Cosmo A. Catalano III
I built this site to show you all of my things.
This is a boss Galaga. I use it as my sigil.
Here is my latest blog post.
The Year the Year-in-Review Clip Show Died
I find myself hoping 2014 is the swan song of algorithmically generated year-in-review mini-films on the various social networks. We’ve all seen Mad Men. We’ve all seen the Carousel/Facebook Timeline mashup. Nostalgia is powerful. Bond with the product. Etc. Yadda. But beyond the logo, these clip shows haven’t got a damn thing to do with the services they promote, and more often than not, they’re pretty lousy products in themselves.
read the rest at my blog
This is what I look like.
Hi! My name is Cosmo and I make things on the Internet.
I do a lot of other stuff, too: tweet, blog, check in, take pictures, ride bikes, etc. I think it's great that all these things have some online component, but I was frustrated by the lack of a centralized location to see all of them at once.
Compounding that problem, I do such a wide variety of things that it's a real challenge to present all of them in one location with any sort of meaningful order. I wanted a single URL to send people to where they could see and easily file through all of my stuff.
This website is my attempt to solve that problem. It uses the feeds and APIs of my various online activities to make neat little widgets, and presents my past work in a sortable format, so you can filter my projects and jobs by the specific skills I've used.
I used a few existing packages to set everything up, but for the most part, everything you see here was written by me, from scratch.
Thanks for visiting!
I have also prepared a generalized PDF resume because some people feel like they need that sort of thing
Web Editor
//City of Hartford, Connecticut - Nov 2012-June 2014
- Maintaining and improving City of Hartford's Municipal website on Joomla CMS
- Quarterbacking 2013 redesign of http://www.hartford.gov site template
- Aggregating, writing, and coding internal weekly City Employee newsletter
- Building custom resident-facing web applications
- Improving search rank, web traffic to municipal websites through SEO best-practices
- Designing media materials and other documents using Illustrator and Photoshop
- Helping to write and prepare press releases, media alerts, and other City correspondance
- Communicating the importance of content strategy to various municipal departments
- Collaborating with Metro Hartford Information Services on web security improvements
Web Architect
//Healthcommunities.com - Dec 2010-Oct 2012
- Building and updating medical websites serving ~4.5 million page views/month
- Preforming edits and building features on proprietary LAMP architecture
- Managing ad serving using DART for Publishers
- Coding and customizing plugins and UI elements for Expression Engine CMS
- Crafting email newsletters and web marketing copy
- Consulting with website clients on improving site SEO
- Primary point of contact for high-value medical association clients
- Creating and offering consultation on promotional graphics
Web Specialist
//Union of Concerned Scientists - Jan 2008-Jun 2010
- Managed website for leading science advocacy group on Convio CMS
- Wrote spotlight summaries of reports and press releases for homepage
- Performed final code and content edits on all new online content
- Coordinated with developers and department heads to create web features
- Collaborated with experts and staff on redesign, content strategy projects
- Wrote internal organizational guideline on editing Wikipedia
Energy and Environment Blogger
//Matter Network - May 2008-Dec 2008
- Wrote daily blog posts on emerging environment and energy topics
- Researched new products and interviewed subject matter experts
- Distilled highly-technical topics for a general audience
- Sourced and edited royalty-free and Creative Commons-licensed images
- Moderated and engaged in detailed discussions with commenters on the blog
- Worked within proprietary Cold Fusion-based CMS
Real Estate Blogger
//Redfin.com - Oct 2007-Dec 2008
- Wrote thrice-weekly blog posts on real estate trends in Boston, MA
- Built relationships with other local bloggers, real estate personalities
- Sourced and edited royalty-free and Creative Commons licensed-images
- Routinely earned monthly traffic bonuses with news-cycle-relevant topics
- Worked within company-administered Wordpress installation
- Optimized keyword use, titles and headers according to SEO best practices
Technical Writer
//Comverse Technology - Apr 2006-Oct 2007
- Wrote documentation for top billing software company
- Consulted with developers on new features, documentation bugs
- Managed 500 pages documentation through complex merger
- 93% of clients rated documentation as "very good" or higher
- Updated legally-binding software product descriptions
- Offered feedback on documentation redesign project
Communications Intern
//Upper Valley Trails Alliance - Oct 2004-Apr 2005
- Updated and managed website for small health-oriented non-profit
- Researched and created 60-page regional walking trail guide
- Designed and laid out promotional brochures and posters
- Composed donor appeal letter letters and quarterly updates
- Tripled webpage traffic from Oct '04 to Jan '05
- Standardized scattered code base to W3C recommendations
tweet-2-json 3.0
//github repo, Jun 2013 [link]
An easy-to-implement script that provides a functional workaround to Twitter's API restrictions (and Instagram drama) by delivering publicly-viewable Twitter feeds as light, semantic JSON. It powers the "latest Tweet" feature above.
