Birmingham Web Designer Jeremy Flint blogs here. He works for Kinetic Communications. He organizes events and programs for IPSA. He takes pictures and posts them on Flickr. He also blogs about Hiking and Mississippi State Sports when he has the time. He recommends Dreamhost for all your hosting needs. Make sure you grab the RSS Feed.

Google announced today that they now have the ability to index SWF files and include them in their search results. While at first this sounded like great news, further reading revealed that there were several problems with their new feature.

The main problem is that Googlebot does not execute some types of javascript. Just about any site worth anything these days uses Javascript to include the SWF file in a page. This is done to get around the terrible “click to activate” issue in IE - a result of their legal issues with Eolas. The most popular of these Javascript methods is probably SWFObject. There is even talk that Flash CS4 will use the Javascript method as the default way to place SWF into HTML files when published.

Aside from the issues of Javascript, one thing I have not found any information on is the ability to index text that has been converted to graphic symbols. When I am designing anything in Flash, I always “break” the text apart and save it as a graphic symbol. This reduces the size of the final SWF and also prevents uncommon fonts from being replaced if a user does not have it installed.

Does text still have to be “editable” text for Googlebot to index it? Can it see the text if it has been coverted to vector art? My guess is no.

There are of course other issues that have popped up, such as not being able to associate loaded SWFs with the URL of the SWF that loads it and not being able to index content loaded from external sources, such as XML or Text files or a database.

The ability to index Flash content is definitely a step forward for Google. There are sources that say Yahoo is also close to releasing some Flash search capablities as well. I think some of these issues will need to be worked out before it can be a truly useful tool.

We love playing Rock Band at Kinetic. It’s the ultimate team event that allows us to blow off some steam at the end of the day.

One of our clients at Lakeshore Foundation is an aspiring Rock Star who happens to be in a wheelchair. She was disappointed because the kickpedal feature on the drums cannot be disabled within the game. A team member heard of her wish and set to work on finding a more access-friendly solution.

We put together a modified drumstick that includes a button to trigger the base kick. Check out the write-up on how to put this together over at Channel K. Digg this!

BarCampBirmingham2 is planned for April 12 at Innovation Depot in Downtown Birmingham. BarCampBirmingham is a user generated conference created around an open, participatory workshop-event, with content provided by participants. Those participating choose the session topics for the day and then present to each other. It’s free. It’s fun. It’s a great way to meet the local technology community.

Innovation Depot has generously donated use of their excellent facilities for the event, and sponsorships from Google, Microsoft and IPSA will help make this a great event. New folks are adding their name to the Wiki everyday, proposing new sessions, and offering to help in any way possible.

If you are planning on attending, make sure you visit the BarCampBirmingham wiki and add your name to the list. You can also subscribe to the BarCampBirmingham Google Group and follow BarCampBirmingham on Twitter to keep up with discussion about the event. Most importantly, you can talk about it on your blog, in your office and with your friends.

We had the first planning meeting today for BarCampBirmingham2. Things are coming together nicely. Our tenative date for the event is April 12. If you are interested in participating, either by attending or helping to plan, make sure you head on over to the official Wiki and add your name to the list.

You can also join the BarCampBirmingham Google Group and follow BarCampBham on Twitter to stay in the loop on the latest updates.

We hope to have our location locked down soon.

If you are a Mac user and are looking for a great deal on awesome software, make sure you check out the MacHeist Bundle. For only $49, you can get 14 awesome apps worth almost $500, including the excellent new image editor Pixelmator, the ultimate uninstaller AppZapper, and more.

There are only 2 days left on this great bundle, so pick it up now.