Grant Skinner and his company have been working on a really kick-ass Apollo app for tracking time. He has a great write up of why they built it, how they built it, as well as some screenshots of what the app looks like. He’s planning on making it a commercial offering and based on my experience in playing around with it (he gave me a beta build) I think he’s on to something big. In fact, I was meeting with some VC guys a week or two ago and demonstrated the app simply as a great example of what Apollo can do – and they went nuts over it. (Grant – I gave them your contact info… ;-)

Go check out Grant’s post on “gTimer” (codename) and visit his placeholder product page regularly to check of updates.

Adobe Photoshop Product Manager John Nack has written a great summary of the great integration points that we all focused on for the new CS3 releases of Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator.

My favorite:

Flash does rich import of PSD files for the first time. I once calculated that getting a 20-layer PSD into Flash intact took 168 steps; now it’s more like two, and the results are far richer. Not only does Flash preserve layers and their names; it also can handle layer nesting, blending modes, layer effects, and more–even preserving live text. Check out the screenshot. If you use Photoshop and Flash, there’s your upgrade right there.

Read the full summary here.

Apollo is a featured sponsor on this week’s episode of Diggnation, the weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories. In the show, hosted by digg.com co-founder Kevin Rose and his former TechTV co-star Alex Albrecht, Kevin explains Apollo and mentions that we are working with them on some cool Apollo projects for Digg.com. At the end of the episode, Kevin interviews Adobe’s Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch.

This began with a visit to Digg’s offices, which are walking distance from Adobe’s San Francisco office, a few weeks ago in which Danny Dura, Christian Cantrell and a couple of others from the Apollo team gave Kevin and the Digg team a quick demonstration of Apollo. We were a bit surprised to hear that Kevin had not only heard a lot about Apollo, but he had watched Christian’s Apollo demo on Google video. After spending some time explaining Apollo we started talking about some projects that our two companies can work on together. You’ll be hearing more about that in the coming months.

View this week’s episode here. If you want to see it now you may need to become a Revision3 member. If not, you can wait a couple of days until they release the freely-available version.

It’s here! It’s here! Today Adobe announced Creative Suite 3 which includes a huge new release of Flash, Flash CS3 Professional.

Here’s a summary of the new release:

Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software is the most advanced authoring environment for creating rich, interactive content for digital, web, and mobile platforms. Create interactive websites, rich media advertisements, instructional media, engaging presentations, games, and more. Designers and developers working on both Macintosh and Windows systems depend on Flash and the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player software to ensure their content reaches the widest possible audience.

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import

Import Adobe Photoshop (PSD) and Adobe Illustrator (AI) files, while preserving layers and structure, and then edit them in Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. Optimize and customize the files during import with advanced options.

Convert animation to ActionScript

Instantly convert timeline animations into ActionScript 3.0 code that can be easily edited, reused, and leveraged by developers. Copy animations from one object to another.

Adobe interface

Enjoy a new, streamlined interface that emphasizes consistency with other Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications and can be customized to improve workflow and maximize stage space.

ActionScript 3.0 development

Save time with the new ActionScript 3.0 language, featuring improved performance, increased flexibility, and more intuitive and structured development.

Advanced debugger

Test content with a powerful, new ActionScript debugger that offers greater flexibility and user feedback, as well as consistency with Adobe Flex Builder 2 debugging.

Adobe Device Central

Design, preview, and test mobile device content using Adobe Device Central CS3, now integrated throughout Adobe Creative Suite 3. Create and test interactive applications and interfaces viewable with Flash Lite software.

Rich drawing capabilities

Visually adjust shape properties on the stage with smart shape drawing tools, create precise vector illustrations with the new Pen tool inspired by Adobe Illustrator, paste illustrations from Illustrator CS3 into Flash CS3 Professional, and more.

User interface components

Create interactive content with new, lightweight, easily skinnable interface components for ActionScript 3.0. Visually modify components’ look and feel with the drawing tools — no coding required.

Advanced QuickTime export

Render content published in a SWF file as a QuickTime video using the advanced QuickTime exporter. Export content that includes nested MovieClips, content generated with ActionScript language, and runtime effects such as drop shadow and blur.

Sophisticated video tools

Create, edit, and deploy streaming and progressive-download FLV content with comprehensive video support. Ensure the best video experience with a standalone video encoder, alpha channel support, a high-quality video codec, embedded cue points, video import support, QuickTime import, closed captioning, and much more.

Timesaving coding tools

Save coding time with new code editor enhancements. Focus on relevant code with code collapse and commenting, and jump to code errors with the error navigation feature.

View the full feature tour here.