Channelkit Blog

Our blog to keep you updated on Channelkit developments, cool stuff we encounter online and people who take a mindful approach to organizing information http://channelkit.com

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We’re now going through a major redesign, which we will roll out in the coming months. We thought we’d give you a sneak peek and an idea of what to expect.

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Channelkit interview for Roem.ru (in Russian)

Here are translated excerpts from Nina's interview.

Is Channelkit a Pinterest clone or an improved del.icio.us? Does the fate of del.icio.us after the Yahoo acquisition worry you?

Pinterest is primarily for visual information and moodboards consisting of images of clothes, interiors etc. Our users collect links to articles, websites, videos. We're more about what's behind the link, rather than the image representing it. I'd say we're more of a work instrument, while Pinterest is more for entertainment. 

Del.icio.us is definitely closer, but it couldn't solve the problem of structuring information. We are offering what we thing is a a useful instrument to do it, and a sufficient amount of organizing tools. And yes, we are visual.

How does Channelkit plan to make money?

Existing features of Channelkit are free and will remain free. In a few months we will be adding additional premium features, enabling teams to jointly collect and organize links for project work.

What are your short term business goals – user growth or something else? What are your long term goals?

Our main goal now is to developer a community of early adopters — users who actively collect and organize information online. And to grow this community. We managed to attract over a hundred very active users without any promotion and they've become real advocates of Channelkit, which makes us really happy. We're trying to stay in touch with them as much as we can to better understand how the product should evolve to grow further.

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We made it easy to migrate from Springpad to Channelkit. Sadly, Springpad is shutting down June 25th.

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Good news - we won a regional competition for startups organized by Seedstars!

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We designed the product, mapped the logic, and hired a development studio. By February of the following year, we had the prototype for Channelkit and started meeting investors. Then we got a wake-up call. 

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Interview for Look At Me magazine

We talk about information overload, Channelkit use cases and show off our new design.

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Channelkit got funded

Good news: Channelkit raised funding from the Untitled VC

http://firrma.ru/data/news/2197/

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Channelkit talking to Russia's major tech resource about our experience at The Next Web Conference

На прошлой неделе призер Techcrunch рассказывал об участии в Hackathon в Сан-Франциско. Тем временем, 1 и 2 октября в Нью-Йорке проходило другое  небезызвестное технологическое мероприятие: конференци...

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Showing off Channelkit at The Next Web conference in New York

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Books we enjoyed

The Information Diet: A case for conscious consumption

“We know we’re products of the food we eat. Why wouldn’t we also be products of the information we consume?”

In his book technologist Clay A. Johnson draws parallels between consuming food and consuming information. Media giants are feeding us news and content that is addictive, simple to process and that we get hooked on. He argues that just as we control overeating and opt to eat healthy foods, we should adopt smarter information habits: carefully select sources which make you better instead of passively consuming what is being imposed on us, filter out the quality content and not overconsume.

A information diet can get us intellectually and psychologically fit, just as a food diet affects our physical and emotional well-being, but only if we make it a permanent lifestyle choice.

Some quotes:

"The Internet is the single biggest creator of ignorance mankind has ever created, as well as the single biggest eliminator of that ignorance. It’s our ability to filter that eliminates the former and empowers the latter"

“Just as food companies learned that if they want to sell a lot of cheap calories, they should pack them with salt, fat, and sugar—the stuff that people crave—media companies learned that affirmation sells a lot better than information.”

"Content creation and digital self-expression, through the creation of text, audio, or video content, are critical components of a healthy information diet."

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Channelkit Users

Rajnish is a Scientist at the Dept. of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University. Through his research work he developed a strong interest in nutrition and healthy food options. He is now working on creating a unique technology to discover food that is grown locally.

I am now doing substantial research on nutrition and food: I collect reports and papers on the science of food, which I would eventually want to share with my comments, save links and contact information of food producers, food brands, grocery retailers and restaurants which carry local products. I meet with farmers, restaurant owners and book authors. I’d like to build a central resource of food information and promote marketing and sales of local, healthy food for a sustainable future.

I’ve gathered a lot of content over the past several years, yet I still wish there was a way to streamline the information in an efficient way. Now if I save all the information I find online as bookmarks, I have to remember the content or its relevance to find it again in my totality of bookmarks after a few years. And in order to share my food content, I will need to build a seperate resource.

Channelkit can become a tool for me to collect knowledge and to share it with others. I will be creating private Channels with my own raw materials and data as well as public ones - with selections of links for my readers with, hopefully, valuable food insights. It makes my task so much easier!

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Gleb is a web enthusiast and entrepreneur. He co-founded Raum 7  - a company which focuses on designing and conceptualizing complex web projects. He is a true expert when it comes to web solutions and design. Here's Gleb's collection of text editors which he put together for one of the projects  http://www.channelkit.com/kalinin/text-editors 

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Channelkit Users

Yury is the pioneer of action sports media in Russia – he co-owns the one of the first major snowboarding web resources – Snowlinks, holds Russian Snowboard Awards and now sole handedly edits the Russian version of Source,  Europe's major action sports-themed business magazine.

I started rollerblading and snowboarding back in high school. After three years of solemn riding I got bored and started conquering rails and other uneven surfaces . This led me to breaking my collarbone. Twice.  I decided to give my arm a rest but did not want to let go of the sport so I started writing about it. At the time there was not enough media on action sports, so I created livejournal communities where I shared links to cool snowboarding news, articles and videos which eventually grew into a proper web resource.

I have two additional projects now for which I monitor news, collect articles and put information together:  Russian Snowboard Awards is a competition which essentially determines the best Russian snowboarders and helps them get sponsorship deals. Media publications on riders that I collect determine results of the vote. Source is a snowboarding magazine for which I curate and publish articles, create snowboarding market snapshots and attract advertisers.

I collect content in Word documents and distribute via e-mail. It would have been a lot more convenient to have a tool which would have links with previews that I could organize by project and never lose.

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Richard Wurman says there are only five ways to organize information: by location, alphabet, time, category, or hierarchy (the so-called LATCH) and devises a set of guidelines to select the appropriate classification

Do you agree that LATCH is in fact the only way to organize content? If you have your own approach, do write to us - we will be delighted to discuss!

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Are you looking for ways to discover new music? Nick Zavriev / Ambidextrous, a Moscow-based electronic musician and music journalist shared some great sources http://www.channelkit.com/nickzavriev/new-music-sources/

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Channelkit Users

Fedor is passionate about future environments and how technology shapes cities we live in. Together with his brother he founded Labori - a habitat robotics firm bringing new technology to living space. He also teaches urban planning to graduate students.

I’ve been involved in various urban planning activities for a while now. This is still an emerging area in Russia and quite often my friends, colleagues, students, or students-to-be ask me to recommend some basic reading materials. Just recently I’ve been asked about the  Design of Parks & Recreation facilities, Global slum development trends and Future work environments!

Unlike Physics, Maths or Art History, you don’t have comprehensive introductory books to the future of urban planning, or public spaces that one could point to. Contemporary disciplines require a different approach: collections of bits and pieces of multiple sources and media that would help establish a general framework.

Some online article may speak to different topics, so I had multiple collections. To this date I used basic tools to keep track of these collections: from finding and old email or blog entry that had about 60% of still relevant links, to GDocs. There simply wasn’t any good tool to curate and share these collections. I will use Channelkit for that.

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Our friend Armine blogs about the exquisitely presented food she cooks, chocolate she tastes and about her beautiful daughter. 

She collected her sources of inspiration on Channelkit - http://www.channelkit.com/avekilyan/food-blogs