You could already pick an individual clip image as the cover of a bundle. Now there’s another way.
The edit bundle page now includes a preview of the bundle cover and let’s you switch to other possible images, taken from the latest clips inside that bundle.
We noticed that some events started using Bundlr to collect media around them: photos taken at the event, slides and videos of the talks, comments from Twitter, Facebook… So we decided to launch a special campaign for event organizers.
We’re offering a free premium account for events that want to become our partners and use Bundlr to organize and share their content. It’s a great way to save a snapshot of an event and keep the conversation going. Know more at: http://bundlr.com/events
Some great events already using Bundlr:
This article belongs to a series of How To blog posts.
Another useful clipping feature is the ability to clip just a specific part of a text, when you don’t want to clip the whole article, for example.
You just need to select it (click and drag across it) before or after clicking the Bundlr browser button. The clipping widget will tell you how many characters you’ve selected, like you can see below:
This way, only the text you selected will appear on your bundle:
This article belongs to a series of How To blog posts.
On certain web pages, you don’t want to save just a link and a description. If you’re on a blog or a newspaper website, you probably want to save an entire article.
In those situations, you don’t need to do anything different. Just click on the Clip button on Bundlr’s browser widget and it’ll grab the article’s text, if it finds one on the page.
Here is an example of the result:
We are excited to tell that you can now import your existing bookmarks from almost anywhere into Bundlr.
You can import your bookmarks from any browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera) and we also support several bookmarking services across the web such as:
Visit the import page to get instructions on how to export your bookmarks from those services.
This time, we launched something just for our premium users. (Jealous? Then checkout our inexpensive premium plan.)
It’s a new bundle stats page where you can see:
Plus, now you can also see the stats even if you’re just a collaborator, as long as the bundle owner as a premium plan. Enjoy ;)
We’re starting a series of How To posts here on our blog. This is the start of our future Help section.
One cool Bundlr feature that is sometimes overlooked if the ability to clip a particular image inside a website. It’s useful when a picture illustrates better the a certain article, or you just want to save an inspirational photo. And it’s very easy to use:
1. While browsing an interesting page, click on the Bundlr browser button or bookmarklet, like you would normally do. You will notice that, on the top-right of each image, a red “Clip image” button will appear, like the one below:
2. Just select the bundle you want and press the button above the image you want to clip. An image clip will be added to your selected bundle. It should look like this:
Simple right? Click it and you will able to see a bigger preview of the image, with the title and description from the website where you clipped it.
We try our best so that our clipper find the correct information from the websites you clip. But sometimes, some particular pages come with a format we’re not expecting, and the clipper stumbles a bit.
Now you can edit a clip’s title and description (the short text on the grid and list views), in order to perfect the final result. Just open the clip and choose Edit Clip on the Options dropdown, like shown in the image below.
Try it out the next time you clip something new ;)
One question we get a lot is where does the Bundlr community comes from? We’re glad to say they’re from all around the world. But these are the top 10 countries using Bundlr:
Your country is not up there? Help us spread the word by inviting your friends and colleagues to Bundlr.
We’re glad to see our own country, Portugal, well placed :)
The community has clipped hundreds of thousands of interesting content and media from all over the web. We finally decided to do it justice by launching a new search engine for Bundlr.
We now index all kinds of information we grab from the sources, and also show you clips that match your search. Not only will you get a lot more results, they will be more relevant, thanks to the extra data we’re using.
So, give a try to the new Bundlr human-curated search.
If you happen to have a lot of bundles, you know that your account page can quickly become confusing. So we decided to organize it a bit. Now, if you have more than 6 bundles, your account page will have two sections: first, your 6 latest bundles; second an alphabetic list of all your bundles (see picture below).
This way, your most updated bundles stay highlighted, but it’s easier to find a particular bundle.
Bonus tip:
To group bundles together, give them the same prefix like “Topic - Subtopic”. With the new alphabetic list, they will appear next to each other.
In the last months we’ve noticed an increase of inappropriate content on Bundlr. These are tipically filled with misleading links or explicit content, and should be dealt with appropriatly.
To address this annoying issue, we’re giving you the ability to report suspicious bundles and users. Reported bundles and users are checked out by the Bundlr Staff, who will apply the proper measures.
To report content use the flag icon on both the bundle and account pages.
Thanks to Gonçalo Valério, we now have a Bundlr Opera extension too. It works exactly as the Chrome and Firefox extensions and the bookmarklet, you just don’t need to have the bookmarks toolbar visible.
