Optimizing Web Site Search

Nowadays businesses spend a lot of time thinking about search and how it relates to their Web sites and a lot of money trying to come up with ways to improve how their sites relate to search.

But for many businesses this takes the form of an almost exclusive focus on improving their visibility to Google and boosting their site ranking through a variety of search engine optimization techniques. And while SEO can be effective, it is also in many ways a black art, with even the best SEO practitioners feeling that they have little control over the changes and whims in search that Google enacts.

The funny thing is that there is an area of search that these businesses have much greater control over but that they pay much less attention to or even ignore outright. And this is the search capabilities of their own Web sites.

When it comes to how users find information and content on your site, a well-implemented search engine can pay real dividends in helping users find what they are looking for. But, strangely, many proprietors of Web sites seem to ignore their own search capabilities, doing little in the way of internal search optimization.

Downloading Flash Movies Made Simple

When it comes to Web-based video, Adobe's Flash format dominates. From YouTube to MySpace to eWEEK video, the majority of video on the Web is Flash.

But while Flash has lots of benefits for developers and content producers, consumers often find it an unfriendly format when it comes to using video outside of the Web.

If a user wants to download Flash video to his or her desktop for use on a mobile device, or for fair use such as in schoolwork or research or for (let's face it) less legal reasons, there are many roadblocks that make this difficult, from sites that make it hard to download Flash files to the lack of support for the Flash format itself on many mobile devices.

There are some free tools and browser plug-ins available that attempt to help users download Flash files, but in my experience these don't always work and can be difficult to use. That's why when the $29.95 GetFLV application crossed my desk I was intrigued enough to give it a try.

Google Wants to Make the Web More Lively

Three-dimensional virtual-reality-based social networking! Just saying it can make you want to cringe. Didn't we already go through this with "Second Life" and its ilk?

We all know the problems. Most of these programs like "Second Life" are big fat applications, essentially video games. They have a high learning curve that discourages casual users. And they don't integrate well with Web sites and other social networking tools.

But what if instead of a big fat application you had a small browser plug-in? And what if it had a relatively low learning curve? And instead of people being forced into a big virtual world in order to connect, customized virtual spaces could be easily dropped into Web sites and collaboration systems? With that you might actually have a 3-D virtual-reality-based social networking system that people and businesses would embrace.

This is the concept behind Lively, which was just released as a beta by Google. Lively runs as a plug-in to Firefox and Internet Explorer and with it sites, businesses and people can quickly get up and running with virtual spaces that enable avatar-based collaboration, chat and social networking.

Adobe Reader Gets Connected

REVIEW: Just about a week after Adobe released version 9 of Acrobat, the latest version of the tool that most people use to read PDF files was also released. For most users, Adobe Reader 9 won't seem like a major departure from the previous versions of the free PDF reading tool.

The interface has been streamlined a bit, making it simpler to view multiple page PDF files. And search can be easily done across multiple PDF files.

However, the majority of the new features for Adobe Reader 9 fit into two camps: increased integration with the Acrobat.com Web site and support for new features introduced in Acrobat 9 (click here to read my review of Acrobat 9).

Acrobat 9: The Web/Desktop Hybrid for Documents

Click here to see screenshots

REVIEW: When it comes to document collaboration and sharing, there can be little argument that most of this activity is moving to the web. But there can also be little argument that the current slate of Web-based tools come up short in features and capabilities when compared to desktop tools.

Perhaps what is needed is a hybrid approach, something that combines the strong feature set of a desktop application with the easy collaboration of a web-based approach. If this is truly the case, then Adobe may be on the right track.

That's because the latest release of their flagship Acrobat document platform is definitely focused on combining Acrobat's strong document editing and creation features with broad web-based collaboration, sharing and conferencing tools.

To do this Acrobat 9, which was released in June, relies heavily on the recently released Acrobat.com to provide web-based collaboration and sharing tools, as well as leveraging other products from the Adobe portfolio to add conferencing and live document reviewing features. And while there are few completely new capabilities in the core Acrobat feature set, many of been overhauled and improved to such a degree that they feel like completely new features.

