Google has developed FriendConnect as an easy way to take friends from social networks (eg., Facebook, Plaxo) with you to sites without previous social networking functionality. FriendConnect allows site owners to embed code into their sites to display the social networking FriendConnect apps in an iframe. The closed beta is available now, we’ve registered and hope we get picked!

According to Marketing VOX, Adobe has released a tool to Google and Yahoo to interpret Flash content for search engines. The tool will allow search engines to read text and links from within SWFs and display them in search engine result listings. Google is apparently using the flash-indexing tool already, so we can now look for SWF results in our searches. This starts to address Flash SEO issues, but using something like the Gaia Flash framework to display unique page URLs still seems necessary.

Further, the wider discussion of proprietary media formats and where they fit in is the more interesting discussion. Apple developed the new version of .Mac, MobileMe, using SproutCore, an open source Javascript framework.

Despite being informed recently that Flock is “so three weeks ago”, I’m just starting to use it.  The most interesting feature of Flock, for me, is the blogging functionality…which I have yet to use.  I’ve been finding it a pain to log into the WP admin site to post.  So, I set this blog up in my sidebar and started my post. However, there’s something about the interface I don’t like.  I can’t quite put my finger on the issue, but I started a post and saved it, and opened it and saved it again.  And…then went into WP admin and am posting…  In trying to sort out the cause of my reluctance, I only get to the inability to preview the post (or have I missed that?) and not being sure the post will display in my posts list in the WP admin area (surely, yes?).  I feel like a TESTING123 post may be needed. So instead of blogging, I’ve spent all my time setting up my Facebook, and looking at my friends in the sidebar.

MODx is cooler than the other side of the pillow.

A CMS (Content Management System) like MODx only comes around once every 76 years. Or maybe that’s Halley’s Comet. Anyway, MODx is an alternative to Joomla that is new to the scene, but has some very nice features.
(more…)

The websters at the Souvenir Shop have gotten the drag and drop shop right! Plus the site has cool Canadian things.

TubeMogel syndicates your video across many online video sites. The online video empowerers are being used by a bunch of sites (NextNewNetworks, Channel Federator to name a few) and provide analytics data as well as campaign management tools for business accounts.

Alpha now but we’re excited about the Beta version of these web based, designer focused apps, A.viary. The icons are pretty and the Flash is fun in a Froot Loops kind of way. Is this why Adobe pushed web-based Photoshop Express?