Channel

Rather than spend hours fighting with Views to create and theme collections of nodes I decided to cook up my own module called channel.  Channel has 3 main components:

1. A filter that gathers what nodes you want in the channel.  A user interface is in progress for the filter (on D7).
2. A template that allows you to control how the channel as a whole is rendered
3. A template that allows you to control how each node in the channel is rendered.

Here are some examples:
Drupal 6.x - Create a calendar
Drupal 6.x - Create a slideshow
Drupal 7.x - Create a calendar
Drupal 7.x - Create a slideshow