A Decade of Web Development

May 22nd, 2009 Posted in Cloud, Entrepreneurship
No Comments

I started designing and developing websites one decade ago. This was way back in the day when the best options for writing CGI server-side logic was to use C++ with libraries handling the HTTP requests or Perl. PHP was still just an embryo and I don’t think ASP was even on the radar. Anyway, this was a business that I ran as “mojNet” through high school, “Monet Web Solutions LLC” throughout college with Matt Pattyn, and then as “Skierkowski LLC” after graduation.

Once I graduated from college it was difficult to continue growing the business. I still had some incoming cash flow, but that hardly covered the cost of the dedicated server.

Over the past year I wanted to get more serious about entrepreneurship. As such, I realized that I couldn’t have any liabilities. I couldn’t spend the time on supporting existing/old customers, and I couldn’t have the overhead of the dedicated server. As such, I have spent the past six months working with my set of customers on moving them off my dedicated server onto other provider’s servers. Many of the websites needed to be redone considering they were 3+ years old.

While I no longer needed the server to host my customer’s sites, I did need a home for my business site, as well as having a server to tinker with for side projects. As such, my site moved to WordPress (here), and my tinkering server will be Amazon EC2 and/or Windows Azure (been playing with both).

Tonight I submitted a support ticket to finally get rid of the dedicated server. This doesn’t close the doors to Skierkowski LLC, just gets it out of the web design/development business.

This leaves Skierkowski LLC with no specific business goal, just a big idea, and a framework for a business (bank account, Tax ID, License, etc).

Read More

OffiSync

May 20th, 2009 Posted in Cloud
No Comments

I use Google Docs to keep track of my start-up project documents so that I can easily edit them from anywhere and such that I can easily collaborate when the time comes. While I do like the power of having an inline editor, it isn’t anywhere near as powerful as Office and it isn’t nearly as usable either. As such, when given an option, I would rather use Office 2007 to edit my documents. It has been a rollercoaster when it comes to integration between Google Docs and Office. Today I tried the fresh new OffiSync beta which was just released today. I’m a fan. It is dead simple.

http://www.offisync.com/

Read More

US Patent 20090112932

May 18th, 2009 Posted in Entrepreneurship
No Comments

I filed the US Patent “Visualizing Key Performance Indicators for Model-Based Applications” on April 17th, 2008, and as of April 30th, 2009 it is available on the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Link to USPTO Document

Many people at Microsoft hold patents, in fact, most hold many patents. Most of the teams that I have been on at Microsoft (WCF, “Dublin”, and .NET Services) do file patents, but nearly as many as other teams like Office. So at Microsoft it is commonplace for people to have patents. In the real world on the other hand this is far rarer.

This is personally a big deal considering this is one official acknowledgement of something that is reflective of my personality. My parents and family will know that I have been an inventor since I was old enough to walk, even before I could read and write.

Read More

Living in the Cloud

May 10th, 2009 Posted in Cloud
Comments Off

Once upon a time I developed websites and paid for my own dedicated server to host these websites. Once upon a time I worked on Microsoft “Dublin”, an on-premises WCF/WF application host. Once upon a time I backed up my stuff to another hard drive.

Over the past several months I have been changing all that.

I have been running a business from a very young age provide web development/design services. To host all the websites I ran my own WS03 dedicated server for years. After a decade of being in this business I want to focus more time on a small startup project on the side and not worry about that server or the customers. As such, I migrated my customers to other providers. I also got rid of my own website and moved it to WordPress (this is where you are reading this).

At the beginning of this calendar year I moved over from Dublin to working on the .NET Services team, a part of the Azure Services Platform. I focus on securing all of the services and the Access Control Service. The .NET Services is just one piece of the bigger Microsoft cloud initiative puzzle. Point being, I now work in the cloud too.

Years back I used to run another computer to backup my contents. Then I eventually had a bunch of hard drives on one computer and periodically backed them up. I also had RAID (mirroring) to keep my OS up and running even if one of two hard drives crashed. ANYWAY, this has been a major problem for years. Most of this has gone away because I now use SugarSync (http://www.sugarsync.com) to put a copy of all my files up into the cloud. It’s great; I can access all my files from my iPhone or any web browser. I also keep a bunch of my files in sync across my four computers I use daily.

Read More