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As many of you may have noticed, today, a new look and feel is present at the blog, not all the changes were merely visual, as the process is undergoing i will explain some of the changes.
Nicole Steinbok (@nicolesteinbok) came up with the 22 minutes meeting concept, presented at Seattle Ignite 9, according to Scott Berkum, got the first touch with it on his blog.
I tweeted about it and Qworky asked my opinion, so i will try to express myself.
Just finished the reading of the “Focus: Use the Power of Targeted Thinking to Get More Done” book, the book was a pleasant surprise.
One big aspects of the book , EASY TO READ, i bought this book on a Saturday and got it finished by the next Wednesday, is really an easy to read book with lots of small tips on getting your productivity into the right path.
Image from the Cover of the Portuguese Edition
Just had a “back to the old times” weekend, a lot of readings around the internet, below are the more interesting readings i had over the last week(end).
Blogosphere
“How I Made $100K With Twitter” by Amber Naslund
The number could be impressive, but the content is even more, a lesson on how to monetize your business using Twitter. A must read.
“10 Ways To Generate Business Leads On Twitter” by Raj Dash
Great tips on maximizing your business Twitter presence.
“5 Ways to Get Customer Feedback — For Free” by Doriano “Paisano” Carta
Some tools suggestions on customer feedback collect.
“7 Must Read Success Lessons from Donald Trump” by Mr. Self Development
Some motivational success phrases by Donald Trump. Always good to read about.
Books
Just couldn’t resist buying a book, this time the chosen one was:
“Focus: The Power of Targeted Thinking” by Jurgen Wolff [Amazon link]
What were yours ?
Hi, just enjoyed the weekend putting my readings on time, and i must say, some of the readings were just superb.
1. Finished reading the book “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (Hardcover)” – Link to Amazon
The story is just great! A lot of tricks and leaving people behind scenes, always with a goal in mind, make Facebook one of the biggest websites live, i believe that the result speaks by himself. A must read, for sure a 8 in 10.
2. Things I’ve learned as an entrepreneur — Part 1 Blog post – Link
A list of truths that every entrepreneur will say, i have been there.
3. 10 Things every young entrepreneur should know – blog post Link
Just another list about global entrepreneur tips, the strongest of the list for me is “get used to receive NO as an answer”, still worth your 5 minutes.
This were my weekend top readings, what’s yours ?
Now, that i am back home, i can write down my thoughts on PHP Benelux 2010, realized in Antwerp, Belgium.
I just signed out for the conference, without really knowing anyone, except from the blogs and previous presentations, i landed in Belgiun without any real expectations about what i was going to bring back to Portugal form the conference.
The venue was nice enough for the event presentation, the reception of the event was just great, no need to be a long time waiting for the badge and no hiccups when asking for it. The conference rooms where nice, talk 2 room chairs where somehow not so comfortable, but in general everyone was happy from what i could see. The schedule was nicely controlled by the organization and no big delays occurred, it’s the first time that i saw no real delays happen on a conference of this size, cheers for you guys.
The speakers were just great, a lot of PHP known names in the list, with a set of great talks to deliver. Just loved all, but Lorna Jane and Cal Evans where just great, i had to deliver this opinion.
Sometimes had the hard job of choosing what talk to see, when some of them just overlap at same time, but i’m convicted that i made a great choice, so what did i saw ?
1. Opening Keynote: – The PHP Universe by Derick Rethans
2. Dependency Injection in PHP 5.2 and 5.3 by Fabien Potencier
3. Get the most out of Solr search with PHP by Paul Borgermans
4. PHP applications/environments monitoring: APM & Pinba by Patrick Allaert/Davide Mendolia
5. PHPillow & CouchDB & PHP by Kore Nordmann
6. Passing the Joel Test in the PHP World by Lorna Mitchell
7. Generating dynamic PDFs using Zend Framework and JavaBridge by Eric Ritchie
8. Closing Keynote: Open Teams by Cal Evans
I just left my comments on Joind.in, if you’re feeling curious just go on and check the audience comments on each talks. http://joind.in/event/view/110
Some of the presentations are now uploaded into Slideshare, sho go on and check them out: http://www.slideshare.net/tag/phpbnl10 and some photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/phpbnl10/.
