Steve Jobs announced the Apple tabled and it’s name for the first time. The iPAD. Since this is the flash design and web design blog — what about Adobe and the flash player plug-in being available on the browser… it doesn’t look like we are so lucky.
The iPad’s lack of Flash support seems to be part of it’s design by Apple, just as the iPhone does not support it. But the device features browsing as a key element, and there are going to be plenty of people trying to access their Flash games and Flash-based video sites, only to be met with that frustrating icon.
It’s still possible that the Tablet could support a limited version of Flash, however ENGADGET seemed to snap a shot of the tablet when it accesses the New York Times and a piece of their flash content didn’t show up … it’s disappointing that the ubiquitous (98% of all internet users) flash player by Adobe is not in it’s design.
This month Google announced that they would be designing everyone’s search results based on their search history even when users are not signed into Google, even though personalized results are nothing new in Google’s design of SERPs (search engine results pages). Google has been customizing peoples SERPs for quite a while already, but until now it only happened when you searched while signed into your Google account. Today, signed in or not, everybody gets personal results.
Whether you’re signed in or not, all the searches you run on Google are stored in your browser cookies. This data is referred to as your ‘Web History’ and Google uses it to customize your search results. If you’re not signed in, your Web History is stored for 180 days, then old data is replaced with new searches. If you’re signed in, there’s no time limit and you can manage your Web History.
So the searches you run and sites you visit will affect your future search experience. The sites you visit more often will be pushed higher in the search results on related queries.
As an example if you search for ‘website design’ and visit www.webdesign.com, next time when you search for ‘website design’ you may see www.webdesign.com in top 10 results even if it doesn’t rank there in the general impersonalized search. You can tell that your search results have been personalized by the ‘View customization’ link in the upper right hand corner. The personalized search results can differ significantly from the general SERPs. I ran a couple of tests searching for related keywords and clicking the same site each time. The results can be drastic – imagine a site page that is ranked for web design at number 30, it might be pushed to a ranking of 5 even if your signed out of Google.
To check a site’s rankings use a rank checker to get a list of impersonalized rankings.
Meta Descriptions have also changed recently
Your Meta description is a crucial factor that determines the CTR (click-through-rate) of your site in search results. The more compelling your description is, the more searchers will click it. When they click through to your site from search results this is recorded in their Web History. Next time they search for a product or service related to your site, it may appear high up in their personalized search results. Since everybody now gets personalized results, the scope of the effect your Meta descriptions have on your rankings can get really huge. That’s another reason why you should invest some time into testing and optimizing your Meta descriptions.
Google doesn’t always show the Meta description you provide. Sometimes it just compiles a random text snippet from your page that contains the keywords used in the query. But you can easily locate the keywords where your Meta description shows up by searching for them on Google.
There’s been a lot of criticism coming down on Google’s new design for introducing personal search to everybody. Some people are worried about privacy issues. Others don’t like it because this will help keep the small guy out of the game. And this makes SEO success harder to measure for search engine optimization firms.
The coolest iPhone application I’ve ever seen. Control a copter and see visuals on your iPhone via copter camera design. Check out the web site here http://www.parrot.com/usa/ or watch the hype video below. This is very cool design for the iPhone.
This will change the way you design websites. I posted a few articles a few months back — on all the different ways you can design with much more than the standard web fonts. Typekit was one of the services providing these design options. Now Typekit and Wordpress have come together.
Add a line of code to your pages and choose from hundreds of fonts. Simple, bulletproof, standards compliant, and accessible.
Customize your WordPress blog with Typekit fonts.
They have just rolled out a way to easily use fonts on the world’s largest blogging platform. With Typekit and WordPress working together, customizing and designing with the look of the nearly 10 million websites they host, now takes just a few clicks.
Log into your WordPress dashboard and click on Appearance in the left-hand navbar. There, you’ll find “Typekit Fonts” with a place to add your Kit ID (available under “Embed Code” in the Typekit Editor). That’s it — you’re ready to go. You can choose fonts from our rapidly growing library to add them to any of the WordPress themes to give your web design a distinct look.
And of course, Typekit works with WordPress web designed sites that you host yourself.
The WordPress developer community has begun to release plugins for web designers and web developers from Typekit. Check out the options over at the plugin directory.
