Ariz Jacinto has pointed out some results from a recent benchmarking "game" that compares the performance of several languages against each other in overall speed.

Here's the link to the Computer Language Benchmark Game as of July 15, 2012. You'll see that the median speed of PHP is slightly faster than Python 3 and Ruby 1.9 on x64 Ubuntu/IntelQ6600 Quad-core machine.

You can visit the results page and turn on and off various languages to get the updated results in the chart. You can also limit it down to one of the many benchmarking test types as well.

Lorna Mitchell has a tip for those using the Google Charts API to plot the data from their applications - a simple way to add multiple axis labels to the chart's output.

The axes in Google Charts are a bit interesting, because what they display bears absolutely no resemblance to what data is there - you label the axes separately, even if they are numbers. To label multiple things - in this example a scale and some units, you simply specify the axis more than once.

In her example it creates a bar graph that puts the values for "chxr" and "chxl" on the axis. The Google Charts API can be used to generate other sorts of dynamic graphs too including the traditional pie, line or scatter charts. It can also create things like QR codes and formula images, all on the fly.

On the RIA Zone today Ryan Stweart has posted a new tutorial about using Flex and PHP to chart out some data pulled from a backend database with just a hint of animation on load.

Creating charts and data visualization is one of the areas where Adobe Flash shines. The combination of a very powerful drawing API that makes it easy to generate artwork and the interactivity means that Flash is ideally suited for integrating data visualizations. It used to be that you'd have to be very familiar with Flash and scripting to work with charting. [...] You use a combination of XML-markup and scripting to create [Flex] applications. Further, you can use CSS syntax to customize the look and feel of the charts. Flex makes it straightforward to add interactive charts to web applications.

The tutorial walks you through the creation of the Flex project (you'll need Flash Builder 4 to follow along), creating and pulling in the data from a PHP-based service call, binding the data to the chart object and a few tips on how to modify the HTML output to use teh Flex/Ajax bridge. Animating the resulting chart is as simple as adding two new tags to the Flex definition.

On the Sony AK Knowledge Center there's a new tutorial showing how to use FusionCharts (Free) to create a real-time charts with no page refresh. FusionCharts is an open source Flash charting component for desktop and web apps.

We will create realtime chart data update that reflect to price fluctuation. There is a line type chart to visualize the price fluctuation. The data of price fluctuation will be fetched from database every 5 seconds using Ajax call and then display the latest 5 (five) data to the chart without any page refresh.

Using FusionCharts and Prototype, they show how to pull information out of a backend MySQL database into a basic graph (HTML and Javascript provided) with a periodic update that grabs the latest from the backend PHP script and pushes it to the graph. You can see an example of the graph here.

Developer.com has posted the latest part in their series on using the Google Maps API. This time they focus on something a bit more complex - working with more than one point and creating complex routes between them.

This installment tackles another fascinating aspect you'll undoubtedly encounter when building location-based solutions, namely distance calculation. Whether you want to simply plot the distance separating two points on the map, or perform more complex operations involving measuring the total distance spanning a more complex route, understanding how to perform these sorts of calculations will prove invaluable time and again.

The tutorial gives you example screenshots and complete code to calculate the distance between two points and, based on plots of a few different points, how to determine the distance traveled. His example is of a running route around a park.

NETTUTS.com has posted a list of nine libraries you can use to quickly and easily add functionality to your web application.

A lot of functionality is shared among applications - like sending emails or preventing spam. In the spirit of reusing the wheel instead of reinventing it, here are nine free web libraries that you can use in your next program which will dramatically increase your efficiency.

Here's their list:

• ReCAPTCHA
• Akismet
• Services_JSON
• Smarty
• pChart
• SimplePie
• XML-RPC PHP Library
• Amazon S3
• PHPMailer

Screenshots (and code examples) are provided for several of the items as well as links to their website and documentation pages.

Vinu Thomas points out a nice looking PHP charting library on his blog today - pChart.

Looking for some good looking graphs without having to pay for a library or resort to Flash graphs? Try creating your own using pChart. pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. This project focuses on allowing developers to generate great looking graphs by increasing rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm.

It uses GD to create the graphs, so just about any PHP distribution out there will support it (if you're not sure, make a phpinfo() page to check out your setup). There's even some example graphs so you can get an idea of what some of the end results could be.

In a recent blog post Zoe Slattery took a look at opcodes in PHP, specifically related to performance increases.

After one particularly frustrating day [looking at how the Zend engine works] I asked a colleague (Andy Wharmby) about the issue I was looking at. Then a miracle happened - he'd not only looked at it but had documented it (and many other things) in a set of charts.

She has linked to the charts (Open Office format) for the results of some tests her friend had already run. They're a bit out of date and some parts might be inaccurate, but they're still a good start.

The Zend Developer Zone has a new tutorial posted today (from Vikram Vaswani) that focuses on making charts and graphs with the help of the GDChart extension for PHP.

This extension, which is freely available from PECL, can significantly reduce the amount of work involved in dynamically generating graphical representations of numerical data at run-time. Over the next few pages, I'll introduce you to this extension, illustrating its important features and showing you just how easy it is to get your Friday evening back.

The tutorial shows how to get and install the extension as well as including a few usage examples - a simple charting of values (with the different chart types defined), comparing more than one set of data, changing the aesthetics of the output and a detailed look at a few of the chart types' output.

Jack Herrington has posted a new tutorial to the Zend Developer Zone today showing how to combine PHP, your database of choice and Flex to create a dashboard in your application.

Let's face it: Interactive graphs and dashboards have never been easy to put together on the web. Sure, there are graphing libraries out there for PHP, but to get something that looks really good and that a user can play with has been tough. Or at least, it was yesterday.

He shows how to create a simple Flex application that takes in XML data (from whatever backend, he uses a PHP script that uses DOM) and displays the information - his sample traffic data - as a graph. This graph is an extension of the Elixir library from ILOG and makes dropping information into graphs and charts simple.

Screenshots of the Flex side of things and code for the PHP side are both provided.