Microsoft (as a part of MSN) has announced a new competition for developers to use their Live Search API to create applications/mashups to help either help people cope with the current state of the economy or help to protect the environment - Will Code for Green.

The goal of “Will Code for Green” is to create a Web application or mashup that uses the Live Search API in order to a) help people cope with the economy OR b) help people protect the environment. The top prizes for economy or ecology categories are $10,000 each, with 3 overall runners up receiving $3,000. The prize money for this contest is larger in hopes of promoting the formation of teams.

More information about the contest and how to enter can be found on its website - submissions will be taken from June 1st through August 12th. Voting starts immediately after and the top five will be posted by August 20th. This blog also has more information.

Lukas Smith has posted his review of a book from Packt Publishing - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects: Practical PHP Mashups with Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, MSN Search, Yahoo!"

Duane from Pakt asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a few books for them in my blog. I picked "Mashup Projects" from the list of just released books, since I am interesting in the topic and I am actually going to give a presentation at the internal "PHP Day" we are doing at Optaros in November.

He points out the good (good writing style, well-chosen examples) and the bad (a log list of errors and oversights in the code). He also talks about the contents of the book - the different examples and the final more major project. Overall though, he sees it as a good book, one that would be a good introduction to mashups for PHP developers (if you look past the formatting issues).

Lukas Smith has posted his review of a book from Packt Publishing - "PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects: Practical PHP Mashups with Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, MSN Search, Yahoo!"

Duane from Pakt asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a few books for them in my blog. I picked "Mashup Projects" from the list of just released books, since I am interesting in the topic and I am actually going to give a presentation at the internal "PHP Day" we are doing at Optaros in November.

He points out the good (good writing style, well-chosen examples) and the bad (a log list of errors and oversights in the code). He also talks about the contents of the book - the different examples and the final more major project. Overall though, he sees it as a good book, one that would be a good introduction to mashups for PHP developers (if you look past the formatting issues).

All of the Zend Framework fans out there can rejoice - the popular framework has "surpassed" the .NET framework, according to this new post from Andi Gutmans' blog.

Always great to see a PHP-related project grow by leaps and bounds like this. Every bit helps to get our favorite langauge out there and in front of more people. Now, when it passes it in Google's list, give us a call...

All of the Zend Framework fans out there can rejoice - the popular framework has "surpassed" the .NET framework, according to this new post from Andi Gutmans' blog.

Always great to see a PHP-related project grow by leaps and bounds like this. Every bit helps to get our favorite langauge out there and in front of more people. Now, when it passes it in Google's list, give us a call...