Marc M. Adkins

Marchex

Maintenance and enhancement of voice call routing software.

Rewrote portions of an existing voice call routing system.  Provided limited support to existing system in the form of bug fixes, analysis, and recommendations.

Skills

• CVS
• Linux

Maintained and extended an extensive suite of tools for aggregating and serving web advertisements. These included the basic ad server, various internal and external administration tools, and an online signup module implemented using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

The majority of the code was written in Java 1.4/1.5 and deployed on Java 1.6. The core systems were heavily database oriented with a large number of interconnected tables and stored procedures. Work included general troubleshooting and bug maintenance as well as the development of new features. User interfaces for adminstration tools were done using Struts and Velocity.

The online signup module was constructed and deployed using GWT to provide a responsive user experience and prevent user abandonment. Implemented page tracking using Google Analytics and other third-party sales tracking tools.

Skills

• CVS
• Eclipse
• Google Analytics
• Google Web Toolkit
• Java
• Linux
• MySQL
• Oracle
• Struts
• Tomcat
• Velocity

Medio

Maintained and extended custom mobile browser installed on various mobile handsets.

Worked on proprietary browser installed on deck on various cellular telephones for select customers. Ported existing code to new handsets, isolating and correcting for handset-specific idiosyncracies. Heavily involved in feedback to and communication with cellular providers and handset manufacturers. Provided various custom test programs to same for use in upgrading firmware prior to handset release. Extended existing browser as necessary to meet customer-specific requirements or work around specific issues that could not be corrected by firmware changes. All work done in J2ME and deployed on a variety of hardware.

Skills

• Java
• Subversion
• Windows XP

Maintained and extended backend server software for mobile web solution.

Worked on proprietary backend system used for mobile telephone presentation. Confgurable system presented information in a variety of formats including WAP and proprietary formats. All work done in J2SE 1.5

Skills

• Eclipse
• Java
• Lucene
• Maven
• Subversion
• Windows XP

WhitePages.com

Responsible for ongoing maintenance and enhancement of primary presentation engine for the WhitePages Network of sites. Oversee weekly development cycles and releases including bug triage, execution of bugs and longer range projects, and passage through QA to production service. Provide architectural reference for code line and guidance to Perl and Web developers as required.

Hands-on execution of numerous bugs and projects in Perl, XSLT, and generated XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Completely responsible for CVS issues including all branching and merging for over six months, remain code line guide and general backup for version management issues.

Skills

• Apache
• CSS
• JavaScript
• Linux
• OAS
• Omniture
• Oracle
• Perl
• Windows XP
• XHTML
• XSLT
• libXSLT

VersusLaw.com

Developed and maintained data acquisition scripts for legal documents collected, indexed, and vended by VersusLaw.com. 10,000+ documents a month were collected from web sites and other sources and reformatted for editing, indexing, and presentation.

All work done in Perl. Various tools were driven via Win32::OLE. Control sites are provided via HTTP::Daemon.

Skills

• Argus
• Perl
• SQL Server
• Windows 2000
• WordPort
• dtSearch

FastStorm

Developed and deployed Ultimate Galaxy online game for FastStorm.  Small team produced working version of game in two months from a disposable single-user prototype and design documentation.  Mr. Adkins developed the user interface, main backend service engines, and much of the deployment infrastructure.  The game was constructed using a multi-level architecture with PHP for the presentation layer and Perl for the backend services.

Skills

• Linux
• PHP
• Perl
• PostgreSQL
• Windows 2000

Ziff-Davis (Tech TV)

Constructed software to analyze Tech TV articles for keywords and generate appropriate META Keyword tags for each document. The tags were generated as an offline process and stored in a database for swift presentation.

The goal was to properly tag documents to cause search engines to return better results on searches within the target subject area (computers) as defined by the keyword database. Keywords were specified as clusters of related words and word forms, stored in a keyword database. The search algorithm checked for all possible keyword forms, marking documents with unique IDs representing specific keyword clusters. Generation of META Keyword tags from these IDs produced full lists of all related keywords and variants, ordered by priority so that more important variants would be included where large numbers of relevant keywords would otherwise have exceeded tag length.

