About the Author

Chris Shiflett

Chris Shiflett is an author and speaker who leads the web application security practice at OmniTI.


Ask Chris

I just finished recording the first episode of Ask Chris, a new joint effort between the Pro PHP Podcast and Brain Bulb. I'd like to take a minute to explain how this show came to exist.

I receive quite a bit of email from people asking technical questions about various things - sometimes I know the answers, and sometimes I don't. I can't answer every email I receive, but I try to answer as many as I can in an effort to be polite and helpful. One problem with sending personal replies, however, is that only one person benefits from my effort. For this reason, I often request that people ask questions in a public medium.

Over time, I've observed patterns in the questions that I receive - people generally seem to have similar questions within a specific period of time. This makes sense, because once a few people figure out the answer to a question (or solution to a problem), the open and friendly nature of the PHP community guarantees that this information spreads rapidly. With this in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to publish the answers to questions that I receive, and inspired by Ask Tim, I came up with the very unoriginal idea of Ask Chris.

Coincidentally, Marcus Whitney recently asked me to do a segment on the Pro PHP Podcast where I answer questions sent in by listeners. Because I don't have anything set up yet, this seemed like the perfect chance to get the ball rolling.

I hope you enjoy the show, and many thanks to Marcus for hosting it.

About This Post

Ask Chris was posted on Sat, 30 Jul 2005 at 04:47:27 GMT.

3 Comments

1. Paul's GravatarPaul said:

Someone (or several someones) needs to buy a better mic :).

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 at 02:36:19 GMT Link


2. Ben Ramsey's GravatarBen Ramsey said:

That's not just the fault of bad microphones. I think a lot of it has to do with Skype itself.

Nevertheless, I'm the one who was using the built-in mic on my laptop, so now I have a headset that eliminates almost all background noise. Next time there's a "round table" discussion, the mic quality issues won't be mine. ;-)

Sun, 07 Aug 2005 at 20:39:35 GMT Link


3. Don Laur's GravatarDon Laur said:

This was a great roundtable talk. I think the discussion was good. The sound at time as a bit iffy but that is to be expected on most podcasts unless it is in a radio studio. The information was good, I wish more of these existed on iTunes. Hopefully more will continue. Thanks, All.

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 at 17:54:29 GMT Link


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