Image via Wikipedia#2 Zemanta add-on for Firefox
This is an awesome Firefox add-on that beats me. I only recently started using it and all I can say is that it is great. According to the Zemanta homepage, the tool lets you
"Have your browser understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant. We are making blogging fun again."It is an impressive tool, as it eases off the having to flip between tabs to get content to make your blog relevant in the blogosphere. Zemanta goes and fetches the most relevant content from blogs around the web. More importantly, it fetches content that is recent and from higly ranked pages. That way, when you reference these posts, you are more likely to get references from the trackbacks. That is how to become a powerblogger, becoming more relevant in the blogosphere over time, as your blogging gets more references.
Wordpress 2.5 was recently released and that brought up a challenge for the Zemanta team, however within a few short days, the team came up with a fix. At the moment, the tool is compatible and works with all versions of Wordpress including the recently released 2.5 version. It also works with Blogger and Typepad.
In one of the earlier reviews was from Techcrunch's Mike Butcher entitled 'A content suggestion engine for blogging ?That could work...'. Other earlier reviews include this more extensive one on wordplayblog.com
This suggestion tool that also fetches images is really a blogger's dream. It is still an alpha release and the founders are a start-up, however the tool is likely to get popular real soon. The strongest potential I see is that of being referenced by subsequent blogs on the topic since you would be one of the most recent bloggers about that topic using Zemanta!
If you were to use Zemanta to blog this moment about say.....Zemanta, the tool will fetch relevant keywords, tags, blogs and images for you. Most of the images come from Wikipedia. Below your rich text editor, it keeps suggesting links and keywords which you may decide to take some , all or none. Beside the editor window also, you have the Zemified option of selecting related articles and letting them appear at the bottom of your post. In like manner, other blogs will see you at the side if they are using the add-on.
This tool is new and I do not know how robust its engine is, but there are indications that it is really smart. I will like to hear from you, how useful this one has been and any hiccups you may have experienced using it. It is a must have for bloggers, even though there are some skeptics who are worried about sploggers. What I do not know is when an IE plugin will be available (still beta testing). Or are we all going to FIREFOX?
The video below is from Zemanta. Enjoy!
1 comment:
Thanks so much for including my Zemanta review in your post. I appreciate the mention! And, of course, I agree with you that Zemanta is a must-have Firefox add-on.
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