PC World Business

PHP security guru Stefan Esser recently posted on some of the changes and important security issues that are likely to have significant effects for the everyday PHP coder (and user) with the release of the upcoming PHP 5.3.

If Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State Board of Education have their way, soon every California student will have to pass an algebra test to graduate from the eighth grade.

You don't have to be a programmer to be a mobile innovator. All you need to do is open your eyes to the fact that a smart phone or QWERTY handset is a personal computer, sans legacy baggage. In the future, user-facing computers will have more in common with the high-end mobile devices of today than with the eight-core desktops and quad-core notebooks of 2009.

InfoWorld has been all over this week's official launch of Android, the new smartphone platform from Google. With its slick interface and open application platform, Android shows every sign of giving Apple's iPhone a run for its money when the first phones begin shipping in late October.

Last week I said I would look at Google Chrome "from a developer's perspective." I should have specified what kind. I meant I was considering it from a Web developer's perspective: What does it mean for Web application builders to have yet another browser enter the already-crowded field?

Zoho has finally added a central document management page called Zoho Docs to tie together its many useful online apps. The clean-looking, functional page looks much like the Google Docs start page, with a folder view on the left and all files - spreadsheets, documents, presentations, etc. - listed on the right.

Last week I suggested that the IT world, particularly when it comes to marketing, is crazy, and I cited as evidence Microsoft's recently announced US$10 million plan to use comedian Jerry Seinfeld to hawk Vista.

I love lampooning the FOSS community. These self-righteous cyber-hippies are almost always good for a blog entry or two per month. And because many of them can't resist airing their own community's dirty laundry, I have no shortage of story ideas to choose from.

Could Microsoft be switching away from Windows?

I'm continually amazed at how the premier Web properties are willing to share what they are doing. We get to peek behind the curtain routinely. Google and Yahoo both have good lab pages, but there's some seriously experimental stuff on the Mozilla labs page. Here's what they're up to.

For a technology that has been in stable release since May 22, 2000, PHP 4 has finally reached the end of its official life. With the release of PHP 4.4.9, official support has ended and the final security patch for the platform issued.