my 2 cents: Zemanta and me

A few days back I well... "announced" to check out Zemanta - the new mega-cool blog-tool-feature-addon-helping-thingy.
So far I have tried to write more or less each and every blog-entry in combination w/Zemanta to get a feeling for this tool - even those which I blogged via Clipmarks (mostly the newspaper articles, I'm damn sure you will notice them).

Think it's a good time of the day to give you my personal feedback and, more or less, review of this neat program.

The Bad

It's -so far- only in English. Okay, I can live with that - just insert the search term of your choice in Zemanta's search field and you will find at least some pictures.
A translation in additional languages is from point of view necessary and should be implemented ASAP.

In combination with ScribeFire, the other wonderful Firefox blog addon, it's good to know that you have at least an additional "picture source" - unfortunately the other tools (like links, articles etc) are not working in ScribeFire

Zemanta + NoScript = *yikes*
That's something they have to work on with... don't know, but since NoScript's last update I have to turn it off completely to have a chance to work with Zemanta.

To insert several pictures is good - especially now that you can just drag+drop them around.
But it should be also possible to resize the picture itself!
Have noticed that, due to the fact that my "introduction sentence / paragraph" is mostly quite short, the picture itself takes too much space.
Also, it should be possible to decide the position of the picture - so far it's either on the right OR on the left. What about "the centre"? Or one left, one right?
I'm also faced this a really annoying problem: when I move the picture around AFTER I have inserted it, it duplicates and, even worser, sometimes quadruduplactes itself. Or even more...

The option to insert, more or less, related articles is nice - but it would be even nicer if I could choose the "main sources".
Actually, I don't wanna link to Jane Doe's blog how she was planting a tree in the nowhere of Montana if I write smth bout the rainforest of Singapore or how my neighbour's car was hit by a tree.
IMHO there should be an option where you can choose from - blogs, newspapers / newsstations (CNN, New York Times etc) or a combination of both.

The "my stuff" is ... well... don't mention it, okay?
I informed Zemanta bout all my blogs around but there's no link to any article I wrote - even this one, which refers to Zemanta which I have mentioned clearly in my blog, will not appear / link.

The Flickr combination is also quite disappointing - but only coz they do not recognise my screen-name (which is working, I know it).

Secondly, the option to enter your AMAZON affiliate ID... c'mon - that's useless if it's only working for AMERICAN participants... *sob sob*

The Good

On the positive side I have to mention the option to link directly to websites like Wikipedia etc when you write a corresponding word.
Example: "White House".
Result: This gives me 2 options for linking: either whitehouse.gov or the corresponding Wikipedia entry (ATTENTION: we're still talking here bout the ENGLISH Wikipedia... so, be careful!)

my personal resumee

Is Zemanta changing my own way HowTo blog?
Yes - suddenly I insert corresponding links / URLs , pictures and -hopefully- good links to articles other people wrote.

Is it The Future?
I would say... No. Because YOU still have to provide the "input" for Zemanta. It's useless to write only a few words without any combination - there should be at least some kind of context. So, YOU still have to THINK before you type.

Would you recommend Zemanta anyway, even if it's for non-english blogs not so useful (at the moment!)?
Aye. Especially the "insert picture" feature is worth the download!

Would be great to hear YOUR opinion about Zemanta (and the other mentioned tools)!

HEY - TIME OUT... what about the other cool features you haven't mentioned?
The fact that Zemanta is working with Google Mail?
The fact that Zemanta offers tags?
And what about the security issue here?

These are good points - but due to the fact that I don't like to use Zemanta in my Gmail (it's working there only online anyway and I prefer to use a desktop solution to write my eMails) I'm not in the position to review this.
This counts also for the security issue - there are other people who know more bout this kind of subject.
And the tag feature... well... that's easy, isn't it? It's useful - but only if you have no tags / labels so far. Or if you wanna "restart" the the whole tagging for all articles...

Just my 2 cents :-)