Facebook has announced “Hip Hop”, a PHP to C++ compiler stack that they hope will overcome some of the scaling and speed issues associated with PHP apps.  The video above lays out the reasons they started the project and the types of things they want to accomplish with it.  As a PHP developer, this project is of great interest to me.  Most encouraging is the fact that someone other than Zend, the primary developers of PHP, is putting significant resources toward the popular language for Web apps.  The project is set to be released to the open source community in the near future.

© AP (Photo by Logan Abassi/MINUSTAH via Getty Images)

As just about everyone knows by now, a massive and deadly earthquake has struck the island of Haiti leaving hundreds of thousands dead.  As relief services are trying to help, they are quickly running out of resources to provide the care needed for a tragedy of this scale.  This is just a quick post to encourage you, if you are financially able, to donate to a relief organization that is on the front lines in Haiti.  Our help is needed now more than ever.  Below are some quick links to some relief organizations, but there are many others.  Again, I really encourage you to contribute something regardless of the amount.

• Catholic Relief Services
• American Red Cross

Sometimes I forget how great The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was. Carson and McMahon were hilarious together.