Flash content cannot be indexed by search engines. If your website is all Flash then you can be sure search engines won’t be able to see 95% of the content.

Google has several official statements regarding Flash content:

“Search engines are text based. This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. [...] Any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won’t be accessible to search engines. [...]

Rich-media technologies like Flash should only be used for decorative purposes. HTML must be used for content and navigation.”

“Make sure that your site has a reasonable, seamless experience for visitors without Flash.
This may involve creating HTML-only equivalents for your Flash-based content that will automatically be shown to visitors who can’t view Flash.”

Adding your content in the noscript tag won’t help either.

Theoretically, adding your web page content in the noscript tag on your web pages should make sure that search engines get the right content. Unfortunately, Google’s John Mueller indicates that this doesn’t work anymore:

“One of the problems with noscript is – as others have mentioned – that it’s been abused quite a bit by spammers, so search engines might treat it with some suspicion.

So if this is really important content, then I wouldn’t rely on all search engines treating your noscript elements in the same way as normal, visible, static content on your pages. If this is ‘just’ for comments, then that might be worth considering.”

What does this mean for your website?

If you want to get a reasonable amount of visitors through search engines, don’t use Flash and other multimedia elements for the main contents of your web pages:

Only use Flash for decorative purposes.
Use regular HTML a href links for navigation.
Do not use fancy JavaScript or Flash navigation menus. Most search engines cannot parse them.
The main content of your web pages should be available as simple text.

You should also be aware that one of the most popular plugins for web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome is a Flash blocker. Used by people tired of seeing all those Flash based adverts on web pages. If they don’t see those ads, they won’t see your Flash website either without over riding the Flash blocker settings.
Will they bother? Or will they just go somewhere else?

Flash based websites look nice, and make webmasters look clever, but they’re not necessarily good for your business.

If you use Outlook, don’t be fooled by this email.

Look out! Outlook phishing form spammed out | Naked Security: “”

Our plans to support modern browsers across Google Apps – Docs Blog: “As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.”

Modern websites make use of technologies not supported, or not properly supported, by older browsers, so even if you don’t use any Google apps, you should still upgrade. Even if only because of the enhanced security offered.

Today Amazon launched it’s Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player.
You store your music collection on Amazons servers and stream it to your music player, be that on your computer or mobile device. There are Cloud Players to download for access over the web and from Android devices.
Amazon gives you 5GB of free storage, which is nice, and if you buy 1 album from Amazon mp3 they’ll upgrade you to 20GB free for a year. A nice perk but if you fill it up you’re compelled to pay $20 for another year if you want to keep it. $50 will get you 50GB.

But this is not a new idea. You can do this with DropBox, iDisk or any other cloud storage solution without the need for yet another app. I have music stored on DropBox that streams to my Macs and my iPhone should I wish to do so. Although why anyone would actually want to do that is beyond me.

Apart from a useful off site backup for your precious music collection, streaming over a limited bandwidth connection makes no fiscal sense. Especially as you already have it all stored on the computer, iPod or phone anyway.
And if you really must stream, Audiogalaxy is free.

Filed under interesting but ultimately a pointless waste of money.

TechCrunch talks it up

Get off the net and get on with your life.

Facebook says it has 30 million UK users, that’s almost half the population. Well I’ll throw a spanner in the works and fess up to having 4 Facebook accounts. Yes I know that’s not strictly in accordance with the rules, but I bet I’m not alone, and that does reduce the overall figures just a bit.

It’s estimated that 30.1 million adults (how they know they are adults isn’t clear) accessed the internet almost every day in 2010. That’s 60% of the population. Facebook has 30 million UK users so it follows that almost all those net users are using Facebook.

And I don’t visit Facebook every day so that further queers the figures. I like to think I make a difference to the world.

Join me and stop visiting Facebook every day. Just for the sheer hell of it. And speed up my broadband as well.

via thenextweb

BBC News – Britons caught out by booby-trapped web ads: “”

“In the context of the World Wide Web, a content farm is a company that
employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large
amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy
algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines. Their main
goal is to generate advertising revenue.
The articles in content farms often poach from other media sources,
leading to disputes over copyright infringement.”
More from this page…

The main aim of these sites is to make money from affiliate links and
display ads. They want as many page impressionas possible.

Google is now working to filter these out from search results as they
are often not relevant to the search terms used, and it’s also
considered to be a form of spamming.

There are one or two extensions available for Firefox that will enable
filtering of Google results, but now you can help Google filter them at
source.

An extension for the Chrome web browser allows the user to manually
block sites that appear in results. When you do that you will never see
results from the blocked domain again.
The extension sends blocked site information back to Google for possible
use as a ranking signal in search results.

You can read about it here on the Google blog http://goo.gl/N5IFw

Getting infected with malware worries 65 percent of Facebook users and 54 percent of Google users, the survey found.

I would have hoped the percentage was higher, especially where Facebook is concerned.

Well I say good for them, and doesn’t everyone?

You really don’t want all your personal details out in cyberspace, leaving you open to identity theft and fraud.
Be economical with the truth, especially on social networking sites.

Never give too much information away.

You can safely ignore these messages. You can also usually ignore any “ACL found but not expected…” message. These messages can occur if you change permissions on a file or directory. These messages are accurate but are generally not a cause for concern.

When permissions won’t be repaired | Macworld: “”