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About The Why and The How

The Why and The How is about the web, emerging technologies and education. As a platform for communication and interaction, the web is a quickly-evolving system of software, services and networks, but there is still a great deal of question about why a particular system or network should be used and how to use it.

The primary goal of this blog is education. As with any rapidly-changing system, staying on top of the new information is a challenge by itself, but evaluating and integrating to the new technologies can be completely overwhelming. As a professional software developer and business owner, I understand the value of having the right information and tools — and I know how much time and effort can be wasted on integrating new fad-of-the day technologies. The Why and The How is my effort to distill all of the new information, provide links to valuable existing information and illustrate methods of integration to ensure that your time and effort is not wasted.

About the Author: Blake Schwendiman

Blake SchwendimanI am a software developer (a computer nerd at heart). I’m the kid that became so enamored with the idea of creating computer programs when I was 12 years old that I made a deal with my dad to split the cost of a new Apple //e as a Christmas gift. We might have had a game or two, but I spent most of my time teaching myself BASIC and running such classics as:

10 print "Blake "
20 goto 10

I graduated from Arizona State University in 1994 with a BS in Computer Science. I have professionally developed software for Windows, Solaris and UNICOS (Cray) in C, C++, Ada, Delphi, Visual Basic, and VB.Net (geeks will match the languages to the OS’s — obviously I didn’t write VB on the Cray).

In about 1999 I was introduced to PHP by a friend while I was developing a basic ASP application for a web start-up. That introduction literally changed my life. At the end of 2000, Osbourne/McGraw-Hill published my first PHP programming guide, PHP 4 Developer’s Guide (now out of print and utterly outdated). I later self-published two more PHP-related books on Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/intechrabooks).

I currently work for Squidoo, a company filled with passionate people who love learning, interacting and sharing. Most of my development is now focused on PHP and Javascript (and all the cool stuff that goes with it: AJAX, jQuery, etc.).

You can learn more about me, follow me, friend me, etc. here:

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