Mahmudur Rahman

The function expects to be given a string containing a US English date format and will try to parse that format into a Unix timestamp (the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 UTC), relative to the timestamp given in now , or the current time if now is not supplied. This function will use the TZ environment variable (if available) to calculate the timestamp. Since PHP 5.1.0 there are easier ways to define the timezone that is used across all date/time functions. That process is explained in the date_default_timezone_get() function page. - Mahmudur Rahman

In his opening words Dave McClure tells us that the online medium is different than any other because we can measure user behavior in real-time. Now add to the mix the speed at your which your competitors are innovating, and the question becomes how you can build that killer app the right way quickly. - Mahmudur Rahman

As of writing this entry there are nearly 3000 polished Facebook applications developed for the F8 Facebook developer’s platform, but only a very small number of those applications were developed with the intent of earning revenue. - Mahmudur Rahman

A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with their friends on Facebook. The combined ecosystem of these game developers and other companies supplying services to them could generate half a billion dollars in revenue in 2009. - Mahmudur Rahman

With Facebook’s new platform reportedly attracting 1,000 developers a day in its first month, I thought it would be interesting to hear one developer’s story of the challenge faced when trying to generate revenue from a Facebook-only application. - Mahmudur Rahman

Facebook Application Monetization - Case Studies - Mahmudur Rahman

Developing a successful Facebook application isn’t an easy task. If you’re just getting started or you’re trying to figure out what it takes to create a successful application, you’ll find the list of resources below very helpful. - Mahmudur Rahman

Joe Winterthaler was going to Clemson University (near my home town of lovely Spartanburg, SC) before he dropped out and moved to Palo Alto. Now, he’s making Quizzes, one of the most popular Facebook applications with over 1.2 million users. We sat down with Joe to get his thoughts on what makes Quizzes different than all the other profile widget apps out there. - Mahmudur Rahman

I had the pleasure of attending the Facebook Application Developer’s Garage in San Diego, California on August 23rd. It was hosted by Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews at Microsoft’s local office space in San Diego. For a brief bit of time we talked with one of the main F8 designers whose name I forget; I bluntly asked him via Skype why ASP.NET wasn’t supported in Facebook’s Thrift release and the answer was, plainly, that Facebook’s internal development team is committed to open source and has no experience with it (noobs). - Mahmudur Rahman

Y Combinator is famous for its well known motto "Make Something People Want." This very simple statement serves as a guiding principle for a startup, helping to focus it on this core goal early on: to ensure that its product provides compelling value to its target audience. It also de-emphasizes many secondary issues that, while important, are not likely to be an early cause of failure for a startup. I'm a big fan of the motto and use it myself as a quick filter for all the startup ideas I evaluate. - Mahmudur Rahman

Facebook Markup Language (FBML) enables you to build full Facebook Platform applications that deeply integrate into a user's Facebook experience. You can hook into several Facebook integration points, including the profile, profile actions, Facebook canvas, News Feed and Mini-Feed. FBML is an evolved subset of HTML with some elements removed, and others which have been added that are specific to Facebook. You set the FBML for a profile box by calling profile.setFBML through the API. The FBML is cached on Facebook's server until profile.setFBML is called again through a canvas page. For a high-level technical spec for FBML, please see FBMLspec. - Mahmudur Rahman

Meetup Do something • Learn something Share something • Change something - Mahmudur Rahman

The following guest post is by Tim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of computer book publisher O’Reilly Media and a conference organizer. O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 five years ago. Now he is arguing it is time for Gov 2.0, and has helped organize a summit next week to talk about what that might mean. - Mahmudur Rahman

Welcome to blipfoto — the zero-fuss website that lets anyone join in and publish one photo a day. Record your life in pictures, improve your photography skills, or just keep in touch with your family and friends. Join the community now and start seeing the world in a completely different way. We warn you, it can get quite addictive.... - Mahmudur Rahman

LiveSalary is a free community-based website where people exchange salary data. The site contains REAL salaries entered by Australian employees FOR Australian employees. Help maximise the richness of this data by contributing today and please return in the near future to see how salaries in your area of expertise change over time. LiveSalary launched in June 2008 ... so the salary database is growing daily! - Mahmudur Rahman

If you are interested in entrepreneurship resources, education or activity at Stanford University, the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network (SEN) should be your first stop. - Mahmudur Rahman

Garage Technology Ventures is a seed-stage and early-stage venture capital fund. We’re looking to invest in extraordinary entrepreneurs who have the ability to build great teams and great companies. - Mahmudur Rahman

A. Use a simple procedure with a complex SELECT This stored procedure returns all authors (first and last names supplied), their titles, and their publishers from a four-table join. This stored procedure does not use any parameters. USE pubs IF EXISTS (SELECT name FROM sysobjects WHERE name = 'au_info_all' AND type = 'P') DROP PROCEDURE au_info_all GO CREATE PROCEDURE au_info_all AS SELECT au_lname, au_fname, title, pub_name FROM authors a INNER JOIN titleauthor ta ON a.au_id = ta.au_id INNER JOIN titles t ON t.title_id = ta.title_id INNER JOIN publishers p ON t.pub_id = p.pub_id GO - Mahmudur Rahman

WampServer is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin to easily manage your databases. - Mahmudur Rahman

Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and after rounding up thousands of your suggestions, considering our own favorites, and performing a little spreadsheet magic, we've cooked up our own cornucopia of excellent free software and webapps we're extremely thankful for. So whether you're an American celebrating the season or not, the selection of apps below is like gravy-drenched turkey and mashed potatoes for your computer. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! - Mahmudur Rahman

"WAMP" is an acronym formed from the initials of the operating system (Windows) and the package's principal components: Apache, MySQL and PHP (or Perl or Python). Apache is a web server, which allows people with web browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox to connect to a computer and see information there as web pages. MySQL is a database manager that keeps track of data in a highly organized way. PHP is a scripting language which can manipulate information held in a database and generate web pages afresh each time an element of content is requested from a browser. Other programs may also be included in a package, such as phpMyAdmin which provides a graphical interface for the MySQL database manager, or the alternative scripting languages Python or Perl. - Mahmudur Rahman