designtoday

well i scrapped that and started again – i finally got what i was looking for. this is designed to work with feedwordpress plug in so if you want to use it normally change get_syndication_feed_id() to $post->post_author

hope this helps for anyone else whos been looking for it 🙂

<?php query_posts('cat=5');
	global $last_author, $posts_limit; $last_author = ''; $posts_limit=4;
	while (have_posts()) : the_post(); global $last_author;
        if(get_syndication_feed_id() == $last_author) continue;
	$last_syn = get_syndication_feed_id();?>
	<li>h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small>Posted: <?php the_time('g:i A  F jS Y');?>
               </small>
       </li>

	<?php global $post, $last_author, $posts_limit; if($posts_limit-- <=0) break; $last_author = get_syndication_feed_id(); ?>
	<?php endwhile; ?>

ps code looks like this so far

<?php
function the_last_post_per_user(){
global $wpdb;
$the_authors = $wpdb->get_results( "
SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_author
FROM $wpdb->posts
 INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id)
NNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON (wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id)
 WHERE
1=1
AND post_status='publish'
AND wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category'
AND wp_term_taxonomy.term_id IN ('12')
AND post_type='post'
AND post_author !='1'
ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 5");
return $the_authors;
}

//get all users, iterate through users, query for one post for the user,
//if there is a post then display the post title, author, content info
$blogusers = the_last_post_per_user();
if ($blogusers) {
  foreach ($blogusers as $bloguser) {
    $args = array(
    'author' => $bloguser->post_author,
    'showposts' => 1,
	'caller_get_posts' => 5
    );
    $my_query = new WP_Query($args);

    if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
      // $user = get_userdata($bloguser->user_id);
      // echo 'This is one post for author with User ID: ' . $user->ID . ' ' . $user->user_firstname . ' ' . $user->user_lastname;
      while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
<ul>
	<li>
   				<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
				<small>
				Source: <a href="<?php the_syndication_source_link(); ?>"><?php the_syndication_source(); ?></a><br />
                <?php the_time('F jS, Y');?> <br />
				<?php the_tags('Location: '); ?><br />
                <?php the_category(); ?>
               </small>
       </li>
</ul>

		<?php
      endwhile;
    }
  }
}
?>

i think ive tried everything but all i get is errors 🙁