In its first ever Annual Flash Awards, Newgrounds.com—the first and largest Flash gaming portal online—one of our own, Aaron Worrall, captured the trophy for ‘Flash Game of the Year’ for Newgrounds Rumble.

Working with animators Jose Ortiz and Luis Castanon as well as musician Marco Arsenault, Aaron donned many hats including Project Lead, Programmer, Lead Background Artist, and Writer during this epic project, in production since December 2005.

Put your brawling skills to the test here.

Yes, I know. Plush toys aren’t exactly a new innovation. Not even ones that spit out some sort of lame audio track on impact. But I couldn’t help but be filled with nintendo fanboy glee when i threw a novelty-sized shell across the room at an unsuspecting bystander, followed by the trademarked ’shell knocking’ noise, and a 1up sound clip. The coin block makes the predictable coin noise, but nintendo has done it again by slotting in a randomized ‘mushroom’ noise to get you going… or i guess growing? If price isn’t a factor for you ($40 each), be sure to make these novelty items a part of your next mario pajama party.

If you’re growing old waiting for FFFFOUND to open up their nifty image bookmarking service to the general public there’s still hope. No, I didn’t hack into FFFFOUND but I did find a pretty rock solid alternative at We heart it. Like FFFFOUND, We heart it lets you bookmark images, tag them, comment, see who else tagged them and search the entire pool by tag. It’s still early on so the features are a bit limited but it’s certainly worth poking around and seeing what’s there. For the designers in the crowd it’s a helluva of a resource for really inspiring images. Photography, illustration, art… the real cream of the crop.

If you do sign up for an account be sure to install the bookmarklet – makes bookmarking images a real snap!