PANMA - Philadelphia Area New Media Association

Here’s the video of PANMA’s HTML Demystified event:

Please note that the audio from the wireless mic both Nick and Chris were using is much lower than the audio at the beginning of the video.  After Tim’s introduction, turn your speakers up and you should be OK.

Also, check out Chris Morrell’s follow-up post for a copy of the code we wrote during the event and a list of HTML5 resources.

We have quite a few event ideas for 2010, but before we finalize our schedule we’d like to get a sense of what our members are looking for in the coming year.  Please take 60 seconds to fill out this quick survey:

Take the PANMA 2010 Survey

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Join Innovation Philadelphia at the 2nd Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit on October 5-6, 2009.  Featured keynote speakers include Peter Shankman, Founder, Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and Founder and CEO, The Geek Factory.  Peter’s keynote is “Social Media: It’s Simply Trust.” See his attached invite for more information.

Event Details + Registration

From the Community Discussion Listserve:

> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Nichelle Walter wrote:
>> I hadn't seen anyone post anything about this yet - seems like a pretty big deal?
>>
>> googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

On Jul 29, 2009, at 9:05 AM, Nathan Gasser wrote:
> If you're going to build an all- or mostly-flash website and expect it
> to be valuable to Google searchers, it's going to take more work than
> this.  While Google may be able to find some content buried in your
> Flash animation, if a user clicks a Google result, comes to your page,
> and starts at the beginning of your animation, they're going to say
> "Huh?  What does this have to do with what I'm looking for?" and
> bounce.
>
> My fear is people will say "Yeah but Google indexes Flash now right?"
> and think that's the end of it.
>
> It's possible to build decent SEO into a Flash site, but it's
> certainly not guaranteed, nor even easy.
>
> Nate

Nathan Gasser
Rock River Star

rockriverstar.com/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert M. Hall, II
Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [PANMA] google learns to crawl flash

Great point Nathan.   

To expand on this - even with the advances mentioned, there are still
a # of best practices that developers building certain types of Flash
content should follow if they want to make sure their content can be
more readily indexed as well as to provide a way for that indexed
content to be linked back to in a way that is easy to navigate and
utilize.

Standard practice of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement
techniques to provide alternate and complimentary content are key, as
well as using things like SWFAddress :
www.asual.com/swfaddress/ combined with SWFObject:
code.google.com/p/swfobject/ or other similar techniques, to
actually allow bookmarkable URLS within large pieces of Flash content.
(The even better route is to use Flash to compliment you main content
and not be the entire content itself). Code libraries and techniques
like SWFAddress do make it much easier to prepare things the right
way.

Its worth noting that Flex based apps (A framework for developing
RIA's on top of the Flash player) have had deep linking built into
them for a while, and history management, etc. - for more info read
this:

labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_3:Feature_Introductions:_Deep_Linking

There are also alternate libraries like URLkit that make deep linking
and indexing very easy to add into your RIA apps:

www.insideria.com/2008/09/advanced-flex-deep-linking-wit-1.html

For anyone interested Adobe has an entire section of their DevNet site
dedicated to issues, articles and techniques for optimizing and
performing SEO on their content, including RIA's, AJAX and Flash based
content here:

www.adobe.com/devnet/seo/

Thats where you will find best practices and some good techniques as
well as updated on how the "Ichabod" player and search engines like
google are evolving the capabilities.

If anyone wants more info, simply do a google search for the terms:

"Flash deep linking"
and
"Flex deep linking"

The main issue is that its really up to the developer building the
Flash content, to be even more aware of the limitations inherent in
indexing Flash, and to do as much as possible to mitigate them by
knowing how to properly build the content to be easy to index, while
leveraging all the available tools and techniques to do so in an
optimal fashion. Or simply to guide their client into handling things
in a different fashion if their is no other content or other avenues
of having their content indexed and that is a priority. This is
generally the weakest point in the process - if the developer isn't
aware of any of this, or sking the right questions up front, then they
are pretty much guaranteed not to have content that is indexable or as
useable as the end client might have liked.

Two other items worth pointing out:

1. Many of the same issues that face Flash for indexing content, also
affect sites that are heavy on AJAX, so a lot of the techniques and
thought process used to solve issues or optimize things for AJAX type
applications can be applied to Flash and vice versa.

2. Use Flash intelligently and for what it does best. I rarely if ever
build entire sites for the web that are entirely Flash - rather
individual applications that compliment or enhance the surrounding
content. The things that are entirely Flash are generally games,
kiosks, or applications that are either not deployed to the web at
all, or are done so in a manner where indexing isn't expected or
needed.

Hope this helps!

Rob

--
Robert M. Hall

Feasible Impossibilities

www.impossibilities.com/

Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive spoke at our may event called SEO in 2009. Here are the slides from his presentation:

Many thanks to Wil for his fantastic presentation!

PANMA is pleased to announce the 2009 release of our web site.  We hope our new site will continue to help us connect the community and continue to share and inspire everyone. We’d like to give a special thanks to Chris Morrell for the great job he has done in developing the site and we look forward to everyone working together to continue to demonstrate how great the Philadelphia technology innovation community is.

We’ve had a great start to 2009 with our Learning Events on Social Media, The Latest in Hosting, Search Engine Optimization 2009, Making Philly Work for You Resources for Creative Professions and we have several new events planned.  Stay tuned!

PANMA presented Web Hosting Demystified at the University City Science Center on April 21, 2009. Tim Dodd of HostMySite.com explained the workings of web hosting and the many options available.

Watch Video

The presentation’s focus is on looking at Search Engine Optimization SEO and what matters most TODAY in the algorithms of today’s largest search engines. Outside of the basic technical blocking and tackling, how do you succeed online? Build great content? Is that enough? How do you build links in a way that is likely to stay around?

Event Details + Registration

Location: Triumph Brewing Company 117 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19106.

This event is FREE, but please register to help us plan.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009: Web Hosting Demystified! Location: University City Science Center, 3711 Market Street, 8th Floor, in University City, Philadelphia PA 19104. Doors open at 6:30pm. Program: 7-8:30pm.