Highlights from the SEW Blog: September 10-14, 2007
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Featured posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week, along with recent search-related headlines from around the Web.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:DeveloperTutorials.com: AJAX and PHP Form ProcessingPHPRiot.com: Monitoring File Uploads using Ajax and PHPCommunity News: Has Smarty's Time Come?Deasil.com: Lessons to be learned from PHPIan Bicking's Blog: What PHP Deployment Gets RightDaniel Crook's Blog: Mashups from IBM at NYPHP in JanuaryMike Naberezny's Blog:  Horde/Yaml 1.0 ReleasedMikko Koppanen's Blog: Padding thumbnail with colorRichard Lord's Blog: If you want to create AVM2 swfs from PHPZend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Episode 31: Book Review - Sitepoint's PHP Anthology, 2nd Ed.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Sebastian Bergmann's Blog: Support for the Cancel Case Workflow PatternCommunity News: The PDO v2 ProposalSite News: Popular Posts for the Week of 01.25.2008ProPHP Podcast: PHP Newscast for 2008/01/24Developer Tutorials Blog: Why you should be using YAML for configJob Posting: InvestorGuide.com Seeks Web Developer (Fairfax, VA)Pierre-Alain Joye's Blog: Debugging symfony (or any php script) with vim and XdebugCIO.com: You Used PHP to Write WHAT?!Demian Turner's Blog: Seagull 0.6.4 Release (fixes Security Isse from 0.6.3)Developer Tutorials Blog: PHP Qualifications: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Dave Dash's Blog: nginx and symfonyZend Developer Zone: The ZendCon Sessions Episode 6: Project Management Methods to Maintain IT StandSitePoint PHP Blog: Tokenization using regular expression sub patternsIT Jobs Watch: Results for PHP Developers in LondonJob Posting: Digital River Seeks PHP Developer (Eden Prairie, MN)Dan Scott's Blog: Oooh...looks like I've got (even more) work cut out for meLeon Chevalier's Blog: Improve website load time by 500% with 3 lines of codePHPWomen.org: elePHPantsPhil Thompson's Blog: 7 PHP functions that saved my lifeStuart Herbert's Blog: Using suphp To Secure A Shared Server
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:IBM developerWorks: PHP frameworks, Part 1: Getting started with three popular frameworksWeb Development Blog: Tutorial: FTP Upload via cURLJoey's Blog: 8 Practical PHP Regular ExpressionsJeff Moore's Blog: Keywords and Language SimplicityAlessandro Crugnola's Blog: AMFPHP and mbstringTravis Swicegood's Blog: Why Inheritance SucksStefan Mischook's Blog: Creating Custom PHP Functions Video Tutorial - Part 3Johannes SchlÃ¼ter's Blog: PHP 5.3 UpdateInternet Super Hero Blog: mysqlnd to support PDO, mysqlnd in PHP 5.3Jacob Santos' Blog: Object Oriented Programming Isn't Easy
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHP-Coding-Practices.com: Try-Catch Syntax WeirdnessPHPBuilder.com: Cross-Platform Database PHP DevelopmentIBM developerWorks: Java and PHP technology on AIX - Integrate the Java business application w/ DB2OpenSourceCommunity.org: What do you think makes a good CMS?Jonathan Snook's Blog: Elemental: Conditional Content with CakePHPDevShed: The Basics of Using the Factory Pattern in PHP 5Builder.com.au: PHP exploit code plants itself in GIFJohn Cox's Blog:  Linux.com Now PHP PoweredNick Halstead's Blog: Solving Programming ProblemsPHP-Tools Blog: Testing FIT
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Plus: SCO to cap legal costs...Novell sees weakness in IT spending...Salesforce reports rise in profit...Nortel to lay off 3,500.
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Links to the week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Search Marketing Jobs Slow Down? - Making the Most Out of AdCenter - Google Says Internal Duplication Is Ok - Blogrolls and Ordinary Link Exchanging, and more.
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:PHPBuilder.com: AJAX and PHP Part 2 - XML Communication/ProcessingCommunity News: Zend Framework 1.0.0 ReleasedMike Potter's Blog: Slides for today's e-seminar on Flex and PHPBlogSecurity.net: Interview with Stefan Esser on WordPressCommunity News: India's First PHP UnconferencePro::PHP Podcast: Newscast for 2007.06.28JSLabs Blog:  How to create Microsoft Office Documents with PHPPEAR Blog: Request for ideas: New developer FAQPHP-Coding-Practices.com: Composing Methods: Split Temporary VariableRob Allen's Blog: Spanish versions too!
