• 05/31/2009 - 18 More Social Sites Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/25/2009 - Run Your Own Remix or Music Project at ArtistServer.com
• 05/22/2009 - AudioBoo.fm and YouNoodle.com Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/06/2009 - mp3tunes.com - no option to close your account
• 03/17/2009 - How to run a Remix Project
• 09/28/2008 - My Lovely Wife Lou is Pregnant
• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank

I recently went to Missouri, out to the Lake of the Ozarks to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday. In classic Marken style, my parents flew in from San Jose, CA, my sister flew in from Phoenix, AZ, and I flew in from San Diego, CA.

While waiting for my transfer at the Dallas airport, I was quite surprised to find these huge vending machines for devices like iPods, headphones, and Sony PSP units. My first question was, "Are the batteries fully charged? And - Where is the digital download kiosk so these people can fill up their new mp3 players? Even better... Apple should preload these units with independent music from ArtistServer.com! Right...

My grandpa and grandma live on her son's 46 acre property, just off the water. Unfortunately, there was a frost a few weeks earlier, so the Dogwood blossoms were unable to bloom. What normally would have been a landscape of white, was rolling hills of brown.

Here is the old barn on the property:

Off on the far end of the property, is the old outhouse:

Just a few trees away, was this clusterfunk of catepillers:

I helped Grandma plant a rose out in front of their house:

Here we have three Gideons... yes, that's Gideon Marken II, Gideon Marken III, and Gideon Marken IV. My dad goes by 'Andy' - from our middle name 'Andrew,' and Grandpa goes by Gid.

The table in the photo was built by my grandpa when he was 15. We were setting it up to use on his 90th birthday, and found the screws pulled through one of the hinges, and one of the wood joints was loose.

Grandpa went out to his tool shed, found the glue and some new screws, and minutes later... the Gideon's had a steady table.

Here's a family photo, with Grandpa, Grandma, my parents and sister:

We had a great visit, met more of the family, and Grandpa looked like he had a very happy 90th birthday party.

I'm posting my Resume in my blog today because my current contract job is nearing an end. Feel free to point people here, I'll be available in 30-45 days.

Or - if you want to look at this from another perspective... I'm posting my resume to show my skills and present my work, because I'm looking for a Biz dev/marketing partner to join me in launching a company based around ArtistServer and the application it runs upon.

If you'd like to contact me, please visit this page and use the contact form:  http://www.markenmedia.com/#Contact

Gideon Andrew Marken IV
skype: gideonmarken

URLs

• Business Site: http://www.WebAndAudio.com
• Ventures/Projects: http://www.MarkenMedia.com
• Blog:  http://www.GideonMarken.com
• Music: http://www.ArtistServer.com/SonicWallpaper
• Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/gideonmarken

General Skills

As an artist and a programmer, I provide both creative and technical skills. I work well with people, understand technology, and feel comfortable either taking the lead or following directions. I'm highly motivated, dedicated to my work,  and have a passion for media. I'm also the type of person who sees the glass not as half full, nor half empty, but as an opportunity for change.  

Experience

Owner/Administrator
ArtistServer.com (Sole Proprietorship)
2000 – Present
Planning, managing and developing a world-class music hosting service. Providing support to over 13,000 registered artists and fans.

Web Application Developer
Edmin.com (11-50 employees)
March 2000 – August 2001
Web application development and planning both on solo and team projects. Started the Edmin Standards Handbook, to standardize all aspects of development.

Contractor/Consultant
Web And Audio Productions (Self-employed)
February 1997 – Present
Application development, site management and project consulting on Web projects from large-scale relational database systems down to single corporate sites.

Web Administrator
ComStream (501-1000 employees)
February 1997 – December 1997
Responsible for the planning, development and deployment of the company Intranet.

Webmaster
ExcelSoft Technology (1-10 employees)
August 1996 – January 1997
Management of Web department, company site and client projects.

