As a fan of most things Yahoo!, I have decided to try out their “Shortcuts” widget to enhance this blog.

Here’s how the Y! team themselves describe the service:

As you compose your blog post, the Shortcuts plugin looks for content related to what you are writing about. A Shortcut may lead your reader to a finance quote for a public company, a map of a point of interest, a Flickr image, or information about specific companies, products, and people. When it finds relevant content, it lets you know.

Shortcut recommendations appear on the Shortcuts review page. You control which Shortcuts to add and which to remove. There are two presentation options for Shortcuts.

1. You can display the Shortcut to readers as a term underlined with a blue dotted line that shows the related content when the reader’s cursor hovers over the term.
2. You can present the recommended content as a badge or image embedded in your post.

Here’s a few items I listed just to trigger the plugin:

• 363 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA
• Apple iPod Shuffle
• President Bush

Here’s a screenshot of my previous post when reviewing the recommended shortcuts.