Search-Powered Web Apps

I never cease to be amazed at what Lijit publishers have accomplished and how cool they seem to be. Take, for instance, today’s profile about Lisa Lubin. She’s a three-time Emmy-award-winning Television writer/producer/editor. But that was before she decided to take a sabbatical to travel and work her way around the world. Lucky for us, she has written about the (mis)adventures that ensued as she traipsed around the globe on her blog, LL World Tour.

In addition to sharing stories from her time abroad, Lisa also posts about subjects closer to home like her love for Chicago and thoughts about her hometown in Jersey, along with tips for those women traveling solo and best practices for booking airline flights.


How long have you been blogging and what made you start?

I have been blogging since the summer of 2006. I had decided to quit my job, chuck all my stuff, and travel around the world for a year (which later turned into 2 1/2 years). I was going to simply send ‘email updates’ to friends and family. But a good friend of mine who worked in the crazy interweb world at what was once a small startup in Chicago called Feedburner (now owned by Google), convinced me to start a blog…and off I went into the blogosphere cringing at the awful name every time.

What has been the greatest thing you’ve received from blogging about your travels?

It truly has been amazing. I have ‘met’ so many new friends this way–some that were also traveling and others that were just living vicariously through my adventures. I truly loved helping inspire others and the feedback I received from total strangers was heartwarming.

In your world tours, what has been your top three destinations and why?

This is always a hard question to answer as what I love about traveling is the interaction with people all over the world and I was lucky enough to meet some damn fine people. But besides that, my favorite places were as follows:

1. Berlin–hands down, a cool, progressive city of now. It’s a young city and Berliners are open and artistic. They look back and acknowledge their history, but at the same time are racing into the future. It’s an edgy city with great architecture and art pushing boundaries everywhere you look. I’d live there in a second and you’d find me at a cafe, drinking a beer in Prenzlauer Berg.
2. The Galapagos Islands–Stunning. This was definitely a once in a lifetime place. Each island you visit is different and unique with its own landscape and flora and fauna. The animal life is amazing and with no predators, they simply could care less that you are walking right up to them. I loved my days there of learning, snorkeling, and drifting around at sea without a care in the world.
3. Turkey–I went there on the recommendation of many saying it was their favorite country. I planned to stay two weeks. I stayed three months. The people are universally warm and generous. So many took me in and in a few weeks I was giving private business English lessons, cat sitting at a great flat near Taksim (the center of all nightlife/restaurants), and had a mobile phone with twenty new friends in Istanbul that I hadn’t even known just a few weeks prior. Besides that…the country has an amazingly diverse landscape-from the beaches of the Aegean and Mediterranean to the jaw-dropping ancient Roman ruins to the mountains, lakes and of course, tasty food-it’s a wonderful place.

What has been the greatest challenge you’ve encountered in your journeys?

The greatest challenge? Probably making time to ‘work’ and keep my blog updated. I tried to dedicate days to just hanging out and working wherever I was, but sometimes it was hard to spend the day on my laptop.

How has Lijit helped you to become a better blogger?

I have just started using Lijit (as recommended by that same cool friend who got me blogging in the first place) and am feeling my way around it. The wijit was easy to install on my sidebar and allowed me to remove a clunky section I’d put together of ‘where to find me on the web’ as Lijit already had this as part of their widget.

In addition to being recognized for her travel blog in various places online (like being a finalist in the 2008 Weblog Awards), her articles and photographs have been published by Sunset Magazine, The Boston Globe, Go Nomad and The Savvy Gal among others. She’s lectured on traveling solo and will be teaming up with Whole Foods, REI and Hostelling International for ‘Travel and Food’ seminars this summer. Keep an eye out for Lisa because if you have any questions about traveling, chances are she has your answers.

I love indulging my wanderlust by reading Lisa’s blog and am honored that she’s chosen Lijit as her blog search tool of choice. Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions Lisa and for inspiring us all with your adventures!

We’ve decided it’s time for a mid-summer contest. Nothing complicated–we just want to hear your Lijit story. To reward your efforts, the best storyteller will win a Kindle and ALL submissions will get a super-comfy Lijit t-shirt.

What should you write about? Absolutely anything having to do with Lijit.

