HipHop: Rocking the PHP World

A lot of techie friends ask me why I chose to program in PHP instead of JSP, ASP or even Java (which I studied formally). Facebook developer, Haiping Zhao, has the same point of view as I do. PHP is simple - to learn, to write, to read and debug. It's in English and makes logical sense even for lay people who know nothing about programming.

Now when you've programmed in PHP for a while, you feel like you can make it do anything - and you can. It's just not as fast as compiled languages like C++ or interpreted languages like Java - it does not use memory and CPU resources very efficiently. When I brought up knowledge discovery and data mining systems to my former programmer/leader, he said that to be able to process huge amounts of data, we would have to learn C++ and that's a completely different ball game from our simple scripting language. This became a limitation that I had to live with - and piqued my interest in learning C++. But all my side projects, full time work load and church responsibility made learning C++ nearly impossible.

A team of engineers from Facebook were faced with the same limitation. They needed the speed of C++ to scale the Facebook application, but their small team were mostly PHP programmers. Instead of making the programmers learn C++ and rewrite the whole application - the engineers came up with HipHop for PHP, which converts PHP code to C++ code programmatically. Isn't that just brilliant?

Use a program so that you don't have to learn a new programming language! And there's an added bonus, you don't have to write great code, it optimizes your code for you - less headaches for senior programmers, I'm thinking. They are releasing the open source project to a select group of PHP developers tonight at 7:30 PM PST and will be streaming it live for our viewing pleasure. Check the Facebook Developers Blog for more details.

Happy coding, everyone!

Facebook + Nielsen = Fast Statistics

39% of Facebook users in the US, UK and Australia have donated money or goods to the relief efforts in Haiti - 13% via text messaging. Facebook Users 50 years old or over are twice as likely to make a donation than teenagers. 75% of respondents say they are not prepared for a natural disaster.

The union of the social networking site, Facebook, with the research company, Nielsen, provides statistics on the Haiti relief efforts in no time at all. Could this be a match made in heaven in terms of getting demographics at a low cost faster than traditional methods?

Repair Pal - Everything You Need to Know

A few years ago when my husband and I organized beauty pageants as a business - we had one candidate ask permission to go buy something in nearby Anaheim and she was gone for hours. Her Acura TL had broken down in the middle of the road and her repair man was in San Diego where she lives.

Whether it's for an oil change, a brake job or your car breaking down in the middle of a strange place, it's always nice to know where a nearby repair shop is, what the reputation of that place is from customer reviews and have an estimate of the work you need before asking the shop owner. Whether you're looking for Anaheim or Houston auto repair shops, trust Repair Pal to give you the information you need to be able to get your car fixed and get back on the road in no time.

As for the reason our poor candidate's car broke down - we later found out that she had run out of gas, but was too embarrassed to call us! Sometimes I think that not being in the beauty pageant business anymore is actually a blessing. What do you think?

Making Helping Easy

Help stop sex trafficking of children and young people by purchasing hand cream from The Body Shop. The Body Shop has promoted this great campaign via email marketing.

The store sent me an offer saying that I can get 15% off my entire purchase, if I buy this Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream. Not only do I get a discount when I buy it, but I can help ECPAT (which stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Child Trafficking) with their cause. Isn't that such a win-win situation?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how many charities there are out there with worthy causes, wanting to help - but not really being able to afford to do so with most of them. But when they make it as simple as buying a $10 hand cream, it makes it easier to give.

Last week, I read that the text HAITI campaign by the Red Cross reached the $10 million mark. I think it was because $10 was not a big amount to donate, the mobile giving campaign was easy to do, and because it was endorsed by so many celebrities - even the president himself. Microgiving works. Ease of donating helps. Informing the people on how they can help is key. Thank you, The Body Shop, and all the companies and organizations out there that are making the world a better place just by launching these brilliant donation campaigns! Keep up the great work!

Mobile Giving for Haiti Earthquake Victims

A member of our church group who was affected by the current recession stated last Saturday that, "It feels different when you are giving from the extra funds that you have than when you are giving when you have nothing to really give." She was talking about giving tithes to the church.

Haiti was hit by an intensity seven earthquake last night, thousands are feared to have died in the calamity. And thousands of financially handicapped Americans have stepped up to help - as evidenced by the $800K raised by the American Red Cross through mobile giving stated in the organization's latest Twitter update. Even US President Obama has endorsed the Red Cross' relief efforts to help Haiti.

There are two ways to contribute to the relief efforts through the American Red Cross:

1. Text 'HAITI' to '90999' for a $10 donation that will be billed by your mobile phone company.


2. Online donations are accepted through the Red Cross' website

Other avenues of helping can be found in the Fox LA website.

It is in these times of crisis that human ingenuity triumphs to use the resources available to help others. Kudos on these mobile relief efforts!