In this new post to his blog Brandon Savage mentions his book, the PHP Playbook (php|architect), and how he's giving away several free copies.

When I started writing my book, I wanted to help PHP developers have a greater understanding of the tools, tips and tricks available when working as part of a team. That goal became The PHP Playbook. I'm excited that the book has been so well received, and I'm excited that I've finally received my promotional copies. So, in honor of that, I'm going to give some of them away! I'm even going to sign them!

Just enter in your email address and you'll be put on a mailing list for the book and its future updates. Here's the official description of the book:

Working with a team of developers is a much different environment than solo development. Experienced developers understand the tools and tricks that go into team development enterprises, and they implement them on a daily basis. The PHP Playbook covers these tools and practices, providing insight into the process of developing PHP applications, teaching developers the skills they need to be successful in a team environment.

As mentioned in this new post from the php|architect site, the voting for their 2012 Impact Awards has begun!

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 categories for this year's event are "Up & Coming", "Best Cloud Platform" and "Best PHP Application Platform". Nominees across all of the categories include Joind.in, PintLabs, AppFog, Pagoda Box Drupal 7 and SugarCRM. If you're a subscriber, get in there and vote for your favorites!

php|architect has officially announced the speaker line up for what they call their "Cloud Summit", a day-long event happening at the end of November about cloud computing - what it is and how you and your PHP applications can take advantage of it.

Tired of hearing about the ever-so... nebulous "Cloud" and what vendors say it will do for humankind? Yeah, us too. So, why won't it just go away? We found some folks who have used the cloud successfully to strike it big and asked them to show us why it made such a big difference to them. We were surprised, and now we're going to share it with you.

The event is virtual, so you can attend no matter where you are. The cost is $50 USD for a single ticket, $24 USD for php|architect subscribers and $100 USD for an "office party". Speakers for the event include Sean Coates (of Gimmie Bar), Kirsten Jones & Jeremy Johnstone and Marcus Whitney. You can find out more information and register for your ticket on the php|architect site.

php|architect has officially announced their CodeWorks '11 conference with stops in ten cities including Austin, Baltimore, Orlando, Portland and San Francisco.

CodeWorks '11 is a one day, single-track conference created specifically for PHP developers. Join us and developers from around your area for a full day of learning and networking as php|architect continues the tradition of bringing the conference experience to you. No airport security lines, no bad hotel food and you get to sleep in your own bed. See seven speakers present brand new presentations on topics they are passionate about. Learn from and talk to all seven speakers. This is your opportunity to get together with other PHP developers, talk shop, swap war stories, and take home a spark of inspiration.

They've split up the tour this year into a West Coast and East Coast tours they've posted preliminary schedules for each stop with speakers like Beth Tucker-Long, Cal Evans, Marco Tabini and Keith Casey. Tickets are $60 USD and you can pick them up right now on the CodeWorks page for your city of choice.

Michelangelo van Dam has posted a book review of one of the latest offerings from the php|architect presses, Ivo Jansch and Vito Chin's "PHP Development in the Cloud".

A couple of weeks ago, my dear friend Cal Evans asked me to review the book "PHP Development in the Cloud" written by "Ivo Jansch" and "Vito Chin". I accepted as I was very interesting in exploring more of the cloudy world I just found myself in the middle of. Another reason was that both authors were fellow co-workers at Ibuildings back in the day. I promised this would be an objective review seen through the eyes of a developer just started exploring the mystifying world of cloud solutions.

He briefly covers the focus of the book and how it makes the distinctions between platform types (PaaS, Sass, etc) to help clear a few things up. He liked that the book was written and organized well, but noted that some of the examples provided were hard to get working on the different platforms. He wished there was some sort of disclaimer that came with it that there'd be a learning curve on the examples that might require some additional work outside of the example to get started.

Vito Chin has posted a quick mention of the book that he and Ivo Jansch wrote together about cloud computing and how PHP fits into the picture - PHP Development in the Cloud.

I had a conversation with Ivo at the Claddagh Ring of Hendon and we'd decided to write this book together. We wanted to clarify where cloud computing will intersect with the internet & the WWW; and parts of it that makes having a different term to describe the cloud necessary. We do so from a PHP perspective because it is the language for the web that we like the most.

Here's the book's summary:

Most developers gloss over when they hear "the cloud" as the term has been appropriated by marketing types and has very little true meaning anymore. In this book, Vito and Ivo strip bare the buzzwords and help PHP developers figure out what the cloud is actually about and how they can take advantage of what cloud computing has to offer. After reading this book, you will not only have a clear picture of what cloud computing is, but you'll also be able to utilize the various cloud services that are out there.

php|architect, the people behind the php|tek confernece, have announced a new training event they're holding in Austin to help you hone your OOP skills in a day-long class.

On Tuesday we launched a new initiative called php|architect Live! - a full-day, in-person training course that gives you practical and in-depth knowledge of a specific topic. But there is more: we don't want our Live! events to be "just training courses." We want them to be intimate learning experiences.

As mentioned, their first event happens in Austin on April 20th and will be taught by Keith Casey. The number of seats is limited (20) so if you're interested, check out the tickets page for a more detailed explanation of the class and to get your tickets ($250 USD).

In a recent post to the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans points out some webinar recordings that have been made available by Zend as a part of their webcasts series.

There are a lot of webinars out there begging for developers to participate. Many contain quality content that is useful to developers; others, not so much. As a company who builds tools for developers, most assume Zend's webinars are nothing more than ads for their products; this is why we don't assume things. In reality, about 1/2 of their webcasts feature prominent members of the PHP community talking about open source tools that developers will find interesting. Here are a few of the recent ones.

Some of the topics that were presented include using PHP 5.3 namespaces, new SPL features in 5.3, unit testing in the Zend Framework and the powerful combination of the Zend Framework and Doctrine. You can find these recordings on Zend's Recorded Webinars page.

Cal also points out some other webinar recordings from php|architect as a part of their webcast series leading up to this year's php|tek conference.

As a part of the sponsorship they're providing to this year's event, php|architect will be providing one-year subscriptions to the magazine to all Dutch PHP Conference attendees at this year's event.

We're back with more good news! Our friends at php|architect are sponsoring the Dutch PHP Conference 2011 with a sweet deal: they're offering every attendee a free, one-year subscription to their awesome php|architect magazine! In case you're not familiar with it, php|architect is a monthly magazine (pdf, epub and mobi version available) that features articles, columns and more awesomeness on PHP.

If you haven't already gotten your tickets, now is the perfect time - you can get a full conference pass for 595 Euro or either a tutorial-only/conference-only pass for 325 Euro.

On php|architect.com today they've posted the recording of one of their webcast series leading to up the tek11 conference from Chris Kite and Josh Butts about Phactory.

Phactory is an alternative to using database fixtures in your PHP unit tests. Instead of maintaining a separate XML file of data, you define a blueprint for each table and then create as many different objects as you need in your PHP code. By using a database factory instead of fixtures, your unit tests will be more clear and easier to write. You'll also be able to change the objects you create programmatically instead of being stuck with the same old fixtures.

You can watch the video (with slides for the presentation) either through the in-page player or by downloading the file itself.