Content Curation Software

New Feature: Support for old-school Atom Feeds. This addition allows you to use your Google Alerts in the RSS feed section of CurationSoft

Drag & Drop Confusion: We’ve noticed that more and more support tickets are coming in with drag and drop issues. It’s not that the feature is broken but it needs to work better. As a response, we made sure the only draggable area is where the drag icon is available. Before you could drag the entire item but it wouldn’t drop. It was confusing. We believe this small change will cut down on confusion and provide you a better experience.

OPML import:  As reported earlier this week, you can now import as many RSS feeds you want with an OPML import function.

You know, this is getting really fun.  I don’t know of any curation platform that updates as much as we do.  All thanks to our tireless and massive team of programmer:  Brandon Hall.

Many of our customers have commented on the fact that Google Blog Search and Google News sources left some things to be desired.  I wholeheartedly agree.  While sometimes you can hit a home run with a query right off the bat, many times you have to keep digging to find good stuff in Google News and Blogs.

Then Brandon discovered Blekko.com‘s API.  (Even before that we were noticing some really quality results from Blekko searches.)  It made us wonder how easy it would be to incorporate Blekko results for news and blogs in CurationSoft as alternative sources.  As it turns out, not so hard.  The Blekko team was awesome to work with and very welcoming of our use of the API for CurationSoft customers.

When you next fire up CurationSoft, an update will start and you will immediately be able to search news and blogs on Blekko.  And you will see quite a difference between their results and Google’s.  It’s an awesome day for curators!

Release Notes for CurationSoft 1.0.9

• Two new sources! We found that many people were unhappy with Google Blogs & Google News so we added Blekko Blog & Blekko news search. If you’re not familiar with Blekko it’s an incredibly powerful search engine. Their results are extremely high-quality and we’re excited to have them as a content partner. When you start using Blekko for curation you’ll soon realize that it’s an excellent search engine.
•  Fixed a bug where the page navigation bar was still appearing when getting RSS feed results. That shouldn’t happen because RSS Feeds only return 10 results usually.
• Couple of small UI tweaks. Made the fact you have to double-click the RSS feed for results to return much more noticeable.

Enjoy your new curation super powers!

On a final note, if you haven’t checked out Blekko, watch this video to learn just why their results are so quality:

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

Image via Wikipedia

We’re working hard on the next update.  Since August we’ve pushed out several updates and we’re not slowing down.

RSS Feeds

Users have asked about adding individual RSS feeds – we’re working on that in the next update!

Cleaner Results, More Results

As well, Brandon has been cleaning up the way dragged content looks in your posts.  Several little tweaks laters he’s greatly improved the way Google News, Twitter, and Google Blog Search results show in your own blog’s style.

Image via CrunchBase

Plus, Twitter will work through CurationSoft just like it does on search.twitter.com!  This means hashtags will be searchable and the results come right into CurationSoft like any other.

There’s lots more on tap for CurationSoft in the next several months.  The updates we begin working on after this one, which should be out soon, are going to take CurationSoft from a very robust “utility” to something so cool that I can’t talk about it.  Suffice it to say, you’re going to freak when you see where we’re going with this software!

Brandon has been hard at work on a new update.  This update deals mostly with the free version, though customers with paid licenses will like bullet #3 below.

The free version is ad-supported and can be used for an unlimited time.  Though it lacks most of the content sources of the full version, it will give users a chance to see what the software does and experience fast search, drag, and drop curation.

Release Notes for v 1.0.5

• Free version rollout – We disabled the trial version because we found it more effective to just have a limited free version instead of time-restrained trial. Our apologies to any users this effects.
• Free version includes ads from our partner BuySellAds.com and is limited to one content source.
• Auto login to CurationSoft.com now available from the software. Clicking Upgrade/Renew in the help menu will take you to your account instead of manually having to login.

Exciting news for CurationSoft users:  we have an update coming soon!

What’s coming:

Google News!

Exciting! Search, drag, and drop up-to-the-minute news from Google news.  Sneak peek below…

CurationSoft users will be able to search and pull the top 10 news stories on any keyword.  The same drag and drop capabilities, of course, with the addition of graphics and photos included in the news stories.

Other updates:

• Removed system tray functionality:  We found this small feature was confusing users and really served no purpose at this point so we removed it.
• Updated Help menu items:  added a shortcut for license and better descriptions.
• Auto complete:  improved the user experience for the autocomplete box.
• Keyboard shortcuts:  now you can scroll through results with up and down arrow keys.
• Recommended post tags:  CS will recommend tags for you to use in your posts based on related keywords.