Gaining Action Points

[Big Fau]

As a DM, I like to reward my players for various things in ways that are unusual. I give out XP and treasure as I see fit (though I try to stick close to the guidelines), but I also like giving out other rewards. I've awarded feats, magical locations (without them counting towards treasure), numerous Legacy Items, and other goodies, but one thing I've wanted to do was reward them with Action Points.

I know 4E has a method of doing this with Milestones, but that method doesn't really translate into 3.5 as efficiently as I would hope (way too easy to get them, and I don't like the idea of APs only lasting for 24 hours). I also don't like the idea of rewarding APs for overcoming combat encounters (unless it was something special, like a major boss in a module). I'm planning on running my party through the RHoD (adapted for Eberron), and I wanted to reward players with both VPs and APs (the former being secret, as per usual), but I didn't want to tie them together.

So basically, I want to know what would be good criteria for awarding bonus action points (not just temporary ones). Any ideas?

[Flickerdart]

The way I do it in my games is that at the end of every session, each player may award an AP to one other player for something cool they did during the session (with the caveat that a particular action may only have one AP awarded for it). This makes APs a fairly renewable resource, so I have very specific rules for when and how they can be used that don't match the various kinds of Action Point rules that 3.5 has.