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I just received this note from a reader, Leisha Cook. I don’t know if anyone else is having this problem with the downloadable code archive that comes with the book. I include the entire note for completeness sake.

I sent this message to Sitepoint, but I thought you’d be interested as well . . .

Just thought you might want to know about a problem with the downloadable code archive for your book “No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP.” I had a problem getting some of the code to work, and I thought I might point this out in case others were having the same problem.

It’s not an error per se, but because the code is organized in folders by chapter, the “common.inc.php” file which tells (ALOT of) other files to look in the document root folder for the /xml/ directory doesn’t function as expected. Everything works fine if you move the /xml/ folder to the document root folder.

Maybe this should be obvious, but it’s not explicitly stated in the book or on the code download page. It took me two hours to figure it out on my own. Maybe you could post this on the errata page and save others the trouble.

Otherwise, though, great book.

Thanks.

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The March Issue of PHP Magazine is out. I have an article in this issue on performance and enterprise XML applications.

Check it out.

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Check out this new IBM Developerzone tutorial: building an SEO application in PHP. You’ll learn how to create a PHP application that then queries Google, Yahoo, and other search engines for different sites/keywords and provides rankings for those sites.

Check it out….

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Monday was day three. I didn’t get as much time as I wanted away from the booth, but I was able to slip into What are Users Doing on the Web, hosted by Joel Greenberg of GSD&M. The panel brought together experts from Google, BuzzMetrics, and Harris Interactive, and the data they revealed were very enlightening.

For example, communications is the killer app on the Web–duh–but the extent to which communication technologies are used (blog, IM, rss/newsfeeds, podcasts, email) is truly staggering across both age groups and nationalities. I was also surprised at how far behind we were as a nation to some of the global trends, like gaming, smartphones, and IM usage.

Another interesting factoid–usage of online games, IM, and chat is fairly high in many groups, including moms with kids. Who knew that this group was playing online games at a rate of 1000+ minutes a month?

When the Buzzmetrics guy spoke, he revealed even more interesting tidbits–for example, in the 1970’s over 60% of folks trusted the advice of fellow purchasers rather than marketers. Fast forward to 2005 and you see that number leap to 90% plus!

Word-of-mouth is virtually the highest integrity form of marketing left on the planet, which is not surprising, given the epic erosion in trust we’ve experienced as a society toward big media and big government. This makes the use of blogs and other w-o-m technologies by “fake grassroots” or corporate-sponsored organizations even more depressing. Paying bloggers to pose as happy customers undermines what has been, until recently, the most effective way to market online.

Oh well.

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Yesterday was another inspiring day at SxSW. I got to meet a personal hero of mine, Peter Merholz of Adapative Path. And no, I restrained myself (somewhat) and didn’t act like a starry-eyed fanboy. Peter was moderating a panel on next-generation (or so-called Web 2.0) web applications and the businesses that grew up around these applications.

There was some pretty impressive stuff there, mostly AJAX-driven apps. It seems that we’ve come around full circle–back-end smarts are great, see, but having an effective UI (and by that I don’t just mean a pretty face) is what is driving business apps.

Since day 2 was also the first day of the trade show, Hope and I worked the booth. We met over 80 potential customers, each of them with interesting needs, desires, and wish lists. This is exactly what I find so energizing about trade shows and event marketing: getting out there, mixing and mingling with the audience. In a lot of ways, it is the best kind of marketing out there–they see your logo and your presence, you get to ask questions and learn about their pain points.

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The day began for me by getting up before 8am. Now, for you hardcore types, getting up that early on a saturday is okay but for me it’s plain sacrilegious. Especially if you stayed up till 1am working on some last minute coding.

Why get up that early for SxSW 2006? Because I moderated a panel at 10 am this morning called “Looking for XML in all the Wrong Places.” My fellow panelists were Giusseppe Ferrigno of Hart InterCivic, Simon St. Laurent of O’Reilly, and Jen Linton of ComTech Services. We basically had a good time up there, talking about all the horrible things that can happen to you if you’re not careful with XML. (As soon as I know where the podcast is, I’ll link to it.)

After the panel, Hope and I grabbed a quick lunch at Liberty Tavern in the Hilton across the street, then spent a profitable hour listening to Jim Coudal and Jason Fried (of 37Signals) talk about less is more. Less money is good, because you don’t waste it. Less time to code is better because then you concentrate on key aspects of the project and less time writing specs that no one will read anyway. Less complexity means building what customers want instead of “death-by-software” projects that aren’t sustainable or supportable. The entire thing made me clap wildly and cheer–it was good to get so much validation on our approach to building TopDog, Lander, and Dingo.

(By the way, SxSW 2006 is when we are launching Dingo. What’s Dingo, you ask? Well, have you ever been in a position where you’re an expert at X but you need to know Y (something similar) to complete a project? Dingo helps you make that leap for programming languages. We are offering it free to the open source community–we’re hoping that we get a bunch of folks come out, register for FREE and help us build a kick-ass knowledge repository that will help us all grow our knowledge.)

Anyway, I ran into a bunch of Django folks after the talk and I spent a profitable half-hour chatting about Python vs. PHP, web frameworks, and directions that Web 2.0 is taking the community. All in all, a good day.

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