Kyle Mulka's Blog

I’m excited that we got funding next semester for a project called Blue Puddle thanks to GROCS. Here’s the vision:

“The Blue Puddle software takes advantage of the Internet’s distributed authorship capabilities to create maps that draw on users’ collective memory and subjective experience of a city. These maps foster the emergence of stories about the city that are richer than any single author could create. The virtual digital environment created by Blue Puddle will serve as a catalyst for engaging the real built environment.”

We have a team of four consisting of students from the schools of Art, Architecture, Information, and Engineering. This should be both interesting and exciting considering we are from a variety of backgounds and I am the only undergrad.

Some of the technologies we are considering using include PHP, MySQL, GIS, and the Google Maps API. Fortunately, I am pretty familiar with them and am excited to be able to use them.

UPDATE: (3/29/06) Mschedule.com and the auto schedule generator have been fused together into one site.

http://www.mschedule.com/

More info

MISchedule, the University of Michigan automatic schedule generator, is ready for Winter 2006 scheduling. (and now Fall too)

I just loaded up the database the other day and it appears to be working. Let me know if you have any problems.

Along the same lines, I’ve switched Mshedule‘s (without the I) default term to Winter 2006, so it is ready too. I haven’t taken the time yet to merge these two websites yet, but you can save your MIschedule to Mschedule.

Paul Graham rocks! If you are at all interested in software startups, check this out. It’s dated 2001, and I think still applies for the most part.

The Other Road Ahead

Here’s a little story about PHP and Java… my two favorite languages…

Andreessen: PHP succeeding where Java isn’t | CNET News.com

I just got and email from Evan Cooke who I know through MESH at the University of Michigan.

He had asked for some help with the Google Maps API. After a little bit of work, he ended up with some nifty data visualization apps. Basically, he has huge 2D representations of network traffic and needed an easy way to map them. Google Maps to the rescue!

Any other ideas of data that needs 2D visualization?

For those interested in some of the things you can do with the Google Maps API, here’s a demo of one of the things I did this summer. It requires flash. Sorry for the bad audio. I need a better microphone.

Google Maps API Video Demo #1

This morning I was playing with the trial version of Camtasia Studios which is a really nice multmedia capturing tool for computer presentations and software demos. I’m considering buying it, but its pretty expensive. That’s what I produced this video with.

UPDATE: I’m employed this summer… yey! Here’s the old post:

I’ve gotten several emails from people at Microsoft and Google asking me if I’m looking for work. No, they haven’t offered me a job yet, but have seen the blog and wanted to know if I had applied. I’d like to let you all know, that, yes, indeed I am looking for an internship. Summer 2006 is currently free, so that would be a good time for me to pick up an internship.

I’m interested in web services, service oriented architectures, object oriented design, social software, agile software development, developer friendly APIs, location based services, geographic information systems, machine learning, and open source software. There’s probably stuff I didn’t list, but that covers most of it.

You can check out my resume in various formats here.

On the flip side, I am also interested in starting my own business or teaming up with some people to start one or continue on an idea related to my interests. I have several posible ideas which could be very exciting to implement and see people use.

So, if you are a web software company, large or just getting started, contact me if you are interested in working with me.

If you are an individual looking for an exciting opportunity to make a difference on the web and have the technical expertise to make it happen, contact me. Let’s see what we can work out.

So, are we seeing the end of the operating system age? Will most applications no longer be tied to an operating system? Will web applications finally be cross-platform? Will the network be the computer like Sun has said for the longest time? How much processing and data can we distribute through the network?

These are some questions I’ve been asking myself in order to predict what the future of computing will be and where to position myself to get the most out of it. Check out this article out:

WebOS

This is a little thing I wrote for a job application, and I figured that other people might be interested in what I did this summer, so I copied it over to my blog here:

This summer at the Great Lakes Commission in Ann Arbor, another intern and I, along with a designer created a web-based data entry, retrieval, and search system for volunteer organizations to record water quality data that they had collected in the field. The site utilized the object oriented features of PHP in order to abstract the details of the data and operations on the data.

Our system included an authentication mechanism using sessions and cookies. Water quality monitoring organizations would register for a username and password in order to update their own data. Data was only visible on the site for searching and browsing after staff at the commission had confirmed it.

We utilized both client-side (Javascript) and server-side (PHP) user data validation so that errors were caught quickly by the system and reflected immediately back to the user.

Data was stored in a MySQL database in about 15 different tables. Data coming from the web text boxes, dropdown lists, multi-select lists, radio buttons, and checkboxes had to be massaged to fit within the data types of MySQL. Timestamps, username, and other status information was stored along with each record when it was created and modified.

To search through the data we allowed the user to filter by lake, watershed, or county as well as date range and type of data to display. The user could get the results formatted for the web or in an excel spreadsheet.

For the browsing section we set up a hierarchy of of the data so that if the user didn’t know exactly what they wanted, but wanted to see what was available instead, they could.

Whoa… I just found this, and if it does what it sounds like it does, that’s amazing! This says it will compile a high-level language of your choice such as Java and C++ umong others into Javascript and HTML to run in a browser. Also, you will be able to unplug your new web application from the net and simply run the http server on localhost.

Morfik