Contest for Busy Programmers (Win a Free Book!)

p. There are a lot of good programming contests out there for PHP programmers to enter and win. Most of them require you to write a piece of code or solve a problem. There’s nothing wrong with that but programmers are busy people. So I’ve come up with a contest for busy programmers. Give blog about PHP Abstract and you could win a free book. Not just any book though, these are programming books. (you know the ones, when you go to check out at your favorite book store they charge you by the pound.)

p. !>http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2270/1732671937_857218c127_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/calevans/1732671937/ The PHP community is blessed to have some really great publishers releasing books for us. I’m sitting here looking at this stack of books from publishers like “php|architect”:http://www.phparch.com/, “apress”:http://apress.com/, “O’Reilly”:http://oreilly.com/, “Sams”:http://www.informit.com/imprint/index.aspx?st=61091&rl=1, “apress”:http://apress.com/, “SitePoint”:http://www.sitepoint.com/, “apress”:http://apress.com/, “packt”:http://packtpub.com… and oh yeah, did I mention “apress”:http://apress.com/? (Seriously Julie, I love you because you keep me in the books!)

p. Now if I only wanted to get rid of these books, I could just announce over in #phpc. (irc.freenode.net) I know that my shelves would be clear in a heartbeat, but that’s just too easy. So, I’m going to steal an idea from one of my podcast hero’s Steve Eley of “Escape Pod”:http://escapepod.org/. (The greatest SciFi podcast ever!)

p. If you want one of these great PHP, MySQL, Ajax, PEAR, and general programming books stacked up in my office, all you need to do is blog about “PHP Abstract”:http://devzone.zend.com/article/2046-Announcing-PHP-Abstract-DevZones-new-PodCast-for-PHP-Developers. Of course, it helps if you’ve actually listened to an episode or two.

p. That’s all you need to do. I’ll scan “technorati.com”:http://technorati.com each week for blogs mentioning PHP Abstract and linking to the “PHP Abstract home page”:http://devzone.zend.com/article/2046-Announcing-PHP-Abstract-DevZones-new-PodCast-for-PHP-Developers. I’ll pick the one I like the best and not only give a free book but a little link love as well.

p. The rules are simple:

# You have to blog about your favorite episode of PHP Abstract, or the current episode, whichever strikes your fancy.
# Your blog has to be tracked by “technorati.com”:http://technorati.com
# Selection is highly subjective, the one *I* like wins. All decisions are final.
# I select the book you get. Actually, I’ll pull one from the stacks at random. But I (well “Zend”:http://zend.com) will pay the postage so it’s not going to cost you anything.
# Guest hosts on PHP Abstract linking to their specific podcast won’t win.

p. Now to get technorati.com to pick you up all you really have to do is link to the PHP Abstract Homepage and mention it. However, if you do that and somebody else actually puts a little thought into the post, guest who is going to win? I need a little more than just a link to part with one of these fine tomes.

p. So here’s you chance to get a free book for very little effort.