mehesz.net :: n:ews

Dev Corner 3.6

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Yeah, well ... hmmm.... unfortunately I had to miss the Jacksonville Barcamp event last weekend :( even though, I was looking forward to it for weeks. Something came up and I couldn't make it, sorry ... but looking at the tweets and facebook, it was a success. I'm glad :)

what's new:
- You can read it from time to time the Apple sues this Apple sues that for the variety of reasons ... I think it was the time to turn the table around :) Nokia (yes, the phone company) sued Apple and if they win, the "delicious fruit" will have to pay $1 BILLION!

- If you ever get the urge to develop desktop applications with your favorite scripting language (ie: PHP or Ruby ), now you can :)

Appcelerator Titanium - the open source platform that lets you build desktop and mobile apps with web-happy development tools, including JavaScript, Python, and Ruby on Rails - has now embraced PHP.

- IBM (and Ubuntu) is trying to shadow the magnificent light of Windows7 with much cheaper solutions for people who can't afford (or just don't want to spend money on) a stronger box for the OS, now they can use a Lotus-and-Linux combo.

frameworks:
- ZendFramework 1.9.4 has been released

- Yii Framework 1.0.10 is out with lots of bug fixes:

- Bug #550: Fixed image alt bug in CCaptcha (Qiang)
- Bug #551: CCache::mget() should return values (Qiang)
- Bug #561: CTabView fails to switch tabs on IE (pestaa)
- Enh #571: Enhanced CDbCriteria by adding several methods to help building common query conditions (Qiang)
- Enh #585: Added CChainedCacheDependency::setDependencies() (Qiang)
- Enh #598: Added CCaptchaAction::transparent (Qiang)
- Enh #600: Modified CHttpSession to allow open and close session multiple times (Qiang)

- a new Drupal site using oAuth called GoTwitr.com.

Grow your Twitter Community Fast and Easy with GoTwitr. GoTwitr is the ultimate in Twitter automation.

- new (Drupal) book on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

- the buzz is louder and louder about the 2010 Drupal Camp - Florida :) (more on this later for sure ...)

tip of the weak:

// be careful when you use the array_diff function in PHP ...
$arr1 = array( 1,2 );
$arr2 = array( 1,2,3 );
var_dump( array_diff( $arr1, $arr2 ) );

Dev Corner 3.5

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

what's new:

- First and foremost, finally we are having a barcamp event in our town Jacksonville, FL (Oct. 18th Sunday). This is gonna be my first camp where I don't have to travel 300 miles. So that's a relief :) If you are interested please go to the site http://barcampjax.com and register.

- Another very important event happening the same weekend in the same town. How crazy is that!? :) You don't see this every day, that's for sure. So LessConf is on Oct. 17th Saturday, make sure you check out their crazy-arse site, it's hilarious.

- Well, I can't really say I saw this coming, but apparently Google Issues Cease & Desist to Open Source Android Developer. Interesting.

- I remember couple of months ago I posted something about government supported Open Source sites with Drupal, and this article made me realize how powerful a CMS can be ( although, I already knew that ;) ).

There seems to be quite a buzz around Drupal in the government and as the Commerce team walked around the building with Drupal books under their arms, they got lots of comments from people in other bureaus, saying, "Oh! Drupal! We're thinking about using Drupal." Word is starting to get around about Drupal as a great platform for government websites. - Jeff Robbins

- and since we are talking about CMS here, here is a site where you can vote for the best Open Source CMS.

- this is just in ;) CNN started to use Drupal as well!

- while we are fighting over what/how/when/why is open source in the computer world, on other platforms, such as phones, OS seems to be pretty popular these days.

Frameworks:

- Yii Radiio Episode #7 is up. Listen to it, and TWEET IT.

Cool post:

- 50 Open Source Apps for Small Biz/Home Office.

Tip of the weak:

- here is how to put your PHP code into Microsoft's Cloud :) (I saw a presentation last week by Joe Healy - it was pretty impressive)

BarCamp Tampa 2009 (wrap-up)

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:35:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to be able to attend this past Saturday at BarCamp Tampa 09. Since I was driving down from Jacksonville I had to wake up really REALLY early. But it was definitely worth it.

Finding the building was quite adventurous, but let's not go there ;) Instead, here is a quick wrap-up of the talks with links and whatnot. Of course I couldn't clone myself so these are the talks , where I was actually present (or wanted to be, but couldn't)

9:35 Beginning iPhone development by Barry Ezell
- Here, Barry technically built a Twitter application in about 20-25 minutes, that had everything you need to post to your twitter account. It was very impressive. My favorite quote was: "you can use any language as long as it's objective C" - or something like that.

10:35 Object oriented CSS by Derek Bender
- I know Bender from NFi Studios, he is an extremely talented designer and a typography fanatic. He gave an awesome presentation on OO CSS, which I've been kinda using, but didn't know it had a name. You can check out his slides here.

11:05 I.T Cultural Fluency (and how it relates to software and sales) by Gregg Ross-Munro
- I don't really know how I ended up at this one (I actually DO know, thanks to Derek Gallo) but it was very interesting. This guy had very funny pictures in his presentation and he explained how different groups of people (tech people, librarians, nurses etc) group together and stuff ... or something like that ;) http://sourcetoad.com

1:05 Selling software craftsmanship and agile in the enterprise by Cory Foy
- I've met Cory once in Orlando (back in May 30th) at a Day of Ruby event. He is a very passionate and great presenter. He showed us some tips on why to implement agile processes and, put up some nice statistical graphs. Definitely read his blog post: Programmers: The Top Ten Things Management Hates About Agile. Here is where I heard the best quote of the day:

"don't write crap" - but crap is comforting because it's yours (anonymous)

2:05 Never write a business plan by: Kurt Forrester
- This was my other non-tech related (imho) talk, and it was also very interesting. Now I kinda have a vague idea how to and how not to present my idea, if I ever want to go big.

