By 2010, Adobe Systems Inc. hopes to see a total of 1 billion phones shipped with Flash Lite, a cut-down version of Flash Player that runs small apps, games and video.

Getting Flash Lite on as many phones as possible will enable its huge community of designers and developers — the 2 million “people in black turtlenecks” as Gary Kovacs, vice president of Adobe’s mobile and device business, calls them — to port their content and applications to a potentially lucrative platform.

“Our developers are already making money on the Web. They just want a way to get to mobile,” Kovacs said in an interview late last week.

Since its release four and a half years ago, Flash Lite has been shipped on 300 million mobile phones and handheld devices. This year alone, Adobe expects 250 million Flash Lite phones to ship, giving it 27% of the global phone market, according to Kovacs.

By contrast, the most popular mobile application platform — Java Micro Edition — will come preinstalled on about 500 million phones and devices this year, according to British research firm Informa PLC.

There are 3 billion mobile phones in use today, according to Informa, far more than the 1 billion PCs that IDC estimates are currently in operation.

Factor in the average two-year life span of a mobile phone today, and Flash Lite appears to run on just 8% to 10% of all cell phones today.

“Adobe has an uphill battle if it wants Flash Lite to become the platform for multimedia on mobile phones,” said analyst Jack Gold, of J.Gold Associates LLC in Northboro, Mass.

On PCs, Adobe could rely on Web downloads and bundling with Windows, on which Microsoft Corp., under pressure from antitrust regulators, offered to propagate Flash. And Flash is free.

Things are different in the mobile space. Most phones today, due to security fears and hardware limitations, restrict users from downloading and installing applications such as Flash Lite. Apple Inc.’s iPhone was the best example, until its developer support announcement earlier this month.

….work YELLOW7 work.

An article released today from the LA Times has a quote from Giovanni Gallucci. Its a good read:

WASHINGTON — Should the world’s most-used search engine be more of a Yankee Google Dandy?

Google Inc. occasionally features light-hearted doodles on its colorful home-page logo to commemorate special occasions. But now they are drawing criticism from conservatives for not being more patriotic.

The Mountain View, Calif., company bathes its logo in stars and stripes every Independence Day, but last week’s decision to honor the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch — the second “g” in Google was replaced with a drawing of the Soviet satellite — is being blasted by some conservatives.

Not only did Google honor an achievement by a totalitarian regime that was our Cold War enemy, they griped, but it did so without having ever altered its logo to commemorate U.S. military personnel on Memorial Day or Veterans Day.

“It’s a kick to your belly,” said conservative blogger Giovanni Gallucci, 39, a social media consultant from Dallas. “I understand these guys are scientists and engineers and they have their quirks and want to make sure people are recognized who might not normally be recognized . . . but why not celebrate the struggles that we’ve come through as a people?”

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Water Filters

Below are 7 signs that it’s time to redesign your site:

7. Your Business Has Changed or Grown - Often the focus of the business must change in order to be competitive.  New service offerings or products are added resulting in a band-aid approach for the website.  A service is added to a site category that doesn’t really fit but it has to go somewhere, right? A redesign helps you reorganize your site to include added business offerings.

6. The Information on Your Site isn’t User-Friendly - This goes hand-in-hand with #7. When you stick items where they don’t belong it makes it difficult for people to find it…duh!  Adding a sitemap can help but usually a redesign/reorganization/restructure is in order when you discover that your site isn’t as “friendly” as it needs to be.

5. You aren’t getting good results in the search engines - “My site looks goooooooooood.  But, nobody can find me!” A redesign can help you fix that.  With SEO considered during the site design process, you can make sure the site is designed with SEO in mind and leave opportunities to maximize your SEO efforts.

4. It’s not bringing in inquiries and helping you to make sales - Isn’t this the whole reason you got a website in the first place?  “It’s like a 24 hour/7 day a week salesperson churning out lead after lead…blah, blah, blah.” A poorly designed website can actually hurt you more than a great website can help you.  Perception! Perception! Perception!  You get one change to make that good impression.  On the flip-side, a website that is designed to showcase your company in its best light can really add value and start off the engagement process on the right foot.

3. It’s costing you a fortune to update - “Johnson! I need the graphic with our old slogan removed and changed to our new mission statement!” If you are making alot of changes make sure this is brought up during the redesign.  Might be time to implement a CMS.

2. You apologize for the site when referencing it or handing out your business cards - Although this could easily be the #1 reason, and maybe it should be, I put it at #2.  This is usually what salespeople tell prospective clients.  Did you hear me?  This is what SALESPEOPLE ( who have no control over the website design ) tell prospective clients.  This is usually followed up with: “You’ll have to forgive us…..we are actually in the middle of redesigning our new website.”  Didn’t he tell you that last year?

1. It looks like it was designed in 1995 - This would look very similar to an upside down “L”.  Navigation will be on the left in a PLAIN box ( maybe gray ).  Logo will be at the top in a PLAIN box. Text will be in the middle in a PLAIN box.  Get the idea?  There will be no control over fonts, spacing, breaks, colors……  Hyperlinks will be blue, UNLESS you have already clicked it and then they will be purple….awesome!