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Popular posts from PHPDeveloper.org for the past week:Ian Selby's Blog: Uploading Large Files With PHPONLamp.com: Quick and Clean PHP FormsDotVoid.com: Reordering nested sets using PHP and JavascriptRob Allen's Blog: Zend Framework Book Coming SoonCommunity News: php|works Daily Summaries (Day 2)Community News: Sara Golemon & Christopher Jones - First Day Summaries of php|worksJob Posting: University of Wisconsin, Department of Medicine Seeks Web Developer (Madison, WI)Zend Developer Zone: PHP Abstract Podcast Episode 19: Glue Frameworks vs. Full Stack FrameworksStefan Mischook's Blog: Installing PHP and MySQL on the Mac with MAMPSecurityReason: Three Advisories for PHP 5.2.4 (dl, iconv_substr & setlocale)
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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roundup Plus: Macromedia taps into AIM...Hewlett-Packard packages services for blades...Corel updates Painter.
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Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Filthy Linking Rich - Google Releases Desktop Search - Exit Page Statistics Query - 'Industrial Strength White Hat' Cloaking Questions - Content for Adwords - RSS Feeds as a Search Engine Marketing Tool
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Nice blog post via Slava  criticizing the quality of the Java runtime and hotspot compiler:  "The HotSpot source code is a bad joke We wasted an afternoon and had a good laugh on IRC today, looking over parts of the SCSL sources to HotSpot and the sun.* classes. I can't give too much detail or paste code samples because that would violate Sun's ... license, but here are some highlights:"  This is my favorite one:  "A lot of preprocessors are used. This includes a mix of awk, sed, shell scripts, and indeed, Scheme! Yes, the JVM source includes jscheme.jar, used to generate some CORBA classes. Considering that Sun talks about how bad preprocessors are, its hypocritical of them to use preproces ...
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Canon G9 review...Photophlow gives Flickr a new face...Mozilla's Weave project...People paparazzi...new SLR rumors...hardware hacking.
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DevShed is starting up another new series today, this time looking at the DirectoryIterator methods out of the Standard PHP Library functionality.   Because this class might be handy to use in projects where handling directories is a must, in this new series I'll be taking a close look at some of its most important methods. We will explore these methods appropriately in conjunction with the corresponding code samples.    They introduce the class, noting why it's handy to use and where's the best place to use it - including an example. They get into a bit more detail, looking at the key() and current() methods as well as using the rewind() method to reset the pointer for the directory.
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A lot of things are happening in the Ruby world right now, and I wanted to highlight a few of them here:  At FOSCon this year, Amy Hoy has asked people to start writing more instructive articles about parts of Ruby or Rails so that newbies would have more "fine manuals" to read.  I've tried to do my part with two short series (so far), one on RubyInline and the other on ruby-prof.  The RubyInline articles are: RubyInline, making making things faster easier, and RubyInline: Going a bit Further.  The ruby-prof articles are:  Profile and ruby-prof, ruby-prof and call graphs, and Profile and ruby-prof:  getting specific. Another blog related event is the current blogging contest being run by Ruby Inside.  They're offering $100 US to their favorite informativ, ruby related blog post this week (Aug 14-20).  There have been a lot of interesting entries so far.  It would be pretty cool to see more contests like this crop up. We're getting close to a couple of Ruby conferences, I wrote about RubyConf*MI in my last post.  RailsConfEurope is also comingu up quickly.  If you're reasonable close to either of these, you should consider registering. O'Reilly has released the Ruby Cookbook.  It's a massive tome, chock-full of Ruby goodness.  I haven't had time to read the whole thing yet, but what I've read looks good, and I'm hearing good things from folks I trust.  Looks like another good book to add to your Ruby bookshelf. APress is getting ready to jump into Ruby and Rails in a big way.  They've got ten titles listed on their 'Rails Roadmap', and have lined up some well known Ruby names to write for them.  They're still looking for some Ruby authors according to this blog post. No Starch Press is also starting to make some Ruby related noises.  I can't be specific yet, but there's a good looking Ruby book on its way into their catalog.  If the book is half as good as what they've talked to me about, it's going to be another 'must have'. The Pragmatic Programmers also look like they're set to add some more titles to their Facets of Ruby line.  James Gray has said that he's writing a book for them that should be announced soon, Ezra Zygmuntowicz also has a book on the way, and I've recently signed a contract with them for a Ruby related book.  It looks like the PragProgs aren't going to be content to sit on their Ruby laurels. Finally, Developerdotstar is close to announcing a couple of books about programming.  Neither of these is Ruby specific, but from everything I've heard I think they're going to be solid, language independant books about becoming a better programmer.  Just the kind of thing you'd expect from these guys.