The site utilizes the Google AJAX Search API to put it all together and is a total of 2 pages, the index pages and a CSS stylesheet.

This is very similar to the CyberSearch located on this site, a matter of fact after I setup the Emerging Media Specialist site, I used the new CSS to enhance the CyberSearch page here.

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Add a “Video Bar” to your blog
September 29, 2006
Google AJAX Search API Blog

…An early adopter of the API known as “CyberCoder” had a cool idea… He envisioned a “Video Bar” that could sit in a narrow side bar vertically, or across the top or bottom of a page horizontally.

Last night we launched a Video Bar solution. This makes a great addition to your blogs and pages and composes nicely with an existing Video Search solution. To show you an example, we added the video bar to our AJAX Search API Playground blog.

I have developed a lot of page variations around this Video Bar over the last 18 months. One thing that always comes up when dealing with AJAX technologies is the fact that AJAX inherently does not help with SEO since the JavaScript elements are not read by the search spiders. Putting this fact aside, adding AJAX to a page can have significant advantages. More bloggers need to realize that not everything on a page needs to be part of their SEO functions. Adding relevant information to a page, especially videos, can greatly affect the amount of quality traffic and links a site gets.

Last year I was also involved in the Blog Bar that was added to the Google AJAX API lineup.

Add a Blog Bar to your site
March 15, 2007
Google AJAX Search API Blog

On February 7, we announced the availability of the Google News Bar. This cut-and-paste search control is simple to use and has seen phenomenal adoption.

Anytime we launch a new AJAX Search API feature, we ask you to share your thoughts with us in the AJAX Search API developer forum. Late Sunday evening, “CyberCoder” (a.k.a., inventor of the Google Video Bar) asked us to produce a modified News Bar that worked over Blog Search instead of News Search.

You can also see other Community Samples built by developers using the Google AJAX Search API, and maybe get yours listed too!

So here is my latest addition to using the Google AJAX API VideoBar. The AjaxAPIVideos WordPress Plugin.

The AjaxAPIVideos Plugin is designed for WordPress and adds a videobar to pages wherever you include the code snippet.

The plugin uses the post title to search for videos and return 4 small thumbnails in a horizontal Video Bar. When clicked on, the video will play on the page without requiring another page load and this means that not only does the visitor stay on your site, he can start and stop the video from your page. And since the search query is simply the Post title, the videos should be relevant to the post content (if your title is relevant). If no videos are found, the space where the video thumbnails usually appear is simply closed up and the page keeps it’s flow without an empty thumbnail etc.

I have always thought the advantage to this type of dynamic page load is that you do not have to anything other than write your post, and you get relevant videos loaded on your page.

Getting relevant videos loaded just doesn’t get any easier than this!

Download the AjaxAPIVideos WordPress Plugin here.

PS: If you are wondering why there are no videos on this page, Youtube is returning zero results for “AJAX API Video WordPress Plugin” which is not a bad thing, that means the plugin is working, no relevant videos, no problem. To see a page with the videos click on a previous post in the right sidebar. Or click a tag from below, the Video Bar Plugin is also loaded on the Tag pages.

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You can read the full post from Mark Lucovsky here.

To show how easy these API’s are to work with I built a simple Partner Bar and plugged it in below. This API would make an excellent WordPress Plugin, I am just limited in time. So here is what I did.

I took the sample code and placed it in a seperate PHP file in my Themes folder. First I modified the feeds included in the sample and included the file in my header.php. Then I placed the required div tag in the body of this post.

I can see where the Partner Bar could be utilizied on a blog or website to either support your partners, but it may also be a good way of selling ad space in the form of a RSS list from the customer. And since this is an AJAX API it is not machine readable and able to pass page rank. So there is a win win!

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Also, I added a Google Videobar to the top of the main page. Google has made this soooo easy and they are not even requiring an API key anymore for the video bar. I have my videobar set to the RadioBlogTalk YouTube channel.

If you are interested in the Videobar check out the amazingly simple Videobar Wizard Page!

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I have gone through all the Official Google press and tutorials and the Video Units are not showing up in the Adsense setup as advertised. So I guess it is just a waiting game now. The system looks pretty good from the blog posts, there is also a post on the Official Google Blog.

The main question I have is whether the Google AJAX Search API will be included to offer the video units?

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By adding an image to the background and a few little tweaks of the CSS file I was able to get the same result. I think it actually helps augment the video player and video title. To see the results click on one of the URL’s below and click on a video in the left sidebar.

I placed this new page in its own folder to demonstrate the ability of making a dynamic page that can have different URL structures. Using PHP I setup a default variable or you can pass any variables to create the following.

• Page Name
• Page Title
• Keywords
• Description
• API results

Examples : (default variable is “Blog Search”)

http://www.cybercoder.net/layout/

http://www.cybercoder.net/layout/You-Tube-Layouts

http://www.cybercoder.net/layout/You-Tube-Layouts/

http://www.cybercoder.net/layout/You-Tube-Layouts.html

The search box will pass input to PHP and the result will be displayed with the following URL. It is not hard to convert this search box to use any of the above URL structures.

http://www.cybercoder.net/layout/index.php?a=You+Tube-Layouts

This project took approximately 2 hours to complete. The bulk of the time was getting a good image formatted just right for the results. No programming was needed on the actual page as the CSS file took care of everything once the image was formatted. I also use the htaccess file to create the redirects for the multiple URL structures.

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What Is Google AJAX API?

As a web developer, you may be asking this question. More so, you may be asking “How can using Google API provide a better professional service to my clients?” or, “How can my clients expand and grow their business within their niche market using Google API?”. The key thing to know and understand is the fact that the Internet itself and the people who use the Internet are constantly growing and expanding and demanding more and more. The Internet has shifted from an era of having flat files and HTML code into a super information galaxy that uses advanced technology coupled with excellent static or machine readable content. Google API is here to present masses of information in a robust way. Here is an example:

This morning I started playing with the Google AJAX API again. One idea I have had floating around in my head was to mash it up so that I could get search results for Blogs, Webs, News, Images and Videos on a single page with a Map to a location. This really wasn’t hard and was possible with a small amount of modifications to other search pages I had created. Here is the result. The page will take any location you pass to it and create a dynamic page of results. Just separate the words with a dash “-” and complete the URL with a forward slash “/”.

http://www.cybercoded.net/map/San-Diego-Zoo/

http://www.cybercoded.net/map/Dallas-Texas/

It’s hard to believe I have been involved with the Google AJAX APIs since June of 2006. The programs have come a long way since then. In September of 2006 I came up with the idea for the Google Video Bar and Mark Lucovsky and team whipped it up into a functional part of the system. In March of 2007 I came up with the Blog Bar idea and the team again made it a reality. This type of response from Google as been a real surprise, but I think that is what sets their work apart from so many others.

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