AdaptiveBlue lets you power up links in your blog

May 23, 2007 | Dan Kaplan | Comments |

Updated

adaptiveblue3.jpgAdaptiveBlue now enables bloggers to add semantically rich “smart links” to their blogs.

Smart links (see left for how they look) are basically links on steroids. They are marked by an icon floating next an otherwise normal-looking link. Clicking on this icon opens a small window with lots of helpful options related to the link itself (see example at far bottom).

These smart links take the power of AdaptiveBlue’s BlueOrganizer FireFox extension out of the browser and onto the web. You can read about BlueOrganizer here. You can create a smart link to sites that fall into any of the 30-plus categories that BlueOrganizer supports, which range from anime to books, music, wine, travel and food.

For example, if you create a smart link to a site about a Jack Johnson, clicking on the icon brings up links to buy his albums on Amazon, eBay and AllMusic. You can also instantly add them your Amazon Wishlist, find lyrics, and see what people are saying on Metacritic. Similarly, smart links to a site about a restaurant display links to reviews from Yelp and CitySearch, maps from Google Maps, and more.

This is all done automatically. When you create a smart link to a website, BlueOrganizer analyzes the content and metadata of the page and does all the work. To use smart links, a site publisher first must add some code to his or her blog’s template, bookmark a page using the the browser extension, and then select a tab called “create a smart link.” The software then generates some HTML, which you then embed, and that’s it.

As part of the upgrade, AdaptiveBlue has also simplified the interface of its plug-in, enabling you to access all of its functions from one button that sits next to your navigation bar. It has also powered up its contextual analysis technology; you can now highlight a sentence or phrase in a page, right click and get rich information related to the selected text.

Because it aims to take up real-estate next to links, it competes with Snap, and some of its functions are similar to Sphere. Neither product offers the same breadth and power.

AdaptiveBlue, which is based in Livingston, New Jersey, raised an undisclosed sum from Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures earlier this year. The CEO, Alex Iskold, also frequently contributes to the blog Read/Write Web.

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About the Author, Dan Kaplan

Once upon a time, Dan considered himself a magazine journalist with dreams of "The New Yorker" and a couple of well-reviewed but only mildly successful books. Then one day, life, as it is known to do, decided it was time for rebirth. Like so many things before it, this rebirth was conceived on a mostly-empty plane to Reno. Now, instead of magazine writing, Dan would plunge into the world of New Media and write for Matt Marshall's blog.

It's funny how it goes.

  • Sounds exciting but unfortunately it only seems to work with the BlueOrganizer installed which I have but it's broken. The Right-Click BlueMenu does not work anymore it says "loading" forever.
  • By "it" I mean creating smart links yourself.
  • Dan Kaplan
    Hey Tadeusz,

    My version of BlueOrganizer didn't automatically upgrade; had to go to the site and download it myself. Just in case that's your problem.
  • Hi Tadeusz,

    We've just released a new faster, more efficient version called BlueOrganizer Denim. You can try downloading it directly on our website: http://adaptiveblue.com If the problem persists, please let me know at julia.iskold@gmail.com

    Thanks!
    Julia
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