So,
Craig and Kevin Duffy have volunteered a pieces appropriate for a "Who
We Are" section about the Struts Committers. Do we have any more takers?
Here's mine:
Ted Husted
----------
My primary interest in Struts is to put it to work writing lots of
real-life Web applications:-) To do that effectively means having good
documentation and code samples at my fingertips, so that's been my focus
with the Struts product so far.
I've been writing software for hire since 1984, but only recently jumped
on the Java bandwagon. My initial interest was with electronic
publishing, and started converting my various print projects to
electronic media. The "Information Superhighway" was still the private
stomping ground of Universities and government agencies then. The rest
of us had to make do with diskettes and bulletin boards.
Between 1985 and 1994, I created and marketed several software products
for publishing on disk, the most popular being "Dart" and "Iris". In
1992, Dart was awarded the Digital Quill for software excellence,
featured in PC Magazine (February 1992), and bundled with McGraw Hill's
bookset, "Paperless Publishing" by Colin Hayes (McGraw Hill 1994). Dart
won an unprecedented second Digital Quill in 1993. Several titles that
used Iris for a publishing system have also won awards and been widely
distributed, including "Hermitville USA." I was also fortunate to find
kindred souls on CompuServe and America Online, who helped me pioneer
resources areas in 1993 and 1994 for the nascent electronic publishing
industry.
I finally cut loose on the Internet in 1995, launching Epub News, an
electronic newspage about electronic publishing. After taking on several
private contracts, I opened the Husted dot Com Website (www.husted.com)
in 1996. I've drifted away from electronic books, but have noticed that
several products are now making their way into the consumer mainstream
-- as usual, I was twenty minutes into the future:-)
My favorite all-time project is the Hitchhikers Guide to Science
Fiction. This was one of my earliest hypertext projects (it started as a
print-book idea), and I had a lot of fun bringing it forward onto the
Web. (Now, if I only had time to bring it current and dress it up!)
One of my best clients is WXXI Public Broadcasting Council, where
serving as the station's Webmaster. WXXI provides public broadcasting
services for television and radio, and we are working to do the same
online. Along with providing companion Web sites for every WXXI
production, we stream both our AM and FM signals, with online archives
in the works. It's a long journey, but we've taken the first steps. I'm
responsible for most of the regular updates to the site, and much of the
overall layout and design. We're grateful to have won the PBS award for
best Web site in our market for two year's in a row.
Our most ambitious projects at WXXI have been Spring Marketplace 2000
and the NY Election Finder. For Spring Marketplace, we put our annual
auction fully online for simultaneous telephone and Website bidding. On
NY Election, we offered not only the usual election-finder application,
but collected voter registration records from around the state, so
people could also check their registration status and polling place. I
developed the Web-enabled database applications for both projects.
Currently, I'm expanding the WXXI online auction software into a
complete package for hosting live and online auctions as fund-raisers;
this is to be an open-source project called Gavel, and will, of course,
rely heavily on Struts.
Our most ambitious projects at WXXI have been Spring Marketplace 2000
and the NY Election Finder. For Spring Marketplace, we put our annual
auction fully online for simultaneous telephone and Website bidding. On
NY Election, we offered not only the usual election-finder application,
but collected voter registration records from around the state, so
people could also check their registration status and polling place. I
developed the Web-enabled database applications for both projects.
Currently, I'm expanding the WXXI online auction software into a
complete package for hosting live and online auctions as fund-raisers;
this is to be an open-source project called Gavel, and will, of course,
rely heavily on Struts.
