China has been long been known as a lover of social networking sites. The top three traffic getters, however, feature no familiar faces to us Westerners. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Renren.com – This site started out as Facebook clone but soon blew up to be the most popular social networking site in China. It has gotten so big that it’s even began dictating social networking norms across the ocean. For instance, popular Facebook game Farmville originated on this site. The one to look out for.

Xiaonei.com- This site also borrowed a lot from Facebook upon it’s inception. It even had the same layout and that same shade of blue. Many Chinese nationals even wondered if the site was formally affiliated withthe big Face.  It’s since, however, come into it’s own and gobbled up lots of the marketshare.

Kaixin001.com – This site is very popular and is known for attracting white collar middle class people in top tier cities. The site has become very valuable due to the fact that it attracts a wealthy userbase.

Cold Hard Flash is on the case to entertain all of you flashheads out there. This blog aggregates all of the best in news and tips. The kind folks over at the site also showcase hot videos, animations and programs to show you what is possible with everyone’s favorite web development tool.  If you are in the market for Flash-related advice, you could do no better than this handy, dandy website. Check it out here. Tell em we sent ya.

Unfortunately, you cannot avoid the issue of search engine optimization (SEO) when developing an Adobe Flash-based Flex rich Internet application (RIA) or Flash Website.  Fortunately, the Flash SEO Tool is almost here to help ease us into comfort and security.

Peter Gwiazda, the author of this handy app, has this to say about it:

“The Flash SEO Tool lets you add text content for Googlebot to your Flash/Flex site and gives you some SEO optimization capabilities.  The idea is to make it as simple as possible.  No matter what the source of data is (XML, database, etc.), it lets you create text content the same way. You can probably plug the SEO tool to your finished application.”

On his motivation to create the Flash SEO tool, Gwiazda notes, “In my day-to-day work I see that lack of SEO capabilities is the main argument against rich application interfaces.  I had some concepts and experiences with leveraging SEO for Flash platform.  Flash SEO Tool is a proof of concept now.”

Gwiazda’s Flash SEO Tool is currently hosted on Google Code and a download will be available soon.

Google has published a rather detailed, 49-page report that rates the search engine optimization (SEO) on its various properties including, but not limited to, the Google search home page. The result? Not so good.

On the bright side, the company says it plans to use this information to improve its own SEO, and that to help others, the company has shared some of the metrics it’s used.

The report covers 100 of Google’s products. The company is also planning a follow-up that will cover international localizations.

Among the items under scrutiny, one of the biggest areas of failure for the company is in “search result presentation,” where the company scored a 33/100 or lower in three different categories, the lowest being “title tag format and length.” This is how much information appears in the large, blue search result links as well as the text descriptions that appear below them. The report points at several ways to fix this, including the use of “descriptive words and phrases in your page’s title tag.”

Conan O’Brien may have been shoved off of NBC to make way for Jay Leno, but he seems to have found a new outlet. Twitter! CoCo joined Twitter just a few days ago and has already racked up over a half million followers. He has entertained his many followers by posting stuff such as :

“I just had the fries at the McDonald’s in Culver City near the Lady Foot Locker. SO AWESOME. If you can get there, ORDER THOSE FRIES.”

Oddly, Conan has yet to follow a single person.  Not even Andy Richter. Click here to follow his Tweets.

The U.S. Department of Defense has lifted it’s ban on social networking sites that had been in place for some sections of the agency since 2007. The Department of Defense issued a memorandum on Friday that sets a new policy allowing access to social-networking services from the DoD network.

“Service members and DoD employees are welcome and encouraged to use new media to communicate with family and friends — at home stations or deployed — but it’s important to do it safely,” a Department representative  said in a blog post about the memorandum.

IT workers within the administration are still given the go-ahead to use their own discretion to ban or limit social networking use, although one would imagine they would not be too well liked around the office if they did so.

This new policy frees up the DoD to continue their foray into social networking sites such as Twitter, where they are building up a presence.

Even you Photoshop experts out there could stand to learn a thing or two, right? Of course! With that in mind, we present to you a trio of tutorial links to help you achieve Photo manipulation nirvana.

A Little Photoshop – This set of tutorials is useful for photographers. Love to take photographs and use Photoshop to get them looking their best? Then this is for you.

Abduzeedo – This website offers tutorials to really bring the style and flare out of your Photoshop sessions. Just look at some of their in-house artists. Amazing!

Pixel2Life – These tutorials run the gamut from beginning Photoshop tips to expert advice. They really do it all. To you blossoming web developers, the site offers flash tutorials as well.

White House Press Secretary is taking it the people, Twitter style. He signed up for the popular social networking site last week, claiming  his deputy Bill Burton had been using it and it looked like “great fun.” He ha racked up thousands of followers in the scant few days he’s been involved with the popular site. He hasn’t gone crazy with the posts, either. He has mostly used the site to ask for help on how to use the site. Cyclical much Mr. Gibbs? Here are some of the nice and crazy Twitter responses to his pleas for help:

dynomitethings: The 1st tip is free: Don’t refer to it as “The Twitter.”

patrickroddy: @PressSec Try not to make it all business. This can be great tool to humanize yourself.

Kajivar: @PressSec Ignore the anonymous crazies who are going to spam you with vicious insults. That’d be my biggest tip.

fleckman: Shouldn’t Gibbs new twitter acct be @PressSUK instead of @PressSec

rosecityken: @PressSec say more here than you do in press conferences, you will cut out like 250 “uhhhh’s” in like 5 mins time.

Follow the esteemed Mr. Gibbs at @PressSec.

Adobe has been having some trouble getting Apple to adopt flash on their best-selling iPhone. This has not stopped the company from giving away six million copies of their Photoshop iPhone app since it was released last October. It’s the second most popular free photography app in the entire Apple  app-verse.  It allows you to do basic photo editing on your iPhone, including cropping, rotating, filters, effects, and borders. You can also view your finished work, be it video or still image, at Photoshop.com.  This app is also available on Android phones and Windows Mobile. Happy Photoshopping!

A post on the forthcoming iPad would probably have been inappropriate here so instead we leave you with three useful Twitter apps for Mac computers. These are all new and you may have missed the radar blip when they were released. Macs sometimes get the short end of the app stick so when good stuff is released, you gotta jump on it. So, without further adieu, useful apps:

Itsy – Itsy is minimal. It handles most Twitter functions with ease, all nestled in a small window whose footprint is ultra-small. If your Twitter  is an ecosystem, then Itsy is an organic apple, or those neat light bulbs, or a Prius. Heck, you get the idea.

Yoono Desktop – This bad boy controls much more than just Twitter. Based on a popular Firefox add-on, this app controls Twitter, AIM, Flickr, Facebook and more. It truly is a handy app. You can update your statuses across multiple networks at once, for starters. The sky is the limit here.

Echofon – This app was originally made for the indubitable iPhone. It just made the jump to Mac OS proper, and you ought to thank your lucky stars. User Interface is the name of the game here. Echofon’s UI is so user-friendly, so smooth, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. Post photos, update statuses and a host of other options done easy and simply. If only the rest of life was like this .