The latest PHP Town Hall podcast has officially been posted, Episode #34 - a /Dev/Hell Mashup but hosts Phil Sturgeon and Ben Edmunds. The /Dev/Hell podcast is hosted by two other PHP community members Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler.

This is a big one. We’ve had Chris “The Grumpy Programmer” Hartjes and Ed “The Grumpy Podcaster” Finkler on our show before, but this time they both join us for a mashup! We talk about the perils of being opinionated people speaking in public. Chris basically just says fuck Reddit and all of its minions of evil, and Phil gives a bit of insight into why he gets stuck in so many arguments.

We move on to chatting about PHP, and how people feel about a strong new demand for more async features. Is it better to leave that to other tools, or should we try and fit some into the language itself, and the ecosystem around it? The last chunk of this podcast ends with a discussion around CodeIgniter 3.0 supporting PHP 5.2 and up. Should it be higher?

You can listen to the recording in a few different ways - either through the in-page audio-only player, by downloading the mp3 or you can watch the video from the Google Hangouts recording of the episode. If you enjoy the episode, be sure to subscribe to their feed.

The PHP Town Hall podcast has posted their latest episode, the mashup with the Loosely Coupled podcast they did (it's here on their side) talking about their favorite open source projects.

In this episode, Ben and Phil join forces with Loosely Coupled to talk about Open Source, burn out and briefly discuss their favorite open source projects. Jeff was out of action for a lot of it due to unexpected wifi troubles (in San Francisco of all places) so he sadly did not get to take part as much as he would have liked.

There were also a few questions taken from the listening audience about dealing with overly reliant people, explaining OSS to non-tech people and the OSS "clauses" some employer put into their contracts. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player, by downloading the mp3 or you can watch the live video recording posted on YouTube.

The Loosely Coupled podcast has released their version of their collaboration show with the PHP Town Hall podcast in Episode #6, "PHPTownHall Mashup".

In this episode, Matt and Jeff join forces with PHPTownHall to talk about Open Source, burn out and briefly discuss their favorite open source projects. Jeff had a spell of bad luck with the wifi at the AirBnB he stayed at in San Franciso, so you may not get as much of him as you’d like. If you’ve not checked out PHPTownHall, you can do so here PHPTownHall.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to their feed or follow them on Twitter for the latest show information.

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.

David Goodwin has posted a new book review of a PHP book offered by Packt Publishing (released Sept 22, 2007) - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects" by Shu-Wai Chow.

Some time ago, Packt publishing sent me this book to review. Here it is, being somewhat overdue!

He talks about the book's contents - the different chapters detailing the different services' APIs, the protocols that are used to talk to those services and the data formats your scripts would have to be able to talk in to communicate. He recommends the book to those looking to get started with mashups specifically, but warns that in some places the book tends to "reinvent the wheel" rather than using classes/packages that already exist.

As a companion to the podcast version of his review, Matthew Turland has posted his comments in text form over on his blog today.

I received an e-mail recently from a very nice gentleman at Packt Publishing - their representative asked if I would be willing to review one of their books, namely PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects by Shu-Wai Chow. Reviewing books is not something I had done before, so I thought I would give it a good old-fashioned college try.

He mentions the size of the book (and how it's not an indication of the quality) and the basic structure of the book, including spotlights on some of the specific topics covered.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series - Matthew Turland with a book review of Packt's "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects".

Today's special guest is Matthew Turland (Elazar to those of you who hang out on the #phpc channel on irc.freenode.net) Matt has been building PHP applications since 2002. [...] Today, Matt is going to review PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects from Packt Publishing.

You know the drill - there's three ways to grab the PHP goodness: the mp3, the in-page player and, the most convenient, subscribing to their feed and getting the latest episodes hand-delivered.

Daniel Crook points out the next meeting of the New York PHP Group where Dan Gisolfi will be talking about some of the latest things that IBM has been up to in the mashup arena.

Centered around the concept of "situational applications," IBM's work with mashups targets a growing trend in Web site development. [...] IT specialists should embrace the model as a foothold for PHP in the enterprise.

Some of Dan's presentation is outlined as well - a demo of IBM's Mashup Starter Kit, a look at best practices, and talk on the collaboration of IBM with Zend and ProgrammableWeb. If you're wanting to attend, be sure you RSVP as soon as possible (before the 21st @ 3pm) to reserve your spot.

Daniel Crook points out the next meeting of the New York PHP Group where Dan Gisolfi will be talking about some of the latest things that IBM has been up to in the mashup arena.

Centered around the concept of "situational applications," IBM's work with mashups targets a growing trend in Web site development. [...] IT specialists should embrace the model as a foothold for PHP in the enterprise.

Some of Dan's presentation is outlined as well - a demo of IBM's Mashup Starter Kit, a look at best practices, and talk on the collaboration of IBM with Zend and ProgrammableWeb. If you're wanting to attend, be sure you RSVP as soon as possible (before the 21st @ 3pm) to reserve your spot.

Many congrats to Cal Evans on getting an article posted in the latest edition of the Dr. Dobb's magazine.

Wow, I wrote this article back in May/June and it finally got published! "PHP: The Power Behind Web 2.0". This was the very first version of the FNN that I wrote. I used the concept in "Flex and PHP: Party in the Front, Business in the Back".

The article shows how to create a site using PHP on the backend along with Javascript on the front end to build a "Flickr News Network" by combining it with information from a feed.