After this, I really crashed and I had to drive home. I also got a giant green monster (energy) drink that kept me awake for the rest of the day - till about 12:30AM :D

Dev Corner 3.4

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:00:00 +0000

I'm going to BarCamp Tampa Bay tomorrow, so I'm very excited. It seems like it's gonna be even bigger than last year. (it's so cool when I can link back to my old stuff :D ) Anyhow, I'm gonna take some notes and put up a post, hopefully by the end of next week.

what's new:

- IBM, Microsoft and Rackspace. When was the last time you saw these companies (especially the first two) together. Other than throwing trash at each other ;) Well, they all seem to support Simple API a support package for cloud development:

The Simple API for Cloud Applications is an interface that gives enterprise developers and independent software vendors a target to shoot for if they want an application to work with different cloud environments.

- After Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, seems like Linus Torvalds is thinking about retiring (just kidding). Some people would like that ;) Apparently he seemed very tired and overwhelmed at the LinuxCon by "bloated Linux". Sometimes I wish I'd be (much) smarter, and I could take off his burden ... and write the Linux kernel ... Let me know, Linus.

- MySpace is making its data processing open source. Yay!? I mean who is using MySpace anyway? It's sooo 2006. Seriously ... but hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right? So I guess, thank you myspace :)

- The death of PHP4 - wait ... what? It's a very very slow death and it is still not here! And as long as there are widely used systems out there, that don't want to make this important step forward (ie: pull the plug, start over etc) it will be here forever.

cool stuff:

- since we are talking about dirty old PHP code, here is a cool little article on PHP (input) data sanitation by Michael Owens.

- how can we get rid of our good ol' language (ie: PHP, Ruby, Python etc) and just use simply Javascript (jQuery) and CouchDB. Introducing sammy.js

Welcome to the new world. HTTP Databases and JSON Storage. The simple act of making the database and the browser more powerful on either end has destroyed the need for the middle tier. In the new architecture, Our database (JSON/HTTP based: CouchDB, Cloudkit) serves data as JSON directly to the browser.

frameworks:

- ZendFramework 1.9.3 has been released:

This release is the third maintenance release in the 1.9 series. Almost 100(!) issues have been resolved for this release, covering more than 40(!) different components.

- How to set up a simple blog with ZF 1.9 by hari.

- Yii Radiio - Episode #6 is up. Listen or Tweet, thanks!

Dev Corner 3.3

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:26:00 +0000

what's new:

- another "glitch" by the search giant last week, GMAIL went down for a pretty long time. It was so funny to watch it on Twitter how people get more and more frustrated, cursing and whatnot. I can totally feel their pain, because I don't store anything on my machines anymore. Most of my data is on Google (or on my site), my pictures are on Picasa, my emails with Gmail, my source code is all over the place ... and so on.

I always try, not to forget, that Google didn't ask me to choose them, it gave everything for free and I am the one responsible for using their services. I don't see that amount of Twitter, Facebook etc posts when Google is great and works perfectly most of the time. Give them a break people or use something else. Good luck.

- The World Bank chose Open Atrium for their "Communicate" Intranet. I consider this probably one of the biggest achievement by a Drupal team. If you don't know what Open Atrium is, check out their site. It's made of ...

Apache + PHP + MySQL + Drupal + HotSauce = ATRIUM

- Apparently Microsoft and Best Buy are ganging up on Linux (surprise!?), telling customers how hard it is to install Linux on a computer. Seriously? My grandma is using Linux and she is over 70 years old. Please ... She is one smart lady, though :)

cool stuff:

- When was the last time you wished - "oh, if I could boot up any OS through my internet connection" - well, wait no more because here comes netboot.me:

netboot.me is a service that allows you to boot nearly any operating system or utility on any computer with a wired internet connection - without having to know ahead of time what you'll want to boot. Once you can netboot.me, you never need to update your boot disk again!

- I've been trying to try this game out called Monopoly City Streets and after they launched the site it was down for a few days :) But now is UP, give it a try.

frameworks:

- here is a cool little site called Jobeet.org that was built with Symfony (a PHP framework). It has a great documentation that you can view online or buy the printed version.

- finally a great article on how to keep WordPress secure, and we all need it :)

- Solar (PHP) Framework 1.0.0alpha3 is available for download.

- Yii Framework 1.0.9 is out with a bunch of bug fixes and minor feature enhancements. Check out the change log here.

- Yii Radiio podcast Episode #5 is up. Also, added Twitter and Facebook etc sharing icons on the site, so please Tweet Away!

Dev Corner 3.2

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:28:00 +0000

what's new:
- I'm always complaining about not having any Michelangelos in our present time, but when I see one, it never occurs to me that he/she might be one of them :)

That's exactly what happened with _why (the lucky stiff). I remember the first time I came across Ruby (and Rails) and I saw this very weird book called Why's (poignant) Guide To Ruby and I was thinking -what a great way to draw attention to a language. I was not eager enough to dig deeper to check the author's name or anything like that, I just really liked the style.

About a week and a half ago he disappeared the face of the internet. I mean HE IS GONE. Deleted all of his repositories, websites, videos. GONE. And that's when I realized, who he really was - cartoonist, musician, teacher and hacker, artist. Here is a video I found where he was giving a talk on software development, enjoy:

ART && CODE Symposium: Hackety Hack, why the lucky stiff from STUDIO for Creative Inquiry on Vimeo.

- Here is another disappearance, well almost or kinda. thePratebay.org, the world biggest torrent tracker site has been sold to a Swedish software company which will try to turn it into a legal pay-as-you-go site.

- Microsoft had to apologize for a badly launched advertisement campaign in Poland.

- Facebook is hiring again so if you are good at anything, just apply, see what happens. Because Facebook is so hot right now :)

- and since I'm talking about hiring, here are 5 good reasons to hire open source developers.

1. You can see more than their resumes.
2. Open source developers have had to think on their toes
3. ... open source developers are very passionate
4. Along with an open source developer you will enjoy open source support.
5. ... you will save money.

frameworks:
- ZendFramework 1.9.2 is out, for details check out the changelog.

- A great cheat sheet for the Yii framework.

