David Goodwin has posted a new book review of a PHP book offered by Packt Publishing (released Sept 22, 2007) - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects" by Shu-Wai Chow.

Some time ago, Packt publishing sent me this book to review. Here it is, being somewhat overdue!

He talks about the book's contents - the different chapters detailing the different services' APIs, the protocols that are used to talk to those services and the data formats your scripts would have to be able to talk in to communicate. He recommends the book to those looking to get started with mashups specifically, but warns that in some places the book tends to "reinvent the wheel" rather than using classes/packages that already exist.

As mentioned in a new post to the CodeIgniter blog today, they've added several new features and enhancements to their (recently relaunched) website.

Besides other small enhancements, they've added to main features:

• a new bug tracking system to make reporting and managing bugs simpler
• the project page to help keep track of websites out there using the framework. If you are, submit yours to be included.

Be sure to check out all of the great content on the rest of the site too with great info like a user guide to help you get started, forums to find help, and even some video tutorials to make learning the framework even easier.

Company	Dutch Open Projects BV (DOP)
Location	Leusden, The Netherlands
Title	PHP Developer
Summary	As a PHP Developer you are working in a variety of self-steering Project teams. You will take an active part in developing, building and implementing custom built applications for a variety of customers and a diversity of products and services. Customer satisfaction is key in doing our business right the first time and we expect you to have the same mind setting. Within the application product range we offer for example websites, components and custom built (web based) applications. Also DOP makes use of a full suite of Open Source/Open Standards Software such as CRM, administrative/logistics tools and a full range of web shop applications. All with custom built front-end interfaces, databases en external connections as required. Finally maintenance and expanding of existing (ASP) applications is part of the job description. This is a position in our Leusden-based office. What are we looking for? Intellectual and working capacity on Bachelor level. Demonstrable by completed or nearly completed degree on Bachelor's level or acquired by traceable (self study/hobby/working) experience; You are able to showing some of your (self study/hobby/working) combined PHP/MySQL/(X)HTML/CSS projects; You are keen on the Open Source Community. Possibly you are already an active member of Open Source Communities?; Candidates with an understanding of one or more of the following techniques: Linux, Kubuntu, Subversion, AJAX, Joomla!, Symfony, PHP5, Zend Studio, Table-less lay-lout and Tux; Experience with PostgreSQL or Oracle is a plus; What do we offer? An informal working culture; Professional self-steering project teams; Development with Zend Studio; Possibility of acquiring your Zend (PHP5) certificate; Growth and guidance to becoming a genuine PHP Guru; Working in a forest environment with our own swimming pool; Remunerate according to knowledge and level of experience. Are you feeling appealed to working in this professional but informal Open Source/Open Standards Organization with a bunch of geek colleagues and interesting products? Please contact us. We will gladly have an appointment with you giving you the possibility to talk to your future team members.
Link	More Information

Paul Jones will be one of the presenters at this year's php/db|works Conference happening up in Toronto this week and he's offering a teaser of his talk (here's the synopsis) for those interested - "Organizing Your PHP Projects".

Fans of Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" will recognize the kind of talk I have in store, although I don't have the time available to expound in detail the way Hazlitt does. The talk will consist of a one-sentence lesson for you to remember when deciding how to organize your PHP project, whether it's a library, an application, a CMS, or a framework. I'll then explain how to apply the One Lesson in your project, and the various follow-on effects the One Lesson will have on your project organization.

He also jokes that he'll be the only presenter to use references to livestock, Jimmy Hoffa, and Mir as a part of the talk. He's even included a slide of the presentation for even more info.

Jan Schneider has a new blog post today concerning the acceptance of three projects (based on the Horde Project) into the Google "Summer of Code" program for this year.

3 student applications for projects in the Horde Project have been accepted by Google's Summer of Code 2006 program: an LDAP browser/manager, a Live CD, and "Wandering Books".

Here's some of the details:

• Jonathan Burchfield's LDAP module for the Horde Application Framework to include full read/write functionality when completed
• Soumyadip Modak's development of a Horde bootable Live CD with a complete install of all Groupware modules Horde.
• Luciano Ramalho's "Wandering Books" application to allow anyone to turn their own library into a lending library quickly and easily.

From the O'Reilly ONLamp.com site today, there's a release about the SourceForge.net 2006 Community Choice Awards winners , and two PHP-based projects have made the list.

From March 15th through the 17th, users within Sourceforge.net were able to nominate projects. From these initial nominations, the finalists were chosen and these choices were made available to the community for voting. The finalists included a range of Open Source solutions ranging from CRM and firewall solutions to anti-virus and Xbox Media Center innovations.

Final voting was conducted March 17 - 23, 2006, and the project winners were selected by voting within 13 key technology categories, plus "Best Overall" project. Nominations and voting were managed by the third-party research firm, Wilson Research.

The PHP projects that made the cut were:

• phpMyAdmin in the "Database Project" and "SysAdmin Project" categories
• A PHP PayPal API in the "Financial Project" section

Referencing back to a previous post they made about the Scrum development method, the ThinkPHP blog has posted a HOWTO of sorts on getting this kind of development started.

In my previous blog post, I was asked how to implement Scrum in the first steps. My personal experience is that it's better not to directly begin with all the methods Scrum provides. Scrum requires changes in your internal business processes, so it's better to move ahead step by step instead of trying to get everything done until tomorrow (you see, incremental steps.

The main obstacles we experienced is in projects where you have moving targets - requirement changes every day. It requires a very good shape of discipline of all stakeholders in the project. See how we started...

He describes each step of the way, beginning with a meeting for the first sprint followed by a short sprint time - 5 days. They even mention a PHP app they've worked up to help track and manage this kind of development - a module for their PHProjekt software, the Scrum Addon.