There has been some great Flex/Apollo coverage this weekend. Michael Arrington and Steve Gilmor are presenting an audio podcast with Adobe senior vice president and chief software architect Kevin Lynch. In the interview they discuss the new Apollo cross platform runtime that will allow web developers to create desktop applications leveraging their existing Flash, Flex, JavaScript and HTML skills. In another presentation, Mike Chambers interviews Christian Cantrell who shows off some of the applications that Christian has developed using Flex and the Apollo beta. There is some really cool stuff here. In fact it’s so cool I almost name this post “I want Christian’s Job”!

ISP on a Mac is a great series of articles that will show you how to compile all the software required to turn your Mac into a full fledged web host. Instructions are easy to follow and cover installing Apache 2, PHP 5.x, MySQL 5, Postfix for mail and spam filtering. What make this series great is you learn how to compile your servers and how to specify many different features and configuration options.

At Chirstmas time, I tend to be a little extra generous when tipping those who give me great service throughout the year. From my barber to barista they get a little extra change to make their holidays a little more enjoyable. But how do you tip your favourite blogger? Well here are some simple suggestions:

1. Click their “dontate” buttons

   Many bloggers have a PayPal Donate button on their sites. Consider giving them a small micro-payment as your tip.

2. Buy them an item from their Amazon Wishlist

   Many bloggers link to their Amazon Wishlists. View their wishlist and purchase them something that they have indicated they will enjoy.

3. Send them an iTunes Gift Certificate

   If you know your blogger’s email address you have enough information to send them a small iTunes gift certificate.

4. Get them a Flickr Pro Account

   If your favorite blogger displays a Flickr Badge on their site, chances are they are a huge fan of the service. Consider giving them a Flickr Pro account.

5. Buy something for yourself through their affiliate advertisers

   Chances are you’re probably purchasing gifts for your family and friends. Consider clicking on an affiliate and purchasing product through them. For example if you were going to buy a CD for your kid, go to your favorite blogger’s site and click on an item they are recommending from Amazon (you don’t have to buy that item). Now as you shop Amazon, your blogger will receive a commission for any item you buy!

6. Send them an E-Card

   So you like your blogger but just can’t afford a tip? No problem - just send them a nice e-card to let them know you appreciate their efforts!

Have I forgotten anything? List your ideas in the comment thread below!

With the Christmas season upon us it’s the time of year that we start taking more photos. Supercharge the photographs you take this year by reading this quick guide on The Rules of Photography. Follow the rules, and you’ll be sure to have more interesting memories from the holiday season!

Timeline is a DOM/JavaScript based widget for visualizing time-based events. Data is fed to the widget using simple XML or JSON. Check out their examples to see how cool this project is. Also, you might want to check out RSS to Timeline that will take any RSS feed and place it into a timeline widget.

VideoLAN Player has just been updated to version 0.8.6. A couple of very cool features have been added like codec support for Windows Media Video 9 and Flash Video, a Fullscreen controller and if your a Mac user, it now supports the Apple Remote. VLC is the only video player I use. It pretty much plays anything I can throw at it and it is free and open source!

Microsoft is feeling charitable? They recently announced that anyone can have IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine through an offer that allows you to download a free Virtual PC image of Windows XP with IE6. Microsoft Virtual PC is free virtualization software that allows you to run multiple Operating Systems (Windows, Linux or Unix) while in Windows XP. This looks to be a great option for cross-browser testing!

It’s been a good year here at Digital Media Minute. Readership is up and so is my Google revenue. To celebrate, I am going to give away two 4GB iPod Nanos (winner picks the color) to two random readers. To enter this give-away, here are the rules:

1. Do a screen capture of something you are currently working on. It can be anything you want from a new web comp, to a print project, to a snippet of code.
2. Crop your screen capture to 320px × 320px. Do not scale your screen capture - leave it at 100%. Anything posted larger than the 320px square will be deleted, and you will not be eligible for the random draw.
3. Post a comment to this article and use an <img /> tag with the src attribute pointing to your screen capture hosted on your server. You can link the image to a full-size version if you would like to give us a larger teaser of your work, but please only post the 320px square. If you add the link, your comment will be held for moderation. I will make my best attempt to process as quickly as possible!
4. Please be sure to enter your email address in the comment form (you email will not be displayed).
5. On December 17th, I will randomly choose an entrant and contact him/her via email.

Have fun and good luck!

Joe Hewitt has just released a Public Beta of Firebug 1.0. Firebug is a kick-ass tool that every web developer/designer must have in his or her toolbox. If you have used Firebug in the past you will absolutely love some of the new features like JavaScript profiling, live HTML and CSS editing, and CSS metrics visualiztion. My favorite new feature is the one that lets you open Firebug in a separate window (perfect for those of us with more than one monitor).

My favorite new feature in the latest Parallels beta is coherence mode. Easiest way to explain this is to show it:

[Click image for larger view]

In a nutshell, coherence mode lets you view a Windows application directly in the host (OSX) operating system. It’s a very cool feature that lets you access your Windows applications directly from within OSX!