Here is the good function for pre PHP 5: I added GMT difference at the end, it's not hardcoded.
function iso8601($time=false) {
if ($time === false) $time = time();
$date = date('Y-m-d\TH:i:sO', $time);
return (substr($date, 0, strlen($date)-2).':'.substr($date, -2));
}