A plugin that’s not a plugin?
April 2, 2008
Image from Wikipedia
Normally, I save my ‘tech’ talk for other blogs - but I thought this warranted sharing.
I don’t know who recommended it to me, but I’ve found this really awesome plugin called ‘Zemanta‘ It installs into your browser, and is a tool that ’suggests’ images and articles to you as you’re writing posts.
It might not sound like much, but I’ve spent the last three weeks trying to work out how to add images and make sure I’m pcoviding decent links to people. And Zemanta is a great step towards that.
I already mentioned it on my personal blog (http://personal.kaiberie.com) and someone from Zemanta was really kind and came over and commented, so they are really heavily invested in thier community, which is also really nice.
So far, I’ve found the gallery a bit narrow and hit and miss, but its a new tool - one which I think has an incredible amount of potential and is already proving to be a great way to start researching my blog posts.
Pros:
I can insert releated articles, images and more at the click of a mouse, plus I get to research as I’m going.
Its a firefox plugin, so I don’t have to install it on a per blog basis
Cons:
I’m not sure the image filtering is up to scratch, and don’t - really - like that I’m presented with ‘could be considered fair use‘ options. I wish I could filter them.
There doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of images available - but the article system seems top notch.
Neutrals
I can only insert one image, as far as I can tell - this is good, cause I can’t distract people.
I haven’t checked yet, but I don’t know if I can modify the ‘releated articles’ box. It just doesn’t ‘pop’ for me.
Comments
2 Responses to “A plugin that’s not a plugin?”
Got something to say?
This is an interesting idea. It sounds like it might need more refinement though. Do you think you will continue to use it regularly or go back to your old methods of finding photos and articles? Thanks for the review!
Julie
I think it needs refinement, yes, but I also think that every piece of software that is released to a group of people - especially bloggers, always needs fine tweaking, and sometimes, flat out change. And to be completely fair, thier gallery is ok. Not stellar, but I’m sure it will improve. I’d just, personally, like to remove ‘could be considered fair use’ images, because I don’t like that ‘grey’ line.
As for whether I’d go back to my ‘manual’ way of doing it - given I didn’t do it very often, probably not. I’d rather have narrow options than mess with uploading images, after researching them. I do really well with parallell processing for other s- when its my own projects though, I’m a klutz and forget to come back with the images