Drewidia

As of late I have been asked the same basic question with a fairly consistent regularity, “What have you been up to?” and “I never see you any more, are you married?” and “Why don’t we have any grandchildren yet?”.

The answer to most of those questions can be answered with PayOwe.com . PayOwe is a way for people to keep track of their everyday, friend-to-friend loans and debts. It works through Twitter, the online social networking site.

How it works: Essentially, you send a message through Twitter with the amount someone owes you and why (“Bob owes me $4 for lunch”). This debt is received by @PayOwe and added to the database. An balance sheet of accumulated debts can then be viewed/managed through PayOwe.com. If the person who owes you also uses Twitter, it will show up on their balance sheet as well (pending their approval). This allows both parties to control the state of the debt which I guess makes PayOwe a social networking site.

PayOwe is the first offering from Inkitecture , which is Jay, Kunal and myself. Jay came up with the original idea for PayOwe and it’s underlying architecture to be based off of Twitter and Jabber messaging. We’ve found Twitter + Jabber messaging to be an excellent means of sending/receiving messages.

The site is in it’s alpha phase right now, and we’d greatly appreciate any feedback on the site. Please check it out and let us know what you think -> info at payowe dot calm.

The majority of my publicly-available interactive work was created between 2002 and 2005. After this time I worked for Deloitte Consulting , and they retain the rights to distribute my work (which means I can’t show it to you).

• PayOwe.com

Track your everyday debts and loans through Twitter and Facebook (coming soon). No need to sign up: if you’re a member of either Facebook or Twitter you already have an account.

Brainchild of Jay Zeschin the site is a highly integrated utility application. It is the first project undertaken by Inkitecture a creative web group including Jay, Kunal and myself.

Jay originated the concept and acted as chief software architect, driving most of the application. I worked on mostly front-end programming and built the identity/layout. Kunal drove the business; creating the business model and developing the marketing plan.

This being a startup, we often switched roles to keep things fresh: for example, Jay taking on the front-end and design at times, while I worked on the bot.

Construction on the site is still on-going and is currently our most vested project.

• Wiimote Whiteboard vs. Smartboards

My most recent work is an implementation of Johnny Lee’s Wiimote Whiteboard made popular as a fun and inexpensive solution to commercial electronic whiteboards. An assessment given the findings from the prototype were posted to YouTube . The video will be used to help leverage a grant to help Forest Hills 5-6 building in Ada, MI equip each classroom with the wiimote whiteboards.

• Competitive Diamond Pricer

The most notable interactive design contribution by myself was a competitive diamond price rich internet application for DiamondKnowledge.com while working for Red Diamond Design. It was created by Matt Erkkila (architecture php/mysql) and myself (flash/php integration). Please excuse the owner’s penchant for pop-ups; he’s very eager for cross-sell. The original diamond pricer was a tradional web app and rather difficult to use as the user had to go through the drang-und-sturm of waiting for the page to refresh with each adjustment to carat, color, etc. Instantanious results from the rich internet application translates to a wildly improved user experience.

• Published “Emerging Methods of Web Media” in 2005

Each Kalamazoo College student must complete a Senior individualized Project (SIP), which is essentially a senior thesis. With the help of Prof. Pamela Cutter I was able to earn an honors on my thesis, which made me quite happy.

My SIP was a study on the experimental web media methodologies employed while working with Red Diamond Design. Aptly titled, “Emerging Methods of Web Media”, it covered Rich Internet Applications (at the time a relatively new concept), agile deployment of shopping cart systems, search engine optimization and the comoditization of the web development.

During the SIP presentation I pulled out some Flash tricks with my powerpoint, which helped make the experience neat-o.