Many news outlets are carrying the story of the “Philly blog tax.” This staff opinion piece in the Washington Examiner is typical. Bloggers are waking up to discover that the city demands they pay $300! Sarah Palin was right— the First Amendment is dead!

Except that’s not what happened at all.

1. These bloggers were deriving a (very small) amount of income from ads. They signed up for that, provided bank account numbers so Google or whoever could pay them, the whole bit. They were very much aware they were trying to make money, successfully or not.

2.They reported that income to the IRS.

3. The IRS made that information available to the city and state authorities, and the city did what it did with everyone who operates a business in the city: they required the business owner to pay their one-time, lifetime $300 business license fee.

The city is not gunning for bloggers or even looking for blogs at all. They are just reading the information the IRS gives them.

Bloggers who are not trying to make money- bloggers who are not running ads for a cut of the profit- are not being required to pay $300. There is no free speech issue here.

You can certainly argue that the city shouldn’t require a business license for entities that have not earned at least $100 in a given year. I would agree with you— $100 would be twice the city’s alternative $50 annual fee for those who don’t want to shell out $300 up front in the belief that their business will one day be viable. A $100 cutoff seems fair and sane.

You can also argue that local taxes are unnecessarily complicated, requiring small business owners to pay as much to accountants as they do to the local government because their tax software refuses to even consider handling every little municipality’s crazy unique tax code. I would agree with you there too. State and local taxes on personal and business earnings should be percentages of your adjusted gross income, or the corporate equivalent. Nothing more complicated than that. (Property tax is another story entirely.)

But the city is not specifically going after bloggers. They are doing what they have always done to collect taxes on all business activities in Philly.

Two recent Inky stories got the facts right, but it’s worth emphasizing the most important point: the city is responding to information from the IRS about people who reported business income to the feds but not to the city. That’s it, and that’s all. They have no idea which businesses are blogs. The underlying problem is that Philly punishes new businesses in general.

Read on for a changelog of what’s new in four Symfony plugins that go into practically every Apostrophe site: apostrophePlugin and apostropheBlogPlugin (which we created) and sfJqueryReloadedPlugin and sfDoctrineActAsTaggablePlugin (which we contribute to).

These updates concentrate on bug fixes and stability but there are also some new features that did not require backwards incompatible changes. These release contain several months’ worth of fixes, so if you are using plugin:install to install Apostrophe we strongly recommend that you upgrade.

A fair amount of refactoring has also been done to make it much easier to extend our work at the project level.

If you are using svn:externals to stay up to date with our 1.4 stable branch then these changes are old news to you, however the release notes contain a neat list of what has changed which may still be of interest.

We have also released updates to sfDoctrineActAsTaggablePlugin and sfJqueryReloadedPlugin to ensure that you have all of the pieces you need after upgrading. Notably, sfDoctrineActAsTaggablePlugin now offers a user-friendly tag widget renderer; use it to progressively enhance your Symfony form’s tags widget.

The changelogs for all four plugins follow.

Enjoy!

