Shooglebox is a great tool when you need to get up to speed on a topic fast – for something you're writing, a presentation you're preparing, or just so you can look like an "instant expert".
It's quick to grab and squirrel away all the nuggets of info you find as you trawl the web, social media, books, documents and other sources.
And the card-based visual interface makes it easy to review everything you've found and start picking out key points, themes and areas to explore further.
In the video example above a journalist has been using Shooglebox to pull together material for an article about the evolution of music in advertising and nostalgia for those memorable jingles that have gone out of fashion.
They’ve captured YouTube embeds of ads through the decades, extracts from books and articles, and social media posts from people talking about their favourite ads.
After less than an hour's exploration they've amassed everything they need to get to work on the article.
The process has also helped them compare different sources and separate fact from fiction – eg, what's the real story of the evolution of the McDonald's ad music from full "I'm Lovin' It" song through Ba Da Ba Ba Ba to wordless jingle? In these days of quick Google searches, it's easy for errors in a single popular blog or news post to be picked up and repeated as fact in hundreds of other places.
When you're doing this kind of desk-based research – what journalists used to call a "cuttings job" – it's easy to end up with scores of tabs open in your browser, lots of clutter added to your desktop or scraps of information in lots of different places.
Shooglebox helps you make sense of the clutter and avoid that feeling that you can’t see the wood for the trees.
What's more, when you've finished the job you don't need to close all those tabs, clear up your desktop, and then panic when you realise you need to go and back and find something you've thrown away.
You've always got all that useful research material squirrelled away in a box or stack of cards to come back to at any time when you need it.
And you can share a box or stack of cards with others – your friends, your wider team, your boss, your editor ... or someone you want to impress!
Sign up for a free Shooglebox account now – and try it out for yourself.
Or if you're interested in finding out about our consultancy services or live feeds – where cards are automatically created based on topics, keywords or specific sources – get in touch here.