I started using Zemanta a few months back and I really like it.

Zementa's goal is to "Improve the way you blog & write e-mails", by providing a simple interface for "enriching" your blog or email with related images, articles and hyper links. The contents is pulled from all over the internet, and you can include your own content, and your friends content as well. It makes it really simple to link to web sites like Wikipedia and Flickr. As you write Zemanta pullis in related stuff that you can include in your blog with a simple click.

It is almost too easy. A few times I linked to articles that I really didn't like. Based on the Title they looked ok, but once I visited them I found they were not what I was expecting at all. I hope that future versions will allow you a way to easily examine potential related information. As it is right now it is not easy. You can't even copy and past the link into your browser.  But over all that is my only major complaint.

UPDATE: I just got a tweet back from @andraz at Zemanta. He pointed out that there is a "visit" link on all the suggested articles. I went back and looked.  Sure enough, there is one, it is just very very tiny :>).  But that erases my biggest complaint.  NICE!

I think Zemanta may be on to something here. There is a need for tools to help improve the quality of blogs. The blogosphere will become a lot more useful if people are forced to support their posts with related information. It is almost like a including bibliography, citing your sources.

I hope that someday in the future any serious blog will have to include well cited sources. Zemanta or something like it may help.