apostrophePlugin 1.4.1

• Admin: aUserAdmin and aGroupAdmin now use a filter subclass that removes most fields, preventing explosive memory use when interesting relations are added. You can override to change this
• Browser: cross-browser cleanup
• CSS: CSS cleanup
• CSS: Fixed bug where the media library was ignoring use_bundled_stylesheet
• CSS: fixed slideshow CSS scoping
• CSS: stylesheets should be loaded before javascript files, reversed order of the include calls
• Configuration: app_a_default_published added as a more intuitive alternative to app_a_default_on
• Development: aArray::isFlat checks whether an array is a flat array: numerically indexed by consecutive integers starting from zero, no ifs ands or buts
• Development: aDate::mysql() method takes a PHP timestamp, MySQL datetime or MySQL date (defaulting to now) and returns a MySQL datetime format string suitable for calling setCreatedAt() or similar. Takes advantage of aDate::normalize() & centralizes that pesky date() format string for MySQL in one place
• Development: aText::limitWords(): changed ellipsis from three periods to the unicode character
• Development: getRealPage fixed: no longer returns the “global” page if there is no real page
• Development: updated aHtml::limitWords to accept the append_ellipsis option that aString::limitWord already accepts
• Email: single or double quotes in the label of an obfuscated mailto link no longer show up with slashes in front of them in the page
• Engines: Fixed an issue with the page property of engine action classes
• Engines: aDoctrineRoute now also supports passing engine-slug as a parameter.
• Engines: engine-slug parameter now pops the target engine page properly. Thanks to Avi Block
• FCK: FCK layout improvements
• FCK: turned off the StartupFocus parameter in the FCK config we bundle with Apostrophe, which either didn’t work at all or created problems depending on context
• Feed Slot: fixed a bug with the title being a link in the feedItem template
• Feed Slot: now accepts an itemTemplate similar to the slideshowItemTemplate
• Feed Slot: titles as links now work as expected in the feed slot
• Feed Slot: updated the aFeed slot to accept options for passing attributes and styles through the feed in addition to just markup
• Feed slot: posts limit option correctly passed as a number
• I18N: removed all of the text transform styles from the plugin. Those we like are now in the sandbox where you can easily remove them for better I18N
• JavaScript: Fixed cross-browser issue with aMultipleSelect
• JavaScript: New jquery ui theme
• JavaScript: Update jQuery UI to match last stable 1.3.x jQuery release. Moving to 1.4.x will require addressing some incompatibilities
• JavaScript: jQuery cleanup
• JavaScript: you can now hit Return to save a new item in aMultiSelect
• Markup: Fixed accessibility and standard compliance bugs (a few compliance issues remain)
• Markup: editPdfSuccess markup corrected
• Markup: editVideoSuccess and _editImage partial markup corrected
• Media: Added aMediaItem::getImgSrcUrl method
• Media: Deprecated use of actual_slug to bring users back from media repository in favor of actual_url; fixed our own examples
• Media: added width and height attributes to the image tag output by getEmbedCode in PluginaMediaItem.class.php. This speeds up rendering for all browsers across the board
• Media: all media slots (when in areas, not as singleton slots) now display a placeholder div where appropriate
• Media: alphabetized media categories in the multiple select drop down
• Media: fixed error with slideshows in global and virtual pages, associated with fixed bug in aTools::getRealPage()
• Media: fixed undefined index error in slideshow slot when no width parameter is specified
• Media: gd backend now recognizes more cases where an image need not be modified, which preseves transparency and improves performance
• Media: ghostscript automatically killed after 5 seconds if it is not able to determine PDF dimensions in that time. Works around ghostscript bugs with occasional slightly dodgy PDFs
• Navigation: Tab and accordion navigation now outputs ancestor classes consistently
• Navigation: better support for the “unpublish an ancestor to create pages that are not visible in navigation elsewhere in the site” technique
• Navigation: fixed bug in accordion navigation that caused improper ordering classes to be placed on nav-items when archived pages also existed in navigation element
• Navigation: getAccordionInfo no longer returns archived ancestors when $livingOnly is true
• Navigation: getAccordionInfo works in all situations
• Navigation: getAncestorsInfo now has an optional $livingOnly flag to return only ancestors that are not archived
• Performance: new app_a_search_hard_limit option prevents out of memory errors when searching very large sites. If you have 1,000’s of pages see the documentation for more information about how to set this
• Refactoring: $aPageTable->checkUserPrivilegesBody() is the core privilege checker method; extend this, calling the base version and adding your own checks, and you won’t have to worry about caching or rewriting privilege names, both of which are taken care of by the checkUserPrivileges method first
• Refactoring: Fixed missing parent::configure() calls in the media subtype forms. Now you can modify the behavior of all media subtype forms by editing the configure() method of the aMediaItemForm class at project level
• Refactoring: aPageTable::checkPrivileges is now a wrapper around $aPageTable->checkUserPrivileges(), which is easier to extend without static method inheritance problems
• Refactoring: all form classes and many other classes, such as aTools, now extend a Basea* class so you can override them and extend the base to avoid duplicating code
• Refactoring: the privileges portion of the page settings form is broken out to a single allPrivileges partial so that you can easily override that to add or remove parts of it when templating out the page settings form
• Samples: removed twoColumnTemplate from app.yml sample
• Search: Zend Lucene can throw exceptions if it doesn’t like search syntax. Catch the exceptions and report no results
• Search: category names now trigger search matches in the media repository
• Search: don’t let workloads requested by consecutive failed invocations of rebuild-search-index build up a backlog of redundant indexing to be done
• Security: breadcrumb partial no longer outputs archived pages when logged out
• Security: checkUserPrivileges is now responsible for converting ‘edit’ to ‘edit|manage’ in one consistent place
• Security: cleaned up logic determining when “this page” button and its contents are rendered. Editors and managers can use “this page” properly
• Security: consistent presentation of permissions option in media type forms
• Security: custom secureSuccess message in sandbox project when you are logged in with insufficient permissions, behaves like a 404 by default
• Security: don’t show the heading for the page permissions area if both privilege widgets are disabled for this user
• Security: explicit permissions are not checked for virtual pages (this introduced DQL bugs granting everyone edit permissions to them, you should be using the ‘edit’ flag to a_area or a_slot to programmatically determine who has rights to a virtual page)
• Security: improved privilege cache
• Signin: removed remember me button from the signin form partial since its default behavior in sfDoctrineGuardPlugin is not what users expect (i.e. it doesn’t work)
• Slots: Added an aUI call after slot is saved to reactivate buttons etc.
• Slots: app_a_new_slots_top option now works properly. Thanks to martin79
• Slots: editing-now class now removed from slots properly after save
• Slots: slots can now be nested more deeply, often needed in the blog plugin
• Slugs: Add checks and fixes when renaming a page creates a slug conflict
• Slugs: Fixed bug that caused engines to not work properly with utf-8 slugs
• Slugs: leading slash required when editing slugs
• Slugs: new require_leading_slash option to aValidatorSlug
• Testing: minor tweaks to the functional testing methods
• Variants: The new app_a_allowed_slot_variants setting determines which slot variants are permitted by default. You can always override it with an explicit allowed_variants option in an a_slot or a_area call

