If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to learn Ruby on Rails, I would suggest reading Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book. It is a great online introduction to the Ruby programming language and will definitely give you a kickstart while learning the Rails framework.

Software for Starving Students is a CD ISO image that packages up close to a hundred open-source and freeware applications. Once you burn the ISO (or DMG) to a CD, you can install any of the applications through a simple to use application. Even if you’re not a student, this bundle contains great value!

I have finally been able to contact the winners of the iPod Nano’s! They are Dan Dean and Doug. I’ll be sending out the iPods over the next few days. Thanks again for all the cool screenshots and watch for another giveaway later on this month!

Even though it is not tech related, indexed has quickly become one of my must read blogs of the day. Jessica Hagy publishes about three index cards with a clever diagram that helps her “make fun of some things and sense of others”. Check it out over the next few days - I’m sure you’ll become as addicted as I am.

One of my colleagues - Nathanael de Jager - has started a great new Flex blog called My2Bits. There is already some great content up there, so check it out and add his feed to your reader!

This is a great collection of 13 Ruby on Rails Screencasts of presentations made to the San Diego Ruby (and Rails) User Group. I particularly enjoyed Patrick Crowley’s ActsAsTaggable Plugin presentation. It was nice to see him talk about the differences between the gem and the plugin and then shows how to quickly implement folksonomy based tagging in a web application.

Happy new year everyone. Just wanted to give you all an update on my iPod Nano Giveaway contest. Thanks to all those that entered. It was really great seeing some screencaps of the people who regularly read this blog!

I have notified two entrants that they were winners on December 18th and can you believe that neither of them have answered my emails to claim the prize!? So I ask that if you entered, please check the email account that you left with your entry and email me back (simply reply to my email) so that I can confirm your shipping address. If I do not hear back from you by Friday January 5th, your entry will be invalidated and I will draw more names for the prizes.

Thanks, Jim.