CosmoCatalano.com 3.0
//Website, Aug 2012
This very website you're viewing here. Uses PHP to parse feeds and read APIs from my various online presences, and HTML/CSS/JQuery to make them pretty/viewable here.
Strava Ride Exporter
//Web App, Aug 2011 - Jun 2013 [link][source]
A web application that uses the API at the social fitness site Strava to export workouts as portable TCX and GPX files. Worked until they decided exporting should be a paid feature.
Strava Leaderboards
//Web App, Feb 2012 [historical link]
A web application that tracked the leaders of various Strava clubs using PHP, MySQL and the Strava API, and that used JQuery to sort through the numbers. Currently offline due to hosting service issues
Embeddlr.com
//Web App, Dec 2011 [link]
A web application that creates embed code snippets for audio and video content on Tumblr-hosted blogs. Allows easy editing, customization and preview of the code snippet, along with non-Flash file downloads.
Twixcuse.com
//Web App, Nov 2010 [link]
An application that stores, delivers, categorizes, and Tweets excuses of 140 characters or less. My first "serious" PHP/MySQL and API work.
You Need An Internet Presence
//Web App, Oct 2010 [link]
Generate permalinked pages for your friends and businesses who ought to have, but currently lack, an online presence.
SiteStructuresLandscape.com
//SEO Revamp, Oct 2010 [link]
Basic re-working, code-updating and content re-targeting for a small, independent landscaping business site. Interesting to get to play with an IIS/ASP site setup as well.
Dial-a-Denial
//Infographic, May 2010 [info]
As both racer and public figure, Lance Armstrong relied on emphatic fervor to compensate for his lack of creativity. So why not make a board game to cook up your own formulaic, DIY refutations?
A Classic Rivalry
//Infographic, Feb 2010 [info]
The greatest professional cycling rivalry of the aughts, rendered as a race course, highlighting all the important race results and intrigues along the way. A lot of fun research in addition to design.
Periodic Table of Professional Cycling
//Infographic, Jan 2010 [info]
The major races of the professional cycling circuit, laid out by location, difficulty and prestige into a periodic table. 30k views on Flickr alone, more elsewhere.
Raphxis of Evil
//Infographic, Dec 2009 [info]
A map detailing back-patting between various players in the cycling industry, styled after the campaign charts of WWII. A potent reinforcer of Cyclocosm's independent stance.
Boston Neighborhood Map
//Google Maps mashup, Sept 2009 [link]
Long before Google had town and neighborhood borders, I assembled KML layers of where Boston's oft-disputed neighborhood boundaries (probably) lay.
Desktop Applications
- Google Docs, iWork, Microsoft Office Suite, OpenOffice
- Photoshop, GIMP
- Illustrator, Inkscape, InDesign
- Acrobat, Framemaker
- Dreamweaver, TextWrangler, Vim
Web Management
- Google Analytics, SiteMeter, WebTrends
- Apache, IIS
- SSH
- FTP, SFTP, SCP
Content Management Systems
- WordPress
- Expression Engine
- MediaWiki, DokuWiki
- Textpattern
- Joomla
- Drupal
- Convio
Coding & Languages
- PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl
- MySQL
- HTML, XML, DHTML, XHTML, CSS
- JavaScript, jQuery
- LaTeX
- Markdown
Writing
- Technical Writing
- SEO
- Social Media
Dartmouth College
//A.B., English Literature and Creative Writing, 2004
- graduated with a 3.5/4.0 GPA, Honors in major, wrote a bad novel
- published in Dartmouth Review, Stonefence Review and The Daily Dartmouth.
- verse translations of Horace's Epodes recognized with Citation for Excellence
- member of Dartmouth Ski Team and Dartmouth Cycling Team.
Mount Greylock Regional High School
//A Public High School Diploma, 2000
- graduated seventh in class, GPA 4.0/4.0, participated heavily in AP Program
- standardized test scores of 720/760/800 (Math/Verbal/SAT II Writing)
- captained Cross Country, Nordic Skiing and Track teams
Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth
//Summers 1995-1998
- nerd camp; college-level course taught over three-week summer program
- coursework included Logic, Paleobiology, Chemistry, and Biomedical Science
- attended at Hamilton College, played for '97, '98 Ultimate Frisbee champs