apostropheBlogPlugin 1.4.1

• Fixed new category validator, now uses post validator to clean values.
• Fixed improper filtering of categories on show success of blog and events.
• Single post blog slot now searches for titles correctly via slots, rather than looking at the obsolete title field. The event slot does too.
• Fixed a logic problem regarding the slideshowOptions arrow in the slot component classes
• aEventSingleSlot uses the correct form, allowing the slot to be saved
• Fix for new categories validator
• Fix for new categories validator when user can’t add new categories
• You can have just events and no blog, or vice versa, or both
• Fixed form class methods to properly match method signature of doctrine parent classes
• Removed edit categories link when editing events and posts
• Fixed inconsistencies in blog and event sidebar tag counts. Future dated posts and events no longer contribute to tag count. Also posts with multiple categories were formerly counted once for each category
• Fixed routing problem with date pager for events
• Fixed misnamed value for categoryColumn
• Edited metadata to only show end dates when it is different from the start date address
• Fixed a bug where it was possible for aBlogItem to be undefined when the slot is used as a singleton and still had no content
• Cleaned up event meta partial. Now only shows times when it is a single day event with different start/end times. Multi day events do not show times, as this leads to confusion. Times for multi-day events are better explained in the event body
• Routing no longer needs to specify what filters are applied for each route
• Two column slot template brought up to date
• Added robot blocking back for multiple filtering to prevent your server from being DOSed by Google Search Appliance (this does not harm SEO because everything is accessible via a single filter at most)
• When viewing events in an engine index events are shown whenever their date range overlaps the filtered date range
• Fixed bug where filtering could break admin view when a selected filter value was deleted
• Using unset to clear filters instead of setting them to null
• Allow no value to be set when deselecting filters
• Changed default ordering of categories to be by name
• Made it easier to override default templates
• Sidebar area was not using the sidebar toolbar for richtext editor in the twoColumnTemplate
• Author field should be unset when not logged in as an admin
• Unfloated the selected tag to correct display
• Being a user for a category means that you can categorize your posts into it. It does not mean that you can edit other people’s posts that happen to be in it. Only blog admins have blanket permission to do the latter. You must be a member of the editors group (if there is one) to be listed as a category author. This limits the size of the dropdown and is necessary for the same reasons as in the page settings dialog. Added an overridable getUseFields method to aBlogCategoryForm::setup() making it possible to add fields without getting clobbered by the useFields() call in setup()
• There was a significant bug designed into the blog sidebar relating to tags and the way the blog admin handled form submissions for the page. There is now a new reuseable tagWidget in the DoctrineActAsTaggable plugin. This widget closely resembles the way the flickr interface for managing tags works. It is much more stable and fixes the bug we had with accidentally submitting the sidebar
• Brought new tag widget over to Events
• Titles live in Apostrophe text slots, which contain preescaped HTML (boring HTML with only entities). When slugifying a blog post we need to unescape the HTML first as the slugifier expects (and is happy to deal with) a real UTF8 string
• Cleanup of tags, fixed categories bug where the permissions check was not wrapped around the edit button
• Fixed blog sidebar category layout bug in IE7
• Permalink displayed in post and event editor now displays the date in the url
• Fixed copy/paste error, a_blog_post changed to a_event
• Made it easier to override engine settings forms
• The blog plugin had markup in javascript inline in a partial. This causes validation errors unless you wrap the script in CDATA – Fixed this in 1.4 and trunk
• updated blog plugin to use jquery ui 1.7.3 by default if it is not set in settings.yml
• published_at now has a default value.
• Altered formating of dates in event admin.
• Event admin was using a blog route for removing filters.

