How to add a Blogdimension shortcut icon to your iPhone or iPod Touch home screen?

Nothing easier than adding a cool "aqua-like" shortcut to Blogdimension.com - your prefered Web 2.0 Search Engine - on your iPhone or iPod Touch home screen.

1) From your device, open Safari and navigate directly to http://www.blogdimension.com

2) At the bottom of the current screen, tap on the '+'

3) A menu with four options shows up, tap "Add to home screen"

4) A new screen appears where you can notice the "Blogdimension" icon

5) Add or complete the word "Blogdimension" in the form just right from the icon

Et voilà !

A nice icon should appear now on your iPhone or iPod Touch home screen allowing you to access directly to Blogdimension.com

Why not doing the same for your own website or blog?

It's very easy! You must first design the favicon for your website in an image editor (like Gimp). The picture should be 57 x 57 pixels. Name it "apple-touch-icon.png" (the image should be saved under "PNG" format). Upload this file and place it to the root of your website. Carry out the same operations as described above for Blogdimension. You will then have the shortcut of your own website on your iPhone or iPod Touch home screen. Share this tip with your friends, contacts, partners or customers!

Original post

The new web is live, tagged, opinion-based and multimedia

We are often asked by the media and journalists what makes Blogdimension a different search engine. We, at "BD", usually reply basically we focus on "Web 2.0" content.

But we find it quite uneasy to explain about our positioning because the Internet content we give access to our users has no clear definition yet.

Q: What is then this still undefined Web content you call "Web 2.0 content"?

A: the type of content BD gives access to is characterized at least by one or several of the following aspects:

1) Real time and live web

• "Live web": it means content that has a limited lifespan. It consists of RSS or Atom-like content which we could define as "As soon published, as soon consumed, as soon scrapped". Typically it includes all the blogs, microblogs, forums, online news, podcasts, online videos... NB: our frenemies - from Technorati - also mention the idea of a "live web".
• "Real time": next step is to introduce the idea of a real time content. It is not so difficult to implement. The only limitation is technical resources (servers) because this process requires much computation and storage capacity.

2) Tags

• There is quite a big difference between Web 1 and Web 2. Previously, a content used to be classified not by the author but on the search engine side when it was indexed. Categories and topics were fixed and defined statically by the webmasters. Today, the author has an active role in sorting out the content by associating descriptive tags. Categories and topics are changing constantly. This new possibility makes now the web really live! One can notice this new phenomenon in tag clouds which are virtually booming on the blogosphere.

3) Opinion and subjectivity

• This kind of content has the peculiarity of aggregating users' comments and viewpoints. That means something distinctive from general, informative, encyclopedic or commercial web. Of course, the latter can also include some opinion (personal comments, critics, etc.). In this case they fully enter into Blogdimension's scope.

4) Multimedia

• In recent years, the web is going through an increasing amount of multimedia content. The success of online audio and video sharing services speak for themselves. Just carry out a basic search and you will consistently find a bunch of YouTube or Blogdimension video files and tons of podcasts from blogs or other online media mixed in the results.

Q: So, finally, what is Blogdimension's contribution to the Internet search industry?

A: Blogdimension allows the user to search via a single entry-point mainly for:

• live,
• opinion,
• multimedia,
• and commented upon

web content.

At the end of the day, the question is: how to clearly define this new kind of web content?

We will definitely have to imagine a new concept. We at Blogdimension suggest "opinion web" or "popular web" because "Web 2.0" appears to be a rather technical definition. "User Generated Web" could also be an option for defining the New Web.

And, you? What is your opinion?

Thanks for your support.

The Team

Blogdimension results now in the Blogbar widget!

Last month we announced that Blogdimension’s results were available in Zuula metasearch, along with all the other “big” search systems. Today we are proud to be part of the search options also in Blogbar.

Blogbar is now a quite widespread search widget the bloggers can easily add on their blogs or websites. It is a module with a nice look & feel and a typically Web 2.0 style of design. The Blogbar allows your visitors and readers (and yourself of course!) to carry out Internet searches directly from your site.

It is difficult to believe that there are so many powerful search functions (it is in fact a metasearch) hiding behind such a tiny, minimalistic and compact widget. The users can search for in practically all the search engines existing on Internet: all the stars of the search industry and now also Blogdimension.com, the Web 2.0 Search Engine! Like Blogdimension.com, they propose the service in many great languages.

Following one of the two creators of the Blogbar and author of the influential French techno-geek Netwizz blog they decided to add Blogdimension’s results because of (translated) “the quality of their results, filtering options and the rapidity of their page display“. I can tell you we are always quite happy to read such phrases!

But the Blogbar does not only propose a flat scrolling list of search engines. The engines are organized in a smart way by coherent types of search: web search, blog search, job search, social networks and even video search! They still do not propose any audio search… But for that specific search the usesrs can maybe be satisfied  by the “podcast search” to be found directly on Blogdimension.com.

Oh yes! I’ve almost forgotten to tell the Blogbar makes it possible to search for your content published on your own blog or website as well. I should even had begun the article by this crucial information!

Okay. We could call it quits with the Blogbar. But we would miss quite a lot other interesting features imagined by its cunning designers. So you can also set your Ad-Sense parameters, if you have any. As you can see, the Blogbar is not only free of charge but can also bring you some little money. Every blogger knows that Ad-Sense is not a real bonanza! Still, this intent shows the Blogbar creators paid some attention to the users’ interest and wallet. A quality that becomes rare in the software or Internet industry.

