If you didn’t find the answer and you didn’t see the tweet giving it out, the answer was http://phparch.com/powersquid/. Blue Parabola’s own Keith Casey singing his own composition, “The Powersquid Song”.

The three winners of the contest were as follows:

1st Place – A ticket to php|tek ’12
Chris (@dragonmantank) Tankersly

2nd Place – a ticket to an upcoming php|architect Live! Virtual Summit
Russell Sherwood

3rd Place – 3 books from our library
Sean (@sprunka) Prunka

…and the rest – There were 29 correct answers who all win a free year’s subscription to php|architect magazine.

Now for some fun facts about the contest.

There were 214 total reasonable answers submitted (a few people just tried guessing random words, we didn’t count those).

There were several URLS that were submitted more than others. In no particular order the most common ones were:

• https://twitter.com/#!/CalEvans/status/125199015074725888 This one was very close but we were looking for the song itself, not a reference to it.
• http://www.powersquid.com – Many people submitted this one which shows they were on the right track.
• http://caseysoftware.com/blog/conference-travel-tips – This was another popular entry which showed that people understood 1/2 of the puzzle because it was Keith Casey singing the song.

The most obscure answer came in very early on in the contest, around 7:17 AM EDT – “Costa Rica”. Honestly, we have no idea what to make of that answer.

Overall, it was a fun contest to run, and we hope you had fun playing along. Please make sure and congratulate the winners, and if you can, join us at php|tek ’12. We’d love to put a face with the name.

@e3betht, @mtabini, and of course myself, @calevans will start tweeting around 8:00 AM EDT and continue giving hints about once an hour until all the prizes are claimed. Oh, did I mention there were other prizes?

• 1st place – a ticket to php|tek ’12. You get to join hundreds of other PHP developers for 3 and 1/2 days of learning, hacking, and making new friends.
• 2nd Place – a ticket to our next Virtual Summit. We are already planning the next Virtual Summit, and it’s going to be every bit as good as the first two. If you are the second place winner, you will be our guest.
• 3rd Place – any three books from the php|architect catalog. Ebook or dead tree, you get to pick three. We’ll even let you see the ones we’ve got in the works so you can choose from them as well. To be a developer is to keep learning, and there aren’t many better ways to keep up than reading a good book.
• SPECIAL BONUS – Anyone who submits the correct answer on Friday gets 12 months of php|architect magazine. That’s right; it’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year long. You will join thousands of other PHP developers each month in learning something new or tuning up existing skills.

So set your alarm clocks and have the coffee ready… One lucky winner is going to Chicago, and everyone who plays can win!

Submit your winning entry on this page

• This contest is void where prohibited.
• All entries must be submitted via the entry submission form to be considered.
• All judges’ decisions are final.
   

Hints

HINT: Some monkeys howl.. ours sings · bit.ly/HxMnS3 #tek12

— Marco Tabini (@mtabini) April 13, 2012

HINT: Sometimes they have yellow feet #tek12

— Beth Tucker Long (@e3BethT) April 13, 2012

HINT: When our monkey carries one, the TSA stops him for two reasons.

— Cal Evans (@CalEvans) April 13, 2012

HINT:It’s not “Spider pig…” · bit.ly/HxMnS3 #tek12

— Marco Tabini (@mtabini) April 13, 2012

HINT: This is what happens when the cola is just there to color the rum.

— Cal Evans (@CalEvans) April 13, 2012

HINT: It’s a monkey serenade #tek12

— Beth Tucker Long (@e3BethT) April 13, 2012

HINT:Now, with a Calamari Edition #tek12

— Cal Evans (@CalEvans) April 13, 2012

HINT: If you have one of these at a conference, everyone will want to sit by you #tek12

— Beth Tucker Long (@e3BethT) April 13, 2012

HINT: This Easter Egg of a song is in *six*-part Power harmony #tek12

— Marco Tabini (@mtabini) April 13, 2012

HINT: It is not on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, caseysoftware.com or powersquid.com. #tek12

— Beth Tucker Long (@e3BethT) April 13, 2012

For those who were in attendance, thanks for showing up! We are a bit late but here are the slides from each of our presentations.

