Display your tweets with Blogbar !
Yet again a new function in Blogbar, for those of you who micro-blog via services like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiky or Poodz !

Screenshot on the right is based on Byron Crawford’s tweets (although we don’t know Byron personally, he’s got a nice blue Blogbar on display on his blog and we read him from time to time).

It’s easy as usual : on the Blogbar homepage, where you generate your own blogbar, you just need to enter your username and the service you are fond of. Then, preview the result… see the small link at the bottom of the Blogbar ? It allows direct ajaxified access to your latest comment on your microblogging service !

Just copy/paste the code provided on your template, and there you go !

ps1: your account must be “public”. It’s an option generally turned on, but if your texts doesn’t show up, check twice this option !

Affichez votre dernier gazouillis grâce à votre Blogbar.

Amis gazouilleurs vous allez être ravis ; désormais, vous pouvez afficher vos gazouillis provenant soit de Twitter, soit de Pownce, soit de Jaiku ou bien encore de Poodz sur votre blogbar.

Pour cela, il suffit de vous rendre sur la page qui génère votre Blogbar, et d’indiquer le service de microblogging auquel vous êtes enregistré, ainsi que votre pseudo (screen name, username). Et c’est tout ! Vous pouvez immédiatement prévisualiser le résultat. Ensuite, copier-coller le code généré dans votre blog.
Sympa lorsqu’on veut afficher son humeur du jour ou sa dernière découverte sur son blog ; sans oublier la promotion de votre microblog puisque la fenêtre où apparait votre gazouillis est cliquable et pointe directement sur votre microblog ;¬)

PS1 : il faut que votre compte soit ouvert au public, ce qui est en principe l’option par défaut pour tous les services de microblogging.

PS2 : cette nouvelle fonctionnalité est uniquement disponible dans la version francophone (les autres langues viendront par la suite).

Gazouillez bien !  

According to Compete.com, Blogbar.org just went over Rollyo in terms of Monthly People count.

Not too sure how it’s computated and if really significant, but hell, let’s sing a Marseillaise !

Have you ever wondered what your friends are talking about? Especially on a subject you are to write about on your blog, or you just wrote about?

That’s now possible with Blogbar, thanks to Google Custom Search and the wizardry of Eric, technical guru of Blogbar. How does that works?

Imagine you want to know what your friends said about the iPhone, for instance. Just type in “iPhone” in the Blogbar search box, and select “at my friends” in the small drop down menu (highlighted in red on the picture). Hit “Ok”, and you’re done!

Blogbar will now search on all blogs you linked to in the past : friends, media sources, acquaintances, etc. That’s really convenient for power users, or even to know what’s going on in YOUR blog universe! This feature has been already implemented on all running Blogbars! Enjoy!

technorati tags: blogbar friends widget search engine
keotag tags: blogbar friends widget search engine

Well, it’s not really our birthday here at Blogbar. But we had to get your attention on what’s going on at Blogbar these days. Eric, our terrific in-house PHP guru, just told me the following stats after he’s switched some tubes in the belly of the monster (the way Blogbar runs, that is), and here’s what comes out in terms of numbers of installed blogbars :

• EN + INtl : 1370
• ES : 932
• FR : 710
• IT : 36
• JA : 11
• RU : 6

That makes us…3065! (05/29/2007)

To celebrate, Eric just added a small gizmo on the search engine we use : you can now search in Twitter (with twitter.FM search engine), too, for those of you that use the INtl’ and US version of Blogbar ! Hope you’ll like it !

Blogbar Widget is available for Opera. Eric strikes again with a new widget of Blogbar for those of you who use Opera as their browser of choice! It’s free, as usual, and allows everybody to have a small Blogbar widget running on their desktop. You must have Opera open at all times, but if you use Opera everyday, that won’t be much of a nuisance !

The widget allows you to :

Search on the web with: Google – Yahoo! – MSN – Ask – Exalead

Search the blogs with: Technorati – Google Blog Search – IceRocket – Blogpulse – Feedster

Search on social networks with: del.icio.us, digg, reddit, RawSugar, Newsvine, Wikipedia

Search for images with: Flickr – Google Image – Stock Exchange – Fotolia

Search for videos with: Google Video – YouTube – Dailymotion

To get it, click here!

While we didn’t post here, Eric worked. In fact, Eric worked to offer the Blogbar users and future users two new options !

• Biggest one, Blogbar ON Google : Blogbar is now available for immediate insertion into your Google Personalized Homepage. We did it before for Netvibes, and now it’s available for Google, too ! Just have a look here.*

• Second one, we released also a widget for the Blogspirit platform. You can check out on our main page, see, the button at the bottom once you’ve created your Blogbar ? That’s it, you can try it if you have a Blogspirit blog !

*Ouriel wrote a nice piece about Blogbar on Techcrunch.fr… merci, Ouriel !

We’ve received an e-mail from Robin, running cybersoc.com, a blog on research/management/law, regarding Blogbar use & Adsense.

Apparently Robin has been kicked out of Adsense recently. He describes what has happened to him on this post, where he tries to figure out the possible whys.

He’s been kicked out, according to an exchange he had with Google, because

We have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site in violation of our Terms and Conditions and programme policies…

Robin explains he’s installed Blogbar a few days ago, after having already seen in his Adsense account the increase in revenue / click. Then, 2 days after installing Blogbar, he’s being kicked out of Adsense. Could that be because of Blogbar ?

