On PHPBuilder.com there's a new tutorial showing how to use the Dice dependency injection container to manage dependencies in your application.

Dice is a Dependency Injection Container for PHP. It allows you to very quickly and simply use Dependency Injection techniques in your code with very minimal effort on your end.

The article talks some about the features of the Dice DIC and shares a simple introduction to its use in a more practical example. It uses constructor injection and type hinting to automatically handle the injections based on its current set of object references.

With Dice you don't have to worry about how the User accesses the Session object, you add it as a constructor parameter and it Just works. You don't need to reconfigure the container, you don't need to do anything at all. You just alter the constructor definition and everything is done for you.

You can find more details about Dice in this post (including more examples of it in action and a link to it's repository on github.

As most people involved in the IT sector know, demand is growing all the time for qualified people to fill the spots companies really need. In a new article from NetworkWorld.com they talk about some of the current trends as to what skills companies are really looking for right now including people with solid experience with Open Source development and tools.

Industry watchers report that while an economic recovery won't guarantee that IT jobs return to pre-recession levels, increased interest in emerging and existing technologies will drive internal training and external hiring decisions. [...] Here we examine 10 IT job titles that could gain traction in 2010 as new technology demands require evolving IT skills.

The list includes specializations like security specialists, capacity planning, network engineers, business process engineers and Open Source specialists that have the knowledge and the skills to either create or bring in the Open Source tools that would fit the need the best. They even quote Dice.com about the increase in popularity those sorts of postings/searches have been getting lately.