PREMSHREE S. PILLAI - CURRICULUM VITÆ

PREMSHREE S. PILLAI — CURRICULUM VITÆ

B/13, Agastya, Sector 5, Srishti,
Mira Road (E), Thane - 401107, India

+91 (22) 2810 5211
+91 9819615457

premshree@gmail.com
http://www.qiksearch.com/

PERSONAL INFORMATION

D.O.B:	February 23, 1983
Sex:	Male
Nationality:	Indian
Marital Status:	Single
Languages Known:	English, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam

FIELDS OF INTERESTS

Intelligent Agents and Bots, Data Mining, Pattern Recognition, Music Information Retrieval, Digital Image Processing, Machine Learning, Social Software

SYSTEMS EXPERIENCE

Programming Languages: Awk, C, C++, JavaScript, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, REBOL, Ruby, Tk (Perl/Python), CGI
Development Frameworks: Visual Basic, wxPython, XUL
Documentation Technologies: HTML, CSS, DHTML, XML, XSLT, LaTeX
DBMS: MySQL, Oracle
Platforms: Unix and variants, DOS, Windows

PROJECTS

Mobile to Web Gateways, Fall 2004: Implemented SMS to LiveJournal Gateways in Python, REBOL and Ruby; and an MMS to LiveJournal Gateway in Ruby.
LJ Tools, Summer 2004: This is an open source project released under the GNU/GPL terms that will serve as a collective of unofficial LiveJournal tools.
PyAC—Python Album Creator, Summer 2004: This is an open source project released under the GNU/GPL terms. This is an extremely easy-to-use, template driven, lightweight Python program to create image albums.
TrisonInc.com: Designed and coded the layout for the website of Trison, Inc., a US-based construction company.
SBSCanada.com: I was involved with the backend programming of this website, which involved creation of modules to automate certain processes like fetching a "tip" depending on the current month.
MuSE—Musical content as a Searchable Element: As part of the final year curricula, chose Music Information Retrieval (MIR) as the focus of my project. Created a system that lets users search for music based on actual musical content, rather than metadata.
b4s Playlist Parser, Winter 2003: This is an open source project released under the GNU/GPL terms. The project is an attempt to create a simple tool to export Winamp3 b4s files to HTML. New releases, news and other related stuff would be made available at the project's development website.
Weblog—An online web-based Journal Management System, Fall 2003: This project was undertaken as part of the Structured System Analysis and Design project. Here, we created an online journal maintenance system using client-side JavaScript, PHP and MySQL. The project consisted of administrator modules and also public-usable modules. We also provided syndication facilities using standard formats like RSS and OPML.
Towers of Hanoi Simulation, Summer 2003: I undertook this project as part of the Computer Graphics course. I created a working simulation of the Towers of Hanoi problem using C++. The program simulates the solution to any number of disks, with the speed of the computer being the only bottleneck.
Online Railway Reservation System (ORRS), Fall 2002: This project was undertaken as part of our Database Management System (DBMS) course. Here we replicated, in a much smaller way, the online railway reservation system used by Indian Railways. The project followed a client-server architecture. The middleware used was Perl, with JavaScript for client-side validation.
Tic Tac Toe, Fall 2002: Implemented an “intelligent” Tic Tac Toe game using Perl.

Work Experience

Jan 2005 – present

Yahoo! SDC, Bangalore: software engineer in the “Market Innovation” group.

Jul 2004 – Dec 2004

Pinstorm, Mumbai: was the lead developer at this Mumbai-based startup. Was involved in the creation of tools to help marketers optimize bids for clients using Google's AdWords. Also involved in the process of automating the entire process.

Technologies used involved Perl and Python as middleware, MySQL as database backend.
Consultant: Designed and coded the layout for the website of Trison, Inc., a US-based construction company. Was involved with the backend programming for SBSCanada.com.

