PHP::Impact recently named sixteen PHP open source applications that have “changed the world” including two of my all-time favorite, much loved, and long used web phenomenons, WordPress and Gallery. Ten years running is a long time for the popular, pragmatic, database-wielding phpMyAdmin to have been in high demand—I had no idea phpMyAdmin had been around that long. I am also very impressed to see Magento eCommerce on the list since it just came out of beta this March. So far, Magento is getting rave reviews and a few complaints. It will be interesting to see how these projects continue to evolve and change take over the world.

SMX Advanced networking party at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle.

There is an exceptional line up of speakers for the upcoming Blogging for Business (B4B) 2008 Conference this Friday, June 6, 2008 in Salt Lake City. Registration is $299 and you can sign up at http://regonline.com/b4b2008. I’ll be at the event, and I am looking forward to networking with the B4B crowd.

Whoa. Google has updated their favicon. And since I’m afflicted with tabitis, it kind of threw me for a loop. I must admit I kind of like the old one better.

Old: New:

Oranges, grapes, grasses, and poppies. I seriously love California Poppies.

First day in Sonoma was filled with yummy breakfast, tasty wines, and walking around a bit in the (unfortunately) 100 degree weather.

Food, foosball, and Nerf were the main themes (well, besides Fedora & Ubuntu) at last night’s Ubuntu/Fedora Release Party at Code Greene. Here are some pictures from the party posted on flickr.

The inaugural PodCampSLC 2008 took place on Saturday, March 15th, 2008. The turnout was pretty good. There were a few glitches with building entry and wifi, but all-in-all it was a fairly smooth unconference I suspect. I had great fun meeting people and listening to interesting conversation and one very well done, very educational speech on audio engineering by Mike Wiseland. I also was pleased to meet Jake Spurlock, who works on skiutah.com blog as part of a school project. Very cool stuff. While browsing the blog, I saw this truly gorgeous ski photograph by Grant Gunderson.

Some really cool things I learned at PodCampSLC were:

• The Zoom H4 is a dynamic and superb little podcasting tool.
• The Sure SM58 is a common mic you can get for ~$100.
• The AT4050 is a great mic (three mics in one: cardiod, omni & figure 8) that retails for $999, but you can probably get it for around $550.
• The biggest problem with lower end video cameras is hum from the tape.
• Vegas is a really great professional podcast editor that also does video.
• VisualHub is great video editing software.
• I really like startcooking.com (mentioned by Doug from Podango).
• 50,000 downloads/month is not enough reach to attract sponsorships, 50k might be enough for niche advertisers.
• If it takes 1 hour to create a 13MB audio podcast, it probably will take 10 hours to create a 50MB video podcast.
• Blogging is a great search engine tool. (I knew that one!)
• The best mic situation for a group setting (i.e. users group meeting) is a Zoom H4 type device to record the speaker plus two table top mics for questions from the audience.

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PodCampSLC 2008
Learn, Share, Evolve.

Bloggers, podcasters, videocasters of all skill levels will come together on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 to mix, mingle, and enlighten the Utah community about podcasting. PodCampSLC is a free event open to the public. Tracks include Podcasting 101 and Advanced Podcasting. Registration/networking for this free event begins at 9:00 am. Event is from 10am to 4pm. Please come, learn and share.
http://podcamp.pbwiki.com/PodCampSLCSessions

Sign Up for PodCampSLC at Upcoming.org
Saturday, March 15, 2008
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Registration/networking begins at 9am
Neumont University
10701 S River Front Parkway, Suite 300, South Jordan, UT 84095
GPS Point: 40.5585 N 111.9104 W