Having just received his brand new Neo Freerunner device (a linux-based phone) Derick Rethans did what any other good PHP developer out there would do - he installed PHP on it right away.

As I mentioned, the Freerunner is basically a Linux computer - which means total freedom of what you install on it. Traditionally it comes with perl and python, including GTK bindings. However, no PHP is found on it. I set out to change that. Unfortunately there were some issues with cross compiling, so I decided to compile PHP on the phone. There were some issues with this.

Because the included BusyBox toolset (that emulates much of the traditional Unix tools) didn't have all he needed to compile directly, he compiled the "coreutils" libraries and installed them to the phone. After a few manual tweaks and file copies he had what he needed and ran the compile without issues. He even created a package you can download (a countdown timer) to see if your install is working correctly.

Vinu Thomas talks about a platform on his blog today that can be used to create PHP applications to live on a S60 phone.

If you'd like to work on your favorite PHP apps on your S60 phones, here's PAMP - Personal Apache, MySQL and PHP. This is implemented on the Symbian OS using Open C, which is a set of industry-standard POSIX and middleware C libraries for S60.

The PAMP system is pretty easy to install and guides can be found over on the dev.mobi website to help get you started. You can download the latest version of the project from its SourceForge website.

The Zend Developer Zone is hosting a special event involving the PHP Women's user group - a live podcast as a part of the PHP Abstract series happening December 4th.

PHPWomen.org recently celebrated it's first birthday. To honor the occasion, four of it's prominent members, Ligaya Turmelle, Elizabeth Naramore, Elizabeth Smith and Sara Golemon have agreed to sit down with me on the phone and talk about PHPWomen.org, it's goals, how well they feel they are achieving them, and why the #phpwomen chat room has nice wallpaper and a couch in it.

Since it is live, listeners are invited to participate too through two methods - via IRC on the Freenode network and on a toll-free number to call in. And, as Cal puts it: "if you ask a good question and they answer it on the podcast, I'll send you one of the new elePHPants!"

You can get full details on the podcast from this post on the Zend Developer Zone's site.

On his web development blog, Joey has posted a new list of eight handy regular expressions you can use in your code for common validations.

Here are eight examples of practical PHP regular expressions and techniques that I've used over the past few years using Perl Compatible Regular Expressions. This guide goes over the eight different validation techniques and describes briefly how they work. Usernames, telephone numbers, email addresses, and more.

Each of the regular expressions comes complete with an explanation of what it is and the kinds of strings it's looking for. Comments on the post have helped even more, finding places where they might break or not catch all possibilities.

In one of his latest posts, Marcus Whitney looks at the upcoming year and what the future holds for mobile applications - and where PHP might fit into it (with a little help from Flash Lite).

Since meeting with Jackson for lunch this week, I am definitely convnced that he is on to something when he says 2006 is going to be huge for mobile. Here's another challenge to the PHP community. Flash Lite is pretty cool. So.. I'm pretty excited by Flash Lite, and the announcement that Samsung phones will support it is good news for me and all the Sprint/Nextel/Embarq customers out there.

Any chance us PHP devs will be able to start writing robust mobile apps? Maybe working in tandem wiith the beauty of Flash on the front end?

It'd be interesting to see if this line of thought would lead to any major PHP/Flash applications. The possibility is definitely there with its ability to not only import data like XML, but pull in other resources as well...