Shoptigo is a development-stage startup based in San Diego and Salt Lake City that is building a revolutionary mobile-centric shopping search engine. Shoptigo calls itself the "KAYAK of Shopping." As KAYAK did with travel, Shoptigo makes the mobile shopping search process 10X faster and up to 20X more accurate - all while delivering an irresistible consumer shopping experience. Shoptigo achieves this through a proprietary, curated shopping engine that transcends current shopping search in the same way that Google leapfrogged earlier Internet search engines. Shoptigo is initially focused on apparel and fashion and their initial demographic target is U.S. female millennials.

I built a prototype for Shoptigo with the following features:

• written in Java
• using Apache Tomcat as a web application server
• using Hibernate object-relational mapping tool
• MVC (model-view-controller) architecture
• MySQL database backend
• running on a Linux server in the cloud

You can experience the Shoptigo prototype for yourself here. Note that only "shoes" are supported in this prototype, but you can get pretty specific in what you are looking for and the system will take you right to the results you want. Try searching for "men's nike red shoes size 8" or "men's black Florsheim loafers Size 10" and click through to any of the stores that come up with black links.

Carbon is an invitation-only event-based membership community for affluent men living in and around New York City. Carbon sponsors three or four socially, culturally or educationally themed events every month. Carbon events take place in private event spaces, members’ homes and other exclusive locations. Events include seasonally themed parties, cocktail receptions, dinners & tastings, fashion shows, guest speaker series, art exhibitions and film screenings. Carbon members include founders and CEOs of publicly traded companies, entrepreneurs, Forbes 400 members, professors, entertainment & media executives, renowned surgeons and restaurateurs.

The rich open-source framework infrastructure that exists today did not exist (or was in its infancy) when the Carbon site was originally designed and built, so the Carbon website was created from scratch in Perl. The member-facing site includes an event calendar, event RSVP functionality, hard-to-get restaurant table reservation functionality (managed via a webservices interface to a third-party provider), the "Carbon Insider" message center (implemented by scraping & re-skinning a WordPress blog) and member profile management functionality. On the administrative side various reports and administrative tools are provided, including user/guest management functionality, event/reservation management functionality, greeting page customization and various reports.

Below are some screenshots of the Carbon website. Click the thumbnails to select different images.

ThoughtsAlive and SchoolOfLifeMastery are websites owned and operated by Trevan & Leslie Householder. Leslie Householder is the author of the award-winning best-seller "The Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can" (opens in new window), a modern-day parable which employs a whimsical and humorous storyline to teach how to achieve what one desires in life by applying principles of correct thought. The websites are a continuation of the material contained in the book, providing advanced step-by-step instruction to members who pay a monthly fee or as a supplement to those who have purchased offline course materials.

For this engagement I came into the process after the basics of the website(s) had already been laid down and work had been done by several previous developers, which meant that I had to use existing code as much as possible and avoid the temptation to re-write. The school uses off-the-shelf software written in PHP which has been customized to provide the specific functionality needed for the school. My job was to fix a variety of bugs in the existing implementation as well as to enhance existing functionality by adding new features to the system. In this engagement I was also called upon to perform various system administration tasks such as implementing regular database backups, fixing broken email configuration and recovering from malicious site attacks.

Below are some screenshots of the School of Life Mastery website. Click the thumbnails to select different images.

PianoDiscoveries aims to become the Internet's premiere resource for piano teachers, students and parents. The site offers free content (tips, advice, ideas, etc) for piano teachers, students and parents including inspirational music quotes delivered daily via email, an interactive music dictionary and regular blog messages containing fresh new ideas and insight regarding piano teaching and techniques. Piano teachers may purchase memberships which give them access to a suite of PDF studio documents including award certificates, worksheets, studio policies, recital documents, etc. which can be customized and saved to the PianoDiscoveries website. Future plans include musical games which can be purchased and downloaded or played online, a radio station and a discussion board where parents and teachers can share ideas.

I collaborated with the owner of PianoDiscoveries, who wrote much of the HTML and provided the site content which I then backed with programming where necessary. The site was written from scratch using Adobe DreamWeaver and Perl. I also integrated with Paypal using the IPN (instant payment notification) process for when customers purchase a PianoDiscoveries membership. Since much of the PianoDiscoveries site consists of static HTML pages, I did not use a web application framework but instead opted to write individual scripts where necessary. I also provided a suite of back-end tools for managing users, dictionary entries, and so forth.

Below are some screenshots of the PianoDiscoveries website. Click the thumbnails to select different images.

The Exmormon Foundation is a diverse community of former Mormons or questioning Mormons, many of whom have been church leaders, teachers, missionaries and faithful members. The Foundation offers emotional support to those who are leaving or who have left the Mormon church. It also sponsors conferences and speakers about Mormonism, serves the media and general public as a reliable source of information about Mormonism, provides support to individuals and groups who are working to present a more accurate view of Mormonism, and maintains a website and several online discussion forums related to Mormonism.

As a former Mormon and past Foundation board member I knew the challenges involved in organizing, coordinating and tracking registrants for the Foundation's annual conference and I offered to help by providing an online registration system. I created a simple registration form and wrote a Perl script to capture registration information and persist it to a database. I also integrated the system with Paypal via their IPN (instant payment notification) system to automatically record registrant payments. I provided a back-end registrant management interface which allows registrant information to be edited/updated as well as providing easy export (via CSV) for loading into a spreadsheet.

Below are some screenshots of the system I developed for the Exmormon Foundation. Click the thumbnails to select different images.