sfDoctrineActAsTaggablePlugin

• Filter tags array for empty tags
• fixing schema in order to get valid yml syntax – see http://xav.cc/28178
• Fixed ActAs documentation for schema.yml; documented “link_function” option to tag_cloud()
• Created a renderer for tag widgets that provides user friendly tag editing features
• Added tag-input classname to the input for the new tag widget so that it is compatible with pkTagahead if necessary
• Found a bug in some logic in the component.class
• Fixed a bug with the new tag widget
• Documented the new tag widget renderer

sfJqueryReloadedPlugin 1.4.3

• Updated jQuery UI. (We still haven’t moved to jQuery 1.4.x by default due to persistent incompatibilities with important jQuery packages needed by Apostrophe. We’re working on it.)

Star Wars Uncut is finished! And next Wednesday, August 11th at 6pm we’ll be screening the entire crowdsourced, fan-remade movie on the projector in our office. I’ve downloaded the whole darn thing and assembled the most popular scenes as voted by the participants. This stuff is awesome.

Please join us for beer, snacks and force-fueled goodness. Or as Chewbacca would put it, “AROUUUUHUUHHHH! ARRRRRGGUUUUU! ARROOOOHAAAAAAH!”

PLEASE RSVP by commenting here so we have a rough idea how many people to expect. Keep an eye on this blog for updates in the event of catastrophic popularity and other natural disasters.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

“Where?” 1168 E. Passyunk Ave, South Philly.

“When?” Wednesday August 11th, 6pm.

“Who?” Grownups and teens. There is some adult humor in two very funny scenes that totally deserve to be in the movie.

“Who made this?” Casey Pugh of Vimeo created and executed this brilliant project. Fans all over the world contributed 15-second scenes.

“Did you guys submit a scene?” Yes, I (Tom) did, but it didn’t top the voting for that scene. Here’s my scene:

“Will there be more crowdsourced movies?” Pugh says there will be an Empire Strikes Back Uncut. Personally I’d like to see Big Lebowski Uncut. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.

PLEASE RSVP by commenting here. Thank you!

What’s bizarre about this is that everyone thinks it is cool and no one is pointing out that this site must be exploiting a truck-sized security hole in Mobile Safari.

Understand this: if jailbreakme can take over your phone, then any website run by a malicious hacker with skillz can take over your phone and run executables that do anything it pleases. This is very bad and Apple needs to issue iOS 4.0.2 today.