- Listen up! Last but not least :) I made it to the front page on the Yii site with my podcast YiiHaw!!! (4th episode is now available at http://yiiradiio.mehesz.net)

Dev Corner 3.1

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:20:00 +0000

I'm not crazy, or forgetful (this time) I purposely didn't post last week. The reason, I'm trying to find a good balance between the Yii Radiio podcast and this blog, and I don't want to cheat on either one of them (with time). So I decided to air the podcast and write to this blog bi-weekly (most likely on the opposite weeks) So please bear with me on this journey and we'll make the best of it ;)

What's new:

- Probably the most shocking news this week, that Microsoft will not drop IE6 from it's repertoire until 2014. I mean, SERIOUSLY!!!???

- Google takes it outside. Here is another campaign against Microsoft's Office package. I kinda feel sorry for these guys ... nah, just kidding!

- So apparently Twitter and Facebook (and other social network sites) are not good enough for the US Marines! Or maybe they are using it too much?

- Our very own hashrocket (from Jax, FL) launched an app to clean up the spam/trash in the Twitter universe, called tweetblocker, check it out.

Frameworks:

- ZendStudio 7 got released.

The new release provides also enhanced integration with Zend Framework, stronger object oriented capabilities with enhanced editing features

- Yii Framework 1.0.8 is out, bunch of enhancements and some bug fixes.

Blogs:

- Brandon Savage wrote a great post on programming ethics, a good read for every developer.

- Craig Buckler is talking about the new PHP namespaces and why they are so bad... or not.

Podcasts:

- Last week railsenvy aired their last podcast :( first I really thought they were joking but when couple of days later Gregg came out with a new show called Ruby5, I knew it was over.

- I uploaded the 3rd episode of the Yii Radiio, so please check it out and send me some feedback so I can make it better.

The tip of the weak:

When I have to deal with date and time, I mostly use the unix timestamp ... mostly. The only problem with this, when I have to find something quickly with phpmyadmin or something like that I can guess what the date is (haha) but I'm not really accurate. This is when FROM_UNIXTIME comes in handy :)

SELECT FROM_UNIXTIME( `dateField` , '%W %M %Y %h:%i:%s' ) AS dateWhatever
FROM `table_name`;

Dev Corner 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Wow, we've made it this far, the big 3point0 :)

What's new:
- The end of the Yahoo era. Almost. But closer than I ever expected or do you think the the Microsoft-Yahoo "merger" is going to have a different end? Yahoo was/is one of the biggest supporters of the PHP community, so this move kinda hurts a little bit ... inside :(

- Finally looks like Open Source made it to the education via Vyatta. Thanks.

- Looks like India is gonna be the biggest provider of PHP developers pretty soon, because they are catching up to the US very VERY fast.

- Firefox hits 1 million downloads. Woohoo, the little jumpy (or sneaky) fox is moving ahead. They're going to release something very special next week here: http://www.onebillionplusyou.com.

- As you can see on these mox* the next Firefox release (4.0) is going to look/act like Google's Chrome ... really!?

Frameworks:
- Joomla 1.5.13 Security release is out,"Wojmamni ama baji" as they say.

- Zend Framework 1.9.0 got released:

The big stories in this release can be summed up in two phrases: enterprise tools and PHP 5.3 support.

Zend_Queue and Zend_Service_Amazon_Sqs, which provide the ability to use local and remote messaging and queue services for offloading asynchronous processes. (Contributed by Justin Plock and Daniel Lo)
Zend_Queue_Adapter_PlatformJobQueue, a Zend_Queue adapter for Zend Platform's Job Queue. (Contributed by Zend Technologies)
Zend_Rest_Route, Zend_Rest_Controller, and Zend_Controller_Plugin_PutHandler, which aid in providing RESTful resources via the MVC layer. (Contributed by Luke Crouch, SourceForge)

- Yii Radiio (Podcast) Episode #2 is out and updated the site itself with a real blog engine. Check it out.

Local:
- The local (Jacksonville, FL) PHP meetup group is gonna meet this coming week, Aug. 4th JaxPHP.org.

Tip of the weak:
- be safe with WordPress and secure your blogs. REALLY!

-------------------------

*mox = mockups

Dev Corner 2.9

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:47:00 +0000

So just as I was trying to write this post, I decided to close some of my windows on the screen (using Windows XP). 15 minutes later I had enough and pushed the power button long enough to cold-reboot my laptop and boot-up Xubuntu. Why does Microsoft punish us so badly? And why do we let them?

What's new:
- I remember back in the days when there was the Netscape browser and AltaVista as your search engine. Some years later I chose Google and using it ever since. I only had to use Yahoo twice in my life, even though I know they are one of the biggest PHP supporters out there. What I'm trying to say here is that I don't know much about this search giant, but they latest "makup" release didn't impress me, unfortunately, I have to say.

- And the news what we (I) have been waiting for: Goole Wave Opens this FALL!!! (for selected individuals ;) ) I wrote them an email a while back, that I need an account, we'll see what happens.

- Adobe rolls out with some new open source stuff. I've never been a big fan of Adobe, probably never will. Flash is just too ... flashy for me. Sorry(!?)

- Twitter is gonna change it's landing (main) page. Wow, I can't believe they are changing. Maybe we can type 180 characters from now on. Woo-hoo ;)

- I'm so glad I was bashing on Microsoft earlier, because apparently they are building a love-nest for open source. They've released 20.000 lines of code last Monday to prove they __REALLY__ mean it ;)

Frameworks:
- Drupal based Acquia gets $8M second round of equity financing. I AM in the good business, but not drupaley enough ;) (PHP rocks, btw :) )

Cool posts:
- How do you recognize the characteristics of great software design?

Dev Corner 2.8

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:13:00 +0000

what's new:
- PHP5.3 introduced the namespaces. Apparently this "feature" or behavior is widely available in other languages such us C# or Java. Here is a cool little blog post on how to use them.

- I remember back in the days (around 1989) when my dad and I was "hacking" on a ZX-Spectrum and there was NO internet (imagine that) some people were broadcasting their applications through the radio. You simply recorded the digital noise on a tape and loaded it into your little machine. Well, this news has nothing to do with this ;) maybe a little. Apparently they are trying to pull uncovered areas into the network via solar power. Amazing.

- here is an interesting one: "A manufacturer of Linux-based networking devices has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Microsoft in order to settle a patent claim, Microsoft disclosed Wednesday." - I didn't see this coming :) haha

- okay, Microsoft has Bing, Google has ... Google and Apache has Lucene, which seems to be coming up here and there. Some say it threatens both.

