At least one major newswire service seems to be taking the advice of the head of AP. Deciding rather to evolve than die, Reuters today has released an API that provides automatic tagging capabilities targeted specifically towards bloggers and online content producers called Open Calais. The service, which is usable within standalone applications as well, allows publishers to automatically tag words within their posts (so long as they’re written in “reasonably well written English prose”) similar to how most bloggers link to relavent content internally.

The difference, of course, would be that the links would go out to Reuters content, and would be generated automatically.

Gerry Campbell, the President in charge of Search and Content Technologies at Reuters said, “The world is still suffering from information overload. The explosive distribution of information doesn’t always help users find exactly what they need when they need it,” implying that this is the impetus and aim for the new Reuters service.

To participate in the open beta, publishers should send their developers over to OpenCalais.com to grab an API key and begin implementation into their systems. As an added bonus, the first developer to create a Calais-based plug-in for WordPress will get a $5,000 bounty (so go get crackin’ on it!).

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