Here’s another effect using AS3 to make fog with source files below.

View: http://bishport.com/fog.html

Source: zip

This is my first attempt at creating a realistic flame effect in Actionscript 3.0 so be gentle.

View: http://bishport.com/flame3.html

Source: zip

Google Maps is one of the most widely used online direction services on the web. That being said, have you checked your company’s listing on Google maps recently. In Google Maps’ Local Business Center you can manage your company’s address, services, image and much more. It also boosted my company’s site up on the local listings. It did take 2 weeks to verify the changes but it was definitely worth it.

So while wandering around the Print OnDemand Expo in Boston I bumped into a small Google booth. So in conversation I was told that Google will be releasing a desktop version of Google Documents and Spreadsheets. Furthermore, they said you can expect to see a new link showing up on your Gmail page…
I was told it will be something similar to Microsoft’s Sharepoint. Where was this information 6 months ago when my company chose Basecamp over Google Apps. Although, i do love my Basecamp.

In other news from OnDemand 08, some cool stuff is going on in the world of variable data publishing. Lots of cool web-to-print apps as well as InDesign plugins. Its also cool to see an array of PURL solutions on the market, however I am still not impressed. Every solution I’ve seen is limited in one way or another; bad reporting, limited functionality, no security, etc.

However, overall it was a good time.

So its no news that a personalized landing page as a response portal to any kind of direct marketing campaign can increase response rates dramatically, but where’s the next step up?

Well it seems as if there are multiple cross-media technologies emerging from the web to help engage, interact and even entertain the user, therefor increasing conversions. People have seen XMPie and other related products do cool things with people’s names and putting them in the picture. But what if the user could change their name at runtime. Furthermore what if the users name wasn’t in a picture, but in a short movie. This is the future of PURLs as a response portal and will be a hit in the social media world. Already I was pointed to a website for a TV Show on FX and I was amazed at what they had done. Here is a PURL someone made for me. I like everything about it, from the page looking like a blog to my name being inserted into the movie.

Now here’s something my own company put together. Basically I wanted the user to be able to interact with the flash movie in real time from outside of the movie itself via the web-form. Using javascript, I was able to insert the users name into the newspaper at runtime and its had an amazing response. People need a break from their every day activities and these fun side trackers give them this opportunity, so both the user and the company win.

So I’ll say it now and say it loud. Get Interactive, Engage your Audience and become successful.

Can search engines read flash? A lot of people think that because flash is a program running on a website, it cannot be read by search engines. This is true to some extant however that does not mean there aren’t methods to make your flash movies Search Engine friendly. In fact Google CAN index your flash movies. In “Google Can Now Index . . . Flash!An Interview with Michael Marshall by Robin Nobles” (here), they discuss how Google indexes your flash movie and different things the author can do to help the process.

There are also other methods you can use if you want to be sure all search engines are indexing your flash movie. I use SWFobject. Here’s a brief explanation of how it can be used with some examples.

So first thing you need to do is upload swfobject.js to your website and link it in your header somewhere:

<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>

Then you need to create a div tag with all the default contents of the flash movie. What your going to do is over right all of the data inside of that div tag when you load your flash movie.

<div id="flashcontent">
This is what the search engines will read
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
var so = new SWFObject("mymovie.swf", "sotester", "600", "400", "9", "#FFFFFF");
so.write("flashcontent");
// ]]>
</script>

View Live Tutorial

And your done! So here’s the result:

And here’s what you see if you don’t have javascript or Flash Player:

And here’s what the search engines see:

Not too shabby.

The cool thing about all of this is the code is valid HTML and XHTML 1.0. There are also a bunch of other cool features with swfobject so explore their website and have some fun.

Now there has been some discussion on whether or not the content in the div tag that is being overwritten might be looked at as spam by Google at some point. So far it hasn’t been a problem and as long as developers don’t abuse this we should be good well into the future.

So go off and have fun with flash. Make many websites and flash intros to your hearts content (if your into that sorta thing). The future of flash looks brighter every day.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Any true SEO expert will tell you there is a lot more that goes into it including but not limited to incoming link monitoring and maintenance, following Google’s new search engine patents, optimizing for keywords, etc.

So there are 3 main things to remember when optimizing your website:

1) Choose appropriate keywords:
This includes making sure you have those keywords in 3 different places; your site content, your Meta content, and your incoming links. Also don’t use your keywords too much, this is known as “stuffing”, but too little and Google won’t index your site properly.

2) Friendly URLs:
The following is BAD:
      mysite.com/index.php?car=jeep&type=wrangler

This is GOOD:
      mysite.com/jeep/wrangler

The difference is easy to see, one is easier to read for both humans and search engines. Also it is a good thing to be specific, so use your keywords in your URL where you can.

To accomplish this most people use Mod-Rewrite (Google it). Another alternative is to use a Content Management System for your website that will automatically create friendly URLs for you. I use PHPwcms but other good ones are Drupal and Mambo but I found mine at http://www.cmsmatrix.org/.

3) QUALITY incoming links to your site
This is the most important in my opinion and usually the hardest to pull off.

Basically the idea is Google will boost your site up on the rankings if you have alot of incoming links from sites similar to yours. This does not include link compilation sites and Google might penalize you for this. Usually the best thing to do is contact the administrators of similar sites and request an affiliate link in exchange for a service or a back link. Another good strategy is to put out press releases with your sites link in it.

Extra Knowledge:
So if you can’t tell, Google is the most popular search engine out there getting roughly 91 million searches per day. That’s a little less than half of all searches done daily. So it’s usually best practice to optimize your site for Google. If you want more information just contact me through facebook and I can give you some extra pointers.

Michael Williams is on the cutting edge of technology innovation and software creation. Glexia is the hub of everything web 2.0. Williams and myself have collaborated on several projects to date including a few cross-media campaigns the competition cant touch. PHP and MYSQL are the laguages of choice. Michael Williams can be reached at Michael.Williams@glexia.com for a quote on any project ideas you might have. Glexia could in fact be the way of the future.

So i wanted to add the little icon next to my URL in the address bar so i went on a hunt for the easiest solution (kinda counter-productive as i could have just downloaded a program however I so love to find new SAAS apps online). So i finally ran across this site. This was pretty much exactly what i was looking for and it was very easy to use. I went on and created 7 icons:

I ended up using the first one i made for my site, but they still all look kinda cool.

So I’ve been working on this site on the side for a couple of weeks now. Ive mostly just been waiting around for content for the site. This was a different kind of site for me to create because I needed to find a way to make it easy to update for someone who has little or no knowledge about the web.

First thing I did was use photoshop to automate the thumbnail creation process. This turned out to be more useful than i thought as it also let me create medium size pictures for viewing within the site as well as very customizable watermark options. This was all part of the “Web Photo Gallery” option which basically created a little mini site on the fly. This is nice and all however if the photographer ever wanted to edit the site or add more pictures all he would know how to do is create new sites on top of the old one. This could work, however i wanted a more logical solution.

Now that I have two folders (thumbnails and images) All the client would have to do is drag the contents of the folders into their respective folders on an easily accessible ftp account I’ve made for them.

Next, I wrote a pretty basic PHP script that reads the contents of the folder, how many files are in it, and displays them in a 4 x 3 table with a POST variable controlling the pages. This was my first attempt at this kind of organization tool but it worked on the first try.

My next step is to generate Titles for the pics using the pics built in meta data. This is so the client can add titles and photo information from within Photoshop, making the process that much easier. Making this site has been a wonderful learning experience. Go and check it out.