I was reading some articles about Flash SEO (like this) and some of them recommended using SWFObject to make some text visible to search engines. The trick is that you put text in HTML format inside <div> layer and then you put your flash over it (SWFObjects javascript code changes innerHTML of the <div> layer). While this works and I am still using this technique at sites like djnet, the technique is also kind of cloaking - showing one text to search engine, other for the user. Spammers can implement this method in their sites and sooner or later Google will create algo that will ban these sites. And the good ones too.
While this problem persists, you can put TITLE and DESCRIPTION in your flash files - in Flash IDE choose Modify > Document (or Ctrl+J). This is the part that gets indexed by search engines. Though this is better than nothing, again using SWFObject hides the flash file from search engine, thus making this piece of metadata useless.
I`m still thinking of rebuilding my best project (djnet) in php, just for SEO purposes. But what I know fur sure is that search engines will try to give better support for Flash because it won`t go away in the nearest decade - Internet cannot live without Flash video (though internet should get rid of flash advertisments).

Microsoft has started a new service - Soapbox. It`s a YouTube future follower, as Soapbox is still in beta and available to limited invitations (you can go to the site and request an invitation). Funny, that once again Microsoft announces a product way before it`s ready, and once again only a product that follows some other market leader. For example, previous it was (maybe still they hope) for Adobe Flash, which Microsoft tries to compete with its Avalon products. Check out - on soapbox.msn.com the video player is in Flash! I have no idea why is Microsoft spending so much money on probably worthless products, though they still keep a big part of internet users on MSN.
Just my 2c.

Animated favicon is supported only by Firefox, for now. (Are you still using Internet Explorer??
)
If you don`t know how to create a simple favicon - just put an icon file with name “favicon.ico” in your web root folder (e.g. www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico).

Animated favicons are stored in .gif image. You can see an example of animated icon at information security awareness blog , it shows in the address bar and on the tab. You can create it yourself using some gif animation software or exporting from Adobe Flash (I do it). When you have your gif icon ready, upload both “favicon.ico” and “favicon.gif” to your web root folder, then add this code to your webpage somewhere between <head> and </head> tags:

Google search engine results depend on some defined behaviour or algorithm. There have always been some clues in patents on how these algorithms work. There have been thousands of patents and you never know if they will be implemented in search engines algo, but you can definitely see the direction that Google is going - human editorial approach.

To get better SERP (search engine result pages) results, algorithm will not count on links or page rank only, but on human reported sites like Dmoz.org directory entries and others. so the system is semi-automatic.

Firefox 2 beta 1 is out! You can download Portable Firefox 2 beta or normal versions. The portable version allows you to use it without affecting your current Firefox installation. It allows you to keep all your profile data in one folder, not spread all over your windows drive (program files, documents and settings, etc). You can keep it on usb flash disk and get all your extensions/bookmarks with you wherever you go! (You can also get Portable Firefox 1.5.0.4).

The new features of Firefox include:

  • Session restore and “recently closed tabs” (like SessionSaver)
  • Spell-as-you-type for spell checking

If you`re interested in SEO, then you should subscribe to www.sitepronews.com newsletter. They always have good articles (dunno if they are original or “private label articles”).

Latest article by Eric Lester is about exploiting in google`s algorithm and how one guy filled Googles index with few billion sp@m pages. He explains that Google indexes each subdomain as independent, so on one domain you could generate countless pages with keywords and AdSense ads. In some previous article they stated, that subdomains add PR to the original domain, so this is even more useful for those who practice “artificial SEO”.

Google analytics is one of the best free tools for web statistics, but now Google makes another step towards web developers. Google posted about its Conversion University - online resource for SEO tactics and optimizing your web page for better conversions (both Adsense and organic). Right now the “university” offers articles in 4 categories:

I`m a enthusiastic Firefox user since it`s early days and I was really pleased with its “tabbing” capabilities. When Opera 8 was released, I decided to give it a try. Opera was fun - fast, intuitive, attracting, full of features. The feature I liked the most was saved sessions - when you closed the browser, it saved your open tabs, so you can get back to them next time you launch your browser. But Opera had some minor problems - it didn`t render all Flash pages correctly. As I am a Flash desiger/programmer, this was hard time for me, so i got back to Firefox. But I couldnt live without saving my tabs anymore, so I searched for Firefox extensions that would do the job and I found it - SessionSaver! It really does the job! It allows you to save different sessions, export sessions with settings so you can import it on another Firefox installation. It also allows you to get back to accidentally closed tabs (like Ctrl+Z in Opera).

www.djnet.lv - Portal for djs and clubbers. A place where you can listen fresh house music from various latian djs` collections. No mp3 downloads, just flash player, allowing to create playlist, comment songs.

This is my biggest project, since I have spent more than a year keeping it up to date and making essential changes and add-ons. Project online since May 2005. Since then it has been 99% Flash + remoting + sql + php, Flash admin panel for djs to upload songs and modify info.