The Web acts as a gateway to an immeasurable amount of resources and information. However, the main access point for all of these sites are a relatively small number of sites – the bottlenecks and watchdogs for Web content – search engines. So, as a Flash Developer, one of the first questions you learn to fear is, “How will this Flash content show up in search results?” Flash is, unfortunately, by and large invisible to search engines – which is a major detriment to the growth potential of the technology. And although the best answer is to provide an alternative HTML version of the content, any programmer worth his salt will go out of his way to avoid having to do repetitive labor. So, here are a few tricks we’ve picked up along the way.

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Web 2.0 is hailed as the democratization of communication. The sheer mass of user generated content and the proliferation of tools and applications facilitating the creation and posting of this material in the virtual world has handed control of message dissemination to the masses (read “consumer.”) This has sent a spasm of strategic renovation down the spine of corporate marketers everywhere, as well it should. Brands and their meanings have always been a two way conversation; it was just that brand managers are like your ex: they don’t listen and just kept talking over you. (more…)