More Projects

I offered to help a development partner out on a pet project: Wondervault, a site for collectors. I did this primarily to sharpen my Django skills.  In retrospect, I'm surprised at how much basic functionality had to be coded from scratch, things like supporting the signup and login process, ratings, comments, etc, etc.

Since then I've discovered pinax, a platform that sits on top of Django and provides the above features and more. It is now my go to architecture for a certain class of web site.  I would call it the ideal tool for building social networks, though the creators say it's not just for that.

This project grows out of a long standing interest in bringing the benefits of custom software to organizations that have heretofore been unable to afford it. Using the plone content management system/portal we provided this non-profit organization with sophisticated community building tools it will use to develop the catastrophe management profession. Moreover, the easy to use, extensible tools put the evolution of the site is in the hands of the members themselves, guaranteeing the site will always closely support the organizations mission.

Download the case study.  See the site.

This web based system for creating vendor payments replaces a manual/paper based payment processing system shortening the time it takes to make a payment and lowering payment processing costs. It includes complex work-flow processing for payment request approval and is deeply integrated with several company systems including an SAP accounts payable system.

Since this was a financial system, that had to be approved by the firms auditing group, the entire system was design up front using UML models, and then built from a full set of specifications. It is a full-blown J2EE application running on the Oracle Application Server with an Oracle database as the backend.

This application was retired in 2006 after five years of uninterrupted operation.

Download the case study.

This photo sharing site for the adventure travel industry is meant to scale large, supporting thousands of simultaneous users. It is integrated with a 3rd party photo processing service and the PayPal e-commerce service.

The application was built using the J2EE application stack, uses the Hibernate open source framework for object- relational mapping and Maverick for the MVC web layer. The application makes heavy use of XSL transforms and uses the Java Messaging Services to implement a loosely coupled Service Oriented Architecture. Integration with PayPal and the photo processor is using the REST architecture for web services.

Download the case study.

We worked with the learning group at this leading software manufacturer to create a road map for integrating CBT (Computer Based Training) production with the companies global XML content management system. Our goal was to create a single source of authoritative product information that could be used by both the documentation and learning groups, eliminating the cost of creating and maintaining redundant content. Our road map detailed two approaches: the enhancement of the XMetal authoring tool to support LCMS specific features, and a path for integrating the Thinking Cap LCMS with the Vasont content management system.

We worked the documentation group to customize this popular and powerful XML editor to meet the needs of a documentation writers working in a structured editing environment. Enhancements included adding custom UI elements and macros that make it easier for writers to reorganize the structure of documents, index materials, and work with graphics.

I was very skeptical. Did the world really need another bespoke content management system?  The requirements called for an asp.net application, but there's DotNetNuke and the free if closed AxCMS. I was very concerned about reinventing the cms wheel for the tenth time.

In the end, I proposed and the client disposed.  But my .net projects being to look more and more like my java apps, with spring.net and nhiberate wrapped up by the excellent ActiveRecord implementation by Castle

Long ago we created an award winning database/mapping tool for Cambridge University Press. It was our first commercial desktop application and included rich GIS functionality.

See it here. Or read the case study.