Source: WikipediaZemanta offers a new firefox extention that will suggest links, pictures, articles and tags as you are typing up a blog post. Currently, it is available for WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.
As I am typing this up right now, I can see some flickr photos as inspiration that I can use in the post. Once I have written 300 characters (which I did just now) Zemanta will start making suggestions. I have link suggestions that make sense and save me from having to do it myself, flickr has some images, there are articles and the tag suggestions are perfect.
It is crazy because it is doing all of this work from within my admin panel and it is not a plugin to my WordPress blog.
It is a blogger’s best friend.
Wow, the time it is going to save me! Oh, and it is FREE. How incredible is that?
What I do like: The tag, link and article suggestions are relative to the content and save me time. Zemanta is super easy to use and it will only get better. Zemanta is still in Alpha.
What I don’t like: The image is too small in my opinion. I don’t really care for how Zemanta lists the related articles with the [via them] after the article. It is a little tacky. Besides, there is a little button that states my post was Zemified located at the end of the blog post. I am surprised it didn’t put a link on flickr! Flickr is HUGE.
So, it isn’t perfect, (edit) YET. But, I will be using it even if it is in Alpha.
Hy!
Andraz from Zemanta here.
Yes, things you mention are right, but it is very hard to do “one size fits most” solution. In the future you will be able to set the image sizes, and the prefered sources for both images and news. But for now we are putting this out and listening carefully. Then we will select the features that will go into next version.
We want to keep it simple, so you don’t need to tweak options to make it work for you. that wouldn’t be automagic as we are trying to do it :)
Andraz,
I think it is a great resource for bloggers and is going to save me a lot of time. I will use it that is sure.
I appreciate all the work that is being put into it. I am impressed that you are checking bloggers feed back and taking the time to post on their blogs. I think that is very professional and shows dedication to improving Zemanta.
The things I didn’t like are small and I understand it is in Alpha which means it will only get better! :)
Thank you for your reply and for Zemanta.