March 2000 to June 2001
RuleSpace, Inc., Portland, Oregon, USA
Integration Services Group
Senior Software Engineer
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Key Accomplishments
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- Designed, developed, and deployed service integration for the largest Internet Service Provider on the planet (America Online).
- Designed, developed, and deployed a Web/CGI/Oracle interface that would support multiple users across a WAN to handle time-sensitive data coming from AOL Operations.
- Mastered web content by "cleaning" it to prevent the many desktop invasion techniques used by unscrupulous web sites (i.e. unexpected popup windows, desktop takeovers, and unauthorized URL redirection).
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Summary of Skills Used
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PROJECT EXPERIENCE
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TECH EXPERIENCE
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Recruiting
Interviewing
Interdepartment Coordination
Contract Review
Customer Requirements
Design Documentation
Design Presentation
Interdepartment Communication
Resource Planning
Employee Culture Club Member
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Linux Server Installation
Linux Server Configuration
Linux Server Operation
Open Source Software Sources
Open Source Software Solutions
Apache Web Server
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
SSH (Secure Shell)
CVS (Version Control)
DNS (Domain Name Service)
SQL Oracle Clients
PHP (Script Language)
BASH (Bourne-Again Shell)
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HIGHLIGHTS
AOL Parental Control Project
The most important integration customer for the company was America Online's TurboWeb group. They were responsible for developing the AOL Parental Control system and handing the whole thing over to the AOL Operations group.
Our team of architect, engineer, and project leadership was responsible for helping AOL engineers integrate RuleSpace Technologies as the engine behind AOL's Parental Control system and developing a tight feedback system for AOL members. The feedback loop required a 24-hour turn around on web site rating change requests. Each web site on the Internet has a web site rating that determines if it should be blocked by parental controls.
During this project we faced all sorts of uphill challenges: incomplete technology solutions, uncooperative internal groups, internal corporate growth pains, and the ever constant battle to prevent project scope-creep.
Our role in the AOL PC project was not just to deliver embedded analysis Contexion technologies but to also take in AOL member requests for rating changes and pass them through a Content Service Group for manual review and disposition. The final design allowed each AOL member to recommend changes to the web site ratings which were fed back into improving the service daily.
This project was a huge boon to RuleSpace. In fact, depending upon who you ask, this project is what allowed RuleSpace to survive the economic downturn.
Data Distribution
I devised a server-based, secure protocol-based, authenticating, file delivery system. Files were transferred to and from RuleSpace, authenticated and staged for use internally or externally (depending upon whether you were a consumer of input or a producer of output).
The system was designed to support multiple corporate customers/groups. At this writing it supports AOL Parental Controls and AOL Search groups. It was designed to scale easily, obviously an absolute requirement for meeting the needs of the largest, fastest-growing ISP on the planet. I leveraged my knowledge and confidence in off-the-shelf open source technologies for cost-effectiveness and reliability.
My design efforts were praised by our AOL counterparts for its simplicity and efficiency.
Content Services Interface
Complaints about our site ratings were sent through my data distribution system then queued up for manual review by content evaluation staff. For example: If a particularly conservative AOL member saw models showing "too much skin" on a lingerie web site he/she might complain to AOL that it should be blocked in Parental Controls as being pornographic.
The content evaluators would use an interface I designed to browse the daily queue of complaints and make a judgement based upon the member's complaint. In this case lingerie is NOT considered porn (by objective definition) and the complaint would be declined, however if the site wasn't already rated as Mature Content the evaluator would make that rating adjustment in the interface.
The content services staff were not engineers or scientists so in designing this interface I treated them like consumers of web sites (clean design, big buttons, simple logic exposure). The interface had to be basic, simple, and fast. The Content Services Interface had to be integrated with the same rating lookup system as the AOL Parental Control system. Also, it had to be fast and functional enough for the content evaluator staff to make efficient and detailed judgements.
Some of the challenges I faced in coding this interface were: interfacing with a proprietary lookup program, interfacing with an Oracle database (that was in the midst of development itself), and inventing a web page "cleaner" to remove invasive attacks (pop up window or desktop takeover attempts) from the web pages that the evaluators were viewing with the interface.
Again, I selected standard proven technologies for this portion of the project. It was based upon a client/server model using Apache with PHP as the server side integration to Oracle and the rating lookup tools. On the client side I selected JavaScript to complement the server-side capabilities.
I used PHP to interface to the Oracle database and generate Dynamic HTML (DHTML) with JavaScript embedded for client-side processing where it added value and efficiency.
By making the interface work on browser technology we were capable of scaling to support more evaluators in record time and at any emergency. It was unclear how many complaints we'd get put through to us when AOL went live so we prepared the system so that everyone in the company could drop what they were doing and pitch in to evaluate complaints in an emergency. This strategy was whole-heartedly supported by the CEO and he committed the entire staff and himself to help in emergencies if the need should arise.
The other benefit of this design is that it can be maintained by one mid-pay level programmer using scripting language skills. This means that changes and maintenance are easy, inexpensive, and fast.
This interface was used as the foundation for a suite of other queue related interfaces and got us from zero to production in less then 3 months development and testing time.
Moving Forward
RuleSpace Inc. had grown to 150+ employees and had a business plan that promised survivability through the Internet economy downturn. As the hierarchy had become more structured and the challenges had become more about negotiating success internally and less about execution prowess I realized that I heard the call for change.
I helped RuleSpace transition from being a fledgling company to emerging as a market leader. I realized that I could do more good by making way for staff that thrive in traditional stable environments.
I also examined my résumé and realized that I needed more international exposure and more project, program, or staff management experience. I wished to expand my ability to be a global worker in the global workplace. I expressed this wish for career growth to my managers.
I felt there was no more value I could add to RuleSpace and there were no career growth options for me there either. So, when RuleSpace performed its first "efficiency layoff" I was on the short list.
 previous experience
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