The PHP Podcast (from Zend) has posted its second episode - Episode #2, an interview with Adam Culp who recently joined the team at Zend and is a organizer for the South Florida PHP User Group.

In this episode we talk to Adam Culp on his very first day as a Zend employee. We talk about PHP community and Adam's decision to move from the realm of independent consultant to Zender! Adam is the organizer of SunshinePHP, PHP Guru and joining the Zend Professional Services Team.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. You can also subscribe to their feed of you want this and future episodes pulled automatically.

On 7PHP.com there's a new post that interviews a PHP community member, Eric Hogue, about his experience with the Zend Certified Engineer exam.

This is the 3rd set of Zend Certification Tips and Advice to help anyone taking either of the two Zend Exams powered by Zend Technologies: the Zend PHP Certification Exam and/or the Zend Framework Certification Exam. The aim being to help people who want to sit for those exams and inform them what it is all about & what to expect by hearing it from (pro) PHP Guys who have already been through it, that is => Hear It From Zend Certified Engineers!

He starts off with some general questions to Eric about the exam and its structure and how he prepared himself for it. He mentions some of the resources he used to study and what kind of topics to pay attention to. There's also a few quotes included at the end giving another perspective on the exam (specifically, some frustrations).

The first episode of a new PHP-related podcast, the "PHP Podcast" produced by Zend, has been released. This first episode, hosted by Joe Stagner features a well-known PHPer, Cal Evans.

Cal Evans has been referred to as "The Ubiquitous Face of the PHP Community". That's made Cal an obvious choice for the first guest on the PHPPodcast. In this episode we chat about the evolving face of the PHP community.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

7PHP.com has posted a new article where they asked Lorna Mitchell for some of her advice for those wanting to take the Zend Certified Engineer exam, including what the test is like and how you can prepare effectively.

This is the 2nd set of Zend Certification Tips and Advice to help anyone taking either of the two Zend Exams powered by Zend Technologies: the Zend PHP Certification Exam and/or the Zend Framework Certification Exam. The aim being to help people who want to sit for those exams and inform them what it is all about & what to expect by hearing it from (pro) PHP Guys who have already been through it, that is => Hear It From Zend Certified Engineers!

They start with a little background on her and her experience with PHP and get quickly into the questions about the exam. Topics include things like:

• What the test is about and hopes to achieve
• Some things you can do to prepare
• A recommendation to make the most of your time exploring topics you might be weak in
• Whether or not the ZCE training classes help in the learning process

You can read the rest of the interview here.

On 7PHP.com today there's a new interview posted, a different kind of one from their usual "community spotlight" series. In this new article they talk with Michelangelo van Dam about the Zend Certified Engineer test and any advice he can offer to those wanting to take it.

This is the 1st set of Zend Certification Tips and Advice to help anyone taking either of the two Zend Exams powered by Zend Technologies: the Zend PHP Certification Exam and/or the Zend Framework Certification Exam. The aim being to help people who want to sit for those exams and inform them what it is all about & what to expect by hearing it from (pro) PHP Guys who have already been through it, that is.

There's a long list of questions in the interview covering a wide range of things about the test everything from what its about out to some of Michelangelo's own opinions about the tests:

• Can you briefly give us an idea of what ZC is about, what it tries to achieve?
• Can you give us an idea of what need to be studied and what kind of stuffs we should expect..etc
• Parts of the modules that you think is more complex and one should pay special attention to?
• What TWO questions can you remember that you can share with us
• Do you recommend PHP guys to get certified?

Check out the answers to these and more questions in the full interview.

On PHPMaster.com today they've posted the second part of their "PHP and the i" series (here's part one). In this new article, he looks a bit closer at what kind of knowledge is needed to develop PHP on the IBM i.

In this somewhat risqué episode, we'll look at just what you need to be able to do development work on the i. Many people in the i world will that PHP is native to the i, but I don't think that's really true. To me, native means that it just runs, no problems or questions asked, nothing special needs to be done, it just sort of happens like when you see someone across a crowded room and know she/he is "the one". That's not the way it works with PHP and the i.

He starts off by talking about Zend and its contribution to the IBM i's abilities to run PHP through RPG thanks to a "bridge" they created. There are other options, but as he points out, they're not as well developed (or supported) as Zend's offering (being Zend Server, Zend Studio and Zend Framework).

He then talks about the details of creating and running scripts - where to put them, what kind of RPG knowledge you'll need to implement them, and which parts of the typical MVC stack work best where.

If you've been mystified by regular expressions in the past and want to learn more about their effective use, you should check out these two webcasts from Qafoo - "Black Magic with Regular Expressions" and "Understanding Regular Expressions".

We are happy to announce the availability of my second Regular Expression webinar recording. It was a fun event, which I used to explain all the attendees a little bit more about the PCRE Regular Expression engine available in PHP and some other languages. I am covering some slightly advanced topics, like subpattern options, unicode and backtracking aka. greediness and performance.

You can watch these two recordings over on the Zend.com site:

• Black Magic with Regular Expressions
• Understanding Regular Expressions

Zend has published the results of their "Developer Pulse" survey for 2012 - the product of a survey of over three thousand developers across the PHP community.

The summer 2012 edition of the Zend Developer Pulse™ survey shows that PHP is gaining prominence as a cloud application development language of choice. The combination of speed and ease of use enables developers to build and deploy PHP-based cloud applications quickly: more than half the developers surveyed indicated that the apps they are developing today are destined to be deployed in cloud environments.

You can view the full results of the report in this PDF which touches on topics like:

• Developing in the cloud
• Working with APIs
• Versions of PHP developers are using
• Tools & best practices

Kevin Schroeder is looking for suggestions. He wants to know what the PHP community wants to hear about in upcoming webinars from Zend.

Just wrapped up a call working on our webinar schedule for the year. We've got a bunch of ideas but we'd like to also get your input as well. Yes, I know y'all want ZF2 webinars. We have that down. I would also like to do an HTML5 and mobile webinar but I need an SME (Subject Matter Expert) for that. [...] I would also love to have webinars on how to use various API's, even if there is not native PHP support. So, what kinds of webinars do you want?

Leave your suggestions in his comments along with one already suggesting a "Why PHP?" checklist of sorts to help encourage companies/employers to go with the language.

On 7php.com there's a new interview posted with Enrico Zimual of Zend - "Everything is an Array in PHP".

In this edition, I talked with Enrico Zimuel a computer geek since he was 9yrs old. He has written a couple of books namely "Secrets, Spies and Cipher Codes" published by Apogeo in 1999 and the recent "How to use the digital sign" published by Tecniche Nuove in 2010. Enrico has a pretty impressive 'geek' path. He also speaks at many international conferences [...]. You can find his presentations on slideshare.

Questions in the interview include:

• How do you find PHP now as compared to when you first started?
• Based on your experience, what are the good and bad parts of PHP?
• To someone who wants to become a better PHP developer, what is your advice?
• What are some good PHP blog or resources you highly recommend?

Read the full interview here.