Skills

• Oracle
• Perl
• SQL Server
• Solaris
• Windows 2000

United States Air Force

Provided programming support to a marketing effort for upgrading the user interface to existing legacy applications related to aircraft maintenance. Converted a canned demonstration to a working prototype providing a core set of legacy functionality through a web interface. Used Yrrid Legacy Objects Framework technology to acquire and update data in legacy mainframe system tracking aircraft maintenance data. Demonstrated prototype to USAF personnel.

Skills

• Java
• Legacy Objects Framework
• SQL Server
• WebObjects
• Windows 2000

Planet Live, Inc.

Created the main page generation engine for the Artandculture.com web site. This site collected a variety of information about artists, their products, and artistic movements of all media into a single online encyclopedia. Information and links were taken from a database and formatted onto web pages connected by relational "clouds."

The site won a year 2000 Award of Excellence from Communication Arts magazine.

The clouds and several other custom widgets were constructed using MacroMedia Flash (provided by other team members). These Flash elements were loaded with page-specific data via callbacks to the site.

Skills

• Apache
• Flash
• Objective-C
• Oracle
• Perl
• Solaris
• WebObjects
• Windows NT

AT&T Wireless

Provided WebObjects expertise and general deployment support for a project constructing an online customer support web site for AT&T Wireless customers. Worked on both the main WebObjects site, now nationally deployed by AT&T Wireless, and a system documentation and administration site for use internally during product deployment.

Participated in two deployment phases, answering questions posed by project personnel, developing various classes of software source code and scripts, and debugging difficult problems. Mr. Adkins was also responsible for making the development environment available on desktop Windows NT units when an increase in the number of project personnel made working on existing HP-UX servers untenable.

Skills

• Apache
• Front Page
• HP-UX
• Objective-C
• Perl
• Sybase
• WebObjects
• Windows NT

MCI

Mr. Adkins participated in the requirements analysis and design phases of a large management support system for MCI. The system was required to process network changes via complex workflows involving a number of distinct customer groups. Data manipulated by the system was stored in a variety of heterogeneous databases, flat files, and legacy systems. A previous implementation of the system contained years of data which had to be converted to the new system.

Some development (prototyping) was done during the design phase, including various requirements analysis and management reporting tools. Mr. Adkins created a number of dynamic tabular displays to represent the requirements, task analysis, and progress of the project as web pages. The data displayed in these tables was stored in the project database.

Prior to switching to PowerBuilder, development began with Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Basic. Mr. Adkins spent about a month generating a GUI prototype using Visual Basic. This included the development of several ActiveX controls, including one case of an ActiveX control nested within another ActiveX control. These controls displayed a tree structure derived from a database accessed via an ODBC linkage. The initial prototype used Excel tables as the database as the Oracle database was not then available.

Skills

• ASP
• ActiveX
• Front Page
• HTML
• Microsoft IIS
• ODBC
• Oracle
• Perl
• PowerBuilder
• Visual Basic
• Visual C++
• Visual InterDev
• Windows NT

Bell Atlantic

Worked on the requirements analysis phase of a large call center software support project for Bell Atlantic. Requirements were mapped against hardware and software tasking to produce detailed tasking and resource allocation data which was then used to refine project scope and priorities.

Participated in two deployment phases, answering questions posed by project personnel, developing various classes of software source code and scripts, and debugging difficult problems. Mr. Adkins was also responsible for making the development environment available on desktop Windows NT units when an increase in the number of project personnel made working on existing HP-UX servers untenable.

United States Postal Service

Developed software infrastructure on a contract for the United States Postal Service using the Legacy Object Framework toolkit for screen-scraping legacy systems. LOF was used to retrieve information from USPS databases for display on the web via WebObjects.

The software infrastructure was geared towards the construction of rapid prototypes which were scalable and deliverable. Support tools included a mechanism for mapping database objects directly into windows for display purposes. Developed a server application supporting stand-alone server platforms as opposed to requiring all client platforms to perform legacy access directly.

Skills

• Bison
• Flex
• Legacy Objects Framework
• NextStep
• Objective-C
• OpenStep
• SQL Server
• WebObjects
• Windows NT

SAIC

Maintenance and upgrade of the scanning workstation software previously constructed for SAIC (in 1994). Developed an SNMP DLL for an unrelated software project.

