There's always loads of new tech aiming to be the next big buzzword for the web, however there are a couple that have the backing to actually make a big push to move things in their direction, Sun and Microsoft.  Sun will be announcing JavaFX soon which seems to want to be an AJAX replacement and more, while Microsoft's Silverlight seems to be gunning for Flash.  While our technology primarily places us within the PHP and Flash realm we're very interested in seeing what these technologies have to offer.  Will JavaFX be compelling enough to bring me back to JAVA, I don't know but it might be nice to try my hand at something new.  That's also another reason for me to check out Silverlight since I'm the resident weak link when it comes to media based interactivity (I'm a backend guy, what can I say).  Silverlight presents a more equal footing between me and the rest of the guys here since it's new to all of us, but the initial downloads (Visual Studio Beta and Silverlight framework) to even start with Silverlight seem way too much trouble for a mere curiosity at this point.   If I get a free weekend soon I may delve into it more, but for now I'll be watching eagerly from the sidelines until these technologies become more widely accepted and more accessible.

We have recently launched 2 projects (this site, Interior TV Phase II) utilizing Wordpress.  During of which, we had come across a number of useful plugins and you can find the list below:

Admin Tools

• Authenticated Login - Force users to login before accessing the site
• Email Alert Users - Send an email to alert users of new posts
• Exec-PHP - Allow users to write PHP when posting a blog post
• Role Manager - For adding/modify/deleting roles management
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - Add and manage tags for each blog post
• Plugin Update Manager - Check for update for the installed plugins
• UserExtra & UserMeta - Add extra fields to the user profile
• ShortStats - Display blog stats on the Dashboard
• Search Meter - Keep track of what your users are searching
• WYSIWYG Editor - Add a WYSIWYG editor for writing posts

Image/Video Tools

• FLV Embed- Embed Flash video (FLV) to post. With fullscreen feature.
• Kimili Flash Embed - Embed Flash SWF to post. Completed with SWFObject Flash detection script
• WP Video - Use <video> tag to embed any video to post
• Simple Flickr - Flash photos slideshow pulling photos from Flickr
• Lightbox2 - AJAX image popup

SEO Tools

• SEO Title Tag - Search Engine Optimize the title tag
• Feedburner Replacement - Redirect all RSS feeds to feedburner for SEO and tracking purpose
• Google Sitemap - Generate a google sitemap for submission to Google

Misc. Tools

• Contact Form - Add a contact form to any post or page
• Cache - Cache pages to load faster
• Email a post - All users to send an email to a friend about a post
• Get Author Profile - Retrieve author profile information. Works great with UserExtra and UserMeta
• Top Posts - Show top posts by category
• Event Cal - Add an event calendar
• Poll - Add a poll system
• Post Rating - Rate the post by star or bar system
• Relative Dates - Show post by realtive dates (2 days ago, 2 minutes ago, etc.)
• User Online - Show who's online and logged in
• Page Navi - Modify the page navigation system to show (Page 1 2 3 ..... 17)
• Subscribe to comment - Allow user to subscribe to the comment list prior to posting a comment
• Snap Preview Anywhere - Add an image preview for any external links

Since most of my duties revolve around the PHP/database solutions I've rarely had to do much integration with Flash (despite our company's strong ties to it). A recent project had me dabbling into the realm of some of my coworkers so I'd figure I'd throw some pointers out there for us backend dev guys. Normally when embedding flash objects we use the swfobject script from Geoff Stearns to handle flash installation and version checking. One of the problems when combining DHTML (especially DHTML menus) and flash is the problem with flash appearing over your DHTML layers no matter what z-index values you assign them. The quick fix for that is to set the wmode parameter for your flash object to "transparent." Using the swfobject you would just call the addParam("wmode", "transparent"); member function of your instantiated swfobject.

Another small thing to watch out for is when using the ExternalInterface with flash to expose functions within flash to javascript you'll need to use the id you specify when you instantiate the swfobject, not the id for the div that the object writes to. For example if you were trying to access an exposed function named "setAudio" for an swf created with the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">

<!--

var so = new SWFObject("flash/myflash.swf", "flashPlayer", "895", "263", "8", "#ffffff");

so.addVariable("menu", "false"); so.addParam("wmode", "transparent");

so.addParam("allowScriptAccess", "always"); so.write("mainFlash");

//-->

</script>

Your javascript would be accessing "flashPlayer," not "mainFlash."