The one and only Cal Evans (twitter account) has put together an amazing group of five speakers to do an 100% online conference for developers to help improve their “soft skills”.  We all know you have the chops to code but do you have the skills to keep your career on the right path?  Five speakers will talk about everything from your résumé to your open source career.  It’s really something you can not miss.  Why?  Because there are five fabulous speakers, it’s all online and the recordings will be downloadable later, and its CHEAP!   Only $35!  Even if you can’t make it you should buy the ticket to watch the talks later.  If you don’t and miss out, the video downloads will cost more than the real ticket.  So no Excuses!

So don’t wait… go and register!

1. Paragraphs
2. Words
3. Bytes
4. and Lists

You can find more information on optional parameters and how to use the view helper at github.

Custom Filter – Excerpt

// To call the filter use
$excerpt = new My_Filter_Excerpt();
$excerpt->filter($str); //$str is the string of text

//Put this in your library
class My_Filter_Excerpt implements Zend_Filter_Interface
{
	protected $_wordCount = 55;

	public function filter($data)
	{
		$sentance = explode(" ", $data);
		if (count($sentance) > $this->_wordCount) {
			$sentance = array_splice($sentance, 0, $this->_wordCount);
			$ellipsis = "…";
		}
		$excerpt = implode(" ", $sentance);
		echo $excerpt . $ellipsis;
	}
}

http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=<<URL>>&title=<<TITLE>>&srcURL=<<SRC>>&srcTitle=<<SRCTITLE>>

Where
URL = Url of the page you want to share
TITLE = Title of the page that you are sharing
SRC = Source of the page that you are sharing. for instance you may share http://www.kapustabrothers.com/ to buzz but found the link and shared it from aol.com so the SRC would be aol.com.
SRCTITLE = The title of the source.

It’s that simple. A box will pop up you can add some tags and some comments and click post. This will post directly to your buzz feed for all your buzzy friends to see.

Next are the icons. What should you use for an icon? Well you can search the net for them but I found some pretty cool simple ones from http://www.chethstudios.net/

All you have to do is wrap the icon with the link and your all set. I suggest setting a rel and a target too if applicable.

Update: Here is another icon that I found floating around on the interwebs.

Enjoy!

You can download the source here. Comments and improvements are always welcome.

<?php
/**
 *
 * @author Shaun Farrell
 * @version 1.0
 */
require_once 'Zend/View/Interface.php';

/**
 * Gravatar helper
 *
 * @uses viewHelper Zend_View_Helper
 */
class Zend_View_Helper_Gravatar {

	/**
	 * @var Zend_View_Interface
	 */
	public $view;
	/**
	 *
	 * @var unknown_type
	 */
	protected $_gravatarUrl = "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?";
	/**
	 *
	 * @var unknown_type
	 */
	protected $_defaultImage = "http://everquest.allakhazam.com/pgfx/item_576.png";

	/**
	 *
	 * @param $emailAddress
	 * @param $size
	 * @param $imgAlt
	 */
	public function gravatar($emailAddress, $size = "40", $imgAlt = "")
	{
		$gravatarId = "gravatar_id=" . md5(strtolower(trim($emailAddress)));
		$url = $this->_gravatarUrl . $gravatarId . "&default=" . urlencode($this->_defaultImage) .
			"&size=" . $size;

		echo "<img src=\"$url\" alt=\"$imgAlt\" />";
		return null;
	}

	/**
	 * Sets the view field
	 * @param $view Zend_View_Interface
	 */
	public function setView(Zend_View_Interface $view) {
		$this->view = $view;
	}
}

Click here to view the embedded video.

Synteractive is a strategy and business solutions consulting firm specializing in
leveraging the power of information to radically improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of complex organizations. Synteractive has a proven record of using Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server (MOSS) technology to aid in business transformation efforts of both
federal government agencies and private companies. They will leverage their unrivaled
expertise in Web 2.0 technology implementation to transform Recovery.gov from a mere
information dissemination website into an interactive platform where Americans can
swap stories about stimulus projects in their areas, upload pictures illustrating the
effects of the projects, blog about their experiences, and ultimately engaged as a
meaningful member of the Recovery community.

First off, why build a transparent application in Sharepoint! Secondly, have you seen any government sites that allow users to blog and upload pictures? Can’t wait to see this in action!

Oh yeah, hopefully Smartronix isn’t letting Syneractive design the website, it looks really bad!

Contract Documents for Recovery.gov can be found at http://www.recovery.gov/?q=node/765 <– where are the pretty urls?
PDF that shows above quote Page 5 Section 2.2 on this document http://www.recovery.gov/sites/default/files/508%20Second%20Modification%20Managment%20Proposal.pdf

Once again you need Firefox, FireBug, and FirePHP. Then in your .ini file add the following lines;

resources.db.isdefaulttableadapter = true
resources.db.params.profiler.enabled = true
resources.db.params.profiler.class = Zend_Db_Profiler_Firebug

The best part about this is that you can add this code only to load based on the environment set in your .htaccess or index.php file in your public folder.

1. Running Zend Framework (1.8.4 or above using Zend_Application)
2. Mozilla Firefox Browser – You should be using this anyways!
3. The latest version of Firebug – http://getfirebug.com/
4. The lastest version of FirePHP – http://www.firephp.org/

Once those firefox add-ons have been installed your ready to add in some code.

In your bootstrap.php file add

    /**
     * Setup the database profiling
     */
    protected function _initDbProfiler()
    {
        $this->bootstrap('db');
        $profiler = new Zend_Db_Profiler_Firebug('All DB Queries');
        $profiler->setEnabled(true);
        $this->getPluginResource('db')->getDbAdapter()
             ->setProfiler($profiler);
    }

With this code added all your SQL statements that are executed will show up in the console window of FireBug. If it’s not working make sure that you have the net console enabled! profiling will not work if net is not enabled.

More information about Zend_Db_Profiler can be found at http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.db.profiler.html