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Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase

At the Web 2.0 Expo in NY this week, I had a chance to meet up with Jure Cuhalev of Zemanta to get a look at the new release of Zemanta. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Zemanta, it’s a recommendation service for bloggers that is really, really good. Zemanta can either be a plugin for your blogging software or an add-on for Windows Live Writer. While you’re composing your blog post, Zemanta looks at the content of your post and suggests relevant photos and blog posts. That way you can link to similar posts related to the topic you’re writing about.

Until now, Zemanta lacked customization. The service was great at finding other content based on your posts, but didn’t allow you to tinker with settings.

Let’s pretend that I love mashable, and that mashable doesn’t use Zemanta. Let’s go further and pretend that Zemanta does not include posts from mashable in their suggestions. Well, if that were the case, I wouldn’t ever get suggested posts from mashable in my Zemanta recommendations. Problem solved. The new release lets you add custom feeds to your account.

Zemanta’s new release has fundamentally changed the service in a big, big way. Before now, zemanta was basically a download that added recommendations to your posts. The service was completely independent of the user so much that there wasn’t even a login. Now the plugin is tied to an account, which is fully customizable.

1. Layout Customization

You’re able set the default image position, change the html code style, and select which image you want next to your zemanta links.

2. Personal Settings

The personal settings within the Zemanta profile allow you to add information about yourself, your flickr account, and your Amazon affiliate ID. So now you can access your own images directly and you can make some coin from amazon affiliate links.

3. My Sources

Finally, the new release allows you to add sources from social services (twitter and mybloglog) and blogs via URL or RSS feed and OPML files.

As I’ve said before, Zemanta is one of my favorite blogging tools, and I really think that any blogger would benefit from using it. The service continues to improve in every release, and I can’t think of a reason not to use it on every post.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Zemanta Releases Major Upgrade - Now It’s All About You
• Zemanta For Windows Live Writer- I Believe The Term Is “Woot.”
• Zemanta - Well That’s a Fun Little Tool
• Zemanta gets social

Filed under: Uncategorized, blog discovery, blogging, recommendation