Zemanta rocks! You should use it!!!!

Image via CrunchBase

Here’s something cool…

Zemanta analyzes user-generated content (e.g. a blog post) using natural language processing and semantic search technology to suggest pictures, tags and links to related articles.

Zemanta suggests content from Wikipedia, Youtube, IMDB, Amazon.com, Crunchbase, Flickr, ITIS, Musicbrainz, Mybloglog, Myspace, NCBI, Rottentomatoes, Twitter, Facebook, Snooth and Wikinvest, as well as the blogs of other Zemanta users.

Zemanta’s understanding of the content (e.g. whether “Apple” refers to a fruit or a company) can be embedded into the content using Common Tag for semantic tagging.

Originally released for use by bloggers, Zemanta is available as a Firefox and Internet Explorer extension and plugins for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Ning, MySpace, LiveJournal, MovableType, Tumblr, Drupal and Joomla. It is now also available for use with web-based email systems like Gmail and Yahoo mail^[2], and an Microsoft Outlook add-in is in development.

Zemanta is server based software, so the server does all the hard work and the plugins simply communicate with the server to retrieve suggestions.

Other companies have used Zemanta’s API to add content suggestion to their products, for example hover.in, Triond, RetailFans, Bukisa and Faviki.

Zemanta used to be based in part on TextGarden content analysis software from Slovenia’s Jožef Stefan Institute national research institute

Zemanta – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Value add statement. Please comment…

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Want to blog better in 2011? We’re here to help!

“For those of you who want to take your blog to the next level in 2011 perhaps you’ve stepped up to the Post a Day or Post a Week challenge, we’ve got your back. From now on, we’ll be offering tips on blogging best practices to help you produce high-quality content, boost your readership, and make the most of all the fabulous WordPress.com features. Here’s a handful of resources to get you started: Want to blog better in 2011? We’re here to help. — Blog — WordPress.com.”

Jag, Inc. can get you up and running fast! Comment or ‘connect with me’ so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

Posterous Co-Founder Garry Tan Leaves for Y Combinator

Image via Wikipedia

Garry Tan has announced that he is leaving Posterous, the ultra-simplistic microblogging company he helped found in 2008. Tan wrote on his blog today that it was time to move on and that he would be taking an advisory role with the company in order to do what he was most passionate about – work with startups.

“My greatest passions lie with the early stage of building world-changing consumer products,” writes Tan. “To that end, I’ve decided to join the team at Y Combinator as a designer-in-residence and help the dozens of top pre-seed startups in the newest Winter 2011 batch reach their potential through excellent user experience.”

via readwriteweb.com

Ruh roh! What does this mean for Posterous? I have been having concerns about the platform for a month or two due to lagging tech support responses and what I interpret as a lack of focus with Posterous groups and now this? Still, Posterous is the best tool in the universe for curating content and autoposting to my WordPress blogs — better than ‘press this’ which really stinks, imho. What now? In the words of the great philosophers .38 Special, “Hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna lose your soul”…

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3 Questions to Ask When Planning Your Website

Image via Wikipedia

The following is an excerpt from “Make the Website Work: The Small Agency’s Guide to Creating Effective Marketing Sites for Themselves and Their Clients,” Mark O’Brien’s forthcoming book to be published in 2011 by Rockbench. O’Brien is the president of web-development firm Newfangled.

You’ve heard from O’Brien before.  I interviewed him last October for “Five Web Development Myths Debunked.” And on Feb. 10, O’Brien will present “Cure for the Common Website: Using Personas to Boost Site Performance,” right here at MarketingProfs—$129 well spent, free for Pro members.

O’Brien says planning a website is hard to do, and most people miss the mark because they jump right into “doing” before giving enough attention to the planning. He suggests that the next time you start a web project, try starting by asking yourself these three questions:

1. Who am I trying to attract?
2. What do they want from my website?
3. What do I want from them?

These deceptively simple questions will get you started on the right track for planning your site and the criteria by which you’ll measure its success for years to come.

via mpdailyfix.com

We develop on WordPress and these three questions came just in time for the new website we’re building!

Have fears? Overcome them now (via The Daily Post at WordPress.com)

I’ve been reading all the comments here, and many of your posts. I’ve seen some of the same fears and concerns come up. Here are some answers. I’m afraid to publish: Most bloggers quickly discover the opposite feeling: they desire to have more people reading what they’re writing. For most bloggers, there aren’t that many people reading what they publish. It’s not like the entire web is sitting around, waiting for you to push the button, just so t … Read More

via The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Day 2: The high price of cheap technology

Trying to squeeze another couple of years out of the president’s laptop? Think again about TCO or the ‘total cost of ownership’. Not buying the right technology at the right time could cost you thousands in lost productivity…

Learn WordPress.com

via learn.wordpress.com

Basic WordPress

Here’s a series of step by step videos to get you started in WordPress…

First, how to log in to your website…

The WordPress.com dashboard – introduction

Writing and publishing a post…

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This video doesn’t exist

Saving and returning to draft posts & pages…

Error

This video doesn’t exist

Adding an “About Me” (or any other static) page…

Error

This video doesn’t exist

Finally, posting via email…

That should get you started. You can find many more instructional videos on more advanced topics at WordPress.tv. You can learn more about html commands at the W3 Schools website…

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