Fons Tuinstra’s review: If you maintain a weblog, you might want to check out Zemanta, a free browser extension for Firefox and Flock that adds a useful and easy-to-use set of features to your posting interface. I’ve been using it for the last few weeks on my blog, China Herald.
The picture at left (click image to enlarge) shows how Zemanta’s tools appear in the back-end Blogger.com interface. Right now, Zemanta is compatible with WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Typepad.com, and self-hosted WordPress (version 2.0 onward). More blogging platforms are expected to be added later.
Zemanta includes a few very cool applications, as well as some that don’t appeal to me. I like the picture gallery, which allows you to link easily to a related picture. I also like the linking service, which suggests links to external sources based on keywords in your post. Right now the linking service only suggests Wikipedia entries — but some of my readers have told me they find this extremely useful, since I don’t have to explain much jargon or other non-essential elements in my posts.
Some caution is warranted with Zemanta, however. When I mentioned my colleague Thomas Crampton, Zemanta suggested I linked to a corresponding Wikipedia entry. However, I did not check the destination of that link. Later, Tom pointed out that the Wikipedia entry I linked to is about somebody else with the same name.
Zemanta’s picture service suggests relevant free-to-use images. (ReadWriteWeb notes: “Zemanta pays close attention to copyright, making sure that suggested content is licensed as Creative Commons or approved by stock providers, so you won’t get into trouble by using Zemanta’s service.”) I like that Zemanta’s picture suggestions always come with a link to the original source — a legal requirement I might forget when I’m in a hurry.
That said, Zemanta’s picture selection is fairly limited so far. For instance, whenever I link to a Financial Times or Reuters story, too often Zemanta suggests pictures of the headquarters of those news orgs.
I find Zemanta’s other two services pretty useless. The media stories are hopelessly outdated and don’t even come close to what Google News offers. (This might be less of a concern for people with less newsy blogs than mine.) As for suggested tags — I have never been into tags. Adding them takes more work than I’m willing to do, so this service adds no value to me. Barbara Iverson’s review: Fons Tuinstra’s take on Zemanta sent me to my blog to try it out. Installation was easy and fast — just a few seconds to download download and two clicks to install this Firefox extension. No registration or password is needed — Zemanta simply shows up as a sidebar when you are working in the “post” window.
Barbara Iverson’s review: I blog using WordPress. In my case, to activate Zemanta I had to go the navigation bar in Firefox and click on an icon that was sitting where you’d normally expect to see an RSS icon. I turned that on once and off, then reloaded the page, and Zemanta started working for my blog. (Editor’s note: I also run a WordPress blog and use Flock for my browser. I did not have to go through this extra step to activate Zemanta in Flock. Also, Zemanta’s suggested tags and links do not appear to work yet in WordPress with Flock.)
I also checked out Zemanta on blogger.com, where it suggests tags (labels in blogger.com speak) automatically. Unlike Fons, I use tags heavily — so this service is a time-saver for me.
For every 300 words you write in a post, Zemanta updates its suggestions. For instance, adding the “Daily Show” and “Jon Stewart” to a post I was writing yielded relevant image suggestions at the next update.
You can force Zemanta to update if you don’t want to wait until you have typed 300 words. However, the suggestions seem to improve with context. Thus, longer posts produce more targeted suggestions from Zemanta.
I believe Zemanta will catch on quickly. As it grows more popular, it’ll be interesting to see whether Zemanta-using bloggers will tend to link more often to the same stories and pictures, or use similar tags. Robots and automatic tools are useful, but they work best under human supervision.
