Programming Interviews Exposed: New Edition Released
Indulge me for a moment with a post that has nothing to do with AdSense, contextual advertising, or Internet marketing in general. Today is the official release date for a book I co-authored, Programming Interviews Exposed. It's a great addition for every programmer's bookshelf.
Last year I was approached by the publisher of my first three books (see books by Eric Giguere) to revise Programming Interviews Exposed (PIE), which was originally published in 2000, since the two original authors were too busy to do it themselves.
I must admit that I was hesitant to do this at first. PIE was an “instant classic” in the fast-changing world of programming books, an incredibly useful resource for programmers looking for a way to get an edge on landing their next job.
You see, the job interview process for a software development position is very different in many respects. You can't really judge a programmer from their resume, or even from casual conversation, although both do give you some clues as to what they're like. What's important is the way a potential candidate thinks and codes. That's why most organizations who are serious about their programmers require candidates to take one or more (it's not unusual to do 5 to 7 of these in a single day for the same job) “technical” interviews. These are one-on-one interviews conducted by the candidate's peers — other techies already working for the company. The interviewer asks the candidate a series of questions to gauge the candidate's technical proficiency — does he or she really know all the stuff they've listed on their resume? — and how the candidate thinks.
Technical interviews are grueling processes. Typically, the candidate is presented with a simple-sounding problem like counting the number of bits that are “on” in a 32-bit value. But there are constraints on those problems that make them non-trivial. And some of the questions are incredibly challenging. The point of it all is to see how candidates approach problem solving — a fundamental skill for any programmer — and how creative (“out of the box”) they are. And, just as importantly, how well they'd fit in with the company's culture.
My first experience with the technical interview process was when I interviewed for Microsoft back in the fall of 1989. They're not fun. You don't have a lot of time to answer the question and the pressure you feel is very intense. A book like Programming Interviews Exposed would have helped me immensely in preparing for those interviews.
The reason PIE's been so successful is because it takes a comprehensive, let's-talk-through-the-problem approach to finding solutions to the types of problems a programmer would encounter during a technical interview. It's not the questions themselves that matter, but how you answer them. PIE takes each problem and walks the reader through the process used to eventually come at the correct answer. A lot of time is spent discussing why certain answers are better than others and looking at various alternatives. A lot of time is spent just talking about the problem and breaking it down into smaller pieces. A software developer who reads this book in its entirety and takes the time to completely understand each problem and the approach that was taken to find its solution is going to be extremely well prepared for the technical interview process.
OK, enough with the sales pitch. Visit www.piexposed.com for more information on the book, including a list of what's new in the second edition, and join the mailing list for free interviewing tips. You can buy the book from Amazon and from other fine booksellers.
If you're not a programmer, you probably know one or two people who are. Do me a favor and tell them about my new book — that's the best thing you can do for me besides buying a copy! (Thanks!)
Sponsored Link: Be sure to check out Viral Profit Machine for a viral list building system that encourages affiliates to send traffic your way.
Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
Dear Eric: Personalizing Your WordPress Blog (or website)
One of the things I liked about Dreams Not For Sale was its recommendation to personalize a user's interaction with your blog or site. What this means is that whenever you capture a visitor's name — usually by getting them to signup for your mailing list — you should use that name to address the user as much as possible. The book even includes free access to the author's $97 personalization course (“The Power of Personalization”) as a bonus — he really believes in the concept.
So I decided to try it with one of my newer WordPress blogs, the one hosting my free Why Keyword Elite? course. As you can see, the home page for the site is a standard “squeeze page” that collects the user's name and email address. Once that's done, they're sent to a thank you page that addresses them by name. Here's how you can do the same thing. Note that you can do this with a blog or a website, all you need is the ability to add some PHP code to your pages.
From Squeeze Page to Session
The trick is to use sessions to store the personalization data. Any decent autoresponder — I use AWeber exclusively and highly recommend it — has the ability to redirect the user to a “thank you” page after they sign up for your mailing list. This is where the personalization happens.
Instead of sending the new subscriber directly to my thank you page, I send them to a short PHP page that then redirects them to the correct page. When I create my squeeze page, I set the “forward variables” option so that the autoresponder signup process forwards all the user information entered into the squeeze page — typically “name” and “email” — to the post-signup destination page, i.e. my PHP page. Here's what my PHP script (personalize.php) looks like:
<?php
session_start();
if( isset( $_GET["name"] ) ){
$_SESSION["personalized_name"] = $_GET["name"];
$_SESSION["personalized_email"] = $_GET["email"];
}
header( "Location: http://www.whykeywordelite.com/how-to-buy-keyword-elite/" );
?>
As you can see, it's a very simple script. It first calls session_start() to create a session, or find an existing session. (PHP will set a cookie on the user's machine to identify the session. All of this is automatic.) It then pulls the “name” and “email” values sent by the autoresponder signup and stuffs them into session variables called “personalized_name” and “personalized_email” before redirecting the user to the real thank you page.
From Session to Personalization
Now that the user's name and email address are stored in the session, a simple bit of PHP coding is all we need to personalize our content for the user.
First we modify the header.php file for the theme we're using to define useful functions:
<?php
function isPersonalized(){
return isset( $_SESSION["personalized_name"] );
}
function getPersonalizedName(){
return $_SESSION["personalized_name"];
}
function getPersonalizedEmail(){
return $_SESSION["personalized_email"];
}
?>
Next, we install the PHPExec WordPress plugin. This lets us insert PHP commands in our postings. (If you're not using WordPress you don't need to do this, of course.)
This lets us refer to the user by name with a minimum of fuss:
<phpcode>
<?php if( isPersonalized() ){ ?>
<p><?php echo getPersonalizedName(); ?>, I'd like
to thank you for subscribing!</p>
<?php } ?>
</phpcode>
Of course, this would be nicer if it was all wrapped up in a plugin. Maybe I'll do that.
In any case, when Tammy subscribes to my course, she sees a thank you page that starts with “Tammy, I'd like to thank you for subscribing!”. And, if I want, I can continue using her name throughout the site, treating her like a unique individual instead of some faceless browser. Neat and easy enough to do!
Sponsored Link: Be sure to check out Viral Profit Machine for a viral list building system that encourages affiliates to send traffic your way.
Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
Viral Profit Machine
A few days ago I told you about the free Silent Profit Machine special report, which I thought was quite clever. (If you haven't downloaded it yet, go get it now — my offer of more than 25 free pre-built AdSense sites still applies to those who download the report via my link.) Well, the author of that report teamed up with Jonathan Leger (of $7 Secrets fame) to create a product called Viral Profit Machine based on the Silent Profit Machine list building technique. If you're looking for an easy way to build a mailing list, you should definitely take a look at this script. You'll need a freebie report or product to use as a giveaway, of course, in order to get people to actually enter their name and email address into your squeeze page. But the script takes care of all the affiliate tracking, a key part of the Viral Profit Machine technique. (If you want to know what it is exactly, read the Silent Profit Machine report first, it'll give you a better understanding of how everything works.)
I'm thinking of using VMP to promote Uncommon AdSense. It dovetails recently with my thinking that I haven't been doing enough to help my affiliates promote my book. (BTW, that's exactly what another product — Ewen Chia's Autopilot Traffic Machine, now called “Traffic, Signups and Sales” — is all about, making your affiliates happy so that they send you lots of traffic. Well, Viral Profit Machine is one system that does just that.)
Sponsored Link: For a complete set of AdSense best practices, read Uncommon AdSense — for serious AdSense publishers only!
Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.