Recently, I went to a band website to buy some music. It was a band site, so it has to be hip, and that means an all Flash site. Roh-roh! I’m not going to go on a total rant and expose the site but suffice to say that I was tortured and never was able to buy the music I wanted. (Had my credit card out and everything!)

It started with an intro loading screen that could not be bypassed by a “skip into” STEEEERIIIIIIIIIIKE ONE! Then there was some type of “mystery meat” navigation system to try to get to the section to purchase the CD… STEEEERIIIIIIIIIIKE TWO! And finally when I found the CD purchase area the link to purchase engaged a pop-up that my browser blocked… STEEEERIIIIIIIIIIKE THREE!

Now I’m not totally opposed to all Flash sites. For creatives that want to really have a site that pops, it does make some sense. However, it probably makes most sense to have an integrated site that has Flash and some normal layout with CSS and HTML. Then, it can be indexed and found by search engines. For the moment, most all Flash sites are invisible to search engines.

One all Flash site that I really like was designed by our newest designer, Daniel Rouse. He did it for SOMA Media Arts up in Lowell. Very nice Dan, but make sure you use your powers for good!

Occasionally I will bump into a company or web firm that claims that there is no place for Flash on the internet. Unless you live in a cave, you probably have gone to YouTube and downloaded a clip, just like over 150 million people each day.The videos on Youtube are played in Flash, just like most of the other videos being played on the web. Flash is ubiquitous; it is everywhere.

Of course, Flash was not always easy to use and when it was used, it took the form of obnoxious, bouncing mortgage ads. Well, those days are over (not the mortgage ads, unfortunately) and using Flash will be part of most web projects.

At Commareus, we believe in the tasteful, non-gratuitous use of Flash.

This week I attended a presentation hosted by the Search Engine Marketing org of New England called “The Future of Marketing.” A woman came up to me, looked at my nametag, and asked if I represented some dinosaur or something like that.

It’s not Greek or Latin or something clever like that. Commareus means “Communications are us, with 2 “M”s thank you! I’m glad she didn’t think it would hurt my feelings…too much…SNIFF…;-( But if we were a dinosaur, we’d be something like this:

OK, we’ve established our core competencies as a company:

1. Clean, beautiful, websites, designed in CSS, and
2. Integration of the ‘non-gratuitous’ use of Flash

So now that we’ve found what we’re really good at, we have to figure out what else we have to know, integrate, develop partnerships with, etc.

Here’s a shot of my notebook where I’ve been jotting down the components of the World Wide Web. My head hurts!!

My notebook at the end of today.

Adobe just announced that it will make a Flash player that will display on cell phones and other mobile devices. That means that many things that are created in Flash like videos, websites, and elements in websites, will be able to be easily viewed on mobile devices like cell phones, PDAs, and the like.

Adobe’s Announcement