Others:

- here is an open source NX server which doesn't require a computer. or something like that :)

With NX Server and other NoMachine products, companies and professionals can take further advantage of the Internet. Not only is information simple to use and always available, but even applications and computing resources.

Frameworks:

- WordPress 2.8.1 is out:

Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.

- here is a great article about how to put Drupal in the Cloud, or in the Space? With the Project Mercury :)

- aaaaaaaand [ ... drum solo ... ] - Last week I aired the first Episode of the Yii Radiio - a PHP related podcast focusing on the Yii framework. Please check it out and leave some comments or new ideas in the forum. Thanks :)

Dev Corner 2.7

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:27:00 +0000

what's new:

- probably the biggest news this week (or maybe even this year!) that Google is coming out with an OS. Well, it wasn't really unexpected (ie: Chrome, Android) but it definitely scared and/or surprised some people. So far I know, it will be built on the Linux kernel and it will be open source (expected in late 2010).

- very quietly USPS went open source. They replaced their old Sun Solaris machines with shiny new HP Servers and SuSE Linux and they use Cobol as a programming language. Wow.

frameworks:

- Yii framework 1.0.7 got released, mostly new features, some bug fixes:

- Bug: yiic webapp may generate incorrect path to yii.php (Qiang)
- Bug: When using MySQL enum type, AR may incorrectly typcasting the column values (Qiang)
- New #360: Added anchor parameter to CController::redirect (Qiang)
- New: Added userAgent parameter to CHttpRequest::getBrowser() (Qiang)

- Joomla 1.5.12 is out [Wojmamni Ama Woi] "This release marks an important milestone for the Joomla Project due to the upgrade of the PEAR library to the new BSD licensed version"

- Drupal 6.13 and 5.19 released "maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as critical security vulnerabilities"

others:

- so apparently Google has posted PHP performance tips (how to improve the WEB) before they actually talked to a PHP expert, so the community didn't take it very well and responded pretty quick ;) good stuff, read it.

- this is an older post but it explains some useful OO practices in PHP.

Dev Corner 2.6

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:29:00 +0000

It seems like I gave myself a little vacation time (from posting to this blog), but hey, it IS summer-time. so ... back off :)

what's new:

- PHP 5.3 is out. Holey smokes. I don't remember the last time I got so excited about PHP itself, but finally, here it is. The latest and greatest:

Two and a half years after the release of PHP 5.2.0 and following a slight delay, the PHP development team have announced the release version 5.3.0 of PHP. Version 5.3.0 of the web programming language includes several fundamental new extensions, as well as a number of other new features and is the one of the biggest revisions in PHP's history. Many of the functions originally planned for PHP 6 have ended up in the 5.3 development pipeline.

- FireFox 3.5 got released, so far I have lots of plug-ins that are not compatible yet, but my favorites ie: firebug and personas have already released an update, and that's all that matters to me :)

- Here is a "not-so-new-but-still-very-cool" tool from Google called Google Voice. Didn't have a chance to play with it yet :/

- CodeWorks Conference 09 is a 2 day PHP conf:

* San Francisco, CA (9/22-9/23)
* Los Angeles, CA (9/24-9/25)
* Dallas, TX (9/26-9/27)
* Atlanta, GA (9/28-9/29)
* Miami, FL (9/30-10/1)
* Washington, DC/Baltimore Area (10/2-10/3)
* New York, NY (10/4-10/5)

cool posts:

- Rails vs. CMS or Rails w/ CMS - what is the deal here? Can Ruby (and Rails) really change the, already strong, CMS world (ie: Drupal, Joomla etc...)? The author points out the differences between web application and web site. read it!

- how to put the OLPC's OS on a USB drive and power up a long forgotten PC? Very cheap solution, love it.

- I always excited to see how the UI (user interface) is designed for a specific site. Here are 10 UI design patterns you should be paying attention to.

- just a cool lookin' site (watch for the squirrel)

frameworks:

- solarPHP.com:

Solar is a PHP 5 framework for web application development. It is fully name-spaced and uses enterprise application design patterns, with built-in support for localization and configuration at all levels.

- how to create a module web app with ZendFramework, one might ask, well here it is ...

- a company who came back from Rails to PHP (to Yii Framework to be exact) nvzion.com

- and to stay with Yii Framework, the new design had been accepted for logo and site. good stuff.

others:

- if you think I only write about Firefox, you're wrong. Here is a pretty cool article about Opera Unite, a new way to use your (opera) browser.

- 40+ Invaluable PHP Tutorials and Resources.

Dev Corner 2.5

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Long time no see (or read). Sorry about that, but my wife and I just had our first baby, last Tuesday, so I gave myself a week(end) to relax. If you are at all interested, you can check out some pictures of her (Violet Alison Mehesz) here. Some of the news probably not the "most recent", but I'm gonna put them here anyway, just for history's sake.

what's new:
- Android 1.5 (Cupcake) is available for download. Honestly, I have no problem with my iPhone, I think it's a great tool, but I can't wait till next year, when I can switch to an Android powered phone. It'd just fit me better ;)

- New Zealand's government will not renew their agreement with Microsoft this seems to be the new thing to do lately.

- Here is an article about an Open Source car, yes a Car. Never heard of such a thing :) awesome

frameworks:
- symfony (PHP framework) conference was going on, the new version is out too (1.3) check out their blog for more details.

- Yii Framework 1.0.6 is out, (this is our newly chosen framework, looking forward to learn it and use it) read the CHANGELOG.

- ZendFramework 1.8.2 (maintenance release) focus on Zend_Db and autoloading improvements and bug fixes.

- Limonade (a light weight PHP framework) tumblog opened and a pretty good example is now available too (no, not another blog ;) ) it's a WIKI built with limonade.

others:
- I really like that cool feature in Chrome (the Google browser) that you can save an actual web-page to your desktop and use it as a "real application". well, wait no more, because FireFox came out with an extension called prism, and I tried it on Windows AND Linux (ubuntu with a little hack). It works independently from FF so if it crashes (never does, but IF SO ;) ) your other running apps, like GMAIL or GCalendar would be fine. Give it a try.

- here is an interesting way to generate menu systems with recursive function.

