A new book on PHP Data Objects has been published by Packt Publishing. The book gives you an overview of PDO, Creating a database and connecting to it, Error Handling, Advanced features.

So, if you are a PHP developer who need to use PDO for data abstraction, this is the book for you.

More details about the book can be read at:

Packt is pleased to announce the release of WordPress Themes Design, which is a complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes. Written by Tessa Blakeley Silver, this book will be invaluable to WordPress users or visual designers who want to develop a WordPress theme.

Technical IT publishing company Packt, has published Learning Joomla! Extension Development, a book that helps create Joomla! 1.5 extensions with PHP. Written by professional Joomla! Extension Developer Joseph L. LeBlanc, this book gives programmers their first step in customizing and extending the features of Joomla! through custom PHP development.

A book on (gulp) law? Why would I want to read this? Well, if you're a developer (open source or not) and you are at all interested in protecting the fruits of your labors, you will want to know this the same way you want to know about locking your house when you leave for work each morning. The next question is, "Will I understand anything the author is saying?". Depends.

This new book "Open Advice" is the answer to "What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?". 42 prominent free and open source software contributors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project, coding of course but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. They are here to give you a head start if you are new.

Packt is pleased to announce a new book on designing Joomla! templates. Written by Tessa Blakeley Silver, Joomla! Template Design is a complete guide for web designers to all aspects of designing unique website templates for the free Joomla! PHP Content Management System.

"Decoding Liberation is a new book that is creating a lot of buzz in different mailing lists. It is written by Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter, both of the City University of New York. Because of the obligatory huge price tag on academic books, it has generated a huge discussion about the need to ‘open source’ the book itself..."

Who knows, maybe O'Reilly will do a book on this, with some strange beastie on the cover. What would an OSINO look like? (Open Source In Name Only.)

Like social Web sites, open source software is most valuable when it has a strong community around it, a community that has invested time and effort into learning the technology, creating features, submitting bug fixes, and creating documentation. Open source is also about empowering users to participate and not simply consume software.