I’m Jake Billo. This site contains links and information about both my professional and personal activities. The easiest way to contact me is by email: jake at jakebillo dot com. For confidential or sensitive content, please sign messages with my GPG key (0×85702A35, available at pool.sks-keyservers.net.)
I perform consulting as a senior partner in EdgeLink Consulting. We complete computer and technology work, including computer service and repair, home networking installation, and business web development. My most recent experience in this area is with Drupal and PostgreSQL, although I also support WordPress and custom CMS solutions.
Disclaimer:
This website reflects my personal opinions and views, and does not represent or claim to represent views, opinions, positions or strategies of my current employer or any previous employers. At times, this site may offer advice or recommendations for technical support. While I strive for correctness and accuracy, any support recommendations are provided as-is and choosing to follow them is entirely at your own risk. For support in an official capacity, please contact the organization responsible.
All BlackBerry and RIM-related information made available on this site is entirely based on my experiences as a loyal user and mobile phone enthusiast. Any information here has been made available to the general public; I respect my non-disclosure agreement and no confidential information will appear on this site.
Employment History
My current employer (as of September 2009) is Research in Motion (RIM), where I work as a BIS Tools Developer. I develop and maintain internal applications to assist with various BlackBerry Internet Service and BlackBerry Hosted Software projects.
In summer 2009, I worked as a Systems Engineering Specialist on the External Test Systems (ETS) team. I’ve completed four full-time co-op terms with RIM; the first two terms spanned May 2007 to December 2007, and the third term was from September 2008 to December 2008.
Before RIM, I worked at IBM Canada as an Information Developer for WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries in Markham, Ontario. I spent two official work terms (Winter and Fall 2006) with IBM, and in total worked for the company for sixteen months. From April to September 2006, as well as January 2007 to the end of April 2007, I worked remotely and part-time from Waterloo as a Student On-Call employee.
Prior to working for IBM and my enrollment in the UW co-op program, I was a Marketing Assistant for Maplesoft in Waterloo, Ontario. My role in Programs Marketing on the Lead Generation team involved data mining, script writing and database work. I worked for Maplesoft both part-time and as a full time summer employee.
I’ve also performed a small amount of contract work for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board. Students of some Waterloo Region high schools may hear my voice in some Flash and Dreamweaver MX tutorials.
Personal Development Projects
I’ve also undertaken several independent and team efforts to develop applications:
- XenonMKV is a graphic interface to several command line tools. It converts H.264 content in MKV containers to function properly on the Xbox 360, without losing any video quality. It is open source under the General Public License (GPL).
- Ethanol, a reasonably stable iteration of my custom designed weblog/content management system. Written in PHP and MySQL, a fully-functional version with over 50 users is in place at ev98.net. Viewing privileges on ev98.net are restricted to registered users, due to the nature of user-contributed content.
- Assorted Java, C# and Visual Basic applications for specific solutions. These applications are typically used in a PC support role, and due to their customized nature and unsupported features, they cannot be made available for public use. However, these applications include:
- A router password search/recovery tool for the most common brands of home networking equipment. This tool is especially useful for users who have forgotten their password for the device, and have PPPoE connections requiring an additional username and password. To avoid calling the ISP’s technical support and requesting a password reset, the utility allows retrieval of the authentication credentials.
- A centralized frontend for spyware/malware detection and removal applications.
- File system utilities, including those for categorizing directories and batch renaming operations.
- A HOSTS editor utility to quickly repair damaged HOSTS files.