If your using Opera, go grab it.
Need inspiration on new ways to use Bundlr? Are you curious about how a bundle embed looks like? Here are five good examples:
JCMB uses Bundlr to show off their companies with press clippings.
The Sociological Imagination team creates blog posts of resources lists for their readers.
Groundviews raises awareness, adding their own perspective to the news they find online.
Brian Fitzpatrick shares with the Game Knight Reviews fans the cool stuff of the week, with a bundle embedded at the end of his round-up post.
My Indie Site shares the latest music on their genre, at the bottom of their Tumblog.
Did you know that you could embed a bundle into any webpage? Here are five good ideas for doing it:
Twitter is adding support for more types of media on their platform, and bundles are one of them. You will start seeing bundle previews below tweets linking to a bundle. The preview includes the bundle title, description and cover image.
Looking at Bundlr’s community, we noticed there are two distinct types of bundles. We call them sprints or marathons, and they’re very distinct ways to curate a topic. Neither is better than the other, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Here’s some information to help you choose wisely.
These usually take a couple of hours to make, and can quickly have dozens or even hundreds of clips. They are used when you’re working on something time-sensitive. Common examples:
This kind of curation tends to get attention more quickly, since it’s about something interesting at the moment. You can watch the number of views increasing in real-time. But it won’t be of much use following it because there won’t be many updates. And so the attention eventually dies.
Marathons start small, without buzz, like when you’re creating a new blog. Unlike sprints, they keep getting updates. Common examples:
This kind of curation slowly attracts followers. The audience steadily increases. Look at the The Meaning of Life bundle, updated frequently by Renato, for over a year now. It’s one of our most followed bundles, without being promoted. This is the best strategy if you’re trying to build a following and become an influencer in a particular topic.
One of the worst things about Twitter is the inability to find old tweets. The best way to backup tweets is using a tool like Bundlr to save conversations, a conference discussion or a product feedback on Twitter.
You could already clip tweets using Bundlr, but in the latest release we simplified the workflow. Here’s how you can clip tweets into a bundle:
On the Twitter website, click on Bundlr’s browser button…
…and notice the red Clip tweet link at the bottom of each tweet.
Pick the bundle to where you want to clip the tweets…
..or create a new one.
Finally, click on the Clip tweet link of the tweet you want to save…
…and the tweet is automatically saved to your bundle. If you go to the bundle page you’ll see your freshly clipped tweet:
To clip more tweets, just press Keep clipping on the widget and select other tweets. The bundle you picked last time will be selected by default.
A good bundle title is short enough to fit the bundle frame (3 or 4 words tops) and to the point. Good examples: Creative Photography, Valentine’s Day Essentials and Surfing in Europe. There is only one way to catch someone’s attention with a less obvious title: a great bundle cover (more on that later).
Since your title should be short, use the description to convince someone to start following your bundle. And don’t forget Google cares a lot about what you write on the description. Here’s a description we love from the Made in Portugal bundle:
The best that Portugal has to offer to the world. The inventions, the art, the technology, the food. A portrait of an old country that is still alive.
A good title is important but there’s nothing like an awesome bundle cover to stand out. Specially an high quality image that looks good whatever the size of the bundle frame. Ludovic knows this and picks good photos for his covers:
If the topic is interesting, your followers will probably start following your new bundles too. However, the most popular authors start sharing their bundles early on Twitter and Facebook, and even embed them on their blogs, to build a following.
Though you can create a pretty good bundle in a couple of hours, the most popular ones are constantly updated, some even daily like Ray Wong’s Awesome Stuff. Too busy? Try adding collaborators to help you.
Great photos and videos work great to impress a new visitor to your bundle, but if you want to keep your bundle interesting and retain an audience, you have to mix different types of media. Look for insightful articles, a good Speaker Deck presentation on your topic or a must-read book from Amazon.
Don’t be a silo. Ask your followers on Twitter if they want to collaborate on your new bundle. If you’re working on a bundle about design, go to design forums and ask for great content for you to clip. You will end up with a better bundle and a bigger audience.
Following up on the last tip, a bulletproof way to create a popular bundle is teaming up with someone who already has an audience on that topic. Nobody said it was easy being popular :)
We know there are websites we all love, but if a bundle is only going to have BBC articles we might as well do a search on their website and skip the bundle. While it can make sense in some cases, you’ll do better by following the example of the LikeSciFi bundle and use as many different relevant sources as you can.