The setting up of the Blogbar is very easy and the guidelines uncommonly clear. Even a 6-year child could do it!

And last but not least, if you feel affraid that adding a widget may clash with the look & feel of your website, it’s simply nay! Blogbar’s inventors anticipated a whole range of colors so their widget integrates seamlessly to all kind of web and blog designs.

Long live then to the Blogbar!

For Blogdimension.com, this new cooperation - short after the North-American Zuula.com and more recently with the Spanish Alianzo.com - indicates that we begin to harvest some cool effects. We, at BD, put everyday much energy and commitment to bring our Web 2.0 users a greater choice in their daily search activities, more fun and finally an alternative Web content cleared as much as possible of all the noise and scoria that begin to overwhelm big players’ results pages!

Thanks for your constant support,

The Team

Find the original article on Blogdimension Blog

Blogdimension & Alianzo - the Spanish bloggers' network - are now supporting each other!

There is no any fanatic blogger who has never heard about Alianzo, the most extensive bloggers' and social network and directory "Made in Spain"! Alianzo is a reference in the blogosphere since early 2005 and is known through its regular and much follwed blog listings established on an international basis.

Alianzo cleverly ranks and federates the blogs and their authors by several criteria like geographic origin (more than 70 countries covered, sometimes zoomed at a regional level), language and a system of categories by tags.

Alianzo rankings are made following a complex formula mixing different sources like "Bloglines RSS subscriptions, Technorati's incoming links, Google BlogSearch's incoming links, Alexa's position, Yahoo's incoming links, Google's incoming links and the number of mentions in several Digg's clones during the last month". It is based on the combination of popularity measurement and the users' influence (the users have they word to say which makes alianzo a true Web 2.0 service).

Moreover, a trends system is implemented so the users can follow the tendency of a given blog directly on a timeline.

As per today, there are 13479 bloggers (many of them influential), 15451 blogs, 244 countries, 49 categories and 13814 tags registered in Alianzo.

So why a cooperation between Alianzo and Blogdimension.com?

"We found a natural convergence between a Web 2.0 network/directory and a pure Web 2.0 search engine" says Henrick, one of the two cofounders of Blogdimension. Alianzo and Blogdimension are both focused on the same kind of users and market: bloggers and more generally all kinds of user generated content producers (video, audio & podcast, etc.). Both are active at an international scale, often in the same countries and languages. Both are niche systems. So, there is definitely a positive effect for Alianzo and Blogdimension to support each other and put in common their respective audiences and share some traffic.

Unlike several years ago, Internet users are now very experimented in 2008. They are less and less satisfied by giant monopolistic Internet search systems which tend to pour tons of useless or commercial results on them. This new generation of Internet users is now ready to explore the alternative, specialized and often very efficient tools available to them. Alianzo and Blogdimension are clearly the tools that the power users and bloggers as well as all the Internet users now need in their tool box for their daily Web 2.0 search activities.

Find the logos and links to Blogdimension directly on Alianzo's website while you surf there! In short time, you will also find a logo to Alianzo on Blogdimension results pages too. Stay tuned!

Thanks again for your constant support,

The Team

Three new "relational" features proposed in Blogdimension's search results

As you know Blogdimension is preparing its new 2.5 release. We don't want to let off the pressure on innovation. So we keep on imagining and designing new useful ideas for our ever demanding users. We owe them innovation!

So, here are three new features in preview of the next major upgrade of Blogdimension.com, the now Web 2.5 Search Engine... in a certain way.

Example of query on AltSearchEngine

• 206 link(s) to this blog
• See more from this blog
• Cached

"206 link(s) to this blog"

This feature displays the number of times let's say ReadWriteWeb is linked to (or cited) by some other blogs. This is a very useful utility to measure your popularity within the blogosphere, of course through the prism of Blogdimension's index! Other systems will probably give different results. So you can compare between various search engines.

Blogdimension's "Link To" feature indicates two things:
1) How many other blogs link to your blog,
2) Who they are.

This way you can find your allies but also your ennemies... A true social and relational feature!

"See more from this blog"

This one is a bit different. It displays all the posts or articles from a same blog available in Blogdimension's index at a given moment.

So you can have the whole history of a source at a glance within Blogdimension's results page. Of course we deliver only the post or article title, date, author and a short summary. You are then invited to clic on the link to access directly the original article for full reading.

"Cached"

Blogdimension caches some raw text content. We usually deliver only the links. But our technology makes it possible to show some limited content of a post or article. So this is the way to read a post entirely within Blogdimension. But it is strongly recommended you read a content directly where it derives from, we mean on the original blog. A direct link to the source is provided.

We will tell you later why this "cache" function is interesting either for the bloggers (content producers) and their readers. Typically, if the distant blog is down or unaccessible, a cached version of articles or posts can provide satisfaction to the bloggers and their readers by delivering a minimalistic content (like a "spare part" content). But the key idea is that this feature will in fact boost bloggers traffic. We'll tell you why next time. ;-)

So, if you are a bit curious about your blog network or you like to spy upon others then try these new features. May be you will learn something about yourself or the others. ;-)

PS : when using these features you might encounter some slowness. It is because such actions require more computation and resources. Just be patient (few seconds in general).

Thanks for your support.

The Team