Jon Bauer’s Blog

This is exactly why I quit any AT&T service I was using a year ago.

Please support the EFF and let the government know you won’t tolerate being spied on.

If you are shocked by all this, you might be interested in reading Code, by Lawrence Lessig. Written before 9/11, this book predicted this, and almost everything that has happened regarding the internet since it was published in 2000.

The internet is a network. It’s always a good idea to know who the network administrator is.

Foundations of PEAR - Rapid PHP Development

Do you use PEAR packages in your PHP web application? Have you inherrited a PEAR based project and debugging it is driving you mad? Do you prefer paper to online documentation? “Foundations of PEAR - Rapid PHP Development” may be a great reference for you. While there are lots of PEAR packages for all sorts of uses, this book focuses on the most powerful packages for website development.
The book is broken up into 10 package categories, Authentication, Utilities and Tools, Dates and Numbers, HTML, Images and Text, Database, Files and Formats, HTTP, XML, and Mail. In each category, anywhere from 3 to 10 packages are documented, each with sections on Common Uses, Related Packages, Dependecies, API, and Examples. Most of what is here can be found on the pear.php.net website, definitions of each public function or method, but the examples are original, and explain the often not-so-obvious practical implementation.
The book finishes with three example PEAR based projects, an Intranet Address Book Website, a Forum, and a web based Calendar. These projects are well documented and illustrate how the building blocks of PEAR packages can really give you amazing power as a PHP developer.
At 610 pages, “Foundation of PEAR - Rapid PHP Development“, is probably not the portable paperback you’ll find yourself curling up by the fireplace with, or tucking away in your back pocket. but if PEAR packages are the core libraries that run your application, this makes a good offline reference for your office library.

Building Flickr Applications with PHP

From a review’s point of view, I liked that this book was short , but from an avid book buyer’s perspective, I wondered if it’s thinness would make this book worth it’s price. I am happy to say that this book is worth every penny, especially if you are a PHP programmer (even a novice one), and you want to learn more about Flickr and how you can integrate Flickr services into your online project.

I am probably the perfect reader for this book, as I had never signed up for a Flickr account, and although I view lots of images there, I’d never set up a Flickr feed or seen what all was possible behind the scenes.

This book starts out with an overview of what Flickr offers it’s users, and the basics of how to start an account and how to fill it up with photos. While this stuff may be obvious to the seasoned Flickr user, this was all new to me, and a welcome introduction to getting up and going in no time. Chapter Two walks you through most of the features available. Organizr, Sets, and Permissions, are all pretty self explainitory, and the book doesn’t waste too much time explaining what you can figure out yourself. Now that I know how to get data into Flickr, the rest of the book examines how to get it back out, using the Flickr API and the Phlickr PHP package.

Chapter Four covers the basics of PHP, which I’m not sure is really neccesary, except in a Beginning PHP book, but it’s good if Flickr happens to be your gateway into the wonderful world of PHP.

Chapter Five gets down to business by demonstrating how to pull a photo and it’s meta data from Flickr via Phlickr. Most blog owners could put the book down there and have everything they need to add Flickr photos to their site or view photos from other PHP based applications, but the rest of the book actually goes into much further detail about Phlickr’s API, and what you can do with it.

Sorting and Searching by tags, Creating a Photo Set, Managing a Portfolio, are all very cool tricks that the book explains very clearly and Phlickr makes very easy. It’s certainly enough power to create your own Flickr admin application, and all without breaking a sweat.

Chapters Seven through Nine give detailed information about what’s possible by extending Flickr Feeds. Auto generating emails with Photo updates and comments is one trick in here, but once your familiar with what Flickr offers, it’s easy to extend these concepts for your own unique uses. Before closing, the book also shows how to re-syndicate Flickr web services, making your customized feeds available to others.

Don’t let this book’s thin appearance on the outside fool you, it’s thick and juicy on the inside, and does a good job of not wasting paper or space on the bookshelf. The only downside to this book would be that it focuses on only the one Phlickr package, but most books would only give an overview, and knowing one package well beats learning the same one trick in several libraries.

This book really opened me up to Flickr and made me realize what I was missing all along. It’s a beautiful application that really can not be judged until you’ve used it yourself. It’s backend is brilliantly developed and seemlessly usable is many ways. It was a joy to discover such a great app via a book, and now armed with several creative ideas on how to use it’s API, I will be using my Flickr account much more in the near future.