ICANN Spurs the Next Internet Land Grab

Isn't nostalgia great! Nowadays, it seems like any old trend, TV show or celebrity is coming back—hula hoops, Transformers, Battlestar Galactica, heck, there's even a Smurfs movie coming out.

And based on some recent news, it looks like another fun, old trend will be making a return performance in coming years.

Remember the heyday of the old Internet bubble? Remember how everyone and their uncle were rushing to gobble up every Internet domain name that might prove to be even slightly valuable? Well, guess what? That's coming back!

At a recent meeting in Paris, the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), unanimously approved a proposal to open up TLD (top-level domain) names in coming years. Now, for those who don't know, the TLDs are the base of all Internet addresses, with examples being .com, .net, .gov and .org.

Under ICANN's new proposal, anything will become fair game for a new TLD: .sex, .money, .smurfs, .movies, .ICANNsshamelessmoneygrab—you name it. I can see the hordes of Internet con artists slavering at the bit as we speak.

Testing Out Google Labs

Over the last few weeks Google has been busy launching some new applications and gadgets as part of their Google Labs. The Labs is where Google tries out new ideas and applications and everything from Google Maps to Google Docs has gotten its start as a Google Labs project.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying out some of the new Google Labs projects and have found some that may be new favorites and some that I could probably live without.

Several new Google Labs projects have been added to Gmail and have even been added directly to the Gmail interface. Users now see a test-tube icon in the upper right hand corner of Gmail and clicking on this brings them to a screen showing all of the Google Labs apps that they can enable within Gmail.

Firefox 3: The Next-Generation Web Browser

Click here to see screenshots

REVIEW: At first glance, it doesn't look that different from previous versions of the browser. And while there are nice improvements from a usability standpoint, there's nothing radically different for Web users.

But appearances can be deceiving. And with its release today, Firefox 3 is poised to usher in a new phase of Web browsing that will change how Web applications are built and delivered, and even how most of us use and think of the Web.

That's because most of the innovations of Firefox 3 are under the covers. Among the major new features in Firefox 3 are its offline capabilities and its ability to seamlessly interact with Web-based applications and services. With these enhancements, Firefox 3 makes it possible for sites to deliver applications and content that people can use—even when they aren't connected to the Internet—and that work with a browser in much the same way that traditional applications work with an operating system.

In this way, Firefox 3 may make it possible to finally deliver on the old promise of the Web as operating system. Because of these features, along with many welcome usability, security and performance enhancements, I am awarding Firefox 3 an eWEEK Analysts' Choice Award; as of this moment, it is clearly the top choice in Web browsers.

Opera 9.5 Syncs Up Web Browsers

Click here to see screenshots

REVIEW: It has a tiny percentage of market share compared with the bigger players such as Microsoft and Mozilla. And if you ask your non-techie friends if they've every heard of it they'll probably say that they don't like opera music.

But one can easily make a very good case that, outside of the early Mosaic and Netscape Web browsers, no other Web browser has been as innovative or introduced more new features and interface standards than the Opera browser.

And with the release of Opera 9.5, Opera has succeeded in some small innovations in browser usage and has streamlined and improved what was already the most powerful and customizable browser interface available today.

But this isn't as groundbreaking or innovative as some of the past Opera releases. And while Opera 9.5 adds some new security features and capabilities, these don't live up to the innovation and ease of use one normally expects from Opera.

The Messy, Working Web

The Web is a mess; it's an unsound and broken hodgepodge of standards, tools and browsers that all kinda work together, except of course when they don't. This isn't an uncommon position. Everyone from major software vendors to government figures to standards bodies has at one time or another held this opinion. In Daryl Taft's interview with Brendan Eich of Mozilla, Eich makes pretty much this exact point about the Web being a mess.

So we can all agree that the Web is a broken mess, to which I think we should all also add that this is also a good thing, because if the Web weren't such a mess, it probably wouldn't exist in anything like the powerful and disruptive form that it has today.

Think about it. When Tim Berners-Lee created the Web he broke many of the classic rules of scripting and development. The Web is supremely flexible (aka messy), highly forgiving of bad links, lousy code and incompatible applications (aka broken), and compatible with a wide variety of browsers, operating systems and applications (formally unsound). And this is why the Web succeeded where similar efforts had failed.