Keith Casey – REST Best Practices

Beth Tucker Long – CI:IRL

Marco Tabini – Refactoring and Other small Animals

Cal Evans – What’s new in PHP 5.4

If you didn’t make it this year, we hope to see you on the next tour!

=C=

That’s right, there’s only a few more hours to get your tickets for php|tek 2012 at the Early-Bird prices. At midnight tonight, ticket prices increase to their regular prices.

FoxyCart was built from the beginning with a desire to integrate with existing systems and avoid duplicating data. We’re not a CMS, we don’t do inventory tracking, customer mailing lists, accounting or analytics. We integrate with the tools you already use. As such, it’s critically important that our data be easily accessible in a way that makes sense. As a tool built by developers for developers, we want to keep things simple without creating “yet another thing” for you to learn or another manual to squint at while building your integration.

As we began our API re-write, we kept these ideas in mind. We didn’t go with SOAP primarily because it doesn’t keep things simple. I’ve worked with SOAP in PHP, Java and ColdFusion (yes, thank you, your sympathy is much appreciated). Granted, it is pretty neat to fire up a tool like soapUI and have a bunch of methods and stubs built out automatically or to see Eclipse parse a WSDL and show you that nifty drill-down-forever interface which exposes the depth of possibilities for the API. However, the real frustration I’ve always had is having to re-learn things I should already know. How do I create something, get it back again, make some changes or delete it? At the most basic level, most method calls can be boiled down to representations of data that just need to be manipulated.

Instead of having to dive into the SOAP API developer’s thought process (often leading to a DailyWTF moment), REST eliminates the confusion all together. Where a SOAP API may have methods like getAllSubscriptions() or customerSave() or filterTransactions(), REST allows us to say, “Here’s the representation, you already know what to do with it.” Ideally, if you’ve integrated with one REST API, you understand them all: GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. We’re all familiar with this thing called the World Wide Web, and it has scaled pretty well over the years following these simple patterns.

The story doesn’t end there. One of the other main reasons to be excited about REST is that it’s still, after all these years, actively being developed and discussed. The API Craft Google Group, as an example, is incredibly active, and they’re not just debating what Fielding really meant in his dissertation over a decade ago. They are helping each other build things right now. Companies like Apigee are creating great content on their blog, educating and improving the entire ecosystem.

New solutions are being proposed such as the PATCH HTTP method for partially modifying a resource. We’re still learning what Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS) really means. There are plenty of questions like how hypermedia should be represented in JSON or how a client should interact with vendor-specific content types and what code-on-demand can do for you. These questions might seem overwhelming, but for us they are exciting! We believe the future of consistent, powerful API development is being defined right now, and we get to be a part of it.

If Facebook, Amazon, PayPal and Twitter have taught us anything, it’s that building a platform is more powerful than just building an application or a website. APIs are the bones of any platform. REST is the muscle that will get the job done.

***Image courtesy of Delyn Simons, Mashery API Network

We at php|architect want to honor those who give of themselves so that we can work with PHP and in this great ecosystem. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and want to pause to say thank you.

The full details can be found on the Impact Awards page. Voting is open through the end of March and is open to all php|architect subscribers. The winners will be announced at php|tek ’12 in Chicago and the winning projects will be given a beautiful commemorative award statuette designed by Aleksandar Ilievski

Subscribers, cast your vote to support the projects that have had the biggest impact on your development this year.

tek ’12 is coming to Chicago May 22nd – 25th, 2012. Yes, there is going to be an uncon that goes till all hours of the morning. Yes, there is going to be a hackathon packed with programmers and cool projects. Of course there are going to be some off-the-hook evening activities that people will talk about for years to come.

We know that’s not why you come to tek though. You come to tech for the talks. Each year we strive to put together a schedule unmatched by any other, and we think that tek ’12 is the best one we’ve done yet.

Check out the schedule for php|tek ’12 now and get your ticket before the Early Bird discount expires.

