SmartLink: The World is Flat

One of the purposes of this blog is to try out things that aren’t possible at WordPress.com. The first example, and the subject of this post, is SmartLinks from AdaptiveBlue. I think that SmartLinks are best illustrated by example, so here goes.

1. The World is Flat, Release 3.0 is a link to my review of Thomas Friedman’s best-seller. What makes it a SmartLink is the blue icon that follows the regular link. If you click on the icon, you’ll see that it shows you various web services you might want to apply to that page (e.g., Digg).
2. The world is flat : a brief history of the twenty-first century is a link to the appropriate Library Thing page. Clicking on the icon will show the smartness. The SmartLink recognizes that this is a book, and provides other relevant links. One of the links is to Amazon; that link includes my affiliate information.
3. The link is smart is what I’d really like to do. The link itself goes to my review of the book, but the SmartLink recognizes that this is book-related, and gives Amazon, etc. Actually SmartLink doesn’t generate this for me; I pasted together the link from example 1 with the SmartLink from example 2.

I emailed AdaptiveBlue support about this last night, and Alex replied impressively quickly. Reading his reply, I realized that the support request I sent at midnight or so might as well have been written by a pumpkin for all the clarity it provided.

Sorry, Alex. I hope this is clearer. I think that SmartLinks are very cool, and would love to see them available at WordPress.com.