Of course, when they do, people will accuse them of being meanies, completely missing the point that exploitable browser bugs are extremely dangerous and are not always used to do cool stuff by nice white-hat hackers.

As one friend tweeted back, “not from what I understand. It just dls a package that that then, as allowed, unpacks and runs. It’s basically a web app.”

No, it is not a web app! A web app is something that stays in your browser and goes away when you close the page. Taking over your entire phone’s operating system is not how a web app behaves. It is the reason why we patiently tell all of our friends not to install .exe files people email to them.

Alas, now iPhone users are so trusting that if Mobile Safari allows something to happen, they assume it must be intentional.

Just because this particular site delivers what it says it will deliver and even asks nicely doesn’t mean that other sites exploiting the same hack must be innocent or will ask at all before installing malware on your phone.

But what is the security hole? Apparently it’s PDF-related. I ran the source code of www.jailbreakme.com through a couple of prettyprinters and tracked down this snippet determining what page it loads in an iframe:

("/_/" + model + "_" + firmware + ".pdf")

Apparently Apple’s PDF viewer on the iPhone has a security hole that allows native code to be loaded and run. This is not awesome. Raising the profile of an exploitable security hole before Apple has a chance to fix it is not awesome either as it will lead to innocent people getting their phones hacked.

This is a Big Bug, and hopefully Apple will patch it before the week is out.

You’ll want to watch fullscreen for readability.

Which web development framework is the best? I can tell you this: Symfony gets the job done fast.

Last week Alex and I took part in a panel discussion of web frameworks at the Wharton UI Conference. I had half an hour to kill beforehand, so I decided to build a web application with Symfony. I had time left over to play with the CSS and demonstrate the power of layout templates. After we returned I went upstairs and made a screencast while building the app once more.

I made a number of educational mistakes along the way, so I included those along with their solutions.

Is this a full-fledged practical web application? Not quite— there’s no user management, for one thing. But that’s a topic for another screencast. Be sure to comment if you’d like to see additional installments.

There are now 10,000 Android developers, as opposed to 40,000 for the iPhone. And Google is gearing up to release App Inventor, a tool for nontechnical Android app developers that is strikingly similar to the Scratch programming environment for kids. Meanwhile Android phones themselves are catching up quickly, although the iPhone 4 remains the coolest thing around.

Like many others I’m sure, I considered developing a tool like this and abandoned it after coming to grips with Apple’s harsh policies on the subject of alternative programming environments:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Google’s reliance on crowdsourced quality control for apps isn’t perfect but it is beginning to add up to a real difference in spirit. As Android phone sales grow, making development for it an even more viable proposition, content creators will eventually vote with their feet for the platform where they feel most welcome and walk away from the walled garden.

I have an iPhone and I love it, in part because of Apple’s excellent quality control in the core applications. If Apple’s competition here were as bad as their competition in the MP3 player market— companies with almost no grasp of design— I wouldn’t doubt the outcome for a moment. But Android also has quality designers at play. Google’s approach to design may be a bit plodding and obsessed with A/B testing, but it does get results.

Apple knows they must continue to release cutting-edge hardware, but they don’t seem to grasp what it takes to maintain a welcoming developer platform once there are viable alternatives in the game.

I’m going out on a limb here: a year from now there will be as many Android apps as iPhone apps. 18 months from now Android phone sales will surpass iPhone sales. Apple will still have the sexiest phones, and will still command a premium price for them. But inside two years the iPhone will occupy a niche similar to that of the Macbook.

WHAT: Symfony 2 Live Conference
WHERE: P’unk Avenue offices, 1168 E. Passyunk Ave, Philadelphia PA
WHEN: 11am Wednesday, June 23rd

Thanks to our hub status, You do not have to buy your own Symfony 2 ticket to attend at our office.

We’re looking forward to discussion and possibly busting out the Symfony 2 sandbox and experimenting after the conference.

No, not by a long shot, not any time soon. Symfony 2 will not be backwards compatible in a “super easy upgrade path” way, which is a valid choice to make improvements that would otherwise be impossible but an obvious problem for existing projects. And we have plenty of those. What’s more, Symfony 2 requires PHP 5.3.x at a minimum, and we know how tough it can be to move clients along just to PHP 5.2.x.

