J. K. Barbalace, inc

Featured Website Development Projects

EnvironmentalChemistry.com

This is the oldest and most popular website produced by J.K. Barbalace, inc. It was started in 1995 and its mission is to be an educational site that makes the subject of chemistry and environmental issues a little less daunting to the average student. The goal was to make this site as classroom friendly as possible so that it can help students have a positive learning experience. This site receives millions of visitors each year. The primary means of marketing this site is via natural search engine placement and organic link accumulation from other sites with no money being spent to market this site. By focusing on producing vast amounts of quality content on a tightly integrated topic areas EnvironmentalChemistry.com consistently ranks very high in search results for related search phrases.

Design features include

Cumberland County SWCD - Watershed Management
(Moblie device optimized, web based database application)

CCSWCD testimonial (PDF - 365KB)
CCSWCD brochure promoting services that rely on this web app (PDF - 2.27 MB)

We developed a web based database application using a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) solution, and provide continuing support for Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District (CCSWCD). This complex property database was necessary to support the Long Creek Watershed Management District's implementation of the Long Creek Watershed Management Plan. Following successful implementation in the Long Creek Watershed, the database was expanded to provide a means of managing other watersheds within the Interlocal Stormwater Working Group (ISWG). The database includes property information such as parcel features, impervious areas, GPS location of stormwater control devices (storm drains, culverts, swales, etc.) and property owners and operators. It facilitates the tracking of treated impervious areas, device performance and maintenance needs throughout the watershed. When conducting field inspections, the web app provides inspectors with a list of devices they are physically closest to by way of the GPS coordinates their tablet, iPad, etc. provides to the web application. Users are also able to open GPS/GIS data directly from the website into Google Earth (even on their mobile devices) via KML overlays and again access the site directly from Google Earth using those same KML overlays. Additional functionality this web application provides includes: landowner invoicing; property inspections & inspection reporting; tracking of storm water infrastructure and management on a watershed-by-watershed and town-by-town basis throughout ISWG's 14 member-municipalities.

This web based database application is designed to W3C HTML and CSS specifications and supports any standards compliant web browser. It is also optimized for use on Android tablets, iPads and other mobile devices that have a standards compliant web browser. As this web app is standards based, member municipalities and inspectors are able to use their preferred Internet capable computing devices and don't necessarily have to purchase special equipment to access this web based database application. This database application utilizes PHP, MySQL, HTML, XML, KML, CSS and JavaScript.

NOTE: This web based database application is not accessible by the general public. In person demonstrations of this application can be arranged. Please click on the thumbnail to the right to see a larger sample screencapture from a Samsung Galaxy Tab runnng Firefox Mobile of a BMP (best management practices) inspection being initialized by selecting area to be inspected based on the user's GPS coordinates.

InternetSAR.org

InternetSAR.org is an all volunteer organization whose mission is to develop and promote the use of the Internet to conduct collaborative analysis of aerial and satellite imagery during search and rescue operations to help locate down or missing aircraft.

Founded by Kenneth L. Barbalace this is our most ambitious project to date. The main site is built upon our proprietary content management system with its private forums running on vBulletin. To participate in InternetSAR.org searches volunteers log in to the main site and then request imagery assignments, which open up in Google Earth, overlaying new imagery taken after a plane went down over top of Google Earth's default imagery. When volunteers find something they think might be of interest they file reports via a special reporting form. Reports are then evaluated and scored by report evaluators. If reports score high enough at the report evaluator level they are forwarded on to a senior evaluator level staffed by professional imagery analysts who make the determination as to whether or not reports will be forwarded on to ground teams for further investigation.

Google Earth is tightly integrated into the functioning of InternetSAR.org with PHP and MySQL based dynamic KML overlay generators. These overlay generators produce Google Earth KML overlays on the fly to issue imagery assignments, report evaluation overlays and search mission information analysis overlays. The system can track who has been issued what imagery and for what reason. Everything is permissions based with different user groups having access to different levels of functionality on the site and different sub-forums based on their level within the organization. The entire site runs on PHP, MySQL, and Apache.

Saco Bay Dems

Saco Bay Dems is a coordinated effort between the Democratic town committees for Biddeford, Dayton, Old Orchard Beach, and Saco. What they needed was a polished website to promote their combined efforts, their individual committees and local candidates; recruit volunteers; announce events; and generally help organize local Democrats. The site had to be easy to update and flexible enough to expand and adapt as their needs change. Events on its events page automatically get "tweeted" out on Twitter via the server in advance of their date.

This site is built upon our proprietary content management system and is built to HTML5 and CSS3 specifications.

English Russian Translations

This website was built using our proprietary content management system to facilitate its long-term maintenance. One unique feature for this site is the ability to request a quote via a special web form that even allows for documents to be attached and uploaded with the request.

Western Maine Finishing

Western Maine Finishing finishes, and restores log, clapboard and cedar shake homes. The objective behind their site was to create a low cost "Web brochure" that can be easily updated via a Web management tool including the ability to upload before and after photos of projects they have worked on. This site showcases programming methods we can use to reduce the cost of website development. To reduce programming time, we draw upon an ever-growing cache of core code components that can be used time and again on other sites we develop.

With this design concept, we can bring the down cost of designing a small professional Web site that could be easily maintained. This makes such sites more affordable for companies who in the past would have had to settle for a static site that would be rarely if ever updated because updates could only be done by a someone who knew HTML or had special software.

SimCity Forum

This forum, based on the vBulletin forum system, is primarily a hobby. It did, however, serve as a testing ground for building the skills necessary to deploy and manage forums.