Flashphone is a Russian based service that offers users free phone calls over the Internet using their Flash web-based software. Free calls can be made towards a limited number of countries, listed on the site. The list is quite large, although I couldn’t find Serbia on it, even though it’s listed in the country list when registering to use the service. The service is still in Beta so there will be more developments over time, and I’m guessing the list of countries available for free phone calls will expand.

There is a limitation to using the service. Each user gets three calls per day, with each call limited to three minutes, for now according to the site. The interface is quite simple - it looks like standard mobile phone layout (numbers and function buttons). Even though the design is a bit too simplistic, I don’t find it to be disagreeable. The fact that it’s web based and relies on software (Flash) available on almost all computers attached to the Web, makes Flash Phone quite interesting. Having to have your browser open all the time in order to make calls may be a small negative characteristic, but at the same time I don’t think that is a big issue. In the end, you have to launch something to use the service, so it may as well be a browser, why not? Skype is different in that aspect as it is a separate application that requires installation on the system, and is platform dependent (special versions for different OS), while Flash Phone is web based, and thus platform independent. All you need is a properly setup headset and microphone, and you’re set.

The service currently has some 1850 registered users. I’m expecting this number to grow drastically as the services gets coverage over the coming weeks. If it proves to work ok, I see no reason for it not to gain a lot of popularity. Well, of to use my three calls for today!

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Content presented through Flash is always inferior to content presented through standard xHTML regarding search engine indexing and ranking. Search engines like and are able to index content in textual form. Flash has always had this drawback, since its content is compiled within the SWF file and is thus unavailable to search engines. There are methods for bypassing this problem, most common being parallel xHTML and Flash content, where the actual indexable content is shown inside the source code of the page formatted using standard xHMTL, while it’s visually presented through Flash to the website visitor. The search engine sees the source and indexes it, while visitors get the benefit of rich visual presentation from Flash. Theoretically, as long as the content presented through both methods is coherent (similar/same), search engines will not give you any trouble. I read a post on Ajaxian today about what’s possibly a break through regarding the Flash content indexing problem.

SWFAddress, a developer library made by Asual, makes it possible to do deep linking within Flash content, or in other words it is possible to link to specific state of a Flash object on a page. There are plenty of example on Asual.com, so I won’t go into too much detail here, except to emphasize the SEO example which shows how SWFAddress helps developers get their Flash content indexed by search engines. The address is formed in a specific way, which with the help of the library, gets interpreted by the application, and returns the appropriate content which is embedded somewhere inside the Flash object. The example URL is:
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/seo/
Within it, there is the “portfolio” subsection which in turn has its own subcontent, for example subcontent “1″:
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/seo/#/portfolio/1/?desc=true&year=2001

I am not sure, but I suppose the URL tail (#/portfolio/1/?desc=true&year=2001) gets passed as parameters to the application residing under “/seo” with the usage of mod_rewrite, and according to these parameters the application serves the proper state of the Flash object, this time pertaining to Portfolio number 1. Although the URL could have been formed a bit better, like:
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/seo/#/portfolio/1/desc-true-year-2001
for example, to avoid passing of parameters within the URL, which search engines, although getting better at, don’t really like to parse that much, the whole thing works well. Asual give search engine search examples with these pages indexed and shown in search results. So, it works. This is great news, since the Flash content indexing issue has bothered developers for a long time, and has prevented some interesting and informative sites from getting indexed by the search engines.

Head on over to Asual.com and take a look at the examples (and there are plenty of them for different technologies).

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I ran into this on FlashLite Blog. Excellent!

They say it took three months to make this. May seem like a long time, but after realizing how complex this animation actually is, three months makes sense.

You can also see this on the original page.

UPDATE: The original embed code wouldn’t play here, just allowed click to the original page, so I replaced with a screenshot of the action. Go see it, it’s really great!

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