Projects

From the Searchy Web site:

Simply put, Searchy is an in-page searching tool that allows you to search inside Web pages using a Web browser on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Awhile back, I got sick of not being able to search long pages in Safari on the iPhone. While I usually start browsing by searching (using Google or another search engine), I found long technical pages difficult to find the elements and text I needed (such as when looking at message boards).
For me, Searchy was a no-brainer. Create a simple Web browser that allowed for searching inside the current Web page, and save the search results for later use.

That need resulted in what you can now purchase on the Apple App Store. Searchy solves the problem of searching inside a Web page, without all the bloat that other third-party browsers bring to the device.
Sure, it’d be nice to have tabs, markup tools, and a bread-cutter, but when it comes to getting work done you usually only need a simple set of tools.

I built Searchy for my own use; I’ve found it incredibly useful and hope you do as well.

- Chad Edge
Seattle, WA USA

Desolation Clothing is a Northwest Snow, Skate and other ‘extreme sports’ clothing maker. Owned in partnership with professional snowboarder TJ Vankatwijk and Patrick Corcorran (Justine’s brother), the Desolation Clothing team has made some amazing apparel for youth.

Pat and TJ have asked Justine and I to redesign the Desolation Clothing Web site, and we’ll be happily launching by mid to end of December, 2006. They have a Web site online now, and I highly recommend you check out their clothes as well as their list of shops where you can pick up these one-of-a-kind designs (created by Justine!)

Update: The Desolation Clothing Web site has been taken offline per the request of the owner, Patrick Corcorran. Since Deso (as they like to be called) hasn’t been printing for awhile, it made sense to stop spending money on the site and further development.

I’m sure they’ll be back soon!

OSNAP.net stands for the Online Shows, News and Announcements Project.

From the OSNAP.net homepage:

We’re a promotion machine. Our core goal is to gain more exposure for you – whether you’re in a band, a soloist, a venue, a label, or even a radio show. Exposure to us means getting more fans out for your shows, buying your songs/albums, and tuning in.
The whole idea started in 1998/1999 when our founder, Chad Edge, got fed up by hearing about ‘the greatest show ever’ – that of course happened last night! So Chad, with the help of some great developers, marketing minds, and supporters starting building OSNAP.net.
OSNAP.net is a massive gateway (now over 69,000 bands in our system) where anyone can publish and distribute upcoming live show information.

There’s a great write-up about OSNAP.net over at the OSNAP.net Web site.

Magstand has been announced. Magstand is a new application that allows subscribers to print magazines a better way to manage their subscription.

Find what you want, and find out what you want

Reagan Rule, a professional photographer in South Florida, hired me for a refresh of her Web site (www.reaganrule.com). The process was fun as I got to update a lot of code on her site, making galleries and editing much, much easier for her.

The site features most of the applications I use on my client’s Web sites (photo galleries, blogging, admin panel, etc), with one new addition: the ability to switch site themes 100% using the admin interface. I’ve basically created my own WordPress Theme Engine, without using WordPress or any other developed solutions. I’m proud of myself for that.

Fabel Headwear is a Washington-based apparel company that makes some great hats. I’m excited to be working with them on their new Web site (coming end of December, 2007). The new site will employ a lot of the technology from other sites (the Desolation Clothing style of product listings, blogging; and the OSNAP.net engine of course!), with some improvements that will make the experience that much better. Look for a link at the end of December.

The Buffelen Door Company Web site is one I worked on years ago (I feel old now) with EH+S and Brand Hammer design/advertising/marketing companies.

The site, still running as one Flash file, allows visitors to brows the entire printed catalog of custom door options, as well as build a ‘cart’ of door, transoms, sidepanels, etc that the user would like to receive more contact information on.

The site uses the same images and much of the same content from the printed catalog (current as of 2006), and has worked silently since 2006. I hope in the coming months to upgrade the hosting account for Buffelen and offer them a free upgrade on their Web site to a more standard layout (using XML for much of the data layer, and some minimal Jquery effects to handle the presentation). Codeigniter might make an appearance on this site as well.

FDO stands for For Documentation Only, a music label in Naples, Florida. I have been involved with FDO for several years, assisting them with their Web site and some album releases (the art namely). Justine and I have done our best to help this small label gain as much success online and offline as we can. I highly recommend taking a look at their music, maybe even attending one of their live shows (I should mention their live shows are OSNAP.net enabled).

The IPTC Fixr (to borrow a little Web 2.0 naming) is a Web application that allows mobile photographers to inject their photographs into a publishing workflow: sending images to a media archive, publishing to blogs, e-mailing to users/editors, etc.

