QuickATM
(May 1993 - July 1997)
Company/Job Description
QuickATM was the leading supplier of
interactive touchscreen information kiosks in U.S. airports.
Since 1993, the network of roughly 100 airport and railway
touchscreen information kiosks served over 7,000 travelers per day.
The QuickAID web site provided comprehensive airport and
travel information for more than thirty airports, and
QuickAID Internet Stations provide email and web access to travelers
at airports nationwide.
QuickATM was a small company; I had many roles simultaneously, including:
senior software developer,
network administrator,
web developer,
hardware troubleshooter,
and graphic designer.
Project Details
-
Designed, documented, and implemented the user database
for the QuickAID Internet Stations, as well as the
client/server interface to it.
This database includes a fault-tolerant system for
replication and propagation of the database
between distributed servers (over TCP).
(Perl under Linux)
-
Proxima.
Wrote a combination HTTP daemon
and HTTP proxy server from the ground up.
This server supports virtual hosting, caching,
remapping, site and URL censoring,
and was fully compliant with the
HTTP/1.0 and CGI/1.1 IETF specifications.
(Perl under Linux)
-
QCall.
Debugged, significantly enhanced, and maintained the QuickAID engine
for touchscreen kiosks, and all supporting software,
from the initial prototype version through its current version.
This 24,000+ line C program was running on over one hundred
kiosks at airports nationwide.
(Watcom C and Microsoft C under DOS;
screens designed in Multimedia ToolBook)
-
Debugged, recoded, and enhanced the client software
for the QuickAID Internet Stations.
This program featured browser, telnet, and email functionality.
(Visual C++ and Visual Basic under Windows NT4)
-
Designed and implemented all back-end server support for the
QuickAID Internet Stations, including:
real-time usage monitoring programs,
usage statistics,
secure user authentication,
encrypted credit card storage,
and a credit card billing interface to ICVerify.
(C and Perl CGI scripts under Linux)
-
Designed the QuickAID and QuickRAIL web sites.
This included page layout and design,
scripts to convert Microsoft Access databases into HTML,
and CGI scripts for real-time data extraction.
-
Designed the Multimedia ToolBook book for constructing, maintaining,
and exporting multi-screen, multi-level airport terminal maps.
-
Other miscellaneous responsibilities included:
-
administering office servers (Novell Netware and Linux);
-
documenting software and operational procedures;
-
training and supervising the kiosk maintenance staff;
-
installing, maintaining, and
debugging internal and field hardware;
-
creating internal office utilities.