One of the things Blog World provides plenty of is new products and software with amazing claims of greatness. There are some that I think look good enough to check out further, and some that I don’t, but there’s rarely any that I feel have hit a home run. Zemanta may be one of those. I say “may be”, because it’s a tool that assists you with finding photos and related articles to link to based on your content, as well as tags for your post, so this very post IS the review and we’ll all know how well it worked by the end of the post. Of course, the post is about blogging tools, so I’ll add in some content about why you might need a blogging tool to help you with your posts.
Find me some photos
One of the biggest problems I find while blogging is how hard it can be to find visual media to accompany my posts. If, for example, I’m writing this post about writing tools, I would probably want pictures of writing implements, note pads, maybe a keyboard or a laptop. The laptop might be my preference because that’s what I’m using to write this post. So if I type “laptop” a couple times in my post, what might I get photos of? Let’s see….
[there WAS an image of a ball park here]
OK… Maybe Euphamisms mess up the algorithm a bit, but this was just one of 9 suggested on the first page of results in my new blog post side bar. The photos included one of a laptop that I could use and a couple others that were completely not relevant. The more I type, the better my selections become. For example, when I refresh my selection, I now find another laptop that I like better.
[there WAS another image here of a keyboard]
It’s close enough. I don’t like how it throws the photo kind of randomly into my post text. Sometimes it’s where I expect it and sometimes it’s at the top of my post.
Let’s get some links!
It seems that if you add a link like the one above, it removes your images, which I consider a serious flaw in the the fireflox plugin version of the Zemanta software.
Maybe the SEO tags work?
I think it moved my link, too. I can’t tell anymore. It did give me some good tags to add, and there’s some OK images to choose from, which will save you time, but it’s more hassle than it is useful if it’s going to mangle all of its own progress.
What’s the conclusion?
I still think it’s a genius idea and will be very helpful to me if it really works. I will give it one more shot with a future post and see how it does. If it still fails, it’ll be uninstalled until some things get fixed. The upside is that I’ve installed the FireFox plugin, so if the verdict is failure, I’ll just remove the plugin. A few other blogs seem to have had better luck than me, so try it out for yourself and let me know.
NOTE: Any missing or displaced links and/or images are intentionally left that way to preserve the results of my testing and are the product of the testing.
UPDATE: Oh look at that… The link is embedded in the content. That’s actually very handy.
My first full day at BlogWorld couldn’t have been better. Michelle and I headed down for breakfast and then I headed out to grab my badge. While waiting for the exhibitor floor to open up, Ian Fernando joined me and we got caught up on our plans for the day’s panels. There were a lot of booths to hit, so I just started from one end of the room and began working my way across, skipping those that didn’t interest me and stopping to talk (sometimes at length) with people at booths that caught my eye. One of those was mindtouch, a collaborative wiki system that I am told is much more intuitive than others and can be integrated with WordPress easily. I don’t know that I’m really sold on it since I’m not much of a wiki guy, but I’ll check it out. One program that looks very interesting is Zemanta. The name isn’t the easiest to remember, but the idea is great. Zemanta integrates with WordPress to ease the process of finding photos, videos, and other artcles related to what you’re writing about. The way it was explained to me, it analyzes the text of the post you’re writing and suggests content and links for you as you type, and all the content is Creative Commons friendly. I haven’t tried it yet, but if it lives up to its promise, it should save bloggers a lot of time as well as help the artistic community promote their CC photos and videos. I’ll do a full review when I retrurn to Phoenix. While wandering around the expo floor, I was stopped my a couple people who recognized me, which is always nice. I would have loved to chat more, but I had booths to see.
Ian and I met back up and headed to the panel full of name-dropees, John Chow, ShoeMoney, ProBlogger (Darren Rowse), Copy Blogger (Brian Clark), Zac Johnson, and Jim Kukral. As always, it was full of useful information, and has inspired some small changes I’ll be making to this blog in the near future. This “super panel”, was so popular, in fact, that people were having a hard time pulling themselves away and eventually people had to be reminded that there was another panel scheduled for the room. Before the panel began, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of my readers, NikNik and Reggie from MyTechOponion. I also had an opportunity to show Jim, the damage I’ve done to my Flip in preparation for the upgrade I’m doing (expect that post soon).
Just before Ian joined me and Michelle for lunch, he let me know that Michelle and I were invited to the Market Leverage dinner at Envy that the super affiliate bloggers were going to. In attendance were the panelists mentioned above as well as a few people who won seats at the dinner, a couple more affilliates, and of course, Deb, Mike, and Jen from Market Leverage. The dinner was almost as great as the opportunity to sit down with some of the blogging elite. John posted pictures of the dinner and all the food, as expected.
The BlogWorld Opening Day party ended at 9:30, so everyone at the dinner missed that, and many of us ended up at the Tempo bar at the Hilton. Shortly after that, Ian, Michelle, the ML crew and I all headed to the Wynn, where we spent the rest of the night at Blush, drinking and dancing.
If you want to see all the photos I took, they’re on Flickr. Day one was awesome, and although I think today will be more relaxed, I’m sure I’ll get just as much out of it.
Michelle and I headed out at around 5:00 from Phoenix and finally made it to the Las Vegas Hilton at around midnight. We checked into our room, which has a great view of Vegas from the 28th floor and proceeded back down to scope out some of the amenities. Having never stayed here before, we’re liking it so far, but haven’t actually bumped into anyone yet. At the bar, we did see a couple guys from PimpMyNews.com, which I have yet to check out.
Unfortunately, we missed the pool-side party, there are plans for the party tomorrow night. For now, I’ll head to bed, but leave you with a few photos. Just click the one below for the whols set.
Oddly, I haven’t been to a lot of techie conferences. I’ve been to a couple during the dot com boom and one before and, of course, there was Affiliate Summit West, where I had such a blast I couldn’t wait to start planning the next one. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to go to every convention, so I had to pass on the Izea one and Affiliate Summit East in order to make the BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas.
What is BlogWorld?
BlogWorld and New Media Expo is the largest conference for bloggers and is a huge event for anyone serious about blogging, but I’ll let them toot their own horn here:
The first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media. In addition to the only industry-wide exhibition, BlogWorld features the largest blogging conference in the world including more than 50 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes from iconic personalities on the leading-edge of online technology and internet-savvy business.
The Plan
Because I like to bring Michelle with me (and I have a day job), I, only attending Saturday and Sunday, the main conference days. However, unless traffic works against us, we will hopefully arrive in time to check into our room at the Las Vegas Hilton and pop into the TechSet Event, pool side at the Bare lounge at the Mirage Hotel, which looks like a lot of fun.
So far, after that it looks like I’ll be hitting the BlogWorld Expo floor and a few panels during the day and then whatever else comes up at night. Dinner plans for a small blogger dinner on Sunday are in the works and Saturday is wide open. Monday, we’ll be checking out and driving home.
The people
Even though there is plenty, I’m sure, that I can learn at BlogWorld, my main motivation is to make new contacts and meet up with contacts I’ve made in the past. I’m really looking forward to meeting up with or at least bumping into the following people while there:
That’s just to name a few, of course. If you’re there and recognize the goatee, shout out “Joe Tech” and I’ll come say hello and slap a business card on you.
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