Zemanta Firefox plugin (Photo credit: Tom Raftery)

I like Zemanta. It is a “curation” tool that helps you create “nice” posts. It goes along with the whole idea of magazine-style blogs that have lots of content that interests people. I have tried a couple other curation tools, but Zemanta is the easiest and most available  of the current products.

When I first downloaded the browser widget, I was not too impressed. But, they have since improved things so much that I have to admit a true fondness for Zemanta. In fact, I like the online version so much I decided to give the actual plugin a try, just to see if it had any additional features.

So, after I disabled the browser widget, I installed and activated the plugin. I noticed that it basically looked the same. However, the photos it selected were slightly different than the browser widget selection. Not so much that you’d notice – in fact it might just be that the plugin sort them differently.

Web browser (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The photo above – or perhaps to your left depending on your browser, is an eample of what Zemanta does. It was selected based on tet I had already typed into the post editor. Here’s another photo, obviously based on the word “browser” in this post. I reduced the size automatically using the Zemanta picture controls.

The plugin looks pretty much the same as the browser widget version, and runs just as quickly (I was concerned about that aspect). Related articles are all there, and tags too.

Here’s a bunch of related articles Zemanta selected for me.

Related articles

• Zemanta Now Native on Blogger.com!(techparade.blogspot.com)

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• Even faster Zemanta!(zemanta.com)

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• Zemanta – Easy Semantic Blogging for Everyone(theresabloginmysoup.com)

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• Zemanta supports Chrome(zemanta.com)
  So it would appear the plugin version of Zemanta works essentially the same as the browser widget version. For me it makes much more sense to have the browser version – then it’s automatically there for any blog I tend to. For someone who only has a single blog, or has a computer that lack horsepower (any browser widgets will suck resources), it might be a good strategy to go for the plugin. However, I will recommend the browser widget as by default call.
  By for now…