Archive for January, 2007

PEAR 1.5.0 Released

Pear pushed a new release 1.5.0 that you can upgrade now using pear upgrade PEAR . The new release come with lots of bugfixes and many exciting new features, but most noticeable changes is that since 1.5.0, PHP 4.3.0 or newer is required for PEAR. From the new features added : package.xml 2.1 allows PECL zend extensions like xdebug to define themselves as such automatic enabling and disabling of pecl extensions in php.ini is now supported post-installation scripts are much more advanced in the CLI frontend deprecated packages are displayed as such by the installer TAP output is possible with the run-tests command

Wikipedia Blocked SEO URLs

Enough spammers I’ll say, because Wikipedia added nofollow to all external URLs since last Saturday . It looks like Wikipedia was targeted by some SEO guys running an SEO contest. I’m not sure if it was a fun rumor or no, but Wikipedia admins didn’t wait to make the decision and stopped all those who used the free encyclopedia for SEO purpose whatever free or paid.

Foundations of PEAR Reviewed

Foundations of PEAR: Rapid PHP Development (Foundations) by Nathan A. Good, Allan Kent It’s great to see the number of PEAR books increasing recently, and this another one to add to your PEAR library. Foundations of PEAR, is the last new book for PEAR, a handy reference and recipe book for PEAR and its package, written by Nathan A. Good and Allan Kent and published by Apress. Certainly PEAR is huge in useful libraries, the same for this book with 610 pages and more than 50 packages. It scared me to finish it in the beginning, but the structure make it easier to read. Packages covered in Foundations of PEAR are mostly PHP4 compatible, with the exception of PHPUnit2 which is PHP5 only. This is not strange because PHP4 usage remain much higher than PHP5 until today, and that’s of course the most popular and useful packages of PEAR.

Second Life Open Sourced

One of the very important Linden Research, Inc. initiatives is to release Second Life client in open source . Second Life, a virtual reality software, technology and community become very popular in the last years. While I was reading comments from many people that are rejecting the idea of open sourcing Second Life, I think it’s a great move that will be positive on the software and the community too. Will see how this is going to change in the future : Releasing the source now is our next invitation to the world to help build this global space for communication, business, and entertainment. We are eager to work with the community and businesses to further our vision of our space.

Philipp’s SEO Basics

Philipp have a great post explaining the basics of Search Engine Optimization . This is the ultimate guide for SEO newbies, very well written, simple and focus on white hat SEO. Three important points that he keep the focus on : Create good content Make your content accessible Tell others about your content There are many important recommendations by the end of the post and I find it really great especially the last one “don’t try to outsmart search engines, unless perhaps you intend to dedicate your life to that task” .