- I really wanted to play with GIT (yet, another source control thing) and I found two sites that helped me a lot. First, how to install git from source and second for windows loverZ -> msysgit :)

tip of the weak:
- never call your JavaScript variable location - weird things will happen to you and to your site :D

Dev Corner 2.4

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:09:00 +0000

This week's post is gonna be a little bit different. I attended the Day Of Ruby event in Orlando on Saturday (May 30th 09) so I'd like to dedicate Dev Corner 2.4 entirely to Ruby (and Ruby On Rails)

What was/is this event about?

It’s a chance to get your hands dirty with one of the coolest languages out there - Ruby! Day of Ruby is a free, one day event featuring sessions on Ruby, Rails, Deploying Rails, Building GUIs with Ruby, using IronRuby and JRuby and more.

And this is exactly what you'll do. Get your hands (and machines) dirty with RoR (Ruby On Rails) :) First off let me thank the presenters and the helping crew:

Cory Foy from cornetdesign.com:
Agile consultant and coach living in Bayonet Point, FL.

Corey Haines from ... coreyhaines.com:
~ "travels around the country pair programming with whoever will feed him a scrumptious vegetarian meal and give him a spot to put his air mattress." - by =>

Hashrocket guys from hasrocket.com =>
Hashrocket is an expert web design and development group. We practice Agile and leverage technology such as Ruby on Rails to help your company deliver quality software quickly.

Orug the Orlando Ruby Users Group:
The Orlando Ruby Users Group was formed in January 2006, to provide a club for many purposes

Wrap up:
- in the first two hours Corey Haines. guided us through the awesomeness of the Ruby language itself. (on a personal note, if you just want to "play" with the language, but don't want the hustle installing, setting up etc. just simply try their 15-20 minutes tutorial on their site, it's worth it! - http://www.ruby-lang.org ) His slides are available on his blog.

- after the tasty launch from Panera, we _really_ got our hands dirty with test/behaviour driven RoR development and created a Todo list application. Here are some of the tools we used:

rspec: RSpec is the original Behaviour Driven Development framework for Ruby.

cucumber: ~ is a tool that can execute plain-text documents as automated functional tests.

webrat: Ruby Acceptance Testing for Web applications

restful authentication: This is a basic restful authentication generator for rails, taken from acts as authenticated.

It is definitely a very interesting development technique (I only experienced it once before, thanks to Sandro Turriate) and you really need to wrap your head around it. The funny thing was, at the end, somehow it all made sense :)

And the best for last, I've literally never won anything in my life (since I don't gamble) and I was not counting on it at all, but I won a cool Rails book called Enterprise Recipes with Ruby and Rails. I kinda looked into it, and I think it's written in Greek :)

Dev Corner 2.3

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:06:00 +0000

what's new:

- this week was one of the biggest (if not the biggest) event for the PHP community, php|tek. So far I only found a presentation about MySQL Performance Tuning by lig. I was lucky enough to saw her presentation couple of months ago with the local PHP meetup group, it's awesome.

- apparently Google has updated Chrome, added more security and speed. I just can't wait the release of the Linux version. I h8 waiting :(

- there is no way to tell which browser is the best. Is it FireFox (yes of course ;) ) Chrome, Safari or IE? One thing is definitely certain. Firefox has a growing number of developers who can create more add-on features than any other browser, and it will be really hard to beat. (I'm pulling for FF but that's just my opinion). And Mozilla seems to be a good supporter, especially with the release of JetPack.

Jetpack is a newly formed experiment in using open Web technologies to enhance the browser, with the goal of allowing anyone who can build a Web site to participate in making the Web a better place to work, communicate and play. - https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com

- Why don't we have more Linux powered laptops and store shelves? It's simple, really. Supply and demand. If we would have more people who want it, obviously more manufacturer would go for it. This is not the case. yet.

some cool stuff:
- here are 20+ ways to design your HTML lists better. I'm a developer, I only use one kind ;)

- if you hate bots and want to you some kind of captcha solution, this one might be for you:

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Check out our paper in Science about it (or read more below).

- if you like robots and nintendoDS here is an awesome way how you can combine the two ideas. just let me know if/how it worked out. hehe

- and the best for last. I'd call myself an old fashioned developer. I love VIM. I try and try different IDEs and editors but somehow I always end up using this text based awesomeness. And if you think that Vim doesn't have those cool features that your IDE does, you are wrong. Here is my proof ;)

what am I up to:
- finally I finished this little app with this PHP micro-framework called limonade and added an iPhone feel to it. So if you have an iPhone (or maybe an iPodTouch) please check this out: http://mehesz.net/isearch

Dev Corner 2.2

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:04:00 +0000

what's new:
- Intel fined $1.45 billion by European antitrust regulators - I think this was a good decision and hopefully will bring good sense to some people.

- the government is moving forward with interesting tech stuff like supporting more and more open source solutions, showing presence in multiple social networks etc.

- Mozilla launched a new add-on for FireFox (btw. it is also available as a stand alone app) called prism which lets you create your favorite web page as a kind of desktop app. (I found it useful with Gmail, RememberTheMilk etc) I think Chrome was already doing this, but FF is better anyway ;)

- Google started WolframAlpha which is a different type of search engine. My english is not strong enough to explain what it is exactly soooo ...

Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing...

framework stuff:
- ZendFramework 1.8.1 is out (ZF 1.8.1) which is the first maintenance release in the 1.8 series. Download it and use it.

- If CakePHP or ZF (or Rails for that matter) is just way to big for your needs, there are other pretty cool solutions out there. For Ruby and Rails dudes there is the Sinatra project and for PHP enthusiasts there is a up of Limonade. These micro-frameworks help you organize your code mostly in an MVC pattern structure but you can tweak them any way you want. Check them out.

