While investigating ways to anti-alias text in FireFox I came across myoats which is a web app is designed to make the creation of pattern/fractal style imagery super simple. You can have something that looks relatively impressive in a matter of seconds but if you spend a bit more time then the possibilities are almost endless...

Microsoft today have released Silverlight 2 for download.  Fresh after being widely adopted at the Beijing Olympics as the media distribution of choice, it is fast catching up with Flash player and in this version they've added a load of support for Linux, OSX making it multi-platform. It even works with Firefox, Safari, Chrome, IE etc (although no iPhone atm).  They've listened to the developers that use it and added a windows desktop player version, and I would expect soon too for other platforms.

- Scott