Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Have You Tried Zemanta?

DSC_0199Image from FlickrThese little duckies have absolutely nothing to do with anything. I just thought they were cute. I've started using Zemanta. It's an add-on for my browser that lets it suggest pictures, links, tags, and related articles for my posts. It loads right beside the composer window for my post. When I first start a post, I get this message:

Suggestions will appear when you write 300 characters or click the button above. Until then here are some interesting pictures from Flickr.
and these little duckies were one of those interesting pictures. To add them to my post, all I had to do was click. Then, every 300 characters, Zemanta suggests new things - new pictures, related articles, links, etc., based on what I write. It can really make blog posts more vibrant. I used to look for appropriate pictures on Flickr or on the web, and I still do, but it's nice to have Zemanta bring them to me.

I tried using the suggested links once, but I didn't really like the links Zemanta gave me. They were mostly links to Wikipedia pages, which isn't bad, but not exactly what I wanted. For instance, when I mention Cory, I do not want to link to a page about someone else named Cory. I am talking about my Cory. Usually I link to things because I have something specific in mind, so I will probably continue using my own links rather than the Zemanta links.

Zemanta supports Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and LiveJournal blogging platforms. I was going to say that it's never worked with my LiveJournal, but I thought I'd go over and start a post there, just to check, and it does work with LiveJournal now. I can't vouch for Wordpress or Typepad, because I don't use those.

Adding related articles is easy, too. Zemanta searches the web, finds the related articles, and gives you a link to each article. Visit the article, and if it fits your post, simply return to your post and Zemanta, click on the title of the article, and Zemanta adds it to your post like this:

Thanks to Vic Grace @ Cariboo Ponderer for mentioning Zemanta in the first place!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Anna, I am taking into consideration your suggestion about changing domain to blogger it is just that I don't know how to go about it. I will have to check that out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I heard about that. Is it something you download or just an add-on on your browser?

    ReplyDelete

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