SELECTED PAST/ONGOING ACTIVITIES

I maintain a website, Qiksearch, where I post original JavaScripts/DHTML scripts and Python scripts that I write. I also post my articles here.
I maintain another website, Scripting by Premshree Pillai, which in addition to serving as a mirror to the former website, also provides original PerlScripts.
I run a newsletter service, The Scripting Newsletter that has over 150 subscribers.
Contributing Author, Developer-IQ magazine – Asia's No.1 software technology magazine, 2001–.
Contributing Author, Developer 2.0 – published in collaboration with Dr. Dobb's Journal, USA, 2002–.
Columnist – “Language”, e-commerce magazine – India's first e-commerce magazine, 2002–2003.
Contributing Author, SitePoint. The SitePoint Network originated as Webmaster-Resources.com. Within two weeks of launch, the site was featured in the LA Times. Mentions in USA Today, The Washington Times and a full-page write-up in WINDOWS Magazine followed, 2003–.
I am fairly active on the Python mailing list.
Technical editor, Computer Society of India – St. Francis Institute of Technology student branch, for the period 2003–2004.
Committee member, eDesic, the computer society of St. Francis Institute of Technology, 2002–2003.
Webmaster, SFIMAR (St. Francis Institute of Management and Research).
Webmaster, SFIT (St. Francis Institute of Technology).

WORTH A MENTION

Qiksearch.com receives over 5,000 hits daily.
premshree.org receives over 3,000 hits daily.
Qiksearch had featured on Digit magazine (erstwhile CHIP-INDIA) – India's largest selling technology magazine; pp. 127, June 2002.
Was offered to work on a project for iFilm. With the world's largest collection of short films and movie clips available to watch online, iFilm is now one of the top ten streaming video sites on the web and attracts a monthly audience of nearly 7 million.
My programs have been or are being used by Kentucky State University, Make-A-Wish® Foundation of Central & Western North Carolina, CenturyTel, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Indian Railways, among others.
My programs have appeared in numerous computer magazines (Indian and International) and computer books: Java Script Big Pack, published by Data Becker – Germany's largest publishing house, Computer Arts Projects, among others.
One of my programs, Intellisearch Bar, had featured in the “Top 5 Softwares” in Electronics For You magazine – South Asia's most popular electronics magazine; pp. 8, December 2001.
I was one among nine winners at the DevArticles Coding Contest (Advanced level), Oct-Nov 2003.
I have won consistently at several inter-collegiate web-designing/programming contests, viz. Abhiyantriki '03 (2^nd place), ISAAC '03^{^} (2^nd place), Torque '03^@ (1^st place), Space '03 (2^nd place), Swift '02 (1^st place), Vector '02 (1^st place), Swastik '02, (1^st place), Enable '02^& (1^st place), Abhiyantriki '02 (1^st place), Torque '02^@ (1^st place).

^{^} Conducted under the aegis of IEEE, ^@ Conducted under the aegis of CSI, ^& CSI (Mumbai Chapter) Annual Student Convention 2002

LECTURES

“Ruby Talk - An Introduction to Ruby”, 3 Dec 2004, Linux Bangalore/2004, IISc, Bangalore
“An Introductory Seminar on Python”, 21 Feb 2004, SFIT, Mumbai
“A Workshop on HTML, CSS and JavaScript”, 6-7 Feb 2004, SFIT, Mumbai

CITATIONS

Puneet Mehrotra: “Mobile Blogging”, Hindustan Times, Nov 15 2004
Peter Otten: “Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!”, Aug 24 2004
Pythonware: “Daily Python-URL”, May 3 2004
Searchive, a tool that I created along with VinodKrishna Pillai featured on BBC World's Click Online, Apr 22 2004
Pythonware: “Daily Python-URL”, Apr 2 2004
Cameron Laird: “Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!”, Mar 24 2004
Cameron Laird: “Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!”, Mar 3 2004
Cameron Laird: “Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!”, Jan 19 2004
Puneet Mehrotra: “Managing change in ebusiness”, Hindustan Times, Jan 11 2004
Michael Gold: “More AI...(GEP) Gene Expression Programming in C# and .NET”, Nov 4 2002

Papers

“Experimental Mobile Gateways”, to be published in ACM's Crossroads, Fall '05

Book Chapters

Python codes—“Improved Gray Scale Quantization”, “ljopml.py”, “makeExe.py”— to be published in Python Cookbook, Alex Martelli and David Ascher (eds.), O'Reilly, Fall '05

