There are a host of technologies and tools from Microsoft that can add value to your PHP solutions, save you time, and are just plain cool. This presentation will cover server technologies like FastCGI, IIS and the PHP SQL Server Driver, client technologies like the ASP.NET AJAX Library and Silverlight, as well as developer tools. This is not a sales pitch – it’s a technical walkthrough with demos, and will give you pointers to lots of resources for digging deeper.

I’m sure Glen’s talk will be interesting, and I’m looking forward to a chance to catch up on the current state of web servers in Microsoft-land. While I tend to use unix-based systems for most of my own work, there are plenty of organizations who are standardized on Microsoft products, and you have to be able to be able to work with what they have. Case in point, my wife is hoping to set up a WordPress website for her department at work, and they’ll probably set it up on a Windows-based server.

If anybody reading this is planning to attend, please introduce yourself. I’ll be wearing a WordPress shirt.

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And on that note, I’ll mention that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available for download. Go break the web!

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But waitaminnit… What’s this stuff about forward compatibility by adding some new X-UA-Compatible header to my pages or my server? Am I reading this right? Are you telling me that in order for IE8 to use its fully compliant rendering, we have to add something new to our pages? And that if we don’t, it will fall back to rendering pages just like IE7? Is that what this means?

That’s just dumb.

Screw their stupid “don’t break the web” motto. Break it! Break the web in the name of progress! How will we ever move forward if you keep dragging us back? And while you’re at it, quit trying to misdirect us with that “don’t break the web” nonsense. Putting out a browser with excellent CSS support is not “breaking the web”, it’s fixing it! There’s no real shame in putting out a better product, and admitting that the previous versions had flaws. This is a concept called “continuous incremental improvement”.

There has already been a lot of reaction from the web development community. There are several big names behind the idea. There are several big names against it. I’m not a big name, but I fall in the latter camp. This is not “forward compatibility”, it’s not “forward” anything. This is keeping progress of the Internet Explorer browser and adoption of better standards at a crawl instead of letting them make an evolutionary jump.

Oh, and unless I’m missing something here, there was already a mechanism in place that the IE team has already encouraged web developers to use, which could do the same job: conditional comments. What’s that? Oh yeah, there are problems with that, too.

If you need more reading material on this subject, check out Mark Pilgrim’s links. At the time of this writing, he has pointers to 29 articles, and I’m sure there will be more.

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I’ve been thinking about deleting my Myspace account almost since the day I got it but always opted out of doing so because of the few friends I have who don’t have Facebook accounts. But by remaining on Myspace, I realize, I’m becoming an enabler. I’m giving those friends no reason to switch over from Myspace by giving them access to my Myspace profile.

The only reason I even have a MySpace account in the first place is because at my last job, we needed to test how to format our video player embed code on MySpace. I did find one actual friend on MySpace, but since my wife and I now have email addresses for her and her husband…

The sole remaining reason for me to visit MySpace anymore would be to catch up on news about Weird Al. And really, there’s not much reason to visit it for that, because that’s not the official Weird Al website, anyhow (though, it is really his account).

I’m adding a reminder on my calendar to delete my MySpace account on January 30. How about you?

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I will likely continue to post mostly technical observations here in my blog (with the occasional side-track into non-technical areas). More personal, everyday, short thoughts will go to Twitter (with the occasional technical note). I’ve got a couple of WordPress-related posts coalescing in the back of my brain, and I hope to find time to write them up and post them soon. Stay tuned!

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When Twitter first started, I didn’t think I’d see much value in it. Like many, I figured, “I’ve already got a blog, why would I need another service to maintain?” Then, Alex King asked me to look at a couple of things in his Twitter Tools plugin, so I signed up, just for testing things out. And also like many other people, I discovered that the deliberately small messages draw you in to making quick updates. Even though I’ve found it hard to make longer regular posts (like this one), posting a quick tweet on Twitter doesn’t distract me for long enough to interrupt my work flow in any significant way. Eventually, I’ll probably start reading and posting tweets from my phone, but for now, the web view, IM notices, and RSS feed serve my needs.

If you’re using Twitter, what was your reaction — was it similar to mine? Or did you immediately jump in? Or did you decide that you didn’t have a use for it? Do you use it more for posting your own thoughts, or for following others? If you haven’t tried it yet, why not?

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In this article, Bob briefly outlines six benefits that he gets from writing on his blog: Meet and Greet, Self Documenting, Self Promotion, Mentoring, Education, and Giving Back. Even though I don’t make time to post something new every day (I wish I could), I have some of the same thoughts and feelings about why I keep a blog. Click on over, read his post, tell Bob why you blog. And tell him that Dougal sent you.

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I don’t know if there are plans to fold this functionality into the main WordPress core, but I’d guess not. But it would be nice to see it as an “official” plugin.

(via Factory City)

Update: as pointed out, I was mistaken about the consumer part. That’s a bummer, but the creation of nearly three-quarters of a million new OpenIDs is still pretty nifty.

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For example, if you typed this:

I was driving to my girlfriend’s house the other day, and some guy cut me off and almost ran my car off the road! I hate when people do stupid things like that. Don’t you?

Then it might come out something like this:

I were sailin’ t’ me girlfriend’s house th’ other day, and some lubber cut me off and almost ran me boat off th’ sea, avast! I hate when scallywags do daft thin’s like that. Don’t ye, and a bucket o’ chum?

Doesn’t that make you wish that every day was Talk Like a Pirate Day?

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So, I’ve got these miles sitting around that I’m not likely to use unless I can add enough more to get a second ticket, so that maybe Susan and I can take our long-overdue honeymoon. And thus is born my Air Miles Experiment. I figure there must be lots of other people out there who travel at least occassionally, but who don’t actively participate in some sort of air miles program. Or people who purchase various things on the net from time to time. If you are one of those people, I’d like to enlist you.

What do you have to do? Just use my AAdvantage number (391H8E0) if you have an opportunity. Staying at a hotel for the weekend? Ask at the front desk if they participate in the American Airlines AAdvantage program. Other participating businesses include Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Circuit City, Sharper Image, iTunes, Shutterfly, LEGO Shop at Home, Target, Land’s End, and Old Navy (among many others). There’s a full list at the AAdvantage eShopping Mall.

What do you get out of this? Well, nothing — except the joy of giving. Maybe this could be a cheap (free!) way for you to reward me for some software I’ve written, or knowledge that you found on this blog. Maybe it’s just a way for you to “stick it to the man” by getting an airline to give up something for nothing. Maybe you need to atone for that time that you snuck forbidden liquids onto a flight. Maybe you’re just sick and tired of all those mofo snakes on that mofo plane!

So there it is: my plea for something free. The next time you’re getting ready to buy something online, maybe you’ll remember to check the list of merchants. And if you’re buying from a participating vendor, punch in AAdvantage number 391H8E0.

And can I ask one more favor? Even if you aren’t going to do this yourself, if you think this experiment is interesting, spread the word with a link back to this post. If I start to see any significant participation, I’ll update here with some details.

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