Adam Jensen has submitted a new post he's written up about the idea he had for a spades game written in PHP. There's no fancy graphics or computer AI but there is a good example of using the Strategy Pattern between the players and interfaces in this CLI script.

Here’s the project (and I deliberately didn’t check to see if anyone’s done this before): write a command-line PHP script that runs any number of automated spades games, involving a variety of players utilizing different play algorithms.

The Strategy Pattern comes in with the players - each influences how the player will bid and what cards it will choose to play. He gives the code for these two interfaces - Spades_Player_Interface and Spades_Strategy_Interface. He also sets up a randomizing class and several of the other "structure" classes (Spades_Play, Spades_Card, etc).

This post is just the start of the project. If there's enough interest, Adam will release the source for the project including some of the other strategies he's considering.

David Sklar points out some of the new base sites that are being offered on the PHP-based mashup site, Ning.

It's been a lot of hard work, so I'm quite excited that we've just released three great new Ning sites: Ning Videos, Ning Photos, and Ning Group.

Plus, all three sites have the juicy bits that every site on the Ning platform gets -- things such as cloneability, complete customization, and built-in REST APIs. I've been watching the feeds for clones of photos and videos -- I suppose seeing who's cloned sites you care about is the Web 2.0 version of ego surfing.

He also talks about some of the features of the Ning Photo cloneable site like the slideshow and, in Ning Video, the embeddable player. The Ning Group application also has parsing abilities to help with sharing documents/music/photos/etc with anyone.

David Sklar points out some of the new base sites that are being offered on the PHP-based mashup site, Ning.

It's been a lot of hard work, so I'm quite excited that we've just released three great new Ning sites: Ning Videos, Ning Photos, and Ning Group.

Plus, all three sites have the juicy bits that every site on the Ning platform gets -- things such as cloneability, complete customization, and built-in REST APIs. I've been watching the feeds for clones of photos and videos -- I suppose seeing who's cloned sites you care about is the Web 2.0 version of ego surfing.

He also talks about some of the features of the Ning Photo cloneable site like the slideshow and, in Ning Video, the embeddable player. The Ning Group application also has parsing abilities to help with sharing documents/music/photos/etc with anyone.

Aaron Wormus notes in this new blog entry about a client-side card game he's been introduced to that comines great graphics, a smart AI and a powerful combination - PHP5 and the Winbinder library.

The game, 32cards is a digital card trading game with tons of data about each country for each card. On each turn, the topmost card is uncovered and five stats are compared. The player with the highest stats wins and points are awarded. You can gabs this great example of how flexible PHP really is (and try out a pretty cool game) by heading over to their site and grabbing the download.

Aaron Wormus notes in this new blog entry about a client-side card game he's been introduced to that comines great graphics, a smart AI and a powerful combination - PHP5 and the Winbinder library.

The game, 32cards is a digital card trading game with tons of data about each country for each card. On each turn, the topmost card is uncovered and five stats are compared. The player with the highest stats wins and points are awarded. You can gabs this great example of how flexible PHP really is (and try out a pretty cool game) by heading over to their site and grabbing the download.

m. norway has found way to combine the popular XSPF web music player Flash application with the flexibility of RSS feeds via a simple PHP script.

He shows an example of the script that convers the RSS feed into a tracklist that the Flash mp3 player can understand. I also like his idea of using del.icio.us to roll a "make your own podcast" kind of thing with the RSS output from your links.

m. norway has found way to combine the popular XSPF web music player Flash application with the flexibility of RSS feeds via a simple PHP script.

He shows an example of the script that convers the RSS feed into a tracklist that the Flash mp3 player can understand. I also like his idea of using del.icio.us to roll a "make your own podcast" kind of thing with the RSS output from your links.