PRINT PUBLICATIONS

“Mobile Gateways: Your Window to the Web”, Information Technology, pp. 52-55, December 2004.
“Auto Creation of Python Executables”, Information Technology, pp. 32-34, June 2004.
“Static Typing versus Dynamic Typing”, Developer-IQ, pp. 77-79, May 2004.
“XML and JavaScript in Mozilla”, Information Technology, pp. 50-52, February 2004^#.
“The b4s Playlist Parser Project”, Developer-IQ, pp. 66-68, February 2004^#.
“Socket Programming in Python”, Developer-IQ, pp. 69-71, February 2004; Information Technology, pp. 42-44, October 2004.
“Automating the creation of Python Executables”, Developer-IQ, pp. 48-49, December 2003.
“Creating Your Own Feed Formats for Syndication”, Developer-IQ, pp. 84-86, November 2003.
“Syndication for the Web”, Information Technology, pp. 79-80, October 2003.
“Generating RSS feeds using PHP”, Developer-IQ, pp. 95-97, October 2003^#.
“Reading OPML feeds using JavaScript”, Developer-IQ, pp. 93-95, August 2003.
“Reading RSS feeds using JavaScript”, Developer-IQ, pp. 71-74, July 2003.
“Using the XML Data Source Object”, Developer 2.0, pp. 27-30, May 2003^#; Developer-IQ, pp. 101-107, June 2003^#; e-commerce, pp. 57-63, November 2003.
“XML Data Traversal”, Developer-IQ, pp. 96-97, April 2003; e-commerce, pp. 58-61, May 2003.
“JavaScript Tickers”, e-commerce, pp. 55-57, March 2003.
“Tabular Data Control”, Developer-IQ, pp. 102-104, March 2003; e-commerce, pp. 59-64, July 2003.
“Socket Programming in Perl”, Developer-IQ, pp. 46-47, February 2003^#; e-commerce, pp. 33-34, April 2003; Information Technology, pp. 49-50, June 2003.
“Add Color to your website”, Information Technology, pp. 56-58, February 2003.
“Dynamic Menu”, e-commerce, pp. 51-53, January 2003; Developer-IQ, pp. 102-103, May 2003.
“XML and JavaScript”, Developer-IQ, pp. 64-66, August 2002; e-commerce, pp. 56-61, December 2002; Information Technology, pp. 32-34, January 2003^#.
“Cross Browser Ticker”, Developer-IQ, pp. 113, April 2002.
“Another tryst with Colors”, Developer-IQ, pp. 53-55, February 2002.
“Working with Styles”, Developer-IQ, pp. 46-48, December 2001.
“Creating a Text Fading Effect”, Developer-IQ, pp. 75-76, October 2001.

PUBLICATIONS AT DEVX

“Open the Mobile Gateway with SMS and MMS Messaging”, Sep 2, 2004
“Create Python Executables Automatically”, Feb 25, 2004
“Manipulate Data in Internet Explorer with the Tabular Data Control”, Jun 4, 2003
“Making Use of the XML Data Source Object”, May 14, 2003
“Traverse XML Data Using JavaScript”, Apr 15, 2003

PUBLICATIONS AT SITEPOINT

“Introduction to Static and Dynamic Typing”, Jun 18, 2004
“XML and JavaScript in Mozilla”, Jan 7, 2004
“Using the XML Data Source Object”, May 9, 2003
“Using XML Data Traversal”, Apr 21, 2003
“Using The Tabular Data Control in Internet Explorer”, Mar 17, 2003
“Build a Dynamic Menu in JavaScript”, Feb 3, 2003
“Read and Display Server-Side XML with JavaScript”, Jan 8, 2003

^# Article title appears on magazine cover

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

Student member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), USA.
Student member, Computer Society of India (CSI).

EDUCATION

University of Mumbai, B.E. in Information Technology, I^st class, August 2004.
Higher Secondary Certificate, 84.17% (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics: 95% – 1^st in class), February 2000.
Secondary School Certificate, 86.26% – 2^nd in class, March 1998.