This is not my usual sort of post and I’m not a professional programmer (just an enthusiastic amateur!), but I managed to go through some simple steps to validate the code. If I can do it why can’t they? Anyway, here goes…………

Original code as supplied by Flickr

<object width=”250″ height=”188″> <param name=”flashvars” value=”offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fspanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F
spanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2F&set_id=72157628429728167&jump_to=”></param> <param name=”movie” value=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615″></param> <param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615″ allowFullScreen=”true” flashvars=”offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fspanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F
spanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2F&set_id=72157628429728167&jump_to=” width=”250″ height=”188″></embed></object>

Now lets break that down into it’s constituent elements

<object width=”250″ height=”188″>
<param name=”flashvars” value=”offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fspanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F
spanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2F&set_id=72157628429728167&jump_to=”>
</param>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615″>
</param>
<param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”>
</param>
<embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615″ allowFullScreen=”true” flashvars=”offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fspanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F
spanishhighs%2Fsets%2F72157628429728167%2F&set_id=72157628429728167&jump_to=” width=”250″ height=”188″>
</embed>
</object>

Steps to Validate
(1) Remove every </param> and enter “/” at the end of the previous line to self close the “param” tag.

For example, the following line
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615″>
</param>

becomes

<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615″ />

(2) The Object tag must have a “Type” statement. Therefore include the following
type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” in the object statement.

For example
<object width=”250″ height=”188″>

becomes

<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”250″ height=”188″>

Your embed code should validate, Mine did. Good Luck!

Article by El Perro Negro

Google + Pages
Google+ launched “Google for business” (Google+ Pages). So if you have not done so already, I suggest heading over to your Google+ account and creating your page. All you have to do is look out down the right hand side of your Google+ homepage and you will see a “create a page”. Add your details and design it how you want and that’s it.

Panda Update
Google have had yet another minor Panda Update. Google confirmed on the 18th of November that they had made a “minor” update. So nothing to worry about.

Yahoo Site Explorer
The long lived Yahoo Site Explorer has shut down. As of November 21st the tool used by many SEO’s will be merged into Bing Webmaster Tools.

Facebook Comments
Facebook comments are now been indexed by Google. That’s right, Google will now be crawling and ranking comments made on Facebook.

Bings Editors Picks
Bing has just launched a new product called “Editors Picks”. Much like a directory where people can search through topic and browse through categories. It is similar to the Yahoo Directory. Head over there and take a look.

Google to launch International Flight Search.
For those looking for flights you will soon be able to search the “Flights Search” filter on Google. You will be able to search by price, dates and time.

As usual Google have declined to give any information or specifics about what types of pages and content this update has targeted. They did give the usual Google statement of  ”We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”

Passed updates have included:

Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011
Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011
Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011
Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011
Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011
Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011

Although many have reported traffic drops overnight and some been effected quite badly. Read what happened to daniweb which has been stricken down twice by the Panda! It will be interesting to see what effects it will have on our clients websites, although nothing seems to have changed as of yet.

Stay tuned for future Panda updates.

What’s changed…

Our main aim from this upgrade was to provide you with lots of info. We want our users and clients to learn, understand and grow with us. We have added extra pages around specific topics to guide you through the whole web agency experience.

We have added a Google guide. Full of interesting Facts and Stats about the company, a full list of Google products and a page dedicated to its history. Don’t forget to check out our SEO updates throughout the year.

If you are new to SEO, you can check out the SEO process page to get an idea of the phases taken in any SEO campaign. Take a look at the SEO blog section to see what’s new in the industry and the practises that are been used in the current times. We would like to remind people that we only post ethical SEO techniques and do not support black hat SEO.

We thought it was about time we put our results where our mouth was and show you what we are made of. We will now be keeping a close track of our SEO results both from this website and our client results. Our web design portfolio has also had a face lift and you can now see what we have worked with on each of the websites shown.

We hope you like the new look and enjoy the information provided.

SEO in Spain team

If you are new to Google+ and are still a little confused as to what it is and how it functions, you can read our article about the Google+ Project and learn what Circles, Sparks and Huddles do.

Keyboard Shortcuts -
J = Lets you scroll down a post
K = Lets you scroll up a post
Q = opens up the chat
Return = To start a comment
Tab and Return = Ends a comment
Space Bar = Use this to scroll down your stream

Text Formatting -
There is only limited text formatting at the moment but these are the basic ones that can be used within Google+. -strike through-, *bold* or _italic_

Tagging People –
Easily tag someone in your posts and statuses by simply adding the + or @ symbol in front of their name.

Sending a Private Message –
Finally we figured out how to send a direct message to someone without having to include a whole circle of people. You can easily do this by adding the +Username and instead of selecting a circle, don’t select anything.

Drag and Drop to your status –
So another cool feature of the Google+ is the drag and drop feature but it doesn’t stop there as you can also drag any image, video or link from your desktop straight into your status box.

Shortened Profile URL –
Create a shortened URL of your Google+ profile. Simply follow this link to gplus, add the numbers from your Google profile and select the shortened version you would like it to replace it with.

Share to Google+ from Gmail –
You can easily share something straight from your Gmail account. When you login to your Gmail account you will notice the grey notification button from G+ at the top right of your screen. Click on it to add your posts and updates.

If anyone has any other tips that can help newbies get started please leave them in the comment box below.

The Google+ Project has a number of social features including many from close competitors such as Facebook and Apple but they have also decided to include some of the new open source social platform, Diaspora. Although there is one fantastic feature that lets Diaspora stand out is that you have the option to host it on your own server. We are expecting and hoping that this time the Google+ Project booms. Check out the Google+ Project demo

Circles
Where as Diaspora uses “Aspects” to categories your people, Google are calling theirs “Circles”. This lets you post to only the categories of people you choose to see your stuff giving you much more privacy too.

The Google+ also possesses of a drag and drop interface which makes it much easier for organising. See how you can easily categorise people in your account by watching this preview video.

Hangouts
Another feature the Google+ holds is “Hangouts”. The way to meet and catch up with friends and family. Live video chats where you can get together with all your friends at the same time. Take a look at the video below to get a better idea of how the Hangouts section works.

Sparks
Other features includes the sparks function. Completely organise and search all your favourite interests from around the web and have it all come into one stream for you. Not only that but when you come across something interesting or a video you like you can easily share it, all from one place. Watch the video to see Sparks in action.

Huddle
Another cool feature is “Huddle”, the way to have an interactive conversation with more than 1 person at a time. Check out the demo below.

Instant Upload
And finally the instant upload feature that lets you upload directly from your mobile phone. Nice neat little feature which effectively uploads automatically from your phone. Again a demo video is shown below.

You may have noticed a change in PR both on homepages and across inner pages of websites. It has been quite a long time since the last update but Google have finally made changes to the toolbar PageRank value.

I would like to remind you that this does not mean websites will be affected with how high you rank or how much traffic you get and to get a true PR reading it should be calculated continuously.

See the live stream here

Although only available in 6 cities at the moment including Portland, Boston, Ore, San Francisco, San Diego, Turin and Madrid you can use on Google Maps for Mobile and Desktop. So if you are in Madrid head over to the Maps and test drive it out.

When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you’ll now see “live departure times (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.

See the full article from the official Google blog spot

What we need now is for Titter to role out another feature that enables statistics within your Twitter account.