On the NETTUTS website today there's a new tutorial about mashups - specifically showing how to create a sample one by combining three services: Google Maps, the IPloc service and the Beer Mapping Project.

This tutorial will show you how to create a mashup of three different APIs including integration with Google Maps. This idea came about when I was searching through ProgrammableWeb's API directory for a couple APIs that complimented each other enough that I could use one to provide the other with data. What I came up with will be known as the "Beer Mashup".

They include links to scripts to interface easily with the APIs and the sample code you'll need to query against them. They wrap it up with the HTML for the output page (a map showing "beer hot spots" near your area) and the download of the source and demo to give an example of how it should look.

Sean Coates has posted a new article today about one of the features that will be included in the next major release of PHP (5.3) - late static bindings.

Late Static Binding (LSB) is a topic that's been brought up numerous times in the past three years in various PHP development discussion circles (and we're finally getting it in PHP 5.3)—but what does it really do, and why should you care? Here's a simple practical example of how it can greatly simplify your code's design.

He shows its usefulness in an example of how it works, letting classes/objects access static methods, constants and properties of inherited classes (besides their own). His example (using beer, of course) shows how an extended class (Ale) can reference the constant (NAME) in the parent class (Beer). Thanks to a new keyword in PHP 5.3 - "static::" - helps define the difference even clearer.

Check out the rest of the article for a more practical usage too.

Going to the php|works conference and in the middle of a job search? Keep an eye out for Clay Loveless then - he and his company, Mashery, are looking for a few good developers and have a tempting offer as an incentive:

The company I had pleasure of co-founding last summer is once again on the prowl for top-notch, Zend Certified PHP developers. We're taking the hunt for these folks to php|works in Atlanta. Whenever possible, Mashery will be luring the quality developers with free beer. That's right: free beer that is free, as in beer.

They're also having a drawing for an 8GB iPod Touch for anyone that can prove they have recently taken the Zend Certification Exam.

Company description:
Mashery is the leading provider of web services and API management solutions enabling software-driven companies to unlock and accelerate their web services channel. With its on-demand, fully hosted solution, Mashery takes away the cumbersome process and plumbing around managing web services. Mashery provides all the ingredients required to get web services up-and-running quickly, easily and successfully while ensuring that they will scale: usage/access management, tracking, metrics, commerce, performance optimization and developer/community tools all come pre-packaged. Mashery enables web services providers to focus their time, resources and capital on building their core software, not on creating web services management infrastructure.

Going to the php|works conference and in the middle of a job search? Keep an eye out for Clay Loveless then - he and his company, Mashery, are looking for a few good developers and have a tempting offer as an incentive:

The company I had pleasure of co-founding last summer is once again on the prowl for top-notch, Zend Certified PHP developers. We're taking the hunt for these folks to php|works in Atlanta. Whenever possible, Mashery will be luring the quality developers with free beer. That's right: free beer that is free, as in beer.

They're also having a drawing for an 8GB iPod Touch for anyone that can prove they have recently taken the Zend Certification Exam.

Company description:
Mashery is the leading provider of web services and API management solutions enabling software-driven companies to unlock and accelerate their web services channel. With its on-demand, fully hosted solution, Mashery takes away the cumbersome process and plumbing around managing web services. Mashery provides all the ingredients required to get web services up-and-running quickly, easily and successfully while ensuring that they will scale: usage/access management, tracking, metrics, commerce, performance optimization and developer/community tools all come pre-packaged. Mashery enables web services providers to focus their time, resources and capital on building their core software, not on creating web services management infrastructure.