Blog Bar to the rescue

The Google Blog Bar is an AJAX Search API application that lets you easily add application and page-controled blog search results to your web pages or blog. It provides search-driven bars of blog search results which are highly customizable. It allows you to specify the blog bar's positioning, the number of displayed results, the list of search expressions that drive it and more. You can even dictate which blog results are displayed by using either the APIs or links on your page.

You start by embedding the Blog Bar search code into the web page of your choice to display either a thin horizontal strip, or a tall vertical strip of blog search results. Adding the Blog Bar to your page is quick and easy using the available creation wizard which will walk you through some simple customizations and generate all of the code for you. Once you have generated the basic code you can adjust as needed.


On the surface the new Google Blog Bar might seem to be just another slick little addition that you can add to your pages in an attempt to keep up to date with the latest and greatest gadgets. Or, a way to add some additional functionality to your web pages and a possible useful service for your visitors. All of that is true but if you open your mind to the possibiities and look a little deeper you might just find a fantastic way to pull the different aspects of your Internet business together.

If you have a companion blog for your main website, (if you don't have one I suggest you set one up immeadiately after you finish this article), you can set up a Google Blog Bar on all of your website pages and have it only pull the feed from YOUR blog. The normal way of setting up a Blog Bar would display feed results from blogs other than your own and could esaily result in your precious visitors clicking away from your site if they see a headline that interests them. By restricting the results to just your blog you can tie both your website and blog together seamlessly with natural click thrus occuring when something of interest is shown. This is absolutely perfect if you actively post to your blog and also have multiple categories.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Our main website at http://www.icanteachu.com/ has the Google Blog Bar installed on the bottom of every page. You will notice that the title on the left side is always branded to us with the actual blog category it is showing headlines for next to it. The title of the actual blog posts show to the right of that along with the date posted. If you were to see a headline that was of interest to you and clicked on it you would be taken directly to that post on OUR blog. Because the blog and website work in synergy with each other to present out material we win either way the visitor decides to go.

You can check out the main Google Blog Bar website here: http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/blogbar/index.html

Linux Administrator Street Smarts: A Real World Guide to Linux Certification Skills

Hit the ground running with the street-smart training you’ll find in this practical book. Using a “year in the life” approach, it gives you an inside look at Linux administration, with key information organized around the actual day-to-day tasks, scenarios, and challenges you’ll face in the field. This valuable training tool is loaded with hands-on, step-by-step exercises covering all phases of Linux administration, including:

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Managing software and processes
Documenting the system
Working with partitions and file systems
Configuring network features
Managing security

An invaluable study tool

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Using the command shell history
Redirecting input and output
Resolving hardware conflicts
Reconfiguring the login screen
Managing RPM and Debian packages
Protecting your system from runaway processes
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Using journaling filesystems
Configuring common server software

The Street Smarts Series is designed to help current or aspiring IT professionals put their certification to work for them. Full of practical, real world scenarios, each book features actual tasks from the field and then offers step-by-step exercises that teach the skills necessary to complete those tasks. And because the exercises are based upon exam objectives from leading technology certifications, each Street Smarts book can be used as a lab manual for certification prep.

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