Skills

• Visual C++
• Windows 3.1
• Windows NT

MCImetro

Developed an integrated workstation for MCImetro Customer Care which provided access to various current and future computing resources. The workstation integrated 3270 and VT320 emulators, Windows applications, and NextStep native applications.

Constructed a program loader to support installation of SoftPC (a Windows emulation package for NextStep). The loader provided a user-friendly windowed front-end to a UNIX shell script, capturing and interpreting shell script output to update the status of the load for the user.

Skills

• Interface Builder
• NextStep
• Objective-C
• SoftPC

SAIC

Constructed hardware-independent back-end for a scanning/editing workstation for a high-end OCR system. The software provided an internal interface for adding new scanners by developing Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) to act as peripheral drivers. Data was stored on a proprietary document server constructed by another SAIC programming team.

In addition, provided analysis of new projects, demonstrations and small prototypes, and maintenance on the scanning workstation.

Skills

• Visual C++
• Windows 3.1

MCI

Developed communications and display components of a workstation for transmission network surveillance analysts. The Transmission Surveillance Workstation (TSWS) gathered data related to ongoing transmission alarms and correlated this data with reference information about the alarm sites and cognizant personnel. The workstation also supported the generation and tracking of trouble tickets for these alarms.

The TSWS replaced a number of separate systems which previously cluttered analysts' desks with a single, integrated platform. The PC-based system communicated with several mainframes via both asynchronous protocols and simulated 3270 terminal sessions.

Mr. Adkins developed generic software for inter-process communication and display management, including script-based window support and a prototyping system which could be used as the basis for production code. The result was a set of reusable software components at both the module and application levels. OS/2 Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) provided much of the flexibility for this system.

Skills

• C++
• CSet++
• OS/2
• Presentation Manager

Mr. Adkins was the lead engineer on a system for automatically handling trouble tickets relating to network problems at MCI. Information in the trouble tickets was used to initiate automated testing, and the results of the testing were used to guide the trouble tickets to appropriate sites for resolution. The PC-based system communications with three mainframes via simulated 3270 terminal sessions and with test equipment located in the network via asynchronous communications links.

Several separate modules are used to handle the processing. These modules communicated as peers via NetBIOS datagrams and automatically started secondary versions of themselves on other machines so that software or hardware failures did not result in system failure. Ticket, machine, and host connectivity status were all reflected in the user interface, which also supported system functions including the automatic flushing of tickets which became stuck in testing.

Skills

• C++
• OS/2
• Object PM
• Presentation Manager

Led the development of a workstation for collecting mainframe information and presenting it to the user in graphical format. The PC-based system communicated with up to four mainframes by simulating users at 3270 terminal sessions. The menus and screen-oriented data returned by the mainframes were parsed and collated on the PC for presentation to the user.

Mr. Adkins was responsible for constructing a spin-off of the original system which handled one new mainframe data stream and structured the data returned from the other mainframes in a totally different manner from the original product. The project for which Mr. Adkins was responsible met an extremely challenging schedule.

Skills

• C++
• OS/2
• Object PM
• Presentation Manager

Developed a series of classes implementing protocols for screen-scraping legacy mainframe systems. The class structure permitted extension for new systems via subclassing and overloading of appropriate methods. More than four legacy systems were eventually served by this class library.

Skills

• C++
• OS/2
• Object PM
• Presentation Manager

Led development of a resource management system for allocating 800-number calls to call centers. The system processed real-time call volume information, reduced the data into statistical information for monitoring the resources involved, and generated control information for allocating resources.

Skills

• C++
• Sybase
• Vax/VMS

Contributed to an earlier prototype of a resource management system for allocating 800-number calls to call centers. Provided support and coordination between the G2 implementation team and a separate team constructing the network interface which fed the expert system with data.

The prototype was constructed in the G2 expert system shell, which was designed for process control and industrial applications. Mr. Adkins was responsible for identifying performance issues with G2 and removing key algorithms to a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) server written in C. The performance enhancement thus achieved was three orders of magnitude, and demonstrated that G2 was unsuitable for the project.

Skills

• C
• G2
• Vax/VMS

Booz•Allen Hamilton

Designed and implemented a network simulator to support development and testing of NASCOM network protocol entities for NASA projects.

Development included a multi-tasking kernel which enabled hard disk access time to be recovered, increasing throughput 10-15%. Involved interfacing with a proprietary hardware interface developed at NASA Goddard.

