The weekend is upon us! Here in British Columbia, we’ve been battling our way through a pretty heavy heatwave, having broken at least six temperature records on Wednesday. It’s been a scorcher, but it looks like the mercury is going to drop just a little for this weekend, just in time for everyone to hit up the beach, go for a hike, or enjoy a great backyard barbecue. Before you go and enjoy the great outdoors, be sure to check out these five fantastic posts.

Jon Lee has what he calls a fun web development blog, but he’s not always into developing things for the web. Sometimes, he’s on the road and when he is, he wants to enjoy himself by watching movies and videos on his Windows Mobile smartphone. Sure, WM-powered devices typically come with Windows Media Player, but just like on the PC, there are plenty of alternatives that offer some great perks. Jon battles both the software and encoding side of things in his article.

Bovine wonder John Cow — not to be confused with the root of all evil below — is offering one crazy contest over at his part of the pasture. He’s giving away an iPhone, a PS3, a Wii, or an Xbox 360 and all you need to do to enter is write a blog post satisfying certain criteria. More specifically, however, he’s not giving away any of those machines, per se, but rather $500 to spend however you’d like. This way, if you’re not an Apple fan nor are you a gamer, you’ve got options.

The real John Chow — not to be confused with the beef-producing grazer above — discovered a very useful WordPress plug-in that will help you customize what happens with your blog’s RSS feed. The RSS Feed Footer Plug-In lets you place whatever footer you’d like at the bottom of every blog post, effectively letting you run advertising in RSS feed. What’s more, it supports full HTML and allows for up to ten rotating footers (ad banners, anyone?).

Josh at Career Ramblings discusses how his home business saved his life. In this first installment of his real-life saga, he shows you how down and out he was when he lost his job and gobbled up his savings. He didn’t eat well, he didn’t live well, and he didn’t feel well. Things looked pretty grim… I’m looking forward to part 2 to hear how he turned everything around!

Derek Semmler demonstrates the power of the group writing project by compiling 32 how-to’s for internet marketing and entrepreneurship. There’s a lot of reading to go through, but a huge variety of topics are covered in those articles including finding a work-life balance, optimizing your WordPress blog, how to use social media marketing.