The PHP.net site has posted the release announcement for the latest PHP version in the PHP 5.3.x series - 5.3.2:

The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.3.2. This is a maintenance release in the 5.3 series, which includes a large number of bug fixes. [...] For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.

Security/bug fixes included in this release take care of things like:

• Safe_mode validation inside tempnam
• A possible open_basedir/safe_mode bypass in sessions
• Added support for SHA-256 and SHA-512 to php's crypt.
• Fixed a bug in the garbage collector that could cause a crash
• Crashing when using ldap_next_reference

For more information on the release and what was fixed see the Changelog. You can download this release immediately - source code or Windows package.

As mentioned in this new post by Alexander Veremyev to the Zend Developer Zone, the first Russian Zend Framework conference has been announced - ZFConf 2010.

I am happy to announce the 1st Russian Zend Framework Conference (ZFConf 2010) which will take place in Saint-Petersburg, Russia at the end of March. An initial list of topics has been decided and the conference is open for registration. I am glad to participate in the event along with other speakers, some of which are acknowledged specialists and have a wide experience in using Zend Framework. The official language of the conference is Russian.

Topics include Zend_Search_Lucene, message queues, internationalization and a look at what Zend Framework 2.0 has to offer.

You can get more details on the conference from their main website or find out more of the specifics of registering. (Note: as of the time of this post, most of their site hasn't been translated to English, save the topics list.)

Two conferences, TekX and ConFoo both released their schedules yesterday to an eagerly awaiting public.

The TekX schedule includes fourty-two talks with two keynotes and includes topics ranging from the Zend Framework, PHP best practices, version control systems (git and svn), RIA topics and code security and testing.

The ConFoo schedule includes similar topics but a wider range of sessions with other subjects like Java, Project Management, System administration, SEO, Ruby and Python.

There's still plenty of time to sign up for both, so if you'd like to register for TekX, visit their signup page and if you'd like to get in on ConFoo, you can register here.

The Zend Developer Zone has officially announced this month's "Bug Hunt Days" for the Zend Framework - November 19th and 20th.

This upcoming Thursday and Friday, 19-20 November 2009, Zend Framework will host its third monthly bug hunt. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, each month, we organize the community to help reduce the number of open issues reported against the framework. Past events have netted around 100 issue closures over each two-day period -- and we want to continue the momentum.

The person that resolved the most bugs will receive a Zend Framework t-shirt and will be mentioned in a future Zend Developer Zone post with the results. To participate, you'll need to have a CLA on file and have some time to put in on Thursday and Friday to help squash those bugs. You can get involved on the #zftalk.dev IRC channel on Freenode.

As mentioned in this official release on their site, the Appcelerator project has officially launched PHP support for their product as an extension.

Appcelerator®, the leading platform for rapidly developing mobile, desktop, and web applications with web technologies, announced its support for building desktop and netbook applications with PHP. Developers can now use PHP, JavaScript, Python, or Ruby to quickly build native PC, Macintosh, or Linux applications with the web skills they use today. [...] Seeing the opportunity for desktop and netbook app development, Titanium community member, Zend Certified Engineer, and software architect Ben Ramsey decided to lead the charge for integrating PHP, with Titanium.

You can grab the latest version of Appcelerator from their website and get coding right away. If you'd like to see some examples to get you started, check out this category on Ben's blog for helpful tips to get started.

php|architect has officially announced some of the speakers that will be joining the CodeWorks 2009 tour this fall. Here's the list so far:

• Derick Rethans will be speaking on date/time, XDebug and development processes
• Sebastian Bergmann will be speaking on unit testing, quality assurance and best practices
• Ed Finkler will be speaking on creating RIA desktop applications (PHP and Javascript) and introducing CodeIgniter
• Cal Evans will be speaking on design patterns and skills/problems PHP programmers could face
• Lukas Smith will be talking about database-driven websites
• John Coggeshall is talking on two topics - android development in PHP and the Flex/PHP combination.
• Arne Blankerts will be a part of the code review tutorial and PHP security
• Scott MacVicar will be speaking about alternative databases, pecl and getting involved with PHP.
• Ben Ramsey will talk on AtomPub and HTTP
• Nate Abele will be speaking on PHP in general, frameworks and best practices
• Matthew Weier O'Phinney will speak on the Zend Framework

Keep an eye on this post for more of the nationwide speakers as they're announced!

For those in the Manchester, UK area (or really anyone willing to travel up there for a day), you'll be happy to know that the schedule has been set for this year's PHP North West conference - October 10th!

PHPNW is a 1 day conference, to be held on October 10th 2009, for developers, designers, managers or anyone else with an interest in the PHP programming language. The conference will have a range of well known as well as more local speakers and aims to highlight current best practice and emerging topics within the sphere of PHP and web development.

The website hasn't been updated for this year's conference yet, but you can find out more information on what last year's event was like on this website.

As announced on PHP.net - the latest release candidate in the PHP 5.3 series has been made available for download - PHP 5.3.0RC1.

The PHP development team is proud to announce the availability of the first release candidate of PHP 5.3.0 (PHP 5.3.0RC1). This release marks the final phase in a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features, bug fixes and security enhancements.

Key features of this new release include: namespaces, late static binding, better garbage collection, mysqlnd driver support, new bundled extensions (like phar, intl, fileinfo and sqlite3) as well as many, many bug fixes. You can find out more about all of the changes in this version, check out the NEWS file and can download the release candidate from the QA site here.

The DC PHP Conference has announced their Call for Papers for this year's conference (being held June 1st and 2nd):

In its fourth year, the DC PHP Conference will bring together PHP practitioners, business managers, and government officials from around the world for two days of exceptional presentations and outstanding networking events. The DC PHP Conference returns to George Washington University, Washington, DC, June 1 & 2, 2009, and promises to be the biggest DC PHP Conference yet!

The Call for Papers will close April 1st, so be sure to get your submission in quickly! They give a list of some of the "areas of interest" you might look into when proposing the talk including best practices, the "art of PHP", PHP in the Enterprise and general Open Source topics.

You can submit your idea here.

The PHP Women have announced the winner of their "I am..." competition - an entry coming from a user of their forums going by the name Rowd.

We're delighted to announce the winner of our "I am" competition. Entrants were asked to complete the sentence "I am a PHPWoman because..." Rowd wins a $50 gift certificate to spend over at php|architect - if you want to read the other entries then check out the competition thread in the forums.

So what was Rowd's entry? Short and sweet: "I am a PHPWomen member because...I enjoy coding in PHP and discussions with people who know what being a woman in IT means."