Web design

"I'm a programmer, Jim, not a graphic artist." I specialize in sites with complex requirements—forms, database backends, dynamically generated pages. I've designed sites that work with everything from PHP and Perl to J2EE.

I also tend to design simple sites. This is not by accident. Web sites today are dynamic, constantly changing beasts; they must be designed for easy maintenance. My days working for a newspaper gave me an appreciation of readability vs. style, and my days as a programmer have made me love interfaces that simply work.

That said, here are some of the external sites I've developed.

Horror Writers Association - designed with the rest of the HWA web team, this site utilizes Active Server Pages and customized Perl scripts to provide a web community with message boards and chat rooms.

MagUniverse - an e-commerce site using PHP and MySQL. The entire site is database-driven and easily customized. The interface is simple and straightforward.

MagMarket - MagUniverse's sister site, written using the same underlying engine.

Software

I've been developing software since 1996, and the one unifying theme has been the enterprise: working with solutions larger than those found on a single desktop.

At BeaconWare, I worked on SQLPro Agent, a tool for delivering enterprise database information to users' desktops, reducing the number of ad hoc queries used by analysts in the field and easing the flow of data into Microsoft Excel.

At Macromedia—originally at Andromedia, the startup Macromedia ate—I helped build and refine LikeMinds, a "collaborative filtering engine" written in C++ for NT and Unix platforms. This server was used by enterprises to predict their customer's future preferences based on previous behavior. IBM purchased LikeMinds at the end of 2000, and it is currently part of their WebSphere® Personalization suite.

VocalPoint's VoiceBrowser, written in Java, is a tool used by companies such as Telecom Italia to help their users access their web sites by phone. It was designed as a cluster of robust, independent services, spanning multiple NT or Unix boxes, and integrated with various telephony and text/speech conversion products such as those by Speechworks and Lernout & Hauspie.

In addition to these hardcore development projects, at Registry Systems I have also been involved in object-oriented analysis in the insurance industry and the implementation of distributed systems in CORBA, DCOM, and J2EE.

Techical writing

I'm a nuts and bolts guy, comfortable working with code and engineering documentation. Most of my technical writing has taken the form of API documentation for C, C++ and Java interfaces.

More

I am currently available for freelance web and software projects. Refer to my resume for a more detailed description of my skills. Feel free to email me for more information.