Note: This post is for PHP and Ruby Developers based in or near Dublin, Ireland.

There’s no denying that Cloud Computing has been a particularly hot space for the last year. I’m sure many of you have given Amazon Web Services (Infrastructure as a Service) and Google App Engine (Platform as a Service) a go by now, if not actually using them to run software of your own making.

In the last year the buzz from Microsoft on their Azure offering has been gradually getting louder, to the point where they are now rolling it out. Microsoft’s proposition is interesting as, in simple terms, it’s a like a mix between the IaaS and PaaS models that are pursued by Amazon and Google.  As part of their drive to let developers know about Azure, Microsoft have been reaching out to development communities that would traditionally be non-Microsoft centric — in particular PHP and Ruby. (more…)

A very short post on a Friday afternoon.

This is an open invite to anyone who works on the web, be it as a designer or developer, a startup entrepreneur or in social media.

Our door is always open for coffee, wifi and shop-talk

We’re based here on Dame St., just drop me an email - eamon@echolibre.com

What is Funconf?

It’s an unusual conference, presented by myself, Eamon Leonard, and my friend Paul Campbell.

Funconf takes place on Saturday 24th April, 2010.

It was inspired by JSconf.eu, an amazing JavaScript conference we both attended in Berlin last November, and by StartupCrawl an event Paul attended in San Francisco also in November.

Funconf is for anyone who designs, develops or works on the web and loves what they do.

It’s a very small conference, with room for only 70 people.

Funconf is about encouraging conversation between conference goers and speakers on subjects they’re passionate about.

It’s a moving conference and will start and end in Dublin, with some stops along the way.

It will take place on two specially converted buses, where the seating faces into the aisle, bringing an intimate (or at least interesting) feel  to the event, and encourage conversation.

We hope it will be a conference that people enjoy and remember.

It will feature some really cool speakers, who will tell us about their experiences with working on fun stuff for the web

• Joe Hewitt - creator of Firebug and Facebook’s iPhone App
• Matthew Inman - creator of The Oatmeal
• Marshall Kirkpatrick - of ReadWriteWeb
• Michael Lopp - author of Managing Humans, aka Rands (in Repose)
• Jonathan Siegel - seed founder of RightScale, founder of ELC Technologies
• Joe Stump - co-founder of SimpleGeo, ex lead dev Digg

Funconf is a simple idea; it does what it says on the tin… we want it to be fun.

The latest information on Funconf can be found on funconf.com and by following @funconf.

A limited number of early bird tickets are on sale now - http://funconf.eventbrite.com/

A lot has happened in the last 12 months. It being the first day back at work of the New Year, I wanted to write a post about some of the highlights of our first full (calendar) year in business.

Startups

The year started off well enough. We’d just finished a two month project for Mobivox, a Canadian VoIP startup. We’d been building their billing system and integrating it with their VoIP system since our first day of trading in October. The project went well, and Mobivox was later sold to Sabse Technologies, a company founded by Sabeer Bhatia one of Hotmail’s Co-Founders.

In early January we decided to shake up our business model a bit. We’d previously taken the route of web developers / PHP guns for hire. Ireland is a pretty small market, and we found that sufficiently differentiating ourselves from all the other web developers in the country to be no easy task. Given the broadness of the term itself, we decided to focus on our strengths on those that need them the most: startups. We also decided that in order to do this, we’d need some extra brains. (more…)

[UPDATE] - a sincere thanks to all those who re-tweeted and responded to our call for developers. We’ve gotten a great response in the last two weeks and we’re working them. We’ll be in touch with everyone who contacted us in the coming days.

So, it’s been a while since our last post. We’ve been busy working with some very smart and talented Irish entrepreneurs on start up ideas, and the last few months have been a blast. We’ve got lots in store over the next six months and we’ve started to scale up our team.

Behind the scenes our team has grown to six, soon to be seven. Continuing on with this growth, we’re looking for two new team members: a PHP developer, and a Business developer. (more…)

Introduction

A few weeks ago, Helgi and I attended PHP|Tek 2009 in Chicago, as both representatives of echolibre and The PEAR Group.

This post will briefly discuss the formation of a Recommended PHP Standards Group, as put forward by a meeting of PHP developers at the conference. As would be expected, a bit of controversy surrounds this proposal, but my hope would be that it would be accepted and grow within the global PHP community in the coming years.

As posted by Travis Swicegood, a group of community project representatives came together to discuss naming standards for PHP 5.3 and above. (I would like to take the opportunity to publicly thank the staff of the PHP|Tek conference for providing us with a large meeting room with little more than 2 hours notice).

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This is an important post. We believe in freedom of speech and expression online, and abhor any attempts at censoring or curtailing a user’s online experience on an ISP or Government level.

Recently, IRMA, the Irish Recorded Music Association, has taken the somewhat heavy-handed approach of sending a letter threatening legal action to Irish ISPs and even Irish hosting providers.

A copy of the letter [PDF] was made available by Michele Neylon of Blacknight (our hosting provider).

This approach by IRMA is shortsighted, thugish, and uneducated. They clearly don’t understand the Internet. If they did they’d be embracing file sharing technologies such as Bit Torrent and considering ideas put forward by the EFF and European Green Party Free Alliance.

A group of concerned Irish Internet users have come together to raise awareness of this issue. We are proud to stand beside Blackout Ireland and we encourage you to do the same. Even if you only use the Internet to check email and facebook, you should be deeply concerned about this.

Setting a precedent whereby your access to websites or online services can be curtailed without due process is what we should all be concerned about, Irish or not.

Go to Blackout Ireland now, see how you can help.

Nope. Just like our man Elvis, we don’t. We’re going to Soho instead*. This week our homepage got a much needed facelift, and with it comes a new address. We now have a base of operations in Soho, London to compliment our Dublin location.

Our new office can be found at 19 Greek Street (W1D 4DT), which currently houses a few other startups (Hmmm….wondering should it be renamed Geek Street?)  - all thanks to Irish entrepreneur Paul Walsh. But some space in an office does not a company branch make. So, we’re delighted to welcome to echolibre Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson.

Helgi comes with the right amount of PHP kickassness that we expect at echolibre; Helgi wirtes for PHP | architect magazine, and being a member of the PHP PEAR Group also rocks. Helgi will be heading up R&D and working with our UK clients, so we’re excited to see what happens in the next few months. We are also looking forward to connecting with the vibrant PHP and Open Source communities in London.

Today, myself and David are off to London for a bunch of meetings, and to meet the rest of the dudes at 19 Greek St.

If you’re a UK based startup and you need a fresh injection of PHP talent to your web app or development team, get in touch on freedom@echolibre.com. If you want to contact me directly, you can skype me on eamon.leonard.

*Yes, any excuse to play some Elvis Costello.

Since opening a few months ago, we’ve been faced with the recession. One thing we noticed and found important so far (and something we have been telling and helping our customers with) is that in times of recession it is important to innovate and come up with new ideas.

For instance small companies are confronted and struggling to get users at this time of the year (Not only in the tech and IT industry) but in all industries, and what we have been doing for a few months when companies come to us is quite simple, take what’s working, take what’s not working, flip it in all sides, find a new way and easier way of accomplishing the tasks you want done and go with it. There’s a term I heard from one of the lead developers from a VoIP company that I thought was well worded for the current economic situation: “Grow a pair and do it“.

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