My First Last Day :)

Jul 252008
 

Today is my last day in the first 100% (non freelance) job I had. It’s funny to see how man can be attached to a team and to an environment.

It was a great experience for me, they recruited me even before I finished my MS, 1 and 1/2 year ago. I learned a lot, realized that what you learn at University is not easily applicable in real world and that sometime the harder is to understand how people think (depending of their department, background, culture, …).

I think that one of the most important lessons I have learned is to trust in my ideas and to try to explain them at the lowest commun denominator. I have also learned to understand that when you lead a company, you need income, so perfection is not always the goal: produce and then try to perfect the product (my boss was right on this). Small iteration in web development are very important as project are easily changed but it demands a good organization.

Big thanks to everyone from MBA-Exchange.com & Careernomics.com team :)

I will now have 1 week holiday and then start my new job at Microsoft (Unified Communications) in Zurich, woooaaw.

Ahmet

Adobe offers to Google and Yahoo! Flash Player Technology – Is It Really A Good News?

Jul 012008
 

I’ve just read via the AXNA that Adobe, Google and Yahoo! worked together to allow SWF searchability. My first thought was ‘finally they made it’ :)

But while reading the FAQ I’ve been a little disappointed by how this indexation seems to happen:

[...]The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user[...]

FlashFlex

[...]All of the extracted information is indexed for relevance according to Google and Yahoo!’s algorithms. The end result is SWF content adding to the searchable information of the web page that hosts the SWF content, thus giving users more information from the web to search through[...]

So I’m afraid that it means that there will be absolutely ‘semantic’ information on the indexed tag. Is this text a title, a paragraph or an image caption? Does this mean that the SEO effort we have to do on SWF are only based on text and keywords?

If you have text with an Alpha of 0 but that have a tween, will it be indexed?

I’m very happy that A_G_Y are working to offer a better indexation and searchability of SWF but as far as I understand it, they are completely missing the SEO point here.

What do you think?

Ahmet

Stepping Down as an User Group Manager –> Moving to Zurich @ Microsoft Unified Communication

Jun 182008
 

I am stepping down as the ‘User Group Manager’ of the Adobe User Group Geneva. It was a great time for me being a UGM, Adobe really cares about us and the community, I have an incredible collection of Adobe’s T-Shirt :p.

I’m very proud of the growth of AUGG, we started in November 2006 with 5 members, today we are around 80 members. I had the opportunity to meet some of the best developers and designers from Geneva and the ‘Romandie’, participating to great meeting (the best one must have been the venue of Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow) and also had some hangover ;)

I resigned from my current role at MBA-Exchange.com & Careernomics.com, where I had also a great time and a great first full time professional experience.

Now I’m moving, early August, to Zurich, Switzerland biggest city with around 1,5 millions inhabitants :)

I have been enrolled at Microsoft (Unified Communication) as a ‘Software Development Engineer in Test’, which is an entry position in Microsoft empire. I’m really looking forward to all the knowledge I’ll be able to gather there and working with the team. I have already started learning C# and Visual Studio 2008 and my first impression is to enter in a serious coding experience :)

Thanks to everyone from the AUGG and thanks to the MBAx team :)

Ahmet

Is using Flash Wrong for SEO and Usability?

May 072008
 

Shari Thurow, the Founder and SEO Director of Omni Marketing Interactive wrote a very interesting answer in led-digest.com about the solution I blogged a while ago: ‘Holy Grail: SEO Model for Flash and Flex Content‘.

Here are a few quotes of her, with my answer below:

[...]as long as you are giving search engines one version of a Web page and users another version, then there is a problem[...]

I totally agree but are we talking about the presentation layer or the data layer?
Most websites content are saved on databases, then called whenever needed. Now if the server side technology used produce an XHTML or an XML, we agree that there is no differences?
The XSLT just load a SWF (a Flash or Flex application) on top of an XML. The SWF then use the data from the XML. Whether it is possible to add content on the XML that will never be used on the SWF is an ethical problem, not a problem of Flash. You can also use ‘badly’ the HTML attributes in normal way.

