ConFoo is one of the most important web developer-oriented conferences. ConFoo 2013 will be held on February 25 through March 1 in Montreal, Canada.

We just opened call for papers and we are looking for the best PHP, Java, Ruby, DotNet,HTML5 experts who are willing to share their knowledge with the Canadian community. Candidates can submit proposals until September 23. Consult the call for papers page for details and to start submitting. That page also explains what expenses ConFoo can cover for speakers. You can also get advice on how to write proposals.

The call for papers is public, meaning that all proposals get published on the website for others to vote and comment on. This approach allows the organizers to pick subjects that have …

We’ve seen the rise of open source software in the enterprise and also beyond the IT industry, but the real keys to openness and its advantages in today’s technology world — where efficient use of cloud computing and supporting services are paramount — exist in open application programming interfaces, or APIs.

Open source software continues to be a critical part of software development, systems administration, IT operations and more, but much of the action in leveraging modern cloud computing and services-based infrastructures centers on APIs. Open APIs are the new open source.

Read the full story at LinuxInsider.

HTML 5 video is coming, but which codec is going to be used to deliver it?

Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome have chosen on H.264, while Firefox and Opera are going for Ogg Theora. For us developers this sucks, because there is no one codec we can bet on to work in any browser. There's flash, which is more ubiquitous than any single browser, but it's a whole new toolchain to learn, and in my opinion it's a declining technology which will one day join the ranks of shockwave and <applet>. The future is in HTML, so what to do? Unfortunately there's no easy answer, so the most I can do is give an overview of what is going on today.

Choose multiple

First and foremost, keep in mind that the standard for the <video> tag allows multiple codes. You can easily specify a video tag with both an ogg vorbis and an H.264 source. This works as follows:

1. <video controls="true">
2. <source …