing Evil-Doers”

Nik Peachey: Marginnote for PDF Documents

IO Tools
Nik Peachey
Nik Peachey

Marginnote – for making notes on PDF readings

This looks like a really useful study tool for working on PDF documents, especially the ability to organise notes with mind maps.

The notes in the visible margin

Other productivity apps don’t let users see their notes and their main document text at the same time, However, MarginNote Reader is totally different and completely better! Now, users can see their notes and main document text all at once, without having to deal with distracting or annoying pop-ups. It’s a fundamentally more intuitive and productive way to get anything done, whether at school or at work.

Organize notes by outline & mindmap

MarginNote Reader also eliminates the need for users to lug around heavy, bulky textbooks and notebooks. All of their data is ready for them in one place, and users can organize and reorganize their notes with the swipe of a finger! This ease- of-use is one key difference between MarginNote and other note apps.

Other key MarginNote special features

Seamless syncing with Evernote.The power to organize notes by outline and mindmap integration.The ability to create outlines of important note files, in order to easily and quickly find specific points without having to scroll through their entire document. The option to export markup and notes in print-ready format. The capacity to store notes on the iPad or in the Cloud.

Learn more.

Robin Good: Tools for Kids to Curate Content on New Topics

IO Tools
Robin Good
Robin Good

Content Curation: How To Help Students Learn, Discover and Make Sense of New Topics All By Themselves

Here's a short first-hand report highlighting how an 8th grade social studies class teacher (Terri Inloes) has fully leveraged the content curation potential to let her students dive, discover and make sense of topics (in this case social reform movements) that they had not studied before. All by themselves.

Here the steps taken to make this happen:

a) By using the Question Formulation Technique, the teacher prepared pairs of photographs representing each of the reform movements, one picture dating back to the late 19th century, and another representing where that social reform movement stands in today’s society.

b) After checking out all of the photos, students settled on the pair of pictures that most caught their interest.

c) They brainstormed and refined a set of specific questions, and then shared their thinking with the class.

d) With the feedback received they selected the topic which they would curate.

Continue reading “Robin Good: Tools for Kids to Curate Content on New Topics”

Howard Rheingold: Streamtools – a Graphical Tool for Working with Streams of Data

IO Tools
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold

Introducing Streamtools: A Graphical Tool for Working with Streams of Data

New and open source from the New York Times R&D Lab

We see a moment coming when the collection of endless streams of data is commonplace. As this transition accelerates it is becoming increasingly apparent that our existing toolset for dealing with streams of data is lacking. Over the last 20 years we have invested heavily in tools that deal with tabulated data, from Excel, MySQL, and MATLAB to Hadoop, R, and Python+Numpy. These tools, when faced with a stream of never-ending data, fall short and diminish our creative potential.

In response to this shortfall we have created streamtools—a new, open source project by the New York Times R&D Lab which provides a general purpose, graphical tool for dealing with streams of data. It offers a vocabulary of operations that can be connected together to create live data processing systems without the need for programming or complicated infrastructure. These systems are assembled using a visual interface that affords both immediate understanding and live manipulation of the system.

Learn more.