The best feature of this tool is the ability for photographers to easily assign IPTC tags to fields in the image, which are then processed by internal tools of my employer (Media Factory to name one). The IPTC tags can be automated to user or system-wide defaults and standards, or edited on-the-fly (per image).

There’s a bit of AJAX (Jquery) going on, and a little GD2 action as well, but the whole application can operate with or without any additions such as PEAR or GD or LDAP/AD if necessary (a necessity as the final host of the application is still undecided).

The Pandora project is a way to assist page managers in finding archived PDF’s of printed pages, ftp them to vendors and download files in batches. The system employs LDAP via PHP, FTP, ZIP, and some conversion (from PDF to JPG for instance). The final product will allow managers to request new pages be generated from a page layout management software system.

The multi-sport system is a project I’m currently involved with at my place of employ. I talk often about the technical headaches of keeping track of many different sports using different database platforms, export methods, and server-side coding languages. The sports scoring system is not a public product, and I do not intend to share a demonstration as it’s a proprietary system. I will, however, from time to time discuss issues I’m having and will ask for assistance (for instance, I recently had to grapple the idea of converting our database from handling team A vs team B scoring methods, to being able to handle multiple teems playing in concert or against each other

As with the multi-sport scoring system, the multi-database/format image server is a private product from my employer. I’m proud of the work I’ve done in creating an asset delivery tool that uses heavy Javascript and n-tier architecture. I’m especially proud of the speed improvement of my system over the desktop applications that users were forced to maneuver.

Again, I will not be sharing this system with the public, but I have in the past asked technical questions regarding its use (most recently, how to handle a drag-and-drop interface of assets in a browser that will force a multi-page printout or PDF using only Divs). It’s fun work, and challenging as well.

Savings to employer: $30,000/year in licensing, hardware, etc.
Savings to users: hours/week in speed improvements.

The contest management system will allow my employer to quickly deploy online contests to their shared Web servers.

The system is built similarly to the image server (modular, built with components that allow for easy portability and translation to other hardware/software combinations).

This application will be hosted both behind the corporate firewall, as well as contest forms and services hosted outside on the public Internet.

This has become one of my favorite products to develop. It’s rare that one gets to “skunkworks” a project – no deadlines, no expectations.

The Whisky Bar (dot-com) is one of my latest undertakings. While not the most technical of sites (nor design-heavy) I am including several advancements in code to this Web site:

1. Photo sharing
2. Advanced blogging tools
3. A dash of AJAX – appropriate, I promise!
4. A little bit of fun for me
5. A twitter account with constant event and specials updates

Update: The Whisky Bar Web site has been taken offline per the request of the owner, Brian Pickering. I’m not 100% happy about this, as even just a homepage/map/directions/about plug would be a positive thing for the bar, but the owner must be satisfied. Hopefully they’ll be back online with the new design soon!

Handsome Apps is a joint project with Sean Westlake (of Backfire Moto).

It is our goal to create simple, image-rich iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry and desktop applications that feature local businesses.

There will be more on this as we continue to spec out our deliverables.

I’m really excited about this project, as there’s a ton of little things we can knock out that will do one of the following (and sometimes both): Entertain, or solve a simple problem.

There are tons of time-tracking and time-keeping applications and Web services available for little to no cost.

Why did I build my own? A couple reasons:

1. I wanted a simple way to quickly add time in the methods I prefer (6-8 “action-words” for tasks, all related to projects).
2. I wanted a simple method to add new features (such as exported reports, e-mail, and graphs).
3. I wanted the challenge to put together a time-tracking app in under a day.

I accomplished these goals building Timeboxr – a simple time tracking PHP app that lets me see where I’m spending my time, on what projects, and a little more.

It’s no-frills, barely “pretty” (I’m an analytical, organized guy, not a designer), and just gets the job done.

Timeboxr was one of those one-day projects I task myself with from time to time.

And yes, I did track the time I spent on building the application.

Backfire Moto is a monthly event held in Ballard, WA targeting vintage cafe and rat-bikes (similar to my 1975 Honda CB 400 four supersport).

Sean Westlake (also of Handsome Apps) has asked me from time to time to create little applications for his Web site.

While I work on the full replacement Web site, I have launched a photo gallery system as well as a classifieds system that has greatly improved the traffic to the Backfire Moto Web site.

Visitors are thrilled at being able to mass-upload photos and list their goods for sale. The feedback has been very positive.

I look forward to launching the replacement Web site, using CodeIgniter as my engine.

Further, the photos and other applications on the Web site are being built with mobile users in mind. Through the Handsome Apps projects, Sean and I will be adding the ability to download photo collections, add new assets, browse classifieds, even find a ride to attend all from a mobile device (targeting iPhone and Android).