Tech
Technical Feasibility Analysis
A wide range of technical knowledge lends itself easily to detailed,
yet concise, analysis of technical issues. Experience with a variety
of development methodologies allows projects to be easily prototyped
and developed to release.
Jason has provided technical analysis and prototype development of
a wide variety of projects, for more details on any of the following,
just ask. Please bear in mind however that due
to the proprietary nature of these projects, the exact extent to which
certain information can be disclosed is limited.
AOL System Integration
A recent project to integrate a proprietary job tracking system into
AOL's existing media Partner Ingest Tool was required to minimise
data duplication and the increased costs associated with the
duplicate data entry. A prototype was developed which allows the job
to be pushed from the proprietary system into the Partner Ingest Tool
on job completion and dealt with automated login of AOL's
complex and protected Screen Name login system. The delivered code
overcame the black-box login system and allowed for chosen entry of
data into AOL's system, along with verbose documentation to support
continued development.
Custom Ringtone Generation
With the popularity of unusual ringtones, such as the infamous Crazy
Frog, the idea to capitalise on the success brought forward a project
for bespoke user generated ringtones. By combining technical know-how
and experience in the telecommunications area along with an original
cross-platform execution system a fully operational and scalable
system was developed. Allowing users to call in, customise their
ringtone and download it directly to their mobile moments later the
system looks to be a surefire success.
YouTube video Player
In the wake of user generated content pushing into the mainstream,
businesses are looking to capitalise on the free content generated
by users world wide. A project to allow YouTube videos, along with
media from many other video sharing services, to be played
sequentially, like a TV station, with paid advertisements
interspersed was conceived. The delivered prototype was delivered to
selected end users to gauge user acceptance levels however with the
advent of Joost and other video sharing services the client decided
to shelve the project at the prototype stage.
Edwards Covell Architects' Network
Edwards Covell Architects,
a subsidiary of UK Land Investment Group, is an architecture startup
located in Soho, London. ECA provides 21st century architectural
services including architectural designs, in-place natural artistic
renders and moving-image services here and abroad.
ECA is a Mac-centric practice though utilises
Microsoft Windows computers for Autocad and other Windows
compatibility. As a subsidiary ECA also required the
ability to access office resources from other premisses including
home and head office.
The ECA network was designed with a Mac OS X
Server at its core providing SMB
compatible file sharing, printer sharing, FTP and VPN
access for the office network. The server includes a RAID
1 mirrored set providing data redundancy
in the case of disk failure.
Links:
The One Page Website
This entier portfolio site is in fact a one page website. While this
has a few limitations, for this particular application it provides
many useful benefits.
Primarily, it provides lightening fast page
loads for individual pages allowing the user
to get to all the important information extremely quickly. Secondly
it allows the site to be saved, in all its glory, to a local machine
for later reference. However, if you prefer your websites on the
more traditional dead tree medium it also prints beautifully -
Print Preview to take a sneaky peak. Both of
these features prevents the user being subject to bait and
switch. Finally it provided an interesting experiment - one
which on the whole works great.
A Beautiful MySpace
MySpace is pretty boring, and when it's not it's pretty ugly. While
some designers have decided to re-skin their page I wanted
a blank canvas, without the rigid layout constraints, to craft my
own page on. Find out what was done, and how at http://www.myspace.com/jtjacques.
Links:
Proof of Concept
Here is a small selection of proof of concept development Jason
has had a role in. Most of these are seriously flawed but provide
a good starting point for serious development of a working
implementation.
YouTube, De-Logoed
There are many ways to de-logo YouTube, and as far as I'm aware
both are perfectly OK. The first is to simple cover the YouTube
logo with something else. This can work really well for videos
shot in 16:9 as the area the logo is shown is usually covered
anyway. An example of this method can be found on the political
site Tony's Legacy
where I was responsible for the simple page and hiding the YouTube
logo for aesthetic purposes. This method does suffer alignment issues
in some browsers.
The YouTube logo can also be hidden by simply not showing it in
the first place. Videos played directly from the YouTube website do
not display the logo. This method involves creating an iframe which
loads the YouTube page for the video requested which is wrapped in a
container div with an appropriate height, width and left and right
offset (typically a negative margin parameter) with overflow
disabled. A good example of this can be seen in the up Web
Clip Widget for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 release.
Ajax Client Side Include
A project required dynamic content to be created without the use of a
server side language. As a proof of concept this JavaScript
demo was created allowing content to be dynamically included into
the webpage using the onclick browser event.
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