Fons Tunistra’s tip in Tidbits about Zemanta sent me to my blog to try it out. It took the time of a download and two clicks to install this Firefox extension. No registration or password, it simply shows up as a sidebar when you are working in the “post” window.

Since it is a Firefox extension it doesn’t even require registration or a password. It works with several blogging tools, including blogger.com and WordPress. On my WordPress blog, I had to go the URL bar and click on an icon that was sitting where you normally expect to see the RSS icon. I turned that on once and off, and reloaded the page, and it was working for my WordPress blog that is hosted elsewhere.

On blogger.com, it suggests tags (labels in blogger.com speak) automatically and that alone is a time-saver.

Every 300 words, Zemanta updates its suggestions. Adding the “Daily Show” and “Jon Stewart” to the post brought up relevant images at the next update.

Image via Wikipedia

You can force Zemanta to update if you don’t want to wait until you have typed 300 words, but it seems the suggestions improve with context, so longer posts will produce more targeted suggestions from Zementa.

This looks like an extension that will catch on quickly. It will remain to be seen if it ends up leading bloggers to post about the same sites or events as it comes into more widespread use. We all need to remember that while robots and automatic tools are useful, they work best under human supervision.