I’ve been wanting to blog this for nearly a month now but haven’t had time. This is big news. Adobe is now providing major search engines with an optimized version of the Flash player technology. Using this new technology, Google and Yahoo! can now read and index the text in .swf files.

Animations and other graphical elements will still be ignored, but text and hyperlinks will be indexed and spidered.

So, the long-running argument that sites cannot perform well in search engines when using Flash isn’t quite as strong now. Google claims to already be using this new technology and Yahoo! is planning to implement it soon.

The press release has basic information but I’m sure there will be more information released in the near future.

I just read an interesting article on the Advertising Age website. The author, Phil Johnson, talks about the trend toward agencies wanting to incorporate more interactive capabilities and provides some insights from his own efforts.

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YouTube, the popular video sharing site, just announced a mobile version of the site. m.youtube.com is geared toward 3G phones capable of streaming video so it looks like that rules out my Blackberry (according to the R/WW site) but the fact that YouTube has gone mobile is another indication of the trend toward mobile computing.

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Seems like web standards and accessibility are continuing to attract attention. Here are a few recent articles I’ve stumbled upon relating to web standards.

Accessibility matters to… — a good overview of who benefits from standards

Web Standards: it’s about quality, not compliance — a passionate, if not somewhat overboard, post about what web standards really means

Web Standards Project Street Team — announcement about a new grassroots program from WaSP

I have to say I’m completely in love with the Apple iPhone Steve Jobs just announced. I’m sorely regretting my decision to sign a new contract with Verizon Wireless last fall because it means I face a stiff cancellation fee if I want an iPhone (currently only available through Apple’s partnership with Cingular).

Other than the relationship with Cingular (see my rant on the Cingular/AT&T confusion), the iPhone seems perfect. Jobs made some pretty big claims about how the iPhone is as revolutionary as the original Macintosh and the iPod. I’m inclined to believe him.

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