Tomorrow, the 17th of March 2009, Microsoft are presenting Dev Days in Cape Town, and as I’m looking at the the agenda one thing stood out, PHP. Microsoft are clearly trying to lure PHP devs from the Apache platform to the Microsoft platform. Why? Thats the question. If you are a PHP dev would you consider moving to a Microsoft platform? My guess is that if you are a hardcore dev, then you might not, but if you are a budding programmer, you might. PHP will also be natively supported by VS 2010, which is interesting. I still cannot understand why Microsoft would target PHP. Whats the strategy? Facebook runs on PHP and Microsoft owns a small stake in Facebook, but that still does not make sense. Being a C# dev myself I dont see myself going beyond a dabble with PHP. Hmmm. Anyways, I’ll be attending the following seminars tomorrow:

• Practical LINQ – I had the impression Microsoft dropped LINQ in favour of Entity Framework, guess not
• WPF Demystified – This could be interesting, but I still dont see myself as a Windows App dev
• The buzzword puzzle: Web Technology Integration
• Five Cool Things to Know and Use for Smart Client Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Entity Framework: A scenic tour

I went to a seminar on SEO and the like last year. A company called Quirk hosted it, and at the time I spoke to one of their people and she indicated to me that they have yet to establish a way to determine the value that social media can bring in terms of monetary benefit. That thought stuck in my head and accidentally I have been a Twitter user for quite some time now and this morning I came across a website called Twendz that ‘analyzes’ trends on Twitter and specifically it listed a lot of American Idol stuff. I know this has probably been done before, but by analyzing what people say on Twitter you get an insight into their thoughts and you can develop trends on those thoughts. I use Twitter to follow developers and I generally get fresh and new articles from them. Following the thoughts of developers might give you insight into their trends. A trend I see sometimes is that a lot of developers from Microsoft are either going to presentations or preparing for them. It also seems developers are developing apps that make use of social media platforms.

Social Media provides trends which to me directly relates to a measurable value. I also think Social Media relates to things such as Cloud Computing.