Joshua Thijssen has a new post to his blog looking at taking a common unix tool - traceroute - and seeing if he could translate it into PHP where it could be called directly without the need for something like exec.

Today i was reading upon this wonderful article about writing a trace-route program in Python in 40 lines. Even though trace-route is one of the many tools i use on day to day basis, i never really got into writing a version myself (something I like to do just to gain knowledge how things works). So when I was reading this post, i thought, Python is nice, but is it possible to do it in PHP as well? The answer to that: yes and no..

His post introduces you to "traceroute" (including a bit on how it works) in case you're either not a unix user or haven't gone much past some of the basics of the operating system type. One issues he butted up against was problems with the socket extension in PHP and inconsistencies with the underlying connection types. Another is the limitation of the tool only working as the root superuser. He includes the actual code and some sample output if you'd like to try it for yourself.

Zend recently introduced an affiliate program targeted at local user groups all around the world to allow them to get discounts on Zend products and services. Unfortunately, the program has met with some mixed reviews and Giorgio Sironi touches on just a few.

The program is intended to benefit all the parties involved; primarily, Zend gets a showcase for its products in an environment of dedicated PHP programmers like the ones in PHP user groups. In exchange, the group members obtain a discount on their purchases via a group-specific coupon code.

Some user groups are seeing it as a good thing, a way to provide the things Zend has to offer (software, training...anything on the Zend store really) for a discounted price. Others, however, see it has an unwelcome way Zend has tried to worm their way into local groups.

According to a new post to their blog, the PHPWomen group has announced a partnership program for projects that want to put out a message of encouraging diversity in contributors:

As quoted from the information page about the partnerships:

PHPWomen has launched a partnership program for open source projects that are committed to embracing diversity and providing a welcoming and friendly atmosphere for contributors. We work closely with project leaders to identify specific areas of need, and will actively encourage our members to participate by promoting those needs through various channels. In return, the project leaders will ensure that newcomers to their projects will be welcomed and their contributions appreciated. This includes fostering an open and friendly environment for all newcomers, not just females.

The goal of the project is to encourage inviting environments for open source projects where developers feel like they're given a chance to contribute equally and to provide something more specific than "here's a project that needs help - go for it".

There's already several projects that are on the list including Spaz and the PHP Documentation team. You can find out more specifics on what they're looking for in contributions on the Opportunities page.

If you haven't heard about the Charter Tickets available for this year's TekX conference you only have a little bit of time to pick one up yourself - until January 6th! If you want to find out a bit more about why these special tickets were offered, check out this new post to Marco Tabini's blog (of php|architect) with some of their thoughts.

It pos­si­ble to pur­chase a full - ex­pe­ri­ence TEK·X tick­et'"valid for both the main con­fer­ence and tu­to­ri­al day - for $650. The catch (if you want to call it that) is that the spe­cial is only valid until we an­nounce the sched­ule. [...] The rea­son­ing be­hing the Char­ter Pro­gram is very sim­ple: we rec­og­nize that there is a core of at­ten­dees for whom our con­fer­ences have be­come an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet up with their peers and learn what's hap­pen­ing in the PHP world.

This Charter Program was created just for those people, the ones that are there regardless of what the conference itself has to offer but are confident that they'll be in for a good even no matter what. For them it's not just about the sessions, it's about the people they'll meet and friends they'll see again.

DevShed has posted the second part of their series looking at an IP-to-Country mapping application, this time with a focus on building some simple applications to use the data inside.

Building a web site that will be seated on a multi-lingual platform often requires developing an IP-to-country application that permits you to map users' IP addresses to their corresponding countries. [...] This database contains over 82,0000 records and allows you to map more than 3,200,000 IP addresses to their respective countries. This can be really handy for developing different IP-to-country applications with minor efforts.

The review the previous article on making the database and move ahead to create a script that selects - based off the IP range - the country that address could be from.

Following up from a previous post of his that got lots of great feedback, Joshua Eichorn has posted his own thanks, not only for the responses to his own thoughts but to the PEAR community as a whole.

You'll be happy to know that were already working on many of your suggestions, Greg's post on the subject has some more details. I'll be sharing everyones comments with the rest of the PEAR group at our meeting on the 13th, so if anyone has a suggestion they haven't submitted yet thats your deadline.

The thing he's most excited about is the new mentoring program that will introduce new developers to the PEAR-ality of it all and get them involved with both the coding and the community.

DevShed continues their look at the creation of a PHP email program (as excerpted from the "Zend PHP Certification Study Guide") with this new tutorial focusing on the management of the emails themselves.

In this second part of a two-part article, you'll learn how to manage email headers when creating a PHP email program, attach a file to a message, and more.

In this part they cover some of the details about the structure of emails, how to add an attachment to an email (for both a normal file and images for an HTML email), as well as a mention of how email is delivered.

In this new post on Zak Greant's blog, he takes a look at some comments made about the eZ partner program he helped to develop and his responses to clear up some issues.

In a blog post yesterday, CMS expert and Optarian Seth Gottlieb wonders about the eZ partner program.

Gottlieb made comments about it seeming to be a good system, but not quite understanding how it would work when applied. Zak comes back with comments on the reasoning behind the program, how it works to benefit the partner, and how they see those partners, both in giving credit and their involvement with the projects.

For more information on the eZ partner program, check out this page on the eZ website.

As PHP Magazine notes, the schedule for this year's International PHP Conference is now available on their site.

The program for the annual International PHP Conference, scheduled to take place in Frankfurt, Germany from November 5 to 8, has been announced. The conference is divided into 'Power Workshop Days', 'Management Day' and two main conference days replete with technical sessions that will equip you with information on technology that you will need for your daily work.

Topics of some of the workshops at this year's conference include a look at MySQL 5.1 in depth, taking your first steps in PHP, and a look at PHP security. There are tons of other sessions in lots of different categories including: "General PHP", "PHP & Databases", "PHP Extensions", and "PHP-GTK". Several well-known speakers will be presenting such as Christopher Kunz, Derick Rethans, Tobias Schlitt and many more.

For complete information on the conference and to register yourself, head over to phpconference.com.

The program for this year's ApacheCon Europe has been published (as linked from on DynamicWebPages.de).

The conference will be from June 26th through the 30th in Dublin, Ireland. Registering before May 29th will get you an early bird discount of about 50-60 Euro. After that, prices start at 680 Euro and go up. You can get complete details on the conference and signup online at their site.