Hats off to the WordPress team, and keep it up.

Over the past several months a new trend has been emerging. The technology changed more than a year ago and the way that we use the web has been catching up. I’m just getting my head around it now, and holy cow is it cool. I’m still grappling with these concepts so please forgive me if this post is a bit janky. I’ll cover some broad trends and then give a couple of concrete examples.

For the past couple of years sites have been displaying data from a number of sources through RSS, that isn’t really new. There is an increasing number of sites that allow users (and other sites) to submit data remotely as well, through API’s. What this means is that you don’t even have to visit a site to take advantage of its services. In some cases the sites, or web applications, don’t offer anything on their own site other than an administration panel. Gravatar is a site that offers a centralized avatar storage and distribution for the rest of the web, all you can do on their site is update your email address and picture. But, once that’s done every website that takes advantage of that service displays your avatar. Similarly, create an account at OpenID and you can access dozens of sites with those credentials. Last.fm keeps track of the music you play on your computer or iPod and gives you tools to display that list on any site you wish, your blog, Facebook, MySpace, wherever. Twitter, Flickr and Delicious also make it a snap to share information on any other site you choose.

There is a shift toward decentralized content, the information that you view on one page could be pulled from a dozen or more places. These mashups are fun and useful, but its not just content that is being shared between sites, now applications are, too. I can think of a few examples for WordPress. Disqus is a blog plugin that replaces, and adds functionality to, your blog engine’s commenting feature. Comments display as threaded, and they extend across similar sites. I have already reviewed Zemanta, which is a tool to help add links, images and related articles to your blog posts.

There are several Firefox add-ons that extend the functionality of Gmail, making it a great alternative to Outlook. RememberTheMilk has an add-on that allows you to see and manage your task list from within Gmail (that’s actually one of my favorites). Xoopit indexes your email and gives you quick access to images and videos that have been sent to you.

Some people are referring to this as the semantic web. The way I understand the semantic web, this is incorrect, though I’m certainly no expert so I don’t necessarily claim to be right. My understanding is that semantic is a way of categorizing the information contained within a web page so that computers can make sense of and utilize that content. I guess maybe this fits within semantic in a general way, though I consider this to be more along the lines of content/application distribution.

This is a pretty exciting trend within web development. As each of these sites/tools develops more ways of interacting with them, the functionality of the web increases. Distributing content across a number of sites increases the chances that someone interested in your words will see them, increasing the value that those pages bring to readers. And, transferring applications to the web opens up a myriad of opportunities as well. I’m excited to be working in this industry right now.

Image via Wikipedia

Have you heard of Zemanta? No its not a drug, although that’s what I originally thought, too. Zemanta is a tool that recommends links, tags, images and related articles as you type a blog entry. I found out about it a few weeks ago, and was intrigued enough that I installed the Firefox plug-in right away. Three blog entries later and I’m sold, I love it.

What It Does
As you type in a blog entry, Zemanta looks through your text for keywords, if it recognizes one, it surfs the web for links, images, tags and articles that are related, and displays them next to your entry. If you agree that these articles are relevant to your post, just click the appropriate button and Zemanta adds the link (or image) to your post.

Why It Matters
First, your posts become more interesting to read when you link to related content on the web, show pictures to illustrate concepts and link to other articles that either support or contrast with your claim. In other words, your readers will find your work more appealing.

Second, Zemanta makes it easier for your blog to be found. By using the tags that Zemanta recommends, you’ll be categorizing your content with the same keywords that others are using, which will ultimately have an impact on the traffic your blog receives through search engines. If Zemanta picks up on something that you blog about, others on the web will find out about it as they blog on related topics. If they link to your post, your blog just became more popular.

Review
Okay, so now that you have a grasp of what this tool does, here’s what I think of it. This is such a great idea! Why on earth hasn’t this been done before? Seriously? I mean, there isn’t any revolutionary technology at play here, this is just a tool that recommends content based on what you’re tying in.

So far I’ve tried the Firefox extension, the WordPress plugin and the Windows Live Writer plugin. As promised, they each work identically, so it doesn’t matter which you use. They also offer plugins for Drupal, Movable Type as well as an extension for Internet Explorer. I have no reason to believe that they’d work any differently. The only blog engine that I’ve tried it with is WordPress, but I did try it with two different themes, and all of the features (pictures from Flickr, lists, links, etc) rendered perfectly in both themes. If you use an image from Flickr or Wikipedia, credit for the image is handled automatically.

The content loads quickly, though I’ve only tried it with a broadband connection. I wouldn’t even attempt this tool with dialup. All of the buttons work flawlessly, which I was impressed with. It works well enough that you really don’t even think about it, it just offers up recommendations in the background as you type.

Bottom Line
Honestly, now that I know about this, it doesn’t make sense to me to blog without it anymore. As a blogger, I want for my work to be tagged appropriately and categorized correctly. I want to link to other sites when appropriate. And I like showing images to my readers. Zemanta makes all of that a breeze, so I get to focus on quality writing. The tool works flawlessly, so what’s not to like. I wish I had thought of it.

Related Articles

• Zemanta Is My New Favorite Tool As A Blogger
• Zemanta ~ Must Have Firefox Extension for Bloggers
• Zemanta – Semantically Augmented Blogging
• Zemanta – Content Suggestion for Bloggers