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Zemanta is a new service that works just like your assistant while writing your posts. In fact, Zemanta will suggest you relevant pictures, links, articles and tags as you write. This service aims to gives you:

    - more pleasure to write your posts by pairing your word with relevant pictures.
    - additional content by suggesting recent articles resources, links, pictures and tags.
    - more convenience by avoiding the need to browse the web to find all that new content.
    - targeted traffic by suggesting links to recent articles frequently result in return traffic.

Does it sound good to you? Let’s take a look a little bit deeper!

Firefox only for the moment

The Zemanta service is giving through a Firefox extension. So, the first requirement is to use Firefox as your browser. Note that Internet Explorer is in private testing. Also, Zemanta seems to have other browsers like Opera and Safari on their roadmap. You may consider contacting them if you want their service to be supported in any other browser. In addition, Zemanta is also limited to english for the moment.

The installation

The installation is very easy to do. In fact, you just have to go to the Zemanta download page and to click on the “Download Zemanta” button. This will start up the installation process – just follow the instructions on the web page to allow Zemanta on your domain list. You will notice, after the installation, that there is nothing changed on your Firefox environment; no new button, no new toolbar, nothing at all. In fact, the Zemanta extension is inactive when you are just browsing the web. It will activate itself when it will detect that you use a known platform to write a new post. For the moment, the number of supported platforms is limited to Wordpress (wordpress.com as well as self hosted), Blogger and Typepad. Zemanta is expecting to add more soon. I do admit that I really appreciate not to have any additional button. The auto detect process is very pleasant.

The ease of use

Just to be sure of the auto detect of my Wordpress platform, I logged in Wordpress and get on the “Write” menu. Then, magically, Zemanta appears on the right side of my writing box and gave its initial picture suggestion. Note that the suggestions are refresh every 300 characters. I must admit that the usage is very simple. You can easily add a picture by clicking on it or add a link to other recent articles on the same subject by clicking again. The following demonstrates how it works:

What about the copyrights

According to Zemanta, copyrights are something they really care of. Actually, they say: “All content that we are suggesting is copyright cleared - either clearly licensed as Creative Commons, or approved by stock providers.” So, you shouldn’t have to care about the copyrights since they care about it for you. I would, however, suggest to pay a special attention at the pictures. Personally, I always feel more comfortable to know the exact license of what I put on my blog.

In summary

Zemanta seems to be a first step toward semantic blogging. The service is really simple to setup and the usability is great – at least, when used with a self hosted Wordpress platform. It will be interesting to follow the evolution of this service and the emergence of any new ventures that will follow this semantic trend. Hopefully, this service will evaluate to serve the needs of every bloggers. Overall, I would say that I really appreciate Zemanta and I would stay tuned to catch any new improvements. If Zemanta is successful to provide multiple sources of suggestion – much more than Wikipedia – and if it succeeds to be part of the most popular blogs, we could be sure that it will really be the first drip of water of a new wave on the blogosphere.

For more information about Zemanta, feel free to visit their FAQ section.

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