I want to

Social media curation tool

I've been playing around with a thing called Kuratur which is another of the news curation tools. It's fairly simple - you start with a template and you click and drag widgets onto it, then edit them to show the content that you want. You can choose various themes and layouts for the page, and it's straightforward enough to populate your magazine. 

You can fiddle around with it for as long as you want, and you then preview it. You can add it to your blog if you use WordPress, but otherwise you can just give people the URL for it. Mine looks like this:

It's still in beta, so it's rough around the edges, but it's nice enough. 

JustBeamIt

File transfer made easy I couldn't see a limit on file size, but there's a 10 minute limit on collecting files, so it's best to try and use this one real time.

WeTransfer

Sending big files the easy way. The limit with this tool is 2 GB. Works as you'd expect - click and drag/drop files, add email addresses and you're done.

Free File Hosting - Online Storage; Upload Mp3, Videos, Music. Backup Files

A free account with Filedropper means that files are kept forever as long as they are being downloaded. If the files are not downloaded even once within 30 days consecutively they are removed. If you have a premium account your files are never deleted. Maximum file size is 5GB.

Transfer Big Files Free

Transferbigfiles is a nice looking resource that you can use without registration to transfer files between accounts. There's a limit of 100GB, which is a reasonable size, and the files disappear after 5 days, unless you take out a paid account.

Meograph: Four-dimensional storytelling

I've had a brief play around with an interesting resource called Meograph, which gives users the opportunity to plot out a time line, add in narration, images, video and links. I've done a very quick one on the American Civil War. It's a fun tool - simply add in the date, place, then write some narration and link to a picture or up to 15 seconds video. Then go onto the next event and repeat the process.

It wasn't bad, but it could have been better. I liked the ease of adding events, although trying to get the system to go to the correct place wasn't easy - it seemed to think that a specific battlefield in Virgina was in Latin America for example. It would have been better if I could have linked to a photogrpah on the web, rather than having to upload on, and I would also have liked the chance to link more than one photo/video clip to an event, although I suppose I could have added more events at the same time and place. It also only works currently in Chrome, although you can view using any browser.

I can see how this could be a great tool for children to use, but it needs to really work on the geographical plotting, and the editing wasn't clear or easy - I had one battle occurring after the war ended for example. While that was my error, I don't understand why or how I got it wrong. So - a really nice tool, badly let down by poor editing functions, and virtually no help.

Bring your passions to life! - Living Junction

via livingjunction.com

This is a tool that looks rather similar to Scoop.it, in that you can create your own magazine, with words, images, videos and so on fairly easily. It would be great to use in school projects, or to document a particular event such as a holiday. It says of itself:

Drag-and-drop your favorite rich media content to the pages of your magazine to bring the stories around your favorite topics alive. Each magazine comes with a set of social features which help to create micro communities around your favorite topics. The magazines you create can be private to you and your closest friends, or public and shared with a community of like-minded people.

Upload your favorite photos from your computer, grab them from your Facebook albums - or search for ones you need using the Bing image search. You can rotate, resize and add the kind of frames and shadows that fit your needs. You can make your magazines come to life by searching and embedding your favorite Youtube videos right in the Living Junction editor.

LiveNinja

LiveNinja is an interesting site. It allows you to set yourself up as a 'ninja' or guru and offer online training sessions for a fee that you set. You can decide when you're available, group rates and so on. They'll check you out, put you on their site and then sit back and see what happens. Which is what I'm doing. Very quick and easy to create an account, but since I've not tried the rest of it yet I can't comment further.

Whiteboard

A Web Whiteboard is touch-friendly whiteboard app that lets you use your computer, tablet or smartphone to easily draw sketches, collaborate with others and share them with the world. Works on all modern browsers, no installation needed.

Of course, the fatal flaw with all of these things is that you have to be able to draw in the first place. If you can't, it's of very little value, unless you fancy a quick game of noughts and crosses!

 

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• AwwApp: A fun HTML5 app for drawing with friends - and it works great with touchscreens (thenextweb.com)

Dropmark

Organize, collaborate, and share Drop files right from your computer or the web to create organized collections—bringing together information like never before. Invite friends and colleagues to collaborate and edit your Dropmarks in realtime. It’s not about “social media” (we won’t ask you to “follow” anyone), it’s about organizing and sharing your ideas in the easiest way possible.