- what are the TOP programming languages right now. I think the answer is always relative in most cases, but here is a list how TIOBE sees it may (without categories)

Position
May 2009 Position
May 2008 Delta in Position Programming Language Ratings
May 2009 Delta
May 2008 Status

1 1 Java 19.537% -1.35% A

2 2 C 16.128% +0.62% A

3 3 C++ 11.068% +0.26% A

4 4 PHP 9.921% -0.28% A

5 5 (Visual) Basic 8.631% -1.16% A

6 7 Python 5.548% +0.65% A

7 8 C# 4.266% +0.21% A

8 9 JavaScript 3.548% +0.62% A

9 6 Perl 3.525% -2.02% A

10 10 Ruby 2.692% +0.05% A

Position May 2009	Position May 2008	Programming Language	Ratings May 2009	Delta May 2008	Status
1	1	Java	19.537%	-1.35%	A
2	2	C	16.128%	+0.62%	A
3	3	C++	11.068%	+0.26%	A
4	4	PHP	9.921%	-0.28%	A
5	5	(Visual) Basic	8.631%	-1.16%	A
6	7	Python	5.548%	+0.65%	A
7	8	C#	4.266%	+0.21%	A
8	9	JavaScript	3.548%	+0.62%	A
9	6	Perl	3.525%	-2.02%	A
10	10	Ruby	2.692%	+0.05%	A

gadgets:
- NorhTech announced a laptop running on AA batteries :)

- and now you can install the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) OS on a Thumb drive.

what am I up to:
- checking out the micro PHP framework called Limonade.

Dev Corner 2.1

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:07:00 +0000

what's new:
- Rails Conf. 09 - is now over, but as far as I could tell from the Twitter and Facebook responses it was a great success. I started to listen to DHH's keynote (didn't have time to finish it yet :( ). I'm a long time PHP guy but always open to learn new stuff, so I'm following both, the PHP and the Rails communities and everybody say their time is here ... NOW :) well, I guess time will tell anyway.

- Who is buying twitter? The entire Tech World reminds me of a bunch of old women sitting on a porch and talking about imaginary/half-true stuff. Who is going to buy Twitter? Microsoft, Google or Apple or maybe Oprah? It might be a short discussion because apparently Twitter is not for sale. At least, not right now :)

- back to Rails for a little bit: they wanted to release a beta version of the up-coming Rails3 this week for the conf, but DHH said that the source is not in that stage just yet. I think you can still download and play with if you want. Here is a short wrap-up (ie. Merging with Merb etc :) ).

open source stuff:
- I see more and more articles like "in this economy how OpenSource will change the World" and such, which is very good and promising, but the big question is, are we, as humans/people in general, ready? new line of cellphones with OpenSource, new, small cheap laptops etc. It's amazing to see the rise of something you like ... like machnes ;) oh, yeah. and the health care system!

- how to avoid Linux migration pitfalls ...

- I remember couple of years ago everybody was talking about the "new big thing" which will change the internet. It kinda did, but didn't change it as much as I expected. I'm talking about Flash here. You can do cool stuff with it, flying saucers, shining whatever, but that's about it. For me at least. Well, now, here is another new thing, Silverlight by Microsoft. What the hack is this? Why would anybody wanna use it, and finally how Open Source comes into the picture?

what am I up to:
- the Drupal guys approved my module so all I have to do now, is to create an CSV older and upload it to their repository. I should be done with it this weekend :)

Dev Corner 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:58:00 +0000

I really wanted something big for the 2.0 release but didn't happen :(

what's new:
- I've been using HULU for months now (catching up on Heroes and the Office) and I'm very impressed by the way it works. Fast and reliable even on my Ubuntu Powered laptop (which is not the case with other sites like NBC, CBS, CNN etc) well, we can't predict if it will be good or bad, but apparently Disney bought Hulu (at least some of it) Time will tell.

- I'm always trying to push (whenever I got a chance) the OpenID solution. It is an awesome idea and I'd be very sad if it goes down the drain unnoticed. They recently launched a Wiki, Check it out.

- I hear more and more about the upcoming Android powered laptop. Looks very promising, if they can keep the price low. I think it will be winner ;)

frameworks:
- interesting supporters for ZendFramework (Microsoft, IBM, Google) and what's in it for them? I don't know, I don't know ...

what am i up to:
- I installed NginX last night, which is a very powerful HTTP (and proxy) server. The site itself is probably the worst looking site I've ever seen in a long time, but it gets the job done :)

- and the big news: they approved my module on the Drupal site. I still have to do some minor tweaks but other than that, it's ready for release :) YAY!

- oh, and I almost forgot. I finished translating a Twitter Multi-account Manager called Splitweet.

other:
- one dude (Steffen Hiller) was lucky enough to work with the Hashrocket team for one day and he was nice enough to write a blog post about it. Good job.

Dev Corner v.1.9

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:16:00 +0000

Welcome back ... myself. It's been 2 weeks, but seems much longer and I'm not gonna lie, it was good :) I hope everybody had a good Easter or what have you :D Now I'm back 100% :)

what's new
- probably the biggest news in the open source world this past week that Oracle bought the Sun :) I knew that you can buy acres of the Moon, but the Sun!? Alright, alright ... just kidding. But no, seriously. The big question is: Will Oracle kill/destroy/discontinue MySQL? - IMHO, yes. Why? Because this is human and business nature. And I truly-truly hope that I'll be proven wrong.

- I recently put this very cute little green robot everywhere around me, all over my screens and even on my iPhone. I'm talking about the little android and when I first saw it, didn't even know what it was. Google's operating system.

- Facebook hit 200 million users (by the time you are reading this is probably much more than that!) How do I feel about that? Gosh, it feels good to be a PHP guy :D

- Google launched similar image search. kinda bulky but fun to play with.

- are you tired of using your fingers for typing? well, you could use your brain instead. believe it or not, here it is -> twitter with your brain!

- MySQL 5.4 is available for download ( for now ;) )

- Ubuntu 9.04 (jj) got released this week. WooHoo!

frameworks
- it is an older article (I'd call it a series of articles) about PHP (MVC) frameworks.

- a new way to write HTML, call it HAML. (we'll see about this later)

- CakePHP just turned 4 years old on Apr. 16th. Wow. Happy birth day!

- and finally How to build a W2.0 dating site in 66.5 Hours :)

good to know
- 10 people who made open source what it is today

1. (Tied) Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman - Some will feel it is sacrilege to mention the founder and benevolent dictator of Linux (Torvalds) and the father of the free/libre software movement (Stallman) together, and that one definitely belongs above the other. However, without both of these gentlemen, the FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) movement wouldn't be where it is today.

