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Zend/PHP Conference & Expo 2007 

October 8-11, 2007, San Francisco, California

Fellow PHPers, you'll be interested in attending this event if you happen to find yourself in San Friancisco at this time.

Take the Zend PHP Certification Exam for Free! (a $125 value)
Conference attendees have the opportunity to take the Zend PHP 5 certification exam for free. You can prepare for the exam by taking the Certification Crash Course tutorials at the conference.

The ZendCon exhibit hall is the best place to see new products from industry leaders. Meet with the vendors in person and receive one-on-one briefings from exhibitors such as Adobe, IBM, Filemaker, Microsoft, MySQL, PayPal, SugarCRM, Sun and Yahoo.

More information:

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Schedule
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Conference Wiki 

Sphinn … it's all the buzz today and I'm reading about it everwhere I go to catch up on today's latest and greatest.

According to Linda Buquet at 5 Star, latest and greatest is an appropriate phrase to use when describing Sphinn.

If you are into SEO, PPC and Internet Marketing you just may want to take "Sphinn" for a SPIN. (That's the pronunciation BTW.)

Many are saying this will replace the now defunct Threadwatch, but with all the social functionality this site has, I say it will far surpass it.

I was wondering what Danny Sullivan was up to these days and now, I get this awesome surprise from the master of webology.

Danny brings us all up todate on his SearchEngineland Blog with the new changes and other changes coming in the near future.

When Search Engine Land launched last December, I talked about liking the name in part because it sounded like "a community, where people can meet, talk, discuss and network." I promised to upgrade the site to help a community thrive. It took much longer than the original "month or so" I envisioned to make this happen. But today, we're happy to unveil our new social site, Sphinn.

And what specifically is Sphinn?

Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

Now what Marketer in their right mind wouldn't like the sound of that?! Hey Linda, thanks for the ping on Sphinn. I'm really looking forward to watching this grow. 

I logged in to my phpAdsNew the other day to do a little work with my banner ads, and darned if if hadn't gotten cracked. I hate those guys. They cracked in and damaged the database more or less … enough that I needed to repair it.

Then I thought to myself, why repair when I should upgrade. I pulled up my link to phpAdsNew, and I discover another surprise … and this one was pleasant.

phpAdsNew is now called OpenAds … and it's got a whole new look and feeling going on. It's definately worth checking out!

I visited their new blog to see what what was up with the new digs, and learned…

We are the world's largest adspace community! Our open source ad serving software is used by more websites than any other, worldwide. We're celebrating this with the launch of our new website, www.openads.org, and a commitment to the open source community.

I grabbed a copy of OpenAds 2.0 for my new install. I decide to scrap the old one and start over fresh. They also offer another version of OpenAds that used to be Max Media Manager. So, be sure you pick the one that's right fo your needs.

Then show a little love for the new OpenAds with a banner on you blog or website … like the one I added here.

Hey guys,  feel the love in this room … add me to your blogroll?!

LinkShare announced their newest affiliate tool called Automated LinkGenerator, but boy did they make it difficult for their affiliates to understand what the heck this thing is and what it does. It's kind of a datafeed, but then again it's kind of not. Here's the email announcement I got….

LinkShare is pleased to announce a new Web services offering for affiliates, called Automated LinkGenerator. Web services are Web based applications that use open, XML-based standards and transport protocols to exchange data with clients.

Automated LinkGenerator creates LinkShare affiliate links for any product on a merchant's site that offers LinkGenerator. This new feature provides the same functionality as the LinkGenerator tool in the Individual Product Links interface, without having to log into the Affiliate Interface to get your links. This new tool does not replace Merchandiser (LinkShare's datafeed), but will be helpful for getting direct links from merchants that do not offer Merchandiser feeds.

If you are interested in using the Automated LinkGenerator, please email us at linkgen_request@linkshare.com to have this new tool enabled. Once you are enabled, the Automated LinkGenerator will be located under the LinkShare Feed Synergy Services area of the Affiliate Interface. To create an Automated LinkGenerator link, you will use a REST (Representational State Transfer) Web services to request links for a given merchant URL. You will then send a URL from the merchant's site to LinkShare using the specified link format (see the Automated LinkGenerator Help area).  The URL can be sent through a browser, a tool like wget or curl, or an automated script.  For each URL provided, LinkShare returns a click link.  You can request up to 1,000 links within an hour.

Web services applications are accessible using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and REST. Web Services use HTTP with XML for communication. These are ubiquitous technologies and any device capable of using these technologies is able to both host and consume Web services. Web services concepts are simple to understand and with the addition of various tool-kits provide a low barrier to entry and easy software development.

For information on setting up a Web services, please visit the following sites:
REST - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
Web Services - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
Web Services & PHP - http://webservices.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2004/03/24/phpws.html

 Okay guys, here's my findings for you on this Affilistore software … it's freaking brilliant … as in the English word for quite nice.

You have to have some knowledge of how a datafeed works. You need to be able to hook up a database and some php/html/chmod abilities. The install was pretty simple if you know these things.

Once the data is pulled in there are certain parameters that there's no way to update, and others that easily can be. It's very important to do the install correctly, otherwise you'll end up re-doing it.

The templates are easy to work with for the most part. It comes with one already there for you. You do have to select it after the install process is over. So, don't panic when you notice there doesn't seem to be styles. The pages it creates are very clean and easy to navigate.

It is SEO friendly (could be more so) and it's a bummer is that it doesn't update your feeds automatically. I'm guessing that's what's coming in their paid version … I hope so.

All-in-all I'd give this a BIG thumbs up from Affiliate Blogger, the Affiliate Guild and Best Affiliate Network. Thanks to 5 Star Affiliate Marketing for bringing it to my attention.

I'm SO tagged!

I didn't even see it coming … suddenly there she was! Linda Buquet with that smile of hers, politely pinging me to let me know that I should consider myself tagged. Wicked wench! LOL

So, here's the deal. There's a tag game going around where bloggers have to share five things about themselves that most readers wouldn't know, and then tag five other bloggers mercilessly. 

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Bobbie Grennier

1) Like Linda Buquet, my dad wanted to name me Linda Loo after his favorite gravel truck too! Thankfully the buoy industry was doing better than gravel that year, and so "Bob"-bie was the agreed upon name.

2) I'm very allergic to all alcohol. I love the taste of beer, so besides being a big bummer, it also makes attending affiliate events not so much fun as the others guys seem to be having.

3) I used to be a school teacher and I love helping people learn new things, but you probably know that last bit since I created the Affiliate Guild to help affiliates learn the ropes.

4) If you phone me you're very likely to hear birdies chriping and doggies barking from time to time. I've got a full on zoo in my office and feeding the animals is required … Starbucks for their trainer.

5) I live near the coastal redwoods of California, so my favorite past time is hiking in the woods. I never weary of just how special and beautiful these giant trees are.

Here are my blog tag predecessors. I was tagged by Linda Buquet who was tagged by Anik Singal who was tagged by Rosalind Gardner, who was tagged by Jeremy Palmer, who was tagged by Scott Jangro.

Now I'm passing the torch to Ros Phillips of LinkConnector, Arlene & James Martell of Affiliate Bootcamp, Tom Avery of RevenueSource Affiliate Forums, Stephen Ralph of Top-Affiliate.com and Marifer Vergara from the queenofcheap.com.

Where to submit your blogs … Blog Directories and RSS Repositories:

Yahoo.com http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_rss_submission