Web roundup

• Ian Bullard asserts that you should never use the RAND() function. The Ayn Rand Google Ad is pretty funny.
• The new Zend Server is coming out as a web stack. Although it can be easier to install a Xampp style web stack on your development machine, if you’re a web developer, you’re better off installing each component separately. In the long run it’s less buggy in my opinion, and what you learn in the process of doing it yourself is priceless.
• With the Zend Framework 1.75 release, Zend View has an important security fix in it, that is somewhat incompatible with previous version. Check it out if you are upgrading.
• Google has finally lost some market share…to Yahoo!. Despite all the bad press Yahoo! has gotten lately, they have some great Semantic Web products. Including Search Monkey, which I plan to post about soon in anticipation of our Semantic Web Meetup next week with Peter Mika presenting.
• Eric Meyer provides feedback on some long awaited CSS3 features. It will be very cool to use shapes in css.
• Congratulations to WordPress on their new datacenter.
• Interesting to learn (via Baron) that there’s a MySQL Federal Migration Bootcamp. Good idea. I hope to soon see a “Don’t Waste Taxpayer’s Bailout Money Bootcamp” too 🙂
• Sad to hear that Ma.gnolia lost all their data. A good DBA and backup strategy is vital to the success of any startup. Very impressive that it was basically a one man operation though. Kudos for getting as far as he did…