The age old question is answered by Google Engineers in an interview I found.  In short, yes but be careful of flash loaded with JavaScript as the indexing may not be able to load the flash file.  For the most part and text elements (text, buttons menu) are indexed and made available for snippet or keyword content.

Improved Flash indexing Article.

If you have a slow server, sometimes restarting these services from the command line can clear up all of the issues.

Here’s the easy process:

Please use caution when doing this… you could break things if you’re not careful.

Log into the command line via SSH, and then type in each of these commans and press enter. The system will display information on restarting the services on the Linux command line:

Reaction Time

The say necessity is the mother of all invention, or in the computer world it should be “annoyance is the mother of all invention”  but then you can also say nothing is ever invented, its simply googled and found as well :-)  or at least it seemed so today.

Basically on my Windows XP development machine I had the most annoying situation where I could not see a thumbnail view of my Adobe Photoshop .PSD files when viewing a folder thru windows.  Since I tend to save everything in PSD and multiple versions with layers it was a crap shoot trying to pic which PSD I wanted to select from any given folder.

Introducing….ThumbView Lite!  I found this cool tool that now automatically gives a thumbnail view in windows explorer for Adobe Photoshop CS3 .psd files just like if you were looking at a .jpg or .gif.

Thumbview website: http://www.seriema.net/thumbview/index.php?page=download

find . -name ‘*.jpg’ -exec cp {} /var/webs/hosts/yourdomain.com/webdocs/images \;

Go into the directory you wish to copy files and issue the above command

When trying to remove a large number of files from a directory and you get:
//bin/rm: Argument list too long

You must use the following (be careful):
find . -name ‘*.jpg’ -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f

Make sure you are in the directory you wish to delete files in.

The lab has been doing some research into color choices for websites and what they translate to from a marketing perspective.  This is very important as studies show that  “80% of the first time impression is made on color alone” according to Color Nexus. 

Here is an excerpt from their website providing a broad explanation of use of color in websites and how it makes the viewer feel:

Red: Red is often associated with both romance and danger. Red roses and hearts are symbols of love, while often warning signs are bright red in color. Red is also the color of blood.

Orange: Orange is a warm color, and often brings to mind mental associations of hearth and home. Bright orange can also be seen as a warning sign.

Yellow: Yellow is distinctive in that it can be easily overwhelming. When choosing web colors, it is best to use yellow sparingly, usually for accents or highlighting important points.

Green: Green is often associated with nature and the outdoors. In addition, green is frequently associated with money and luck in Western cultures.

Blue: Blue is the most universally safe choice when selecting web colors. It has positive and comfortable associations across many cultures. Be careful with darker shades and blue-gray since it can also be associated with sadness.

Purple: Purple is a highly charged color. In some cultures it indicates status and even royalty, while in others it is the color of mourning.

Brown: Brown is often associated with simplicity and genuineness. It’s also a neutral tone often linked with earthiness and nature.

Black: Black can be seen as dark and brooding, particularly in large amounts. More than other web color choices, black tends to rely on the colors it is used with for associations. For instance, yellow and black can indicate caution, red and black can seem dangerous, white and black can look modern, and pink and black can be seen as trendy.

White: White is frequently associated with purity and innocence in western cultures, and also with sterility and cleanliness. In some Eastern cultures, white is the color worn for mourning and can betoken bad luck. Using white space as part of your web color scheme can make your page simple and visually appealing or it can make it seem blocky and disjointed.

Gray: Gray is often seen as austere or depressing. If you are trying to convey a very sophisticated and professional image, using gray as one of your web colors can help.

I spent an hour this morning re-installing one of the labs desktop machines acrobat.  While re-installing it a second time I remembed back on Windows 3.1 that a sure-fire fix to most problems was to delete the huge piles of temporary files.  This has gotten better over the years but after realizing the application was fine, I did some research and found this was the case with my Adobe Acrobat freezing up.

 Here is what I did to fix the problem:

Solution 1: Delete the temporary files that Acrobat or Reader creates, and then install the update or upgrade.

Acrobat 6.0 and Adobe Reader 6.0 may not delete the temporary files that they create during normal processes, such as filling in forms. Because Acrobat and Reader check temporary files at startup, an excess of temporary files can cause a long delay during startup or appear to be a freeze.

To delete temporary files:

1. Choose Start > Run, and type command in the Open text box. Click OK.

2. Type the following commands and press Enter after each command:

c:

cd\

del acr*.tmp /s

Note: Many lines of text will fill the Command.com window as this process runs. Wait for the process to complete (when the text has stopped for about 10 seconds), and then continue to the next step.

3. Type exit to close the Command.com window.

4. Install the 6.0.1 update, or upgrade to version 8.

Important: Before you upgrade to version 8, remove versions 6.x and 7.x of Acrobat or Reader from your system. For instructions, see the Related Documents section of this document.

– To install the Acrobat 6.0.1 update, download the update from the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/support/downloads and then follow the online installation instructions.

Okay, we have been working on this REALLY cool design using DHTML fade effect as the entire background of a design complete with each fade image being click-able to a link.  Using some really cool CSS tricks we overlayed div tags over top of the DHTML image effect to display content.  These DIV tags in turn had transparent png files so that they would overlay on top of the background graphic.  Sounds cool right?  Even better, it was cross-browser independent with IE 7 and Firefox 2.0…quite an accomplishment eh?  Stop the presses… that was until we tested the application in Internet Explorer 6.  The png images showed a gray background instead of being transparent.  Our research showed us this is due to a bug in how IE 6 handles png transparency.  Bottom line:  We dropped the following code into the <head></head> tags on the page and it worked!  Here is a link to a  .txt file with the code inserted in the <head> section.

http://progresstechlabs.com/wp-content/uploads/pngtestfixed.txt

The G8 met in July 2008 to discuss international food shortages.  A review of the menu they were served at the banquet is a great example of actions speaking much louder than words.  Bon-Appetite!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4286365.ece