Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.
For the very first time WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This truly marks a paradigm shift in the public perception of WordPress, from blog software to full-featured CMS. No small contest, the Open Source CMS Awards received over 12,000 nominations and more than 23,000 votes across five categories.
In addition to winning in the Overall Best Open Source CMS category, WordPress was named first runner-up in the Best Open Source PHP CMS category.
Well, it’s official. The folks over at SHIFT Communications, especially Marie Williams and team, have done it again… Done what you ask? Well, I’ll tell you — they have thrown a wonderful get together known to Bay Area folks fondly as Lunch 2.0. It was over at Powerset’s sweet office and was a wonderful chance to meet the Bing team. Not only did they have some amazingly tasty grub, as well as some great beer and other non-alcoholic beverages (for those got to go back to the office types), but they also had a stellar collection of Bing swag (like these ultra-nice beanies) to take home for a warm fall day in San Francisco.
I can’t wait to see some of the photos taken by non-other than the world infamous and elusive PHP terrorist. Until the next the Lunch 2.0 color me satisfied!
So, in light of Microsoft’s new “Make Web Not War” campaign and if you find yourself using Microsoft’s Web technologies and are wanting a cost conscience solution in these tough economic times you owe it to yourself to check out this exciting new program.
Microsoft has a new program – WebsiteSpark — A program that offers visibility, support and software for professional Web Developers and Designers wanting/needing to utilize Microsoft’s product offerings (for a small fee of course).
WebsiteSpark is designed for independent web developers and designers as well as for small web development companies that build web applications and web properties on behalf of their clients. It enables you to receive software, as well as support and business resources from Microsoft at absolutely no cost for up to three years, and enables you to expand your business and build great web solutions using Microsoft’s technologies such as ASP.NET, Silverlight, SharePoint, and the various open source applications built on top of them. Hell, you can even use PHP with most of their proprietary tools.
So, you ask – what does this unique program provide?
WebSiteSpark provides software licenses that you can use for up to three years at absolutely no cost.
Once enrolled, you can download and immediately use the following software products from Microsoft:
The Windows Server and SQL Server licenses can be used for both development and production deployment. Yes, you read that correctly. You can either self-host the server software on your own hardware, or use the licenses with a hosting provider.
WebsiteSpark makes it easy to find hosting providers who are also enrolled in the program, and who can use your licenses to provide you with either dedicated or virtual dedicated servers to host your sites.
In addition to software, WebsiteSpark provides partnering opportunities to grow and build your business organically (including things like customer referrals through Microsoft’s extensive partner programs network) as well as including product support (two professional support incidents) and free online training for other Microsoft services and products.
So, now you want to know — who exactly can join this here program?
WebSiteSpark is available exclusively to independent web developers, designers and small web development agencies.
So, really the only two requirements to join the program are as follows:
If you meet these simply requirements you can visit the WebsiteSpark website and sign-up.
As part of the enrollment process you can pick either a network referral partner (for example: the PHP Group), or enter a referral code that you have received at an event or from a Microsoft employee. Also, if you send an email to webspark@microsoft.com you can get a referral code quickly…
You then can use that code to enroll in the program on the WebsiteSpark website.
Once enrolled you can immediately download and use the software, as well as begin to participate in the networking and partnering opportunities with other members.
So, now maybe you are a bit worried about — what happens after the initial three years of bliss?
All good things don’t necessarily have to come to an end but, WebsiteSpark is only a three year program. There is no obligation at all to continue to use any of the software after the three years is over, and there are no cost for the three years (other than a $100.00 USD program fee at the end of the three year period.)
At the end of the three years, WebsiteSpark participants can optionally choose to purchase all of the software in the WebsiteSpark program via a $999.00 USD yearly package. That includes three copies of Visual Studio Professional, one copy of Expression Studio (including Blend and Sketchflow), two copies of Expression Web, and four processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 and a four processor licenses of SQL Server Web edition that can be used for both production as well as deployment scenarios.
