If you're looking around for software to fill the needs of your company or group and your sights fall on Open Source software, Builder.com.au has a few suggestions for you to consider.

All open source projects, by definition, provide the end user with certain perpetual rights and freedoms in using, studying, modifying and redistributing the product. However, there is a lot of inconsistency in terms of the product quality, the governance model and the availability of support. Thus, when selecting open source components for your enterprise, it is important to do some background checks to ensure the open source product you have selected is compatible with your enterprise business model and IT standards. Below are 10 questions you can ask to evaluate open source maturity.

Among things on their list to consider are:

• Are the open source licence terms compatible with my business requirements?
• How well is the product adopted by users?
• How is this project governed and how easily can I influence the road map?
• Will the product scale to my enterprise's requirements?
• Are there regular security patches?

Sameer Borate recently posted this new look at hooking your PHP application into the Amazon Product Advertising API to use the updated key system Amazon has put in place.

In this post we will see how to access the Amazon Product Advertising API from PHP. Amazon has recently changed (from 15th Aug '09) the authentication mechanism for accessing their API which must now be signed with your Amazon keys. Unsigned requests will be rejected by Amazon. Note that the code uses the hash_hmac() hash function which is only available for PHP versions 5.1.2 and above, so the code will not work for versions below that.

The full code, including an example if it in action - connecting to the API and searching for the DVD of "X-Men Origins". The full code of his class is included, perfect for cut and pasting.

Matthew Turland has posted the second part of his in-depth series looking the features that the Magento e-commerce platform to the Blue Parabola blog. In this new article he looks at ten product browsing features.

Here's the list of topics covered:

• Multiple Images Per Product
• Product Image Zoom-in Capability
• Product Reviews
• Related Products
• Stock Availability
• Multi-Tier Pricing Upsell
• Product Option Selection
• Grouped Products View
• Add to Wishlist
• Send to a Friend with E-mail

Upon review of all of the above, Matthew has this to say:

The overall feature set is pretty complete for most storefronts. Beyond fixing issues, the Magento platform could benefit significantly -- and quickly -- by improving the quality of their existing features.

Recently, Cormac posted this look at a method for lazy loading on variables in an object with the magic __get method.

I used the magic method __get() to load the images into the [Product] object when they were needed. __get() is called whenever something tries to access a variable that is not set or publically accessible, so basically I used that to load the images whenever some other piece of code tried to access Product::images.

He includes a quick bit of code that fires off an internal private method for the class that loads up the images. In his example, if they're already loaded, it never gets called.

According to this new post on the Zend Developer Zone, its parent company, Zend, has launched their Zend Product Online Documentation Center:

You know when you reach that point when you just don't remember where to configure your Zend Platform Events, how to set up your Tunneling, or what that Zend Core extension does? Well the documentation team at Zend have come up with a way to make all Zend product documentation as easily available as possible, so you can all benefit from our wisdom and experience.

The documentation center is a resource for all things Zendy - information on their products made searchable and easy to browse.

Want to try out the next major version of Delphi for PHP? Paul Gregg is looking for volunteers to be testers for the latest version of this CodeGear project.

CodeGear is looking for additional beta testers for the next major version of Delphi for PHP.

Those interested should check out this page and fill in the application to become a tester (just name, email address, experience using PHP tools and how much time you could devote to testing).

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract series highlighting developers from all over the web. This time, though, it's a little different. This episode is an interview with Aviv Katz of Zend.

Today, we are going to do something a little different. While I was at ZendCon 07, I had the opportunity to sit down with fellow Zender, Aviv Katz. Aviv is the product manager of Zend Core and Zend Network. [...] Zend is a very distributed company, the downside of that however, is that a lot of us don't see each other during the course of a year. So when I was offered the opportunity to talk to Aviv I naturally jumped at it.

Cal also warns listeners ahead of time that it's more about a certain product than it is about Aviv.

The usual three methods of listening are there - right on the page, through a direct download and via the podcast's feed in your favorite aggregator.

DynamicWebPages.de has pointed out a new offering for the German PHP community - Zend's ZendOne video channel provding information on Zend's products, PHP development, training information and business-related information.

While the focus in the Product channel is on the Zend Platform, the Development channel contains information (videos and/or announcements), so far, on the Zend Framework. On the Training channel, there's been a few sessions announced (including a presentation on SimpleXML) while the Business channel is still empty.

Be sure to check out their main events page for updates to each of the four categories. All sessions will be in German.