According to this post on O'Reilly's ONLamp.com website, Microsoft has released a new five page PDF file titled "PHP on Windows: Community Involvement Improves Performance" discussing the relationship between the software giant and the language over recent years.

The first effort described is the partnership between Microsoft and Zend that resulted in the development of the FastCGI Extension that essentially allowed PHP to be a first-class citizen when used on a Windows Server with IIS. The second effort described is the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP developed internally by the SQL Server team.

They also mention Phlanger and the PHP for Microsoft Ajax projects.

David Coallier has issued a challenge to all PHP developers in Ireland and in Europe to "stand up" and offer to share their knowledge with others in the local communities:

Now is the time to prove that we are all friends and Open Source Passionate after all. This is something I have been pondering on meeting all technological groups together instead of being divided, but I believe this push from Laura is exactly what Ireland needed in order to make it's outstanding Technological IQ even higher than it already is.

He's talking specifically about one opportunity - the Ireland Open Source Technology Conference 2008 happening in May, 2008.

Lukas Smith is sending a wakeup call to the internet providers and web hosters out there - get involved in the PHP community!

We do not seem to have any ISP's active inside the PHP community. This is kind of odd, considering that PHP seems to be driving the business of hosters quite a bit. Why have none of them decided that PHP is important enough for their business that its worthwhile to ensure that their interests are taken into account?

He makes the suggestion of passing along the suggestion to bosses/co-workers/anyone who'll listen about getting involved. Suggested places to start would be as a part of the testers group or even contributing to the migration guide.

Ligaya Turmelle, one of the founders of the PHP Women movement, has posted another update on the situation and the status of the group to her blog today.

OK - PHPWomen.org has been around for about 2 weeks now and we sure have been busy. Currently we have just under 50 registered users on the very active forums, a basic site set up with a page explaining what we are about as well as what we have planned for the site. We also have a couple of writers who are busy getting a couple of series articles together that will be published on the site.

She mentions that most of the traffic to the site is still just people getting to know each other and discovering other female PHP developers just around the corner. She again thanks all of those helping to make the group possible and to keep the ideas and new members flowing in by spreading the word to co-workers, over email - whatever your comunication method of choice is - to get more people involved.