There’s no doubt that web design is evolving. One of the major influences on web design is mobile computing – smartphones and tablets (like the iPad and the soon-to-be-released Playbook from RIM). These have a direct influence because the focus has to be usability, readability, and functionality.

One important technology that does not work on most phones and tablets is Flash. So the advice of many web designers in tune with mobile is to move away from flash. This is quite a turnaround from a few years ago when flash was seen as the answer to web functionality and interactivity.

Another trend to watch is the use and influence of  Tumblr.  As Christina Warren of Mashable says,

The popular microblogging platform Tumblr is a great way to quickly and easily post updates, share content and garner direct visitor feedback. Tumblr has become a really popular platform and more and more small businesses are using it for their own company blogs or sites.

For other trends in web design see these resources:
5 Design Trends That Small Businesses Can Use in 2011
4 Winning Web Design Tips From Ryan Carson of Carsonified
Essential Web Design Advice From a Wireframing Master [INTERVIEW]

Is there anything more boring than an article about web page meta tags? Unfortunately, people who create websites have to actually think about these things. That’s because they have played a role in SEO, presumably indicating (to the search engines) something about the subject matter of a particular page.

It is generally accepted that the keywords meta tag has not been used by Google for years. In fact Google announced back in September of 2009 that “Our web search… disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.” If you’d like to see the post in Google Webmaster Tools where this was confirmed you can go here.

The title and description meta tags are a different story. Most SEOs consider the title tag to be one of the most important on-page factors used by Google to identify the subject matter of your pages. The description tag also provides important keyword hints and as Matt Cutts says, “we do sometimes use the “description” meta tag as the text for our search results snippets.” So that means it has an impact on the click thru rate when your pages show up in Google results pages.

If you are publishing a blog (using WordPress, for example) this is taken care of for you when you set up your blog.

Here are some resource articles (from the Vertical Leap Blog) that discuss the use of meta tags:

Google News Introduces Meta Tags for Source Attribution
SEO Tips for More Efficient Meta Tags
More on Title Tags
Google announce that Keywords & Descriptions tags have no impact on ranking
The Importance Of Understanding Clients Business
Search Engine Optimisation – Duplicate titles and Meta Descriptions
Meta Robots Tag Syntax for SEO
Business Blogs for Business-Guidelines from Yahoo Blog Guru