In conclusion, the conference was just great, i am extremely happy for making around 1000 miles to go there and meet the people and watch the conference live. It as great to meet Jeremy and Priscilla Coates and quickly meet Lorna Jane.
Congratulations to all the people that put effort on making the conference memorable and see you all soon.
Just run into a link where the Twitpic story was being told, just found the numbers around Twitpic just impressive.
The interview deserves your time, it’s a really inspiring story, on, how a weekend project worked on a Millions revenue stream.
And great news about this, Twitpic will soon have oAuth support, is just like someone hear me.
Inspired by the article of Mixergy.
Zend Framework has a great interface to access Google Data, this is one of the most easiest ways to implement Google Data API using PHP, in this short how-to i will explain how to authenticate, read and write information from/into your Google Calendar, Zend Framework Documentation has great examples on this. On this first part of this how-to i will explain how-to:
I will assume that you are already familiarized with the Zend Framework, and the project is already set up, meaning, include path’s and all extra work.
First let’s include the needed packages into our code:
<?php require_once 'Zend/Gdata.php'; require_once 'Zend/Loader.php'; //Let's enable autoload, ZF handles this nicely Zend_Loader::registerAutoload(); ?>
In order to communicate with your Google Calendar, you need first to Authenticate, and there are 3 ways you can use to authenticate: ClientAuth, AuthSub and MagicCookie, you can read the details of each on the Zend Framework Documentation page, on my quick how-to i will use the ClientAuth method.
/** * Please define your Email and Password for Google Accounts access */ define('YOUR_EMAIL_FOR_GOOGLE_ACCOUNTS',''); define('YOUR_PASS_FOR_GOOGLE_ACCOUNTS',''); require_once 'Zend/Gdata.php'; require_once 'Zend/Loader.php'; //Let's enable autoload, ZF handles this nicely Zend_Loader::registerAutoload(); $myEmail = YOUR_EMAIL_FOR_GOOGLE_ACCOUNTS; $myPass = YOUR_PASS_FOR_GOOGLE_ACCOUNTS; // Parameters for ClientAuth authentication $service = Zend_Gdata_Calendar::AUTH_SERVICE_NAME; $client = Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin::getHttpClient($myEmail, $myPass, $service);
Now that we have the authenticated client instance, we are able to interact with Google Calendar. The first action that i do, is to verify if the Calendar i want to write on, exists, if not, i create a new calendar.
/** * Lets create the Service instance, to interact with Google Data Api */ $service = new Zend_Gdata_Calendar($client); $calendarName = 'My Calendar ZF Example'; $useCalendarFeed = FALSE; try { // Let's get the calendar list from Google calendar API $listFeed= $service->getCalendarListFeed(); } catch (Zend_Gdata_App_Exception $e) { echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage(); } /** * Need to run through all the array to search for our calendar name * Calendar Listing Feed is available on $listFeed variable */ foreach ($listFeed as $calendar) { if($calendar->title == $calendarName) $useCalendarFeed = $calendar->content->src; } /** * If we have not found the calendar we want to use, * we need to create a new one */ if(FALSE === $useCalendarFeed) { $appCal = $service->newListEntry(); $appCal->title = $service->newTitle($calendarName); $own_cal = "http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/default/owncalendars/full"; $service->insertEvent($appCal, $own_cal); /** * Need to grab the Google Calendar feed again, with the newly inserted calendar * We'll need the refreshed feed in order to get the newly added calendar ID in order * to add the event into the created calendar */ try { $listFeed= $service->getCalendarListFeed(); } catch (Zend_Gdata_App_Exception $e) { echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage(); } }
If you go to your Google Calendar account a new calendar named “My Calendar ZF Example” was created.
You can download all the code from my Google Code Repository – Zend Framework Google Calendar Example 1/2.
Hope this helped, on the next how-to i will explain how to create events in your newly created calendar.
Today is the last day of 2009, so it’s is more than time to make a quick analysis:
What’s next ? Still making the 2010 goals, but one point is sure, have more fun and learn to chill out more, stay tuned for the news.
