With the recent release of the first alpha of PHP 5.3, the community has been talking and testing this new version - here's just a few:

• Johannes Schluter looking at the actual release
• The PHP 10.0 blog mentioning the impact this new release will have on the language and the web
• and a few tests that Lars Strojny has already run on the release.
• Evert Pot's look at some of the upcoming features of PHP 5.3 (including code)
• Some testing from PHP Freaks
• A note about some testing with the Stubbles framework

You can check out this page on the PHP.net wiki for more information on what's left for the final release and a tentative schedule for the releases in between.