Zemanta recently won second prize in the Change the Web Challenge for web-innovation, and they are giving away the prize money to whichever charities most people vote for. Zemanta, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a tool for suggesting content (photos and links to related articles) to add to your blog, based on whatever you’ve already typed in. It works for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, and a wole bunch of other blogging platforms. If you’re using FireFox, you can run it as a plugin in your browser, so you don’t need to install it on your blogging host.

You can try the interactive demo on their website. Just cut and paste the text from one of your old blog posts to replace the sample text they put there, hit the ‘run demo’ button, and see what pops out. I’m willing to bet you’ll be impressed. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

So, Zemanta, congratulations on winning that prize, and thank you for a great tool. Now on to my vote. I would like you to donate to the Marine Conservation Society UK, to help them with the work they do. The Marine Conservation Society UK is involved in a large number of activities around the British coast, and beyond. Coastline is something that Britain has lots of, so it’s an important charity!

They actively campaign to persuade the UK government to establish Marine Protected Areas, and encourage people to get involved at several levels, such as reporting sightings of basking shark, turtles, pink sea fan and many other creatures that can be seen in the seas around Britain. They encourage divers to become better observers by learning about their marine environment so they can in turn provide more accurate and useful observations to help drive conservation efforts.

They have a lot of educational resources for schools and project-suggestions for college students. They even organise coral reef surveys in the Maldives for recreational divers.

For the less well-heeled visitor to the British seaside, they monitor the state of beaches and publish an annual guide to the best beaches in the UK. This is not just cosmetic, many beaches pose health risks for swimmers, so knowing where to go is important. To help you get there, they even provide downloadable maps for your in-car GPS. How’s that for service!

Zemanta have had over 50 charities proposed to them so far, and will donate to the five that get the most votes. If you think that the Marine Conservation Society UK deserves a donation from them, all you need do is blog about it yourself, to add your vote.

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

(Possibly) related posts:

1. The Coral Reefs of the Maldives
2. Diving in the Maldives
3. World Oceans Day, June 8th
4. What do you see in my blog?
5. The Maldives