Skills

• C++
• MS DOS
• Vermont Views Designer

Computer Sciences Corporation

Developed support tools and provided general systems support for Formal Qualification Testing on an large C3I project. Tools included a regression testing tools to support automated execution of tests on new releases of software.

The regression testing tool operated by driving a network of detached emulators, each representing a CPCI in the test scenario. Heavy reliance on VAX/VMS system services, specifically those involved with inter-process and network communication.

Mr. Adkins also developed several utilities for the main development team. These utilities were used to re-format source code and trace module calling hierarchies and variable usage.

Skills

• C
• FORTRAN
• VAX/VMS

Booz•Allen Hamilton

Mr. Adkins was shared between two organizations.

As a member of the Systems Resource Center, a corporate resource for technology tracking and development, Mr. Adkins pursued diverse tasks including market research, troubleshooting of designs and software, software development, and other consulting tasks both internally and to clients.

As a member of the Artificial Intelligence Practice, Mr. Adkins participated in the design and development of Expert Systems projects and support tools. Evaluated alternative compilers and hardware for a project writing an expert system in Ada for monitoring and controlling electronic warfare equipment. Prototyped a graphic design tool for Expert Systems in the planning and assessment domains.

Skills

• Ada
• MS DOS
• Macintosh
• Think C

Planning Research Corporation

As a member of a Research and Development organization Mr. Adkins was involved in a number of general support efforts and some direct contracts.

Support eforts included evaluation of hardware and software, high level analysis and design for various projects, programming, and marketing and proposal efforts.

Research into secure communications and abstract object representation for a contract in the design phase. Development of a flexible query mechanism to be applied to a database of message generated by a proprietary natural language understanding system.

Skills

• InterLISP-D
• Xerox 1186 (Dove)

Technical lead on a research contract applying artificial intelligence techniques to computer security models. The project developed a representation for computer security models that could automatically generate security-preserving rules in a logically proveable framework.

Led the definition of a common notation for security models, constructed the model translator for the common notation using a parser generator. The parser generator, written in Pascal at the College of William and Mary, ran under VAX/VMS. Parse tables were interpreted by a parsing kernel ported to InterLISP-D as part of the contract.

Contributed to the development of the Argus security model, created using the tools developed on the contract.

Skills

• InterLISP-D
• LOOPS
• MYSTRO
• Pascal
• VAX/VMS
• Xerox 1186 (Dove)

Constructed a testbed for the development of communicating, cooperating expert systems utilizing distributed blackboards.

Experts and data could be distributed across multiple systems. All blackboard and rule software was developed on top of a partitioned version of the Frame System developed previously.

Skills

• InterLISP-D
• Xerox 1186 (Dove)

PRC-sponsored upgrades to the Mobile Missile Prototype. Prototyped rule engine in Ada.

Skills

• Ada
• Symbolics 3670
• Vax/VMS
• Zetalisp

Worked on the Mobile Missile Prototype contract, developing software for the display, editing, and aggregation of fuzzy values and geographic data.

Developed the likelihood curve user interface for depicting substantive intelligence perceptions in the presence of uncertainty of variability.

Skills

• Symbolics 3670
• Zetalisp

Developed support tools for the Moving Target Analysis project.

Developed the Frame System, a knowledge-support tool based on the frame data structure. This structure provided a common representation for all software and data.

Skills

• InterLISP-D
• Xerox 1108 (Dandelion)

Research on Remote Procedure Calls networking protocols. Some minor prototyping.

Skills

• C
• MS DOS

Developed custom communications software for the Executive Office of the President.

Customized a 3270 emulator for the IRMA card. Wrote programs to automatically connect to CompuServe and download UPI news reports.

Skills

• 8088 assembler
• BASIC
• MS DOS

Kept abreast of current database techniques. Developed microcomputer networking software. Coordinated the development of an in-house course in the Ada programming language.

The Ada programming course required a set of tools to be developed for the generation of teaching materials (slides and handouts). This tool, similar in general function to PowerPoint, was developed in the Ada language and functioned as a bank of example code for the class. The slides were generated using a plotter.

Skills

• 6502 assembler
• Ada
• Apple ///
• Apple II
• Intellimac ROS
• Pascal

College Employment

Details available on request.