Zend has issued a press release about a new series of online training classes they will be offering.

Zend Technologies, The PHP Company, continues its series of free online seminars started in early 2007.The so-called "Webinars" are aimed at anyone interested in PHP - web developers, consultants, project managers and technical decision makers. Topics include PHP as well as specific solutions and the tools Zend offers for enterprise-use of this programming language.

You can get more information on the events from the Zend website but here's a few to give you an idea: "Zend Cargo and Present: Using PHP to Build a Mobile Internet Platform", "Get Rich Quick: Building Ajax-based RIAS with Zend Framework and Appcelerator" and "i5 - Application Lifecycle Management for the Enterprise".

All of the webinars are free and, if you miss a session and you want to catch up, you can always download it from their archive.

On the CSS Tricks blog there's a recent article showing how to combine the jQuery Javascript library and the SimplePie PHP feed aggregator to create a iPhone/mobile interface to any RSS feed.

We are going to create a web page that is formatted specifically for the iPhone (but would presumably be good for other mobile devices as well). This web page will dynamically fill itself with content from any RSS feed that you give it. The interface is going to be built to be easy to use on a mobile device, with large "touchable" areas and nice (jQuery) animations that whisk you between articles.

They work through the process - five simple steps:

• Create the iPhone Environment
• Pull in the RSS Feed
• Creating the Front Page: Headlines Only
• Creating the Article Pages: jQuery Slider Style
• Adding Some Flair

All code and images needed are included (as well as a demo if you'd like to try it out).

A new post on the Zend Developer Zone points out a talk that's going to be given at the National Arts Club about making mobile platforms with the help of PHP5.

Kargo derives significant competitive advantage as their application designers & producers make use of Zend Framework to build their next generation mobile application platform on. [...] Zend Technologies will present an introduction to the modular "use at will" PHP 5 components in Zend Framework and Kargo will outline the high-performance messaging server and mobile internet platform they've built.

You can find out more about the meetup from its page on Upcoming and check out this page for more details and a map to the location (New York, NY).

Company	Ox Publishing
Location	Mobile, AL
Title	PHP Developer
Summary	The primary job responsibility for the web developer position is to provide PHP programming and functionality for a variety of consumer-related websites, intranets, extranets and web-based applications. You will be challenged on a daily basis to solve problems in new and creative ways. A successful candidate will have demonstrable experience building real online applications in a LAMP environment and will be able to make a meaningful contribution from day one. You will be comfortable working with team members at all levels and departments within the organization. You will be willing to share your opinions and insights with business leaders in order to affect rapid decision cycles and effective technical solutions to business requirements. This is the perfect opportunity for LAMP Developers looking to play a key role in creating enabling technology for a local ecommerce company. Job Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or commensurate work experience PHP web application development DBA experience with MySQL object oriented programming methodologies (especially in PHP) relational database design complex SQL query authoring and optimization Experience with Linux Servers Knowledge of (X)HTML, CSS and Javascript relevant W3C standards and best practices Ability to translate business requirements into system design Ability to partner and work in a fast-paced, collaborative team environment Strong debugging skills and the ability to easily and quickly read and modify existing code Sense of humor We're looking for someone who has worked as a developer and has experience with database design, setup and administration, as well as PHP development with well-structured, scalable and maintainable code. This will be a full time position working from 8-5, M-F near Bell-Air Mall. Send resume to hr@oxpublishing.com
Link	More Information

Vinu Thomas talks about a platform on his blog today that can be used to create PHP applications to live on a S60 phone.

If you'd like to work on your favorite PHP apps on your S60 phones, here's PAMP - Personal Apache, MySQL and PHP. This is implemented on the Symbian OS using Open C, which is a set of industry-standard POSIX and middleware C libraries for S60.

The PAMP system is pretty easy to install and guides can be found over on the dev.mobi website to help get you started. You can download the latest version of the project from its SourceForge website.

The Zend Developer Zone has launched a new feature for their PHP Abstract podcasts to help make giving feedback on the episodes even simpler (especially on mobile devices) - a TwitterBridge.

We know many people listen to PHP Abstract on their cell phones or mobile music device. Many of you aren't near a computer when you listen. Even so, we want to hear from you about the episodes. So we've installed our handy new TwitterBridge. Now, all you need to leave a comment about an episode of PHP Abstract is a twitter account.

You'll need a Twitter account (obviously) and then set it up to follow phpa, then any comments that are sent starting with "@phpa" will be grabbed and pushed into the comment system automatically.

Ryan Malesevich has posted another brief look at a WordPress plugin on his blog today - this time, it's WP-Wap, an additon to WordPress to help make a WAP version of the site.

I saw this on TechBuzz and thought it was really cool. WP-Wap is not a plugin per se, more like an addition to Wordpress, but it creates a completely WAP compatible version of your blog. Now I know not many people are going to be using a phone to read your blog, but what if there's that one person who's a little weird in the head that wants to do that. You can't exclude that person.

Thankfully, this plugin is just as easy to install as some of its siblings (slightly different, but still easy). Then, it does the rest of the work for you - making the WAP pages automatically.

Jim Plush has an interesting post today (complete with a video) about a project he's worked up for sending messages to remote devices via a web connetion and a JSON encoded message.

I have my PDA resting on my laptop and on my laptop I have firefox open with a local PHP page. The PHP page has a couple checkboxes that when clicked and the submit button pressed will actually open up a socket connection to the IP address I specified in the text field above. The script then sends a JSON encoded event string of data. That string gets read in by a custom minimo/firefox extension I wrote that listens on a particular port for incoming connections, reads in any data sent then forwards that on to user land javascript. By user land javascript I mean javascript written on a regular webpage, not in the extension itself.

The video linked to in the post shows more clearly how this functionality works, and also includes a bit more detail on the whole process, including a graphical representation of how the entire process works. Ajax wasn't actually used to send the message in this particular application - it's all just made with regular sockets.

As mentioned in this new post on the PHP Magazine website today, the United States Equestrian Federation has made a move on their site to an all PHP-based setup.

The United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) boasts almost 100,000 individual members, holds more than 2,700 member competitions, and has 100 affiliate organizations. All these records are managed in the USEF with PHP programming.

In the original press release it references, they also note that the Show-EZ system, which the horse entry section of the organization's site is based on, has only been around for a little while but has already proved itself invaluable. It even bosts the ability to be used via a Blackberry/Pocket PC/cellphone for the ultimate in mobility during shows.

In one of his latest posts, Marcus Whitney looks at the upcoming year and what the future holds for mobile applications - and where PHP might fit into it (with a little help from Flash Lite).

Since meeting with Jackson for lunch this week, I am definitely convnced that he is on to something when he says 2006 is going to be huge for mobile. Here's another challenge to the PHP community. Flash Lite is pretty cool. So.. I'm pretty excited by Flash Lite, and the announcement that Samsung phones will support it is good news for me and all the Sprint/Nextel/Embarq customers out there.

Any chance us PHP devs will be able to start writing robust mobile apps? Maybe working in tandem wiith the beauty of Flash on the front end?

It'd be interesting to see if this line of thought would lead to any major PHP/Flash applications. The possibility is definitely there with its ability to not only import data like XML, but pull in other resources as well...