3. Andrew Morton - Every benevolent dictator needs a trustworthy lieutenant to take on part of the load. Morton has been invaluable as one of the central Linux kernel maintainers.

4. Eric S. Raymond - "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," published in 1997, is still quoted today as one of the central arguments behind open source. His co-founding of the Open Source Initiative also gave us an umbrella for the open source licenses of today beyond Stallman's GPL.

5. Andrew Tridgell - Without the Samba file server, much of the ability to integrate Linux with Windows networks (and vice versa) simply wouldn't exist. Not to mention that without rsync most backup software would need another program to use under the hood.
6. Mark Shuttleworth - The founder of Canonical, Ltd., and patron of Ubuntu and KDE.

7. Marc Ewing - The creator of Red Hat Linux and co-founder of Red Hat, down to the fact that he used to wear a red hat.

8. Miguel de Icaza - Father of the GNOME and Mono projects.

9. Michael Widenius - Founder of the MySQL database and founding member of MySQL AB.

10. Rasmus Lerdorf - Creator of the PHP programming language.

tip of the weak
- how to type cast a variable in JavaScript

score_number = Number(score);

Dev Corner v.1.8

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:12:00 +0000

What an exciting week. Wow. Since next weekend is Easter (and after that I will be in Miami) I'm taking a little break, but please don't leave meeeeehhheeeheeee. I'm also very sorry that I won't make it to BarcampOrlando this year. (i know, my mom)

what's new:
- this is an older post, but definitely shows how drupal is growing every day and moving forward with big steps. I remember how bad the jacksonville.com (news) site used to be and, I think last December (08) they moved to drupal and bammmm, I just like to look at it. yummm

- google launches GMAIL Labs in 49 languages and as a foreigner I know, it IS a big deal :)

- how popular CMS vendors are imporving their search functionalities with Apache Lucene. It's pretty cool.

- What's your preference on Linux? At this moment, I run Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop, use PuppyLinux 4.1 on my other laptop (a very old one :) ) and Debian 4.0 for my local "server". Can't wait for the new (k)Ubuntu 9.04, though.

I tried SuSELinux before it was Novell, I also tried it afterwards. In fact, that was the only distro that ran without major problems on my wife's tabletPC, but somehow, it just didn't do it for me. Well, some people call it the Enterprise Linux Desktop. I'm not really sure about that :)

- What is dependency injection? It is very simple and if you don't know, you better read it.

- and finally another google related news. here is the new google OS. OK. wait... what? oh yeah, the new google OS :) can't wait.

frameworks:
- CakePHP 1.2.2.8120 got released, here are some of the changes/fixes:

Disproving FormHelper::textarea always escapes value.
Adding test case to disprove regression in Auth component.
Adding test case for Model::saveAll for HABTM data with additional fields saved in join table.
Fixing escaping of fields in hasAny() also adding in correct model aliases.
Refactoring NumberHelper::toReadableSize to properly use I18n functionality.
and much much more. really.

- Symfony 1.2.5 is out, mostly bug fixes:

replaced lime_test::get_temp_directory() calls to sys_get_temp_dir()
fixed invalid assumption in cache:clear task
updated Propel external to contain some oracle reverse engineering fixes
added proxies to sfOutputEscaperSafe so safe vars work as expected when accessed from an action

- ZendFramework 1.7.8 (mini) release just got .... released(!?)

AMF3 Messages with Object as first param fails with badVersion
Chinese Languae using Zend Translate
Zend_Cache_Frontend_Page: config option "debug_header" breaks "memorize_headers"
Fix namespace propagation in App.php

cool script:
- if you are not into the big "framework" thing, here is a cool pagination script I found very use- and powerful.

tip of the weak:
- if you want to align an entire DIV to center because float:right and float:left just won't do it, remember this:

margin:0 auto;

Dev Corner v.1.7

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:43:00 +0000

This week I got a nice, water- fire and bullet-proof flash-drive from my wife's boss. I used to have one with 128Mb and everybody was laughing at me from time to time, but I was waiting and waiting patiently :) this new one is 8Gb and with this tremendous amount of space I'd decided to install one of my favorite Linux flavor, puppy. I followed these instructions and set up my USB OS drive literally in 10 minutes. Give it a try :)

what's new:
- I don't wanna put the PHP news always at the end, so here it is right on top. PHP 5.3 Release Candidate 1 has been announced.

- I've been using Skype for a long time now (at least 2.5-3 years) to call my family overseas and they finally will release a version for iPhone users :) can't wait to try it.

- What is "The Cloud" exactly? Is it JUST open source? Well, at this point is mostly open source, but just like with everything else Micro$oft (and other companies like M$) will need a piece.

- How this recession helps big enterprise companies to take another look on open source solutions. I don't think open source for everybody, but if there is an alternative, I'd go with it :)

cms stuff:
- Drupal guys put up an awesome post and show you how much money they made/spent at the DC Conference. It's like having a see-through wallet :)

- Some of the guys I used to hang out with, down in Orlando, started a Consulting thing called DrupalEasy. But they do more than that, like weekly podcasts, training and all kinds of stuff with Drupal and Drupal people.

- other cms sites:

alfresco.com - ~ is the Open Source Alternative for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

SilverStripe.org - Our CMS is fast, flexible, and FREE. It's designed for people who edit website content.

tip of the weak:

- how to change the font-size firebug?
- you can just click the bug icon in the top left of the Firebug pane and there is a "text size" option.

Dev Corner v.1.6

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:14:00 +0000

At home we have the cheapest available DSL by AT&T. The speed is decent, and we can't really complain about the service either. We had a 3.5 years old linksys router to "broadcast" the joy to other wireless devices (iPhone, Wii, laptops etc).

After the second week we noticed that some of the sites are not loading correctly (weather.com, target.com etc), ping returns with lost packages etc... called the tech-support couple of times, went through bunch of forums and figured out that our router is causing all these problems and had to replace it with a new one (belkin for the future :) )

what's new:
- cisco is cooking something new and something else. something more. also, trying to make everybody nervous. i wonder how they'll deal with it later :) (~ declares war, embraces open source)

- Hadoop, which I don't know much about (it's a toy elephant) but sounds very cool and promising.