Fortunately, Sensio had the wisdom to make Symfony 1.4 a long-term-support release. And since Apostrophe 1.x is happily married to Symfony 1.4, that means we’re all in good shape.

Symfony 1.4 is supported until November of 2012, and Apostrophe 1.x will also be supported until at least November of 2012.

At some point, Apostrophe 2.x will come into being and it will be based on Symfony 2, but we have many client and internal projects that are purring away happily on Symfony 1.4 and we have absolutely no interest in abandoning it. So you can very safely pursue client projects based on the current stable releases of Apostrophe.

Wondering where the blog is? In the context of a larger website, a blog doesn’t always jump out and shake you by the lapels. On philly360 it’s the engine behind The Insider:

Notice the navigation links at the left. You can spelunk by category, date or tag.

Don’t see the categories? That’s because, on this particular site, they have been rebranded as “Features.” This is a common way to use Apostrophe blog categories: as separate “blogs.” It’s possible to set them up with entirely separate pages at any point in the site or, as in this case, as subpages of the main blog.

The Apostrophe blog plugin also drives the Events page:

But that’s not quite the whole story. In truth, the blog is front and center on the home page. Let’s take another look:

Notice the “News” and “Events” sections. These are Apostrophe slots pulling in recent blog posts and recent events from the blog plugin. Editors can plug in recent posts and events, or plug specific posts and events into specific pages. And designers can customize the presentation of posts to suit any page template.

Visitors can comment on blog posts in a spam-free environment, optionally logging in via Facebook, Twitter and several other services thanks to the excellent Disqus blog comment management service.

All of these capabilities are standard in Apostrophe’s blog plugin. And it’s open source, so Symfony developers can dive right in. Visit the Apostrophe documentation for details.

“Great, so how come your own blog is still running WordPress?” That will change! It’s not broken and we have plenty of client projects to build, so it’s not our first priority today. But our blog will be migrating to punkave.com/window. We need to take a little time to design it nicely and take advantage of Disqus’ “import comments from Wordpress” feature.

Junto: Creating an Age-friendly Environment

Please join us Thursday, June 10th at 6:00 P.M. for The Aging Junto.

This month we will be discussing issues we face as a society as a significant portion of our population enters their golden years. As a community, the better and more accessible we can make our environment for seniors, the better it will be for people of all ages. Out of the 10 largest cities in the USA, Philadelphia has the largest proportion of people age 60+, most of whom want to remain in their homes and communities for as long as possible. In order for this to happen, the physical and social environment must support seniors who want to live independently and it must complement the existing programs and services offered by the agencies that serve them.

Background on GENPHILLY
This Junto is being curated by Generation Appreciation Philadelphia (GenPhilly). GenPhilly is committed to promoting an age-friendly city by inspiring emerging leaders to make connections with older adults in their professional and personal lives. Its members come from a variety of backgrounds such as the arts, social work, technology, public policy, law, community development and more. The group has regular events aimed to encourage collaboration between different disciplines around aging issues, and has bi-monthly meetings to provide a support network for emerging leaders who jobs touch on aging.

We have an excellent panel lined up to lead this discussion.

Katherine Gajewski, Director of Sustainability for the City of Philadelphia

Allen Glicksman, PhD, Philadelphia Corporation for Aging

Christine Knapp, Coordinator, Next Great City & Director of Outreach, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture).

Our panel discussion will be moderated by Kate Clark, MPA, Generation Appreciation Philadelphia (GenPhilly).

Refreshments will be served at 6:00 P.M. and the panel discussion will begin at 7:00 P.M. As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

When:

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm

Where:

P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

Speaking of Symfony and being busy, if this announcement disappoints you— if you’re eager to hobnob with other Symfony developers— may I suggest you apply to work here? You’ll have all the Symfony you can eat! We’re particularly eager to talk to experienced PHP5 framework coders, and to Ruby on Rails coders who are open to working in PHP (sekrit plans to convert us to Ruby are a bit unrealistic given the depth of our commitment to PHP and Symfony).