March 2009 : Enterprise Security API for PHP

Posted on 04/03/2009 by Ben Dechrai

When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Thursday 12th March 2009.

Where?

Hitwise,
580 St Kilda Road,
Melbourne

The main doors are locked after a certain time. There’ll be a notice on the door with a number to call to be let in.

What?

Pizza is provided by one of phpMelb’s sponsors, Hitwise, so get in early if you want food!

Enterprise Security API for PHP by Andrew van der Stock

Andrew van der Stock is the Project Lead for OWASP’s ESAPI for PHP. Learn how the Enterprise Security API can help you protect your PHP applications from the most common security flaws, as well as improve your overall security architecture.

Some of ESAPI’s features include:

Object oriented (yes, we use classes and exceptions)
Authentication
Access Control
Access Reference Maps
Simplified Security Logging
Intrusion Detection
Encrypted configuration
Input validation
Canonicalization
Ultra safe output encoding for 10 different encoders (CSS, HTML, JavaScript, JSON, various SQL dialects, Windows and Unix shells, etc)
Safe(r) command shells

As it’s the early days of the PHP port, not all (if any) of these features are available today.

ESAPI for PHP is in dire need for volunteers. If you’re a PHP coder currently itching for a new project, fresh victims^W developers are more than welcome to volunteer to finish^W start this effort.

Impromptu Presentation, Lightening Talks, Discussion Forum

As we only have one talk scheduled for this month, the second half of the meeting will be open to anyone that wishes to give a lightening talk, start a discussion or give a presentation that they might feel is interesting.

Then?

We head over to the Belgian Beer Cafe at about 9pm for drinks and socialising.

February 2009 : Social Web and OpenID

Posted on 02/02/2009 by Ben Dechrai

When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Thursday 12th February 2009.

Where?

Hitwise,
580 St Kilda Road,
Melbourne

The main doors are locked after a certain time. There’ll be a notice on the door with a number to call to be let in.

What?

Pizza is provided by one of phpMelb’s sponsors, Hitwise, so get in early if you want food!

Twitter and the Social Web by Alec Clews

There has been an explosion in ‘lifestream’ posting in the last 12+ months, even Kevin Rudd has a Twitter account! This presentation looks at the various reasons for using services like Twitter and Identi.ca. It then describes ways of linking services together using tools like friendfeed and twitterfeed to create an online presence and reduce the time involved in posting and consuming lifestreams.

Alec Clews is an indie software consultant, old school software guy and wannabe Gen-Y kid.

OpenID: What it Ain’t by Ben Balbo

OpenID has been around for quite some time, but uptake has only recently taken off. Ben will discuss what OpenID is, what it ain’t and give a live coding demo to demonstrate its implementation, all in 45 minutes.

Ben is a full time web developer and open source evangelist, actively involved in organising BarCampMelbourne, the Melbourne PHP Users Group and the Open Source Developers’ Club meetings, the treasurer for the Open Source Developers’ Club and a frequent speaker at meetups and conferences. Although he wouldn’t admit this, his participation at this level is secretly only in order to go to restaurants or pubs after the meetings.

Then?

We head over to the Belgian Beer Cafe at about 9pm for drinks and socialising.

January 2009 : Meeting Cancelled

Posted on 12/01/2009 by Ben Dechrai

Unfortunately we’re going to have to postpone this month’s meeting as Nick Hodge has a last minute family commitment and has had to postpone.

We were planning on running an open discussion after Nick’s talk but there’s probably little point in meeting up just for a discussion.

To make it a little trickier, Ben C has had an accident (nothing life threatening!) and cannot make the meeting. Aaron won’t be in Melbourne and Christian might not be able to make it either.

This means that not only is our only presenter not available, but the highly unlikely situation of having no-one with access to the Hitwise building around has become somewhat likely.

February’s meeting is on, though, and will be an OSDClub meeting. For those of you who haven’t heard of these, the Open Source Developers Club organise talks every other month and are hosted alternately by phpMelb and the Melbourne Perl Mongers.

The two talks lines up for February’s meeting are:

* Twitter and the Social Web – Alec Clews
* OpenID: A hands on tutorial and demo – Ben Balbo

We’ll send out another announcement with more information nearer the time.

In other news, the next BarCamp Melbourne is due to be announced in a few days. You heard it here first – it’s likely to be held on the 7th/8th or 14th/15th March 2009. To keep up-to-date on developments, subscribe to their low traffic twitter or identica feeds (@barcampmelb).

That’s all for this month’s meeting announcement. If you want to talk about these or any other related topics, head over to the main mailing list. You can join by sending a blank email to main-join@phpmelb.org.

December 2008 : Social

Posted on 11/12/2008 by Ben Dechrai

The next meeting in on the 11th of December. As every year, this is a social event. This year, we’re meeting up at the Belgian Beer Cafe from 7pm – it’s diagonally opposite the Hitwise building at the corner of St Kilda Road and Moubray St.

November 2009 : Meeting Cancelled

Posted on 12/11/2008 by Ben Dechrai

We regret that there will be no November 2008 meeting.

The next meeting on the 11th of December will, as every year, be a social event. We’ll bring you more information when it’s available. To ensure you’re kept up-to-date on all Melbourne PHP Users Group news, sign up to one of our mailing list.