[...]There is the assumption that users want content delivered to them in Flash. I’ve seen Flash used well. I’ve seen Flash used poorly. Only once in my entire Web design career was it necessary for us to do an entire section of a site in Flash [...]

So in your opinion, if the Flash player penetration is above 90% it is because of this assumption? As you said, SWF can be used greatly or poorly and everything in the middle. I’m not a partisan of using SWF just for using it. The best technological solution must be used for the need of the users (not for the developers nor the marketers need). I don’t want to go through to much point but just think about data visualization, broadcasting (TV / sound) or experimental marketing.
I must accord you that SWF changed a lot recently (the last two years) and I understand that you didn’t had to use it before, but keep yourself ready :)

[...]Do they really usability test to determine task completion, efficiency, etc. in order to verify whether users really prefer Flash-delivered content or not? I’m sure there is a
rare few out there who do.[...]

Most of the usability testing that I made or that I read showed that people tend to be more comfortable in front of a UI (user interface) they already know. So obviously ‘traditional HTML’ is often plebiscite, but in terms of task completion, efficiency, UI learning curve, the SWF have an immense advantage: they can follow every move of a user, learn from his mistakes, make elements bigger, dynamically improve the UI to his needs. Doing this with ‘traditional’ web technologies is much harder (IMHO).

[...]I have the kahones to tell a Web site owner that their users do not want Flash and they should change the design. And I can prove it with usability testing.[...]

Again, you talk about usability testing as if it comes from the sky. As far as I know, before doing usability test, there is a reflexion about the UI (I cannot teach you what you know better than me). Usability is everywhere: in the bus, in your kitchen and in front of a screen. But I do really not see the point of aiming at the SWF.

Ahmet

Back to the Army, for 3 weeks…

Apr 142008
 
I still remember this cold and foggy morning, doing some exercises. Morning at Army

This morning, I’m leaving again to give my services to the country, well I wished I could be more useful :)

Anyway, this blog will most certainly be muted until I come back, in May.
So, bookmark or grab the RSS feed and wish me good luck :)

Ahmet

Tired of having my Blog Spammed…

Apr 092008
 

Lately someone found a hole on my wordpress blog and use it to inject hidden links.
I was a bit reticent of upgrading my wordpress as I had customize it with a lot of my own functions but enough is enough!

So I’m going to reinstall a fresh new wordpress and say goodbye to my functions :( Until I rewrite them…
It is totally useless to express my hate of spammers, finally they only use a security hole I couldn’t find and use to their advantage the algorithms of pagerank and back link of most of search engines.

This situation remember me the early ages of search engines where most of the search you would do would show unrelated content (with the meta tags abuse). Although search engines results aren’t as worst as they used to be more than 10 years ago…

Expect this blog to change soon :)

Ahmet

Convincing your Boss to Use AIR – Step #1

Feb 292008
 

AIR LogoIn an over charged world of projects management and ideas, it sometimes hard to gather the attention to the ultimate decider (your boss or yourself) to use new technologies.

I started at the beginning of this week to seed (and water it  ) my boss brain with new possibilities with AIR. Some techniques worked greatly and some did not…

I’ll try to gather all the different move I’ve made (and I’ll make) and let you know what to do and what to avoid ;)

My first step was to present to my boss what our existing technologies could be with AIR, all the advantages of desktop applications, supporting internal database, connections aware and finally demanding very few adjustment to our already existing application to be deployed.

Just told him about the few times involvement and the small budget to allocate and you’ll make a positive point in your argumentations.

The second day, very enthusiast I told him about the easy installation process and the lightweight of the plug-in: bad idea! Technical argument won’t, most of the time, speak to entrepreneurs.

If you are, like me, pushing your boss to shift to AIR, be smart and follow this thread ;=)

Any advices are welcome…

Ahmet

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