- and finally the exciting news we've all been waiting for (personally, I wasn't but it's not the point right now) Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8. They say this is the fastest browser on the market right now. Well, I know some people who know some other people and ran some tests on this beast, and seems like this is the slowest of ALL :) surprised? Didn't think so. can't wait to install it on my linux box ... hehe - N O T -

- how will the new iPhone OS (3.0) look like?

some cool site(s):
- this week I found a site that jumped out (almost literally) from the rest: webdesignerdepot.com

event(s):
- i was not really paying attention what was going on in the past 2 weeks in Texas, but seems like I missed a lot. the sxsw is some kind of media event that pulls great people together and apparently can break Twitter ...

"In its 22 years, SXSW has grown from a tiny music festival in the Texas capital into a massive, unavoidable media beast that reflects, discusses and showcases trends in culture and media but also often creates them." National Post, 3/13/08

- i was hanging out (and trying to participate) with the hasrocket (=>) guys here in Jax this weekend as they were planning new features for http://localpolitics.in

- ruby people gonna meet this coming Tuesday (24th) to talk about Groovy/Grails/Java MVC (rubyjax.com)

what am i up to:
- I'm always open to try new (mostly PHP, JavaScript or CSS) editors. With this one (aptana) you can add all kinds of plugins and support (Rails, PHP etc), (built on Eclipse so can't really be that bad ;) )

- I'm waiting on the new (k)ubuntu (guessing 9.04) to come out and make my laptop even better ...

- usually don't embed videos, but this one is just .... shocking?

Dev Corner v.1.5

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 14:16:00 +0000

this week I only have couple of short news and some cool sites to write about:

what's new:
- Are we really gonna have to pay for Google Services? Well, not quite yet, but that time might come sooner than you think. In fact, some of the services are no longer offer rich and powerful features as before :( which makes me a saaaad panda :(

- Is IBM better than Microsoft, or vice versa? If you ask me, than yes, definitely (I also started to think about Apple on the same level as good ol' M$, but that's a different story) Why is Microsoft terrified of the idea of Open Source? Why IBM isn't? - and more questions like this ...

- Someone is trying to re-design craigslist.org. And I was like, why? What's wrong with it? Well, I am clearly NOT a designer :)

some cool sites:
- smashingmagazine.com - a lots of cool stuff, mostly design and JavaScript (AJAX), check it out

- awesome cheat-sheets literally for __EVERYTHING__ (ie.: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP, RAILS and much much more)

framework(s):
- here is a blog series about ZendFramework, this time on Zend_Loader. if you are a "real" developer and want to know how this feature works in ZF, read it :)

In this article I will introduce you to Zend_Loader, a Zend Framework class used to automatically load other classes. Typically you would use include_once() or require_once() when you want to load a class but using Zend_Loader you don’t have to.

Dev Corner v.1.4

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:59:00 +0000

Another week another dollar ... or something like that :)

What Happened:
- We had a great time with our local (Jacksonville, JaxPHP.org) PHP group on Tuesday, learned new tricks on how to fine-tune your MySQL Server, what to turn on/off for performance boost etc by Ligaya Turmelle.

- DrupalConf DC 2009 - unfortunately by the time I was ready to buy the ticket they were sold out :( according to all the twitter people, it was definitely a great event. Feel bad I missed it.

- The other pretty cool party I missed this week, was the ignite orlando event. great presenters, great talks from how to brew your own beer to how to use openID. The idea is, that you have 1 presentation, 20 slides and 15sec/slide and that's it :) you can see some cool videos and other stuff on their site :)

What's new:
- The Linux Foundation finally owns Linux.com. Well, it was a shocker to me ;)

- Who is Microsoft biggest enemy, besides itself? Well, according to Steve Ballmer, Linux is a bigger threat than Apple :) hehe, maybe he has some secretly stored statistics somewhere deep in the system that we don't know about!?

- In this struggling economy it's good to see that other governments are trying to push and support open source solutions. yay.

- FireFox passes IE6! no comment. use FireFox, be better than others ;)

- If you have some free time and want to hack on something, why not to get paid for it? Google challanges hackers, the reward is more than $8,000!

Conference(s):
- The second annual Linux Conf. in Jacksonville, FL is here. It's on Monday, so I won't be there :( FAIL. Make sure YOU register and YOU go!

PHP Framework:
- kohanaPHP is another MVC framework, promises lightweight and speed. Some of the highlights:

Strict PHP 5 OOP
Simple database abstraction using SQL helpers
Multiple session drivers (native, database, and cookie)
Powerful event handler allows small modifications dynamically
Originally based on CodeIgniter

Dev Corner v.1.3

noreply@blogger.com (imehesz) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:58:00 +0000

First off, I apologize for being late, but we had some technical difficulties at our house and I did not have reliable internet access for a week, so I could not post anything :( well, that is all behind us now. Just FYI, I moved my family back to Jacksonville, FL (from Orlando, FL) and will continue the weekly Dev Corner from here. Let's dig in.

What's new:
- PHP 5.2.9 got released, fixing 50 something bugs, improving stability and security. Here are the highlights:

Fixed explode() behavior with empty string to respect negative limit.
Fixed a segfault when malformed string is passed to json_decode().
Added optional sorting type flag parameter to array_unique(). Default is SORT_REGULAR.
A number of fixes in the mbstring extension

For more details and release announcement please visit this link.

- I've been hearing a lot about Facebook this week and that they are going back and forth between their new and old Terms of Service. If you know what I'm talking about don't check out this link, but if you have no idea (just like me) give it a read. Could this be the beginning of the end for the Facebook era? I guess we will see.

Other(s):
- What can schools do to use their already small tech budget more efficiently? Use open-source technologies for example.

- Since we are talking about budget and money and open-source, here is a great article how the U.S. government is trying to save money.

Book(s):
- This is not a new book, but maybe is new for you. Are you a PHP developer and thinking about moving towards Rails? Look no farther, Rails for PHP Developers.

What am I up to:
- I'm always doing/writing stuff and because we moved back to our house, I put my good old dartboard back on the wall, and need some sort of scoring system. I'll go with ZF and PHP for now.