The Run Geek Radio podcast has posted their latest episode today. In it (episode #5) host Adam Culp talks about time estimation, thoughts on conference talk ratings and the contest winner from his standing desk contest mentioned in an earlier episode.

This episode Adam Culp announces the winner, David Stockton (Colorado), of the contest launched in Run Geek Radio episode 004. [...] Adam also talks briefly to clarify his views on “soft talks” versus “soft skills talks”, and how he was misrepresented as disliking soft skills talks though the opposite is true. [...] Then this episode is rounded out with a detailed coverage of time estimation in relation to projects, and why it is so vitally important to be accurate. Adam also speaks about how important proper requirements gathering is to the process.

You can either use the in-page audio player to listen to this latest episode or you can download the mp3 of the show. Be sure to subscribe to the feed if you enjoy the show and want to hear more from Adam.

There's a new post on 7PHP.com talking about a new giveaway they're doing in collaboration with the Nomad PHP (virtual) user group and giving away two tickets for the upcoming meeting.

NomadPHP is already on their 3rd edition and I’m hence also on my 3rd Ticket(s) give-away. [...] The topic of this 3rd talk will be centered around PHP and Websockets and will be presented by speaker Corey Ballou.

There's two ways to enter into the contest - either subscribe to their mailing list or Tweet about it (with the given tweet). The contest ends July 21st, so hurry and enter if you're interested. The Nomad PHP user group is "a (virtual) place to call home" if you don't have a user group in your area. It meets online once a month.

On PHPMaster.com today there's a new article posted that has a review of PHPStorm, an IDE from JetBrains that focuses on providing a great experience for PHP developers and tons of features.

It's said the tool doesn't make the craft - a carpenter can drive a nail into a wooden plank using a hammer, a rock, another plank, or his forehead, but he'll rarely choose anything other than the hammer. [...] I'm talking about using a text editor versus using a full-fledged PHP-dedicated project-oriented IDE for PHP application development. Both will get the job done, but productivity-wise, one is obviously a better choice than the other.

Bruno Skvorc goes through a brief summary of what the editor is about and talks about some of the more notable features including:

• Being built on Java (good and bad)
• The IDE being strictly project-oriented
• Supports the latest PHP version, including 5.4
• Smart refactoring
• Good intellisense support

He also mentions the plugin architecture that's included with the product and a few of the more handy plugins available. They're also running a giveaway in collaboration with the PHPStorm folks and are giving out IDE licenses and copies of SitePoint's "PHPMaster: Create Cutting Edge Code" book (rules are included in the article).

On Zend's DevZone site there's a new post about the Call for Creativity for this year's ZendCon PHP conference:

If you, or someone you know with connections to the developer community at large, have something to show, we would love to hear so we can showcase at this year’s ZendCon. We are looking for music, digital artwork or video media submissions (including fun videos) which will be played or displayed at various places around the conference, with attribution, of course. Physical media submissions are also welcome though we will be limiting that to local artists.

They include some of the guidelines for submitting your work (with an obvious preference on digital media) including the formatting and what sort of topics it should be relevant to. Prizes will be offered to the winners - a spotlight in a ZendCon newsletter and press releases as well as exposure via each category on Zend's social media properties.

If you'd like to send in your submission, you can use the form on this page and link to the media you've created.

On the Ibuildings techPortal there's a new post for people out there wanting to attend this year's Dutch PHP Conference but find the ticket price a problem - they're running a contest to give away one ticket for this year's event!

Good news! We've managed to acquire a conference ticket for the Dutch PHP Conference in Amsterdam, on June 8th and 9th, to give away to our readers. We know that since you're reading techPortal, you are interested in technology in general and probably PHP in particular. The Dutch PHP Conference is one of the leading european conferences for PHP content and we hope you can join us there!

The ticket to this year's Conference also includes admittance into the Dutch Mobile Conference if you're interested in that as well. You can find out more about the Dutch PHP Conference on the main event site.

php|architect has announced a new contest they'll be hosting (a scavenger hunt, really) and are giving away a ticket to this year's php|tek conference happening in May in Chicago.

Ok PHP fans, we don’t do this often, but once a year we do give away a ticket to php|tek to one lucky programmer. This year, however, you are going to have to work for it. Starting Friday, April 13th, 2012, those of us who work at php|architect will tweet clues, and you are going on a web scavenger hunt. That’s right, dig up other people’s websites, trash their JavaScript and generally make a nuisance of yourself as you follow the clues to the…well, you’ll just have to wait and see.

You'll need to follow the php|architect folks on Twiiter (Elizabeth Tucker, Marco Tabini and Cal Evans) to get clues about the hunt. First prize is a ticket to php|tek this year but other prizes include a ticket to their next Virtual Summit, any three books from their catalog and a free one-year subscription to the magazine.

Once you've found the solution, you'll need to enter it here to be entered. Good luck!

The jsDay/phpDay organizers have announced a contest to win a free ticket to this year's event(s), one for each conference:

GrUSP is organising a tweet contest and its prizes will be two tickets, one for each conference. The contest will start today (March 29th) at 1pm CEST and will end April 1st at 7pm CEST.

Anyone can enter - all you have to do is tweet a post with a few things: the "#grsup" hashtag, a mention of the twitter accounts for the events, a link to the conference site and something about the event. Be sure and get those tweets posted before April 1st a 9am CEST - they'll pick the winners soon after! (Oh and multiple entries are accepted so the more you tweet, the better your chances!)

The folks over at Pusher (the real-time push notification service) have announced a contest they're holding for developers (not just PHP either) to enter for a shot at a MacBook Air and a ticket to the Keeping it Realtime Conference - the "Pusher Challenge".

We believe you can massively improve the user experience and engagement of your existing applications by making them realtime. Pusher lets you do that quickly and simply with our hosted API. In the Pusher challenge, we want to see the innovative ways you can turbo-charge your apps with a sprinkling of Pusher magic.

Pusher uses Websockets to handle the notifications. You can sign up for a developer account to get the development ball rolling but the deadline is midnight (GMT) on October 16th (just five days away!) so dive in and get realtime quickly for your chance to win!

Recently Microsoft sponsored a contest where the entries were PHP applications built on the Windows Azure platform. Brian Swan has posted an interview with Ben Waine, the latest winner of the contest who created an application called the "Twitter Sentiment Engine" that analyzes the sentiment towards various search terms on Twitter.

I recently had a chance to catch up via e-mail with Ben Waine, winner of the 2011 PHP on Azure contest. [...] I only followed the contest from a distance while it was happening, but after hearing that Ben had won the contest (I had the good fortune of meeting Ben in person at the 2010 Dutch PHP Conference) and after reading a bayesian filter he developed to help filter out some of the twitter spam.

The Ibuildings techPortal has announced a contest today where they're giving away a free pass to this year's Dutch PHP Conference.

I’m wildly excited to announce that we have a ticket to give away for the Dutch PHP Conference 2011!! The conference is entirely English-language (although you will hear many languages spoken in the hallways!), and takes place in Amsterdam between 19th and 21st May 2011. The schedule is online now, and it promises three days of really excellent technical content from some of the leaders of the PHP Community from Europe and beyond. The tickets are on sale already; bookmark this link in case you don’t win the ticket.

Entering the contest is simple - just leave a comment on the post with an email address and the winner will be picked from the group. You'll have to leave a comment before March 18th, though or it won't count towards the contest!