I’ve stumbled upon a good Flash 9/8/7/Javascript speed test.
Its interesting how Flash 7 was somewhat quicker than 8.

Another useful test is this one from Ted Patrick.
I’ve ever wondered if with Flash 9, Firefox was still so much slower than IE: seems not (with Firefox 2 and IE 7).

Finally, Apollo is out:
grab it from the Adobe Lab

To start with it:
Building your first Flex-based Apollo application

How promised, here my little perl Flash socket server.

This is a simple prototype that I've made to explore the power of non-blocking sockets.
I've tested it with a thousand connections and it should handle some more.
This can be used for a multiplayer flash game or a community chat, but since it isn't "production ready", use it at your own risk
It can be also useful to who want to implement his own server.

Features:

• >=1000 connections
• anonymous nick, free nick (free to choose you own) and registered nick with mysql/postgre/sqlite/dbo compatible
• Can run in some web hosts like Dreamhost Update: It violates their policy

Download: Perl Flash socket server

To run:

Here are also a bunch of AS classes to interact with the server and an example application like the "mouse chat" in my website. Update: my hosting (Dreamhost) doesn't allow FlashServe, the party is over
Sadly, since these was made 4 years ago with an italian friend, all the comments are in italian, if someone is interested, I can translate it.

Download: MiceTalk socket server example + Classes

You can use my server at dev.madarco.net:7777 but only in the Flash IDE (no crossdomain.xml)

Flash buzz-site of the moment:
Red Universe is an interactive avatar chat in Flash, where you can explore the good-looking world while talking with others.

Little advertisement:
If you'd like to do something similar, look at www.madarco.net. If there aren't other users connected (likely), open it in two tabs and move the mouse to interact, type to talk.
I'll release my quick-and-dirty flash socketserver soon, it is written in perl and run on every Dreamhost hosting.

I've adhered to the campaign: "Ban Time Travel Now!"

Our mission:

To preserve the integrity of the spacetime continuum, I hereby petition the governments of the world to immediately enact laws banning the research and practice of time travel.

dBug is a php library that print a nice-formatted dump of a variable:

Will be formatted like this:

Variable types supported are: Arrays, Objects, Recordsets and XML Resources.