photograph of Michael Fagan

Michael Fagan

http://faganm.com/

You have reached the personal website of Michael Fagan, not to be confused with various other Michael Fagans. See also my blog or résumé.

Where Am I?

– ~April 25 2008
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
~April 25 2008 – ~August 1 2008
Toronto, Ontario, Canada and overseas
~August 1 2008 –
Redmond, Washington, United States

Online Accounts

Used Frequently

Others

Waterloo Stuff

See my ongoing recap of Waterloo-related items.

Beyond being a participant at technology events in Waterloo, I’ve also started one myself. The Web Clinic is a weekly time for people of all skill levels and experiences to work on their websites and get help from each other. Feel free to join, or contact me about anything.

Selected Projects, Past and Present

Major Projects

Puzzlepieces
Puzzlepieces is my personal blog. While I started reading blogs in 2000, and I wrote a blog about search engines in the summer of 2002, I didn’t start a personal blog until October 2002.
OpenSearch
I didn’t come up with OpenSearch (that was DeWitt), but during my internship with A9 (winter of 2005) I was very fortunate to be allowed to work on it almost exclusively. OpenSearch is a simple specification for machine-readable search information, now used by Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and many other organizations. I continue to spread the word about OpenSearch to anyone who will listen.
UWhub
This is a two-pronged project: to create a great search engine tailored to the University of Waterloo, and to do it as an example a general search application that could be customized to any vertical. Most of this was developed between May 2005 and April 2006. Like most of my projects, I may have run out of steam before fully realizing my plans, so its current status is undecided.
URLinfo
This was one of the earliest specialized tools on Fagan Finder and went through several revisions. Today I am quite happy with the interface, but the resources need to be updated. Essentially it is a tool that allows you to perform actions on a web page, such as viewing information about it, translating it, saving it, searching within it, etc.
Translation Wizard
One of my last major projects on Fagan Finder (2003), this was one of the biggest projects I have done myself. The idea was to provide a seamless experience for translating anything to anything, so it acted as a meta-translator (not the first, but I like to believe the best). Sadly, most parts of it do not work today, and I would love to find the time to improve and update it.
Fagan Finder
Essentially a collection of search and other web tools and information about web searching. It began as my personal home page in the fall of 2000, and officially launched as Fagan Finder on October 13th 2001. The name Fagan Finder was a temporary name to coincide with its original URL at my previously-personal webspace at fagan.f2s.com and save me the trouble of actually thinking of something. When I needed to move hosts I decided to make the name permanent. Most of the website hasn’t been updated since 2003/2004, although a few parts are a bit more recent and I continue to convince myself that I'll give it all an upgrade some day.
The Futurama Icon Page
My first substantial website, essentially 1998 to 1999. It actually launched about three months before Futurama premiered (it was the sixth Futurama website), showing the extent of my insanity at the time. Back then I used a pseudonym (Mark Mintoff), due to internet privacy and security fears that seem silly these days. I was actually poised to relaunch the site elsewhere, but that fell through, and when Yahoo! acquired Geocities, they cancelled one of my two accounts… the one I actually used, preventing me from ever editing the site again. The website was actually the first result on AltaVista (then the most popular search engine) for “futurama,” which is what first lead to my learning about search engines.

Minor Projects

Quizify
Quizify is/will be a suite of online learning aids. It is now open source... anyone want to help?
Zimride
Unlike most of the other projects here, this one was not my idea, and I only played a small part in it. Zimride is a carpool matching service, which I encourage everyone to try out.
Speed Browse
The first non-search tool on Fagan Finder, it allows you to provide a list of websites you frequently visit, and then visit them in order in an efficient manner. While you’re reading one site, the next one loads. With the advent of newsreaders and faster internet connections, I no longer use it as my own home page, but it remains very useful for some.

Companies I Have Worked At

Frequently Used Software and Websites

Software

Websites