Interests

Spending time with my wife, playing with our dog Miles, reading, camping,  listening to jazz,  programming, writing/recording music, experimenting with media and media tools, improving things, helping people and learning.

Technical

14 yrs music recording and production (Guitar, Bass, Keyboards)
10 yrs Web development (HTML, xHTML, CSS)
10 yrs graphic design (Photoshop, Fireworks, Illustrator)
8 yrs Web programming (ColdFusion, JavaScript)
8 yrs Database (SQL Server)
8 yrs Windows Server: NT4/2000/2003 / IIS Server
3 yrs Macromedia Flash
3 yrs Video Editing/DVD Production (Premiere, Vegas, Encore)
2 yrs 3D modeling (TrueSpace, GameSpace, Unreal Engine)
2 yr XML, RSS, XLST
1 yr Linux, Apache, MySQL
1 yr WAP/Mobile Web development (xHTML MP, WML)
1 yr AJAX, AHAH/JAH

Education

National University
Masters , Educational Technology , August 1995 – May 1997
Graduated with Honors.
San Diego State University
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences , Psychology, Minor in Child Development , September 1988 – December 1993

References    

(available upon request)

Open Source    

As a means to give back to the wealth of Web development knowledge and code I've benefited from over the years, I've started a few Open Source projects this year:

AddToBookmarks.com – a JavaScript solution to assist site visitors with bookmarking your content using social bookmarking sites.

OhMyGUI.com– this project will provide a complete GUI framework for Web developers. The goal here is to help people create good looking sites that validate, contain all the JavaScripts one would generally need, in addition to providing them with a series of layout templates. OhMyGUI supports Ajax, AHAH/JAH and more!

2005 Accomplishments with ArtistServer.com

ArtistServer.com provides music hosting, social networking, and mobile services to more than 13,000 artists and fans. It runs on MediaServer System, a platform for media solutions I've been developing for the last five years. The following is a collection of my accomplishments with ArtistServer in 2005 along with statistics for January.

Current Stats (January 2006)
    * Songs: 5,000+ total
    * Artists: 4,000+ total
    * Members: 9,000+ total
    * Ringtones: 100 total
    * Visits: 27,045
    * Pageviews: 121,436
    * Total Visitors: 19,363

TIME Magazine lists ArtistServer.com as one of the "Top 20 Music Sites on the Web"
    * November 21, 2005
    * http://www.time.com/time/2005/onlinemusic/4.html

Created and Launched an mp3 ringtone transfer tool supporting the following:
    * SMS or MMS message with a link to the mp3 ringtone
    * SMS or MMS message with link to a WAP Download page
    * MMS to phone, ringtone as attachment
    * Download to Computer, send to phone

Created and Launched a WAP 2 xHTML MP site - currently in BETA
    * main Website identifies mobile devices and routes to mobile.ArtistServer.com
    * mobile site supports ringtone downloads
    * mobile site may support song downloads, but my phone is limited

RSS enabled ArtistServer.com, providing feeds for
    * Site News
    * New Song Reviews, Song Posts, and Blog Posts
    * New Songs by Genre
    * Top 40 by Genre - 7 day chart and 30 day chart
    * New Songs and Song Reviews- per artist
    * New Blog posts - per artist/member

Created and launched a Station and Playlist System supporting the following:
    * multiple search methods, for playlist building
    * AudioFeeds - also known as PodCasts, or RSS with enclosures
    * XSPF support – a standard for playlists
    * XSLT - fully styled feed to improve technology uptake
    
Created and launched a complete 'tag' system supporting the following:
    * tag clouds - clustering of tags with relational sizes based on use
    * tags added to: songs, news, blogs, playlists
    * relational design - each tag exists only once in the system
    * multi word tags - most sites only support single words, like del.icio.us

Created and launched a Friend networking system supporting the following
    * acceptance settings - set to auto-accept, approval or deny
    * approval process - allows you to include a message to the requesting person
    * reciprocation option -  you accept a friend, then an option to send an invite back