Adobe’s Flash technology has long been the bane of efforts to create a Web site or application that can be indexed by Google, Yahoo! or other search engines. What it lacked in search engine optimization (SEO), Flash made up in offering designers an infinite playground for creating rich-media apps, games and video.

But what good is an application that users can’t find?

Yesterday, Adobe and the two search engine leaders came out with an answer: A special Flash player that opens up content within applications and translates it for search engines. Flash content owners and search-engine users should notice results immediately.

This news was also mentioned in today’s Googleholic.Google is at the forefront of this Flash-spidering technology with Yahoo! not far behind. (The latter plans to release their improved Flash search in a future update.) Both companies were provided an optimized version of Flash Player with which to develop their improved algorithms.

An entry on their Google WebMaster’s blog says they’re now able to index any content a user sees as they interact with the Flash file. They’re also able to discover links used within the Flash file, which can presumably be used to boast page rank like a normal site.

Adobe has also posted information about SWF searchability on their site.

The search indexing of Flash currently only exists for text and links, not images or anchors on buttons and related objects. And unfortunately for the tremendous growth in Flash Video, or FLV, this format cannot yet be indexed either.

There are also other limitations reported by Google:

1. Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
3. While we are able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, we will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files.

But while this search indexing technology is somewhat limiting now, it presents a huge opportunity for Flash designers and developers that could have been stunted due to Flash’s unfriendly nature with SEO.

Prior to this move by Adobe, most Web designers recommended against using Flash for areas of your site that are critical to usage or indexing. There were ways to improve the page rank and searchability of Flash sites, but they can be hackish.

Adobe says that current Flash content owners and developers need not change anything to make their files more searchable. But they contend that best practices will emerge as they did with HTML.

With one of Flash’s major negatives now overcome, will Web designers once again embrace the still-propritary technology? Post your thoughts in the comments.

[Via: Techcrunch]

Google has rolled out a whole slew of new features for Blogger, the company’s user-friendly blogging software. In order to enable the new goodies, you’ll need to login to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com. This is where Google rolls out tools that might not be quite ready for prime time. But once you try out the new version, you’ll probably never want to go back.

First up, Google has redesigned the post editor. It’s still a what you see is what you get editor, but the toolbar looks much cleaner and placing images got about a thousand times easier thanks to a new drag and drop image handling. You can also easily resize images by clicking (or double-clicking in Firefox 3) to bring up a box that asks if you’d like an image to be small, medium or large.

Blogger in Draft also has better support for HTML and enables tables and other advanced HTML code to be placed in a post. And the preview feature brings up a new window so you can preview your post without leaving the editor window.

One thing to note is that Google has turned off the autosave feature, so you’ll need to click the save button periodically if you don’t want to lose your work. Autosave should be restored in a future update.
Google has also added the ability to import and export blogs as XML files. This makes it easy to change your blog’s URL without losing any data.

You can also finally allow users to leave comments without leaving your site. There are three options in the comments settings. You can have the old fashioned full page comments, pop up comment boxes, or embedded comments that will show up without leaving the current page. Note that embedded comments might not work if you’ve altered your template in any way. In our tests, the pop up comments worked just fine, but since we’ve kind of pimped out our Blogspot blogs, the embedded comments were a no go.

Finally, there’s a new star rating feature that lets visitors rate each post. Again, this feature may not work if you’ve messed with your Blogger template. There are a few more subtle changes, including the ability to make Blogger in Draft your default Blogger homepage. While Blogger still doesn’t offer the flexibility that competitors like WordPress do, these latest updates do make the service a bit more attractive.

Google Browser Sync is a utility that lets you synchronize your Firefox bookmarks, preferences, and cookies across multiple computers.

Now anyone can check out the source from the Google Code project page. While nobody’s done anything really cool yet like make a version of Google Browser Sync that works with Firefox 3, it may just be a matter of time.

One thing that’s particularly interesting is the fact that Ars Technica reports Google posted the source code online on June 13, the same day that Lifehacker confirmed the death of the official project. It’s not clear which came first, the chicken or the egg. But either way, we’re not complaining. If Google isn’t going to continue developing this useful utility, then we’re just glad that someone else may be able to pick up the torch.

Everybody knows that Alexa, Compete, and other web services that track web site traffic are inherently flawed. Because they compile third party data instead of looking at your actual server data, you can never be sure that the statistics you’re reading are accurate. But hey, if you really want to see whether Engadget is more popular than Gizmodo, they’re the only game in town, right?

Now there’s a new player in the web traffic comparison game. Google has added the ability to search for websites in Google Trends. While there’s no guarantee that the stats Google spits back are any more accurate than the ones you’ll find from Alexa or Compete, the service does give you one more source for comparison.

Search Engine Land reports that Google grabs its numbers from a combination of sources including search traffic, anonymous Google Analytics figures and other third party marketing data.

[via VentureBeat]

A NYT article says that Americans waste $650 BILLION dollars over-checking their email obsessively. BILLION. Not Millions. Not Thousands. BILLIONS. Crazier? We waste $650 BILLION dollars trying to get back into the groove of work after checking our email obsessively.

