Books for MacOS X

Books is a Mac application for cataloging and managing book collections and records. The Books project began in 2003, when I created my first Mac application for my (then) girlfriend, who had an astonishing number of books and no good way to keep track of them. Since then, the application has gone through three major revisions and the project consists of myself, Enrico Richter, and a variety of contributors who have assisted us in translating the application for a variety of languages and locales.

The current incarnation of Books is built upon Apple's Cocoa framework and makes extensive use of CoreData for data storage and retrieval. Books 3 also features a variety of mechanisms to extend the application. Currently, these extensions use a variety of technologies including Java, Ruby, Python, XSLT, and compiled C code. These extension mechanisms allow third-party users and developers to extend the application to support new book data sources, import formats, and export options (including exporting to iPods, J2ME devices, and Palm PDAs).

Books is an open-source endeavor and is licensed under the BSD license. The current version requires MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.

Building a Next-Generation Context-Aware Notification System

My primary academic research consists of designing and implementing a next-generation notification system indended for end users. Current popular systems like Growl have demonstrated the utility of notification systems, but do not incorporate the research about context and interruptions. In the academic realm, a variety of useful components for building context-aware notification systems exist, but these have not been combined in a manner suitable for end-user application. The goal of this project is to synthesize the academic literature about notifications, interruptions, and context and to apply these theoretical constructs to create better end user systems.

This project is being conducted in Darren Gergle's CollaboLab at Northwestern University.

Web Use Project

I am presently working with Eszter Hargittai's Web Use Project developing new methods for collecting information about Internet usage.

The House Theatre of Chicago

Since 2005, I have been advising The House Theatre of Chicago on various Internet-related topics, including weblogs, social networks, and digital media distribution. In 2006, I redesigned the House website to use the Zope / Plone content management system.

Since then, I have assisted the House in placing their content online in both free (Internet Archive, YouTube) and paid contexts (CDBaby, iTunes Music Store).

As a fan of this company, I'd strongly encourage anyone visiting the Chicago area to check out their site for any current productions and pick up some tickets post haste.

Friends First

I have been a mentor in Mercy Home's mentoring program since 2005. It's been a very fun and very rewarding experience, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

H.P. Lovecraft Copyrights

For the past several years, I have been researching the copyright status of the stories published by H.P. Lovecraft in the 1920's and 1930's. This seemingly simple question has led to an extremely complicated investigation, and you can read about my progress by clicking the link above.

Past Projects

Chicagoist: For two years, I was a contributor to this Chicago-centric weblog as an interviewer. I talked to a variety of people during my stint, but my favorites were Mr. T, Pete Schwaba, and Peter Sagal.

Oyez: I worked with Jerry Goldman and the Oyez Project as a technology consultant from 2003-2006. I remain a strong believer in the site's mission of putting all of the Supreme Court audio online, and I volunteer in limited capacities when time permits.