If you like me write a great deal of JavaScript-intensive applications than some congratulations, are in order for the Closure Tools team at Google today they announced the open sourcing of their Closure tools (Closure Compiler, Closure Library, Closure Templates, and Closure Inspector) which is so awesome because all of those projects started as 20% projects and have now had many many Googlers contributing patches.
So, what’s a QR Code matrix code you ask? Well, wait no further — just look, at the square image on the right… side of this post!
Patrick Reilly's Blog -- QR Code
Well, that there my friend is a QR Code. (The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”) it is a two-dimensional bar code developed by Denso-Wave way back in a magical time know as 1994.
Originally, the standard bar code replacements were designed for tracking parts in manufacturing situations, but the use of QR codes has gained popularity in consumer space in recent years as a way to encode meta-data like; various URLs, contact information, mobile numbers, etc. This act of linking from physical world objects, is typically known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks… Unlike, the standard basic bar code of yesteryear, which I’m sure you’re totally familiar with if you have ever been shopping at a retail establishment in your life, QR Codes contain information in both the horizontal and vertical axis. This fact contributes to its capability of storing much larger amounts of raw data in both numeric and alphanumeric, as well as binary form(s). If you’re interested in learning a bit more, feel free to check out the QR Code site provided by Denso-Wave for additional details and implementation techniques.
So, to honor this posts title don’t forget to download, “Barcodes” from the iTunes Store don’t worry my cost conscience friend it is, “Free”. Also, for the true geeks in the room here is the link to the SVN repository that holds the source to the iPhone Xcode project, definitely worth a peek.
So, Microsoft Bing had a huge party at San Francisco’s famed venue, Ruby Skye. Some of us, from the PHP Community were fortunate enough; to attend this exclusive party… and as if that wasn’t enough in and of it’s self. Josh Holmes, and John Coggeshall thought hey, I have an idea – (let’s take this pilgrimage from “ZendCon 2009” in San Jose, to the “Microsoft’s Bing” party in San Francisco, to the next level) let’s go ahead and hire a Party bus… yeah that sounds like a great idea! So, in true geek fashion about 34 fortunate souls, piled on a Party bus destined for San Francisco, oh and did I forget to mention that John Coggeshall and Scott MacVicar (in true Scottish fashion, no, no really I kid you not) decided that a regular old Party bus just could not be enough so they stocked that bad boy… with roughly, $150.00 dollars worth of liquor! It was a great party and Microsoft was gracious enough to provide a copy of “Windows 7 Ultimate” to all attendees…. sweet!
So, the only way to monitor the Gearman daemon is via telnet to port 4730.
The current monitoring supported commands are really fairly basic.
I could not locate any documentation on the support commands so had to, “literally look at the code to figure out the supported commands” (the below command documentation is copied from the comments in code).
Note: There are plans to include more set of commands in the next release.
Command: STATUS
The output format of this function is tab separated columns as follows, followed by a line consisting of a full stop and a newline (“.\n”) to indicate the end of output, below are the columns shown:
- Function name : A string denoting the name of the function of the job
- Number in queue : A positive integer indicating the total number of jobs for this function in the queue. This includes currently running ones as well (next column)
- Number of jobs running : A positive integer showing how many jobs of this function are currently running
- Number of capable workers : A positive integer denoting the maximum possible count of workers that could be doing this job. Though they may not all be working on it due to other tasks holding them busy.
Notification 1 0 1
GroupNews 2 1 1
Command : WORKERS
This command show the details of various clients registered with the “gearmand” server. For each worker it shows the following info:
- Peer IP: Client remote host
- Client ID: Unique ID assigned to client
- Functions: List of functions this client has registered for.
12 :: – : Notification
11 :: – : GroupNews
Any other command text throws a error “ERR unknown_command Unknown+server+command”
Here is a simple PHP class, to get the output of the two currently supported monitoring commands:
http://www.agencycharlie.com/work/
http://www.agencycharlie.com/work/
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=2aU&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=180+Varick+New+York,+NY+10014&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=180+Varick+St,+New+York,+NY+10014&gl=us&ei=pheYS-2OLoHmswO02PQ_&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ8gEwAA
http://bit.ly/beMsVi