A slight alteration to the default Rails currency formatting helper to show numbers in cents if the number is less than $1.00. For example $0.99 would instead become 99¢.

def number_to_currency_with_cents(number, options = {})
    options = options.stringify_keys
    precision = options.delete('precision') { 2 }
    unit = options.delete('unit') { '$' }
    fractional_unit = options.delete('fractional_unit') { '¢' }
    separator = options.delete('separator') { '.' }
    delimiter = options.delete('delimiter') { ',' }
    separator = '' unless precision > 0
    begin
        fraction = number.abs % 1.0
        body = number.floor
        if body != 0 || body == 0 && fraction == 0 then
            parts = number_with_precision(number, precision).split('.')
            unit + number_with_delimiter(parts[0], delimiter) + separator + parts[1].to_s
        else
            (fraction * 100).to_i.to_s + fractional_unit
        end
    rescue
        number
    end
end

I'm really tempted to go through and replace that whole thing with my own code, but it works, so I'm happy.

I needed a short and intuitive way of showing dates, so rather than just making something up I decided to steal Google's short date format from Gmail. I'm sure they did usability studies and whatnot.

ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Time::Conversions::DATE_FORMATS.merge!(
  :gmail => lambda { |date|
    Time.now.beginning_of_day <= date ?
    "#{date.strftime('%I').to_i}:#{date.strftime('%M')} #{date.strftime('%p').downcase}" :
    Time.now.beginning_of_year <= date ?
    "#{date.strftime('%b')} #{date.day}" :
    "#{date.month}/#{date.day}/#{date.strftime('%y')}"
  }
)

ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Date::Conversions::DATE_FORMATS.merge!(
  :gmail => lambda { |date|
    Time.now.beginning_of_day <= date ?
    "#{date.strftime('%I').to_i}:#{date.strftime('%M')} #{date.strftime('%p').downcase}" :
    Time.now.beginning_of_year <= date ?
    "#{date.strftime('%b')} #{date.day}" :
    "#{date.month}/#{date.day}/#{date.strftime('%y')}"
  }
)

Put this code in your "environmen.rb" file in your "RAILS_ROOT/config" directory or make a new Ruby script file containing it in your "RAILS_ROOT/config/initializers" directory.