Zemanta

Blogging can be fun but it can be difficult to put a good blog post together, particularly when it comes to adding images and links to make the page look more interesting.

Zemanta can help with that. It’s an add-on for Firefox or Microsoft’s Live Writer blogging tool that, when you open a blog post, offers links and images that can be added.

The most useful part is the pictures – Zemanta opens as a sidebar in the window, with a collection of pictures shown. At first these are random, but type into the search box and you’ll see a collection of relevant shots, all available for free use. Double-clicking or dragging one adds it to the post.

The same applies to the links and tags that appear at the bottom of the post – each can be added to the post with a click. It also works with email services such as Google Mail and Yahoo Mail, but it’s less useful there.

The quality of the pictures varies – they come from public sources such as Flickr so it’s a case of picking wisely – but Zemanta is a good way of quickly and legally adding pictures and links to blog posts.