Module development and code questions

I've taken a swag at updating the Amazon module to 4.4. I have it running on the administrative menus, but it isn't at all apparent how you are supposed to invoke it otherwise. There is a block which appears to provide possible book matches for a given page, but that's not what I'm interested in.

Has anyone gotten the Amazon module working under an earlier version on a site that I could browse? I'd like to see the functionality actually 'working' before I try to debug things under 4.4.

Thanks!

I've installed the (amazing!) Flexinode module for Drupal 4.4 and have run into a problem with displaying the custom fields that I've added to my new content type. When a page created with a flexinode is promoted to the front page, only the Title and Description fields are shown (not the custom drop down box or check boxes that i've added). These other fields are only displayed when you click on the Title to view the node. I have set the node setting for 'Length of Trimmed Posts' to 'Unlimited', but that didn't affect it.

I'm working in Xtemplate designing a custom block. I want to display "related content", so I need the Node ID# so I know what content is related. My code so far works, except that I can't figure out how to access the nid! $node->nid and for that matter $node are empty, global $node; doesn't seem to help, nor using $GLOBALS["$node"]. It seems like there must be a simple answer that I'm too new to PHP and Drupal to know when I've stumbled across it.

I created an alphabetic (a-z) index module for node titles and was wondering if anyone has experience creating Keyword in Context (KWIC) displays using PHP/MySQL.

Source for the module is here at alpha_index.module.phps. I apologize if my code is poor. Any suggestions on how to code this are appreciated.

Is anyone planning on updating forum_link? I was hoping that someone might consider making it so that forum posts and comments were the same thing. And or have the articles automatically placed under the correct taxonomy in the forums.

Cheers,
Tom

I'm doing some research on CMS for creating community-drive sites. Drupal has been one of the best I've seen out there. However, I'm wondering if there is a module written for Drupal that allows a site-admin to email all the members of the community site. A project I am working on (for an alumni group) requires this functionality. I see the mail handler module which allows folks to update the site through email, but not an email list kind of functionality.

Thanks in advance!!