Git is a great version-control tool designed for today’s nimble, distributed teams. For those of us who come from the world of CVS and SVN, however, mastering its features takes… some getting used to.

Fear no more, for your friends at php|architect have put together a great half-day event dedicated entirely to Git called the php|architect Live! Git Summit. With talks from developers who have first-hand experience using Git in a variety of environments, this is your opportunity to learn Git without leaving your desk (in fact, you can even listen in on your iPad, so you may enjoy the Summit on your favorite couch, too).

Best of all, the price for this great event is just right: single seats start at $25 for our premium subscribers, and we even have a discounted rate if you want to get your whole team in on the fun. Seating is limited, and we’re already 50% sold, so don’t delay—get your tickets today.

As a rule, we normally shy away from political speech here at php|architect. On this particular topic, however, we feel that we should take a firm stand against SOPA, and explain our position.

Why You Should Listen to Us

We make our living by selling intellectual property. Our books, magazines, and training materials are precisely the kind of content that is all too easy to copy and distribute illegally through the internet. Plus, don’t forget that Blue Parabola is not some multinational industrial conglomerate; we are a small company, which means that selling digital content is what pays our mortgages, keeps our houses warm, and sends our kids to college. And, of course, the same applies to our authors.

I say this because, if SOPA were really about protecting the interests of copyright holders, this post would be a glowing endorsement of everything it stands for because we would have a direct interest in seeing it become a reality —but it’s not, and we don’t. We’re taking a stand against SOPA, and we urge you to do the same.

I won’t deny that seeing our products copied and distributed without our permission is unpleasant and hard to take; however, I —and everyone else here— am also firmly convinced that a punishing law like SOPA is not going to stop illegal downloads.

The simple reality is that honest people—the vast majority of us—are happy to pay a fair price for products they need, want, and enjoy. As long as the price is reasonable, the purchase process is sane, and the licensing terms do not stray into the draconian, our statistics show that most people have no problem with paying for digital content.

What of the rest? Do they deserve to get away scot-free with what amounts to theft?

No, of course they don’t, but they are —and remain— a tiny minority; one that is not easily deterred by digital locks and oppressive laws that only end up annoying and inconveniencing the very people who behave honestly.

Besides, we already have laws that are designed to deal with the criminals—laws, I should point out, that are already widely used with a reasonable amount of success to block large criminal organizations that perform piracy on an industrial scale.

SOPA Fixes the Wrong Problem

Piracy is better fought by creating better products that respond to the real needs of customers who value our work, not by trying to punish those who don’t with overly broad legislation.

We learned this lesson a few years ago, when we removed all forms of DRM from our electronic publications, and our sales went up as a result. All our products have been DRM-free since, and—well, we’re still here, alive and well. In fact, we’ve been able to invest the money that would have gone towards maintaining increasingly complex digital protection schemes into making our products available to customers in more formats, which has benefited both our bottom line and their enjoyment of everything they buy from us.

SOPA is simply an extension of the same way of thinking that has foisted DRM on our computers for the last twenty years: It’s the final, desperate blow of an industry whose business model is predicated on controlling its customers rather than adapting to their needs. Much worse than that, it’s a piece of legislation that opens the doors to all sorts of nefarious attacks on the freedom of speech which makes the internet such a delightfully messy—and immensely vibrant—melting pot for all the ideas of our generation.

The Internet We Want

This is why we do not support SOPA. At the end of the day, we do not see any significant benefits from it, even for the large media conglomerates that seem to think they will reap its rewards. All we see is a slippery slope, at whose end is an internet that we do not want to be part of.

If you haven’t submitted your proposals yet, now is a great time to do so (you know, before the new-year celebrations kick in, and you get distracted by more… urgent fun). Don’t forget, you don’t need to be a professional speaker to present at tek—all you need is a great idea and an infective passion that will rub off on your fellow attendees. Some of the best speakers we’ve ever hosted were first timers—and we love to invite new people to speak every year!

Well, what are you waiting for? Head on over to our CfP page, where you can find out more about the proposal process, and submit several of your ideas. We look forward to hearing from you.