Zemanta
While researching new blog tools/toys/enhancers I came across an interesting service called Zemanta. What is Zemanta? I’m glad you asked. It’s a small application installed as a Firefox extension that adds a sidebar to the write post window of your favourite blog software. As you write your post this nifty tool will automatically scan your text and suggest links to similar articles. It continues to analyze your text every 300 characters and as it does so it updates the suggestions.
We analyze your post through our proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically compare its context framework to our preindexed database of other content.
It also offers a photo gallery of relevant images you can insert into a post if you wish. The suggested images have all been copyright cleared in case you’re wondering with the bulk coming from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers.
If that’s not enough the application also provides a list of suggested tags and links to use with your post.
As the service is new they currently use a list of about 300 media sources and blogs from which they derive the related articles and links from but more will be added as it grows. For the present, Zemanta supports WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.
The links you see in this very blog post and related articles at the end were all suggested by Zemanta and were automatically inserted with the click of a button. The suggested links and tags appear below the write post window while the related articles and images appear in the sidebar to the right of the write post window. The icon immediately following the end of the post was also inserted. While they maintain you can remove the icon if you wish they ask that you don’t as they rely on it for exposure.
As the service grows and matures look for the efficiency and accuracy to improve.
Below are 2 screen captures. The first is the addition to the sidebar containing the related articles and images while the second is of the area directly below the write post window where you will find the suggested links and tags.
Related articles and images. (click to enlarge)
Suggested links and tags. (click to enlarge)
Thanks for giving Zemanta a spin. I’m sure that as you continue using as in your everyday blogging, your suggestions will improve even more than when writing about us.
If you have any questions, ideas or problems, you can tell it to us at our forum – getsatisfaction.com/zemanta or just drop me a mail – jure@zemanta.com
Jure Cuhalev, Zemanta
What a handy service. Thanks for the info.
Hi Rose,
I thought it was a cool service as well.