Why do we do it? Are we that afraid of missing something?

Some of us here can say that we too check our email obsessively. Even going so far as to click on the Gmail logo over and over to refresh the page. Does this sound familiar to you? If so, you’re apparently not alone.

How do we stop? How do we combat this problem? Do we love email that much? We hear people complaining all of the time about information and email overload, so maybe we’re trying to get a jump on controlling it before it controls us?

Many questions and not a lot of answers, but if these numbers from the NYT are true, oh boy do we have to change some things.

First things first.

Stop. Look, and Listen.

• Stop checking your email so often
• Look and notice that Gmail already refreshes itself
• Listen for emails to come in automatically via POP or IMAP

You won’t miss something.

What’s your favorite way to catch email? We find that checking email on the mobile slows us down a bit. Unless you get too obsessed with that…can you say Crackberry?

Lets hear your thoughts in the comments.

[via silicon valley insider]

Google Browser Sync provides Firefox 2 users a way to synchronize their bookmarks, history, cookies, and saved passwords across multiple browsers on multiple computers. In other words, you can use the program to make sure the settings on your home browser are identical to your settings on your browser at work.

According to a Google representative, the folks who had been working on the browser plugin had moved onto other projects. But honestly, we’re not surprised to see that Google Browser Sync is no longer a priority for Google. Mozilla is now working on its own synchronization service called Weave, which lets you synchronize bookmarks and browser history across multiple computers.

Confusing, and annoying. It’s also confusing and annoying to have to use those services in separate programs or multiple tabs in a web browser.

AIM is probably the most popular IM service known to man and woman, iChat for Mac…these are both desktop experiences.

Enter Gabtastik.

For Windows XP and Mac OS X, Gabtastik wants to take your browser chatting to the desktop where a lot us feels that it should stay. The program takes you to a page just like a web browser would to log in. It did seem a little slow to pull in Facebook data. That could be an issue.

You can switch back and forth between Facebook chat and Google, as well as change the opacity of the application itself so that it doesn’t become an annoyance by overpowering your desktop. Make it invisible if that floats your boat.

This is a great way to not be tethered to either site via browser 24/7 and still be in contact with your friends who either are tethered or are cool enough to use something like Gabtastik. The downside is that you still have to have AIM or iChat up along with this if you use them too.

Gabtastik calls itself a “Site Specific Browser” for web chat services, so will other services be included as they pop up as well? Let’s hope so!

Gabtastik is not the first to do pull these services away from their respective sites, Digsby handles it, and so does a sweet Firefox trick.

Now that Yahoo! has finally decided things are really over with Microsoft, the company has found room in its heart for a new love: Google. The two companies today announced an advertising partnership that will basically place Google AdSense advertisements alongside Yahoo! search results.

The deal isn’t exactly comprehensive. It covers “some of” Yahoo!’s web properties, and the ads will only be displayed in the US and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, which means that Yahoo! may display its own ads or ads from other parties as well.

In a press release, Yahoo! says it expects to raise about $800 million in revenue per year from the deal. Google, in return, posted a blog entry saying the deal is “good for users, advertisers, and publishers.” The US government isn’t quite convinced yet. Back in April, the Justice Department responded to a test run of a Google/Yahoo! partnership with an investigation. And today the chairman of the US Senate Antitrust Subcommittee said the Senate will be closely examining the deal.

It’s been about a month since Google announced its new Friend Connect platform which lets you add social widgets to any blog or web site. If you’ve been waiting patiently to see these widgets start popping up on the wild, wild web, it looks like the wait is over. Tech blogger Orli Yakuel has added a widget to her blog, Go2Web20.

The widget looks a lot like the recent readers widgets you find from services like MyBlogLog. But Friend Connect offers users the opportunity to interact with their contacts and communities more deeply without leaving the current web page. For example, Yakuel has added a comment widget that lets FriendConnect users who sign up to be members of her blog to leave comments that are visible to other members.

When you visit a site with a FriendConnect widget you can invite your Google contacts or friends from other sites including MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, or Plaxo to join the community.

Yakuel says there are only a handful of Google gadgets available at the moment, but says there is a section where you can grab gadgets from third party developers, much like the gadget gallery for iGoogle and Google Desktop.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

For some baffling reason, Gmail still doesn’t officially support HTML signatures. In other words, you can’t add links, graphics, or adjust your fonts.

There are a handful of Greasemonkey scripts that add support for HTML signatures, and the latest version of Better Gmail also lets you create HTML signatures without installing Greasemonkey. But what if you don’t want your signature to show up on every single message? Or what if you want to create multiple signatures that you can use in different situations?

GeekFG has developed a web service that lets you create and HTML signature and then save it as a browser bookmarklet. All you have to do is click on the bookmarklet when composing a Gmail message in Firefox or Internet Explorer and your signature will be added.

This utility comes from the same guy who brought us DomainFinder, a web service that lets you break up any word or phrase into possible domain names like downlo.ad/squad or downloadsq.ua/d.