Your contest entry could be about how you found out about Lijit…

“I landed in Nashville for the BlissDom09 conference. It had been a REALLY long flight day for me. The last leg of my trip was out of Denver, and I picked up my luggage and searched for the hotel’s shuttle van…

We talked a bit and I learned that she was representing Lijit, one of the sponsors for the event! (Sorry, I didn’t have the sponsors memorized.) Her name was Tara and I was feeling lucky to have met her like that, one on one, ridin’ in the van…”

–From Carissa at GoodNCrazy

Or simply what you like best about our service…

“This isn’t even the coolest part of Lijit, though, IMHO.  Instead, in my mind, the most interesting feature is the “Research” feature.  After you’ve searched for a specific term or after you reach TOCWOC through a search engine, the Lijit widget shows a Research area which gives you other possible posts or pages from TOCWOC and from the entire Civil War blogosphere!”

–From Brett at TOCWOC

Of course, you could be like Louis Gray and write a post that explains our service better than we do…

“Google’s goal in life is to find the one right answer that is true for everyone. Search for iPhone, and you should get the same answer I do at the top of the results, blanketed by potentially relevant ads from the company’s partners. Lijit’s goal in life is to find the one answer that is most accurate, depending on where you are searching. Search for iPhone on my blog, and you will find the most relevant responses that come from my blog and my content from around the Web, including Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and other social sites. Search for iPhone on Steven Hodson’s blog (also using Lijit), and you should get a different set of responses based on his activity.”

–From the blog of Louis Gray

Then, like Louis, you can turn your babies into little Lijit evangelists as well…

(But that’s not necessary to win the contest.)

To enter the contest:

• Simply post your Lijit story on your blog.
• Link back to us here.
• Leave a comment on this post with a link to your entry to insure we don’t miss your post.

You have thirty days and we will pick the winner with the help of everyone around our office. To answer potential questions, Lijit employees and their families are not eligible to win. (Lenora and Walter, I’m talking to you two!) Also, if you have posted something about Lijit in the past, feel free to republish your older post and we’ll consider it a valid entry.

In addition to the Kindle, you’ll also be featured on our blog, our homepage and receive our undying love & devotion.

Seems easy enough, right?  Have fun and we look forward to seeing what you come up with!

There used to be only two ways to display your search results–an overlay that popped up on top of your blog when a reader did a search or with the results hosted on our site. For those that haven’t seen it, this is what the overlay looks like…

With a recent release, however, all that has changed. We’ve had many users asking for the ability to embed search results within a specified page on their blog and now, you can do just that.

To see an example of how the embedded search results look, take a stroll over to Celebridiot. While getting your updates on celeb gossip, do a search using Lijit in the upper left of their site*. This is how you’ll see the search results…

Pretty cool, huh? The only thing with this display option is that it’s not meant for the weak of heart or the less tech-savvy. By this, I don’t mean to offend but do want to convey that in order to embed search results on your site, you need to be able to create your own page within your blog where the results will live. This is not always an easy task and there are some blog platforms that may not allow you to do this. But, if you know what you’re doing, here are the steps for embedding Lijit search results on your blog.

Start by creating a page within your blog for the search results. If you’re using WordPress, you can do this by creating a new page and calling it www.yoururl.com/search. Publish the page and once you have this set up, log in to your Lijit account.

Go to your Wijit configuration page within Lijit. When you’re logged in, choose the ‘Wijits’ tab at the top of the page. If you scroll down towards the bottom, you’ll see an area with a drop-down box to choose where you want to display your search results. Choose the ‘on my blog (embedded)’ option and you’ll see this appear.

You can enter the URL of the page you created for your search results in the empty box and then copy the code below to put on that page.

Save your widget settings at the bottom when you’re done. You’re going to paste the code we provided you on that special search results page that you set up and then, you should be good to go.

We’re excited about this functionality because it allows our users to have even more control over how their search looks and feels. And? This is something you wanted. So if you have any questions about how to embed search results on your blog, feel free to send them our way.

*This site is also a great example of our WordPress plugin overridng the default search of a site and making it way more Lijit.

In case you were wondering where all the honey bees have gone…look no further.

According to eyewitness reports, the swarm “arrived in tight formation, surveyed the Rio Grande across the street, found it unsuitable and then proceeded to colonize our tree.”

The guy in the white shirt is Bill, a wonderful guy and Lijit employee who alerted us to the swarm’s presence yesterday. After others in the building caught wind of the news, a small crowd gathered to enjoy the spectacle of nature until some do-gooder beekeepers came by to collect the bees a little while later.

A final close-up shot of the swarm, so you can fully appreciate just how Lijit we can bee…

Many thanks to Zach Conger, our resident Systems Architect and honey of a guy for rushing out to document this extraordinary event.

And yes, this does constitute exciting around our workplace. No judging.