Blogbar & Adsense, & Adsense numbers, etc

Blogbar proposes you to submit your Adsense # when you create your Blogbar. This Adsense number is commonly available to everybody, and in itself has no “privacy” or personal info attached to it. For Google, it’s merely an identifier: With the Adsense #, they can resolve who you are (they issue the # once you’ve completed the registration process).
So, everybody using Adsense on his blog has to send the Adsense # to Google when the page is loaded. For instance, Blogbar own Adsense # is

pub-0189436817918665

and can be seen by looking to the source code of our blog (look for “pub-” string). Similarly, the Adsense # of Mike who commented on Robin’s blog is

pub-7942538102426325

; (I just had a look right now).

This issue of privacy of the Adsense # has already been raised on the Digital Point excellent forums : Digital Point proposes his users to share revenue with them by supplying their own Adsense #s. Check this link to see their own FAQ, which is similar to ours.

So, what does Blogbar knows about Robin ?

Nothing ! : we don’t keep any log of the Blogbar creation process. It means that once Robin (or anyone else) has generated his Blogbar code (including site URL & Adsense #), if he doesn’t use it, we have no trace that he ever connected to our site (beside classical server log).

When somebody runs a search through a Blogbar with an Adsense # included, it calls the Blogbar script on our server. It sends us the search term, the search engine chosen by the user, and the Adsense # associated on that Blogbar. Then, we just process the search request to Google server (if that engine was choosen) and include the Adsense # so that any sponsored links shown will be credited to the Adsense # we pass as parameter.

Blogbar relations with Google

We have no special relation with Google, nor any agreement. We just use Google as any other search tool. Our system (feeding them with users’ Adsense #) doesn’t appear to be against their terms of service. Of course, if we learn it’s against their TOS to do what we do, we’ll simply cut out the Adsense # passing.

Blogbar, Malware ?

Eric & I try to be fairly transparent on what we do, as this blog and the site tries to prove. We tell you what we know about you - nothing personal, and not much more than can be available by a log analysis : we even have a list of our users being automatically updated everytime somebody’s Blogbar is called (i.e. shown on his blog).

More than that, we just know quantitatively how many searches are conducted. But we don’t know what search terms are queried, to what engines.

Should that change, we’ll announce it here, as before.

So, why’s Robin been kicked out ?

Difficult to say, but there’s the issue of invalid clicks raised by Google. I’ve just spend a couple minutes on a thread on the subject on Digital Point, and it could be the explanation.

Q: can I use my own Adsense code with Blogbar to generate some cash ?

A: yes, just go to the blogbar page, enter your Adsense code, and you’ll be ready to rock instantly

Q: I don’t have an Adsense code. What is it ? How does it work ?

A: AdSense is a program made by Google. Basically, you set up an account, get an Adsense affiliate number in exchange. Then, whether on your blog or with Blogbar, if you use your Adsense number to display search results or ads, Google will “recognize” you. When somebody clicks on a sponsored link on the page, you are credited some money by Google.

Q: I don’t have an Adsense code. Where can I register? Is it Free ?

A: Adsense is a free program, so you should register. It’s a few minutes’ process. You can go in here to sign-up.

Q: Ok, if I give you my Adsense number, you’re running a Nigerian 419 Scam and will steal all my money / invade my life / come to my place / (insert your own paranoïd fear here)

A: your AdSense number is public : if you already use Adsense on your blog/website, you can see your Adsense number when you look at the source page of your blog/website. We can not do anything with your AdSense number - except pass it on to Google so that they credit YOU for any sponsored links clicked on their results page.

Q : I don’t understand what this blog is about / I don’t understand what Adsense, Blogbar, a blog or a website are ?

A: start your quest here.

Q: My AdSense / Blogbar question is not listed

A: Just ask your question in a comment to this post. We’ll try to answer you asap.

Since we’ve launched Blogbar in November 2005, we’ve had some major work done : 3 major versions of the tool made by Eric, 8 languages dealt with, more than 25 search tools in the latest release, the ability to search your own blog, a rather successful “Blogbar Design Contest“, blogbars installed as far as Japan, Chile, Italy…

We’re now talking of more than 750 installed Blogbars, more than 1.8 million Blogbar displays in July > that is, more than 60k displays per day, and growing

Blogbar financing

As of this date, Blogbar has been privately funded. That is, mainly time spent by Eric & myself, plus some expenses (hosting, domain name…). This way of funding the project slows us down, since we both have “real” jobs beside Blogbar to earn money to raise our children ! Money, for everybody ?

With the latest 3.2 release (which we’ve released earlier this morning), everybody is allowed to make money with Blogbar : you, the users, and us, to help us further develop this free service.

For Blogbar users

As of today, you can now insert your own Adsense code when you are in the process of installing the Blogbar. Once you’ve put your Adsense code, then you’ve inserted your “new” Blogbar on your website / blog, Blogbar will automatically pass on your Adsense code to Google when a user makes a search from your blog/website. That means any sponsored link clicked by an user on a results page coming from your blog will be credited to YOUR account! Just insert your Adsense code right now, or subscribe to one if you don’t have an Adsense account.

For us

We plan on inserting a sponsored txt-link to replace the small “blogbar service” sentence at the bottom of the Blogbar (as shown here on the right). That is, if we manage to find some advertisers willing to purchase this spot (then drop us a note here). Note there shouldn’t be any change in the Blogbar shape or layout beside this link insertion if we sell it !

Blogbar Evolutions

This small link may help finance the coming evolutions we have in mind for Blogbar :

• add new search tools if/when they’re available : search tools, social bookmark tools, specialized tools such as YouTube, DailyMotion…
• centralize all results on one page (a bit like Jux2 SERP maybe)
• develop further widgets (as the ones we’ve done for Netvibes () and Typepad)
• save your searches / share your searches
• visualize a tagcloud of users’ searches
• …and many more