There are only two days left for geeks that haven't made all their holiday gift requests to add one more to the list. But you've got to act fast! Until December 15th, you can still wrangle a loved one into purchasing a Community MX Gift Certificate. And because we want your loved one to feel special too, we've provided a way to give them some bang for their buck -- a buy one get one free sale!

That's right, if they purchase a 3 month CMX subscription, you'll receive 6 months. A 6 month subscription becomes a year and a year becomes two years. You get the picture. And heck, maybe you need to put something in your own stocking this year. With almost 900 tutorials in stock and two more every day, CMX JumpStarts, CMX extensions and a host of new items planned for 2005, there's not a better value... But you've gotta beg fast! ;)

Just released, sIFR RC2. I just downloaded the new version to update a project. I have another in the works now that will really benefit from beautiful image-like headings. They've fixed some Opera quirks as well as the Flash URL limit.

Be sure to check it out. And if you haven't been following along and wonder what it's really about, you can view Danilo Celic's Breeze presentation about sIFR. He gave a nice visual guide to the process.

I'll type more later. For now, I've got a beach volleyball tournament to win. ;)

It's been a while since I used video on a commercial web site, but I remember it well—what a royal pain it was. First there was the need to select your player and platform, then the struggle with compression and codecs, and on and on. Compromise everywhere you looked. But that was then.

And this is now: Flash Video is a brilliant new solution to the longstanding problems of quality and compatibility. It looks great, and it works on just about everything. "Write once, run anywhere" is actually true with Flash Video (I can view it on a Linux box, a handheld computer, and just about everything in between).

You won't find a better introduction to the subject than Paul Newman's excellent series here on CMX—Part 2 has just appeared today. Paul teaches you everything you need to know about building an exemplary Flash Video Player. If you use Flash or video in your site projects, this is a must read.