When Above Photography requested a blogging system, suggested a Twitter feed/News page integration. This solution achieved the desired goals, enabled Above Photography to update their news page from their iPhone Twitter app, and saved over 80% compared to original estimated costs.
Presenting Data
Implemented automated keyword highlighting on legislative Word documents, helping lobbyists quickly scan through lengthy bills to find relevant sections.
Implemented an Excel report generator in Ruby on Rails, creating a 3,000 row spreadsheet for a lobbyist firm before close of business.
Integrated a scheduled email system with Gmail and Capsearch’s database to inform the lobbyists of newly introduced bills and alert them to any changes to legislation they were following.
scalable data processing
Replaced Above Photography’s Photoshop-watermarking process with a Ruby on Rails image processing server, which resizes, watermarks, and documents 10,000 photos per hour, and has processed over 120,000 photos to date.
Integrated Above Photography’s library with Google’s Maps API, utilizing the geospatial coordinates from Above Photography’s library to place over 30,000 photographic markers on a Google Map, which customers can browse, zoom, and search through from Above Photography’s website.
Created an Excel spreadsheet analyzer for Capvoice to enable political organizations to upload a list of all of their political contacts, sort through and email specific groups or constituents, and track the incoming responses.
SEO
Implemented SEO (search engine optimization) techniques on AbovePhotography.com.au, placing them as the first Google result for every Australian aerial library and photography term imaginable for 6 years and counting, and helping bring in over 600 unique prospects to their website each day.
reliability + redundancy
Implemented code change tracking into Capsearch’s architecture, enabling developers to quickly revert changes when problems arise, and ensuring the code is safely backed up.
Automated daily backups of Capsearch’s database to Amazon’s redundant “S3” file system, ensuring that when failures or unexpected problems arose, their customers’ data remains secure.
Integrated Above Photography’s architecture with Amazon’s S3 file system, ensuring that their most precious assets — their customers’ photographs — are secured across two continents, in multiple warehouses, for only a few dollars a month.
site speed
Improved Capsearch’s response times by over 60% — from an average of 3 seconds per page request, to about 1 second — by combining code into Amazon’s CloudFront system
Designed Capvoice’s architecture to display each page, on average, in 1/10th of a second
Database Systems
Administrated Capsearch’s MySQL database, with 113 tables, 2.54 million rows, and 1.4 GB of data
Designed Above Photography’s MySQL database, dividing Australia into states, regions, and suburbs, and categorizing photos into multiple locations and labels
Created a NoSQL MongoDB document store for Above Photography’s photos, helping Above Photography collect and analyze the camera-supplied information inside each photo — the EXIF data — across their entire library
Installed a NoSQL Redis database for Above Photography, to track which photos have been processed and which are pending
Maintained a Sphinx full-text search for Capsearch, enabling lobbyists to search through the text of over 10,000 bills and amendments in less than a tenth of a second
Time-sensitive
Implemented real-time alerts for changes to Arkansas legislation, allowing lobbyists to track specific bills and keywords, and be notified as soon as the legislature voted
Implemented monitoring system for Capsearch’s information analyzer, sending out alerts to staff if Capsearch’s database became out-of-date with the official legislature’s.
Systems
Ruby on Rails, 7+ unique applications, including classified listings’ site, to-do list app, image processing server, grassroots campaigning communication tool, URL shortener with Twitter/Blog integration, and more
WordPress, 5+ separate installations
Drupal, for a large non-profit organization
phpBB, managed 7+ separate installations, installing modifications, changing themes, and upgrading to newer versions
Heroku, integrated with Ruby on Rails to instantly request more processing computers when many new photos are available, and back down afterwards, saving Above Photography over $20,000 a year