A List Apart issue #238 is up:

• Evangelizing Outside the Box: Web Standards and Large Companies, by Peter-Paul Koch
• Who Needs Headlines?, by Shaun Crowley

The first is an article about front-end programmers at large companies do know about and use web standards, but don’t talk about it or engage in the “standards movement”. The second is a great primer on how to write better headlines when you are a developer and not a trained writer.

Also of note (and cited in the first article), last month Jeffery Zeldman from A List Apart wrote a interesting blog post about the “hidden profession” of web design”.

The PEAR group has elected new officers and launched a blog. The blog should be a great way to keep up with the most recent developments and changes in the PEAR code.

If you don’t already know it, PEAR is short for “PHP Extension and Application Repository”. PEAR is a framework of PHP code which allows web developers to use standardized packages of components to accomplish common web tasks (such as authentication, caching, database access, encryption, and web services) without having to write them from scratch.

If you are a Ruby on Rails developer looking for chance to get more exposure for your application, plugin or gem, then O’Reilly wants to hear from you. Jeremy McAnally will be spotlighting a Rails project once or twice each month on O’Reilly’s Ruby Blog. You have until the end of June to be considered in the first batch. They will be hosting a similar spotlight-series for non-Rails Ruby projects too.

The Beatles are perfect to listen to any time. They covered such wide musical terrain that there is something for every mood. And every album has a seemless topology of highs and lows, slow songs and fast songs.

But today is the day to give centerstage to their biggest album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was 40 years ago today… on June 1, 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s was released. It was a #1 hit in the UK for 27 weeks (only their first album Please Please Me stayed longer) and stayed on the charts for 198 weeks (longer than any other Beatles album). In the US it was #1 for 15 weeks and on the charts for 175 weeks (both longer than any other Beatles album). It was the first rock album to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year (it won 3 others and was nominated for 3 more). In 2007, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame awarded it the “Most Definitive Rock and Roll Album”.

(More on Sgt. Pepper’s and other music released this week after the jump.)

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The PHP development team has released PHP 5.2.3.

In their words: “This release continues to improve the security and the stability of the 5.X branch as well as addressing two regressions introduced by the previous 5.2 releases. These regressions relate to the timeout handling over non-blocking SSL connections and the lack of HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA in certain conditions. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.” They have also detailed the security fixes and key improvements.

If you are upgrading from PHP 5.0 or PHP 5.1 you should refer to their upgrade guide first.

Madhatted.com has a good how-to article on Geocoding with Rails using GeoKit.