Yahoo! Shortcuts for WordPress is a plugin much like Adaptive Blue that allows you to automagically embed relevant links into your WordPress blog with information about terms on your blog posts. Information for the terms such as company names and tickers, locations, news and product names is determined by Yahoo! and in some cases, Yahoo! search is used to enhance the content. They have also published a tutorial to tweak the generated content. I like the ability to map a location and the ability to link to Flickr photos. Check out the full list of features and the download location here. Download Squad was unimpressed with the features of the plugin. Disclosure: Adaptive Blue is an advertiser on this blog.
I think that the plugin is totally stupid. I don’t really understand why Yahoo! thinks that WordPress users would willingly give Yahoo! free publicity by using this plugin. Maybe if this plugin was through Yahoo! Publisher Networks and I was paid when people used it but otherwise, forget it.
I agree with Michael. If we wanted all the ads & junk we might as well have a Blogger account.
Another issue is , WHile in use it takes too much of memory. It can be a big problem with hosting if you use it too often!!
Have to agree with Michael on this … do they really think we want to let them advertise for free?
How about this, Yahoo: pay bloggers to host these links and use this plugin.
I wouldn’t use it (the pop-up link thing is horrible) but some publishers would.
Hmmn…something Yahoo trying to muscle us away from Google??
What next? Yahoo Rank (or YauYEE Yikes?! Adapted from Bruce Almighty)
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azrin @ http://www.azrin.net
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I pretty much agreed with the naysayers until I watched the plugin’s video walkthrough with Alex King. The embedded maps and Flickr embedding features look promising. It additionally allows users to embed company stock quotes, which could be useful for financial bloggers.
Also, keep in mind that this is only a beta release. I have a feeling that this may become a handy little tool and a great timesaver. It’d be really nice to see Yahoo! Publisher Networks integration.
While I won’t be using this plugin, I think that it will offer some pretty good value for people who don’t know where to look for decent media. This will also give some newer bloggers the ability to make semi-professional looking sites. I’m surprised that Yahoo! isn’t suggesting any kind of profit sharing system in order to steal bloggers away from Google, but perhaps they’re just testing the waters to see if some of the burned people go running to Yahoo just go say they’re anti-Google.
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how this plugin shapes up over the next few months. Like everything else in the blogosphere, it’ll either be popular for a year, or it’ll bomb like BlogRush.
You know, It’s better to consider this plugin and method a big step forward, I do not agree with those who think this plugin will be a free advertising offer. People like to have rich pages, it is not a bad idea at least to auto link places to maps 😉
Hey check out what shoemoney is saying about this new “tool” that you’re promoting.
Haha not only that you have so many ads, on this blog, and you use/spam wordpress to get visitors, but you created a new tool for wp to get more, from simple users… steal their traffic and squeeze the cash out. And that’s not all.. in the same post where you are promoting this tool, you also mention your advertisers.
I have one simple question: DO YOU CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE THAN MONEY? The word unscrupulous rings any bells?
I’m not the onlyone check out what shoemoney is thinking of you all:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/.....wordpress/
PS I know this comment won’t be posted on your blog since the truth must stay away from your visitors.
Chris: I am not sure I need to justify the reason for posting every item on this blog and I did disclose that Adaptive Blue was an advertiser on this blog. Here is the comment I left on Shoemoney’s post:
Awesome plugin! I love the flickr integration!
It takes the chore out of finding a suitable image to go along with a post!
The only problem I found is that the picture formatting was broken. I had to strip out all the id and class so that the jscript wouldn’t be added. The jscript formatting clashed and the image overwrote part of my text.
I am actually quite amazed that anybody thought that this thing was useful. Now in all fairness, I hate the popup look ever since I saw “SnapWhateverItIsThisWeek” showing up all over wordpress.com blogs. Add to that the Yahoo attempts to redirect your traffic (which is all this really is) with some snippet of information (none of the links they demo actually provide any value, just the tease of something worthwhile if they click away to Yahoo!).
Amazon offers a similar service now through their affiliate program, but at least when you generate sales for them, they pay you for it.
(Full Disclosure: I tried the Amazon program, but my distaste for the stupid popups made me pull that one down too).
Yes, the Snap stuff was big, then they got a big head, then they ruined the whole thing.