All about Clint Ecker

Hey there! My name is Clint Ecker. I’m a web developer living in Wicker Park, Chicago in the United States. I grew up in Kansas and through a series of travels through Indiana and Ohio, I’ve ended up in what I consider to be one of the best cities in the world.

The five years I spent attending Purdue University were to obtain a degree in Computer Engineering, but had the side-effect of pushing me into a career of web development—which, as it turns out, I enjoy quite a bit. I am most interested in creating web applications, but feel strongly about producing semantic markup, adopting new ideas & trends in web development, making software more social, and generally making the web a more desirable place to live out our lives.

Most of my projects these days are coded in a Python web development framework called Django. Django fullfills every need I have for development and has the benefits of being written in my favored programming language, having a fantastic developer community, a solid vision and goals for the project, as well as being accessible to almost every level of interactive development (design included). Check out the free online book if you’re interested in learning more. In less ideal cases, I do work in PHP (a variety of pre-built and home-brewed frameworks and CMSs), ColdFusion, ASP.NET, classic ASP, Ruby on Rails, and much more. I obviously have an excellent grasp of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. When I get down to HTML development, I am most likely to employ Yahoo!’s YUI tools, Blueprint CSS, and/or jQuery.

I am currently employed by an outstanding advertising agency, Stone Ward, as their senior web developer. The company was founded and is based in Little Rock, Arkansas with interactive offices located (and growing!) in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. It’s a great place to work and my team is second to none. We’re currently transitioning the company and the interactive division to a new level of interactive and web focus. This is more difficult than it might sound. The advertising agency of the eighties and nineties look nothing like the advertising agencies of today and the future. Look for great things to come out of our division!

In addition to my daily duties at Stone Ward, I do the occasional stint of freelance work for companies and individuals whom I know and trust. Most recently, this has been for Ars Technica. For the uninitiated, Ars is perhaps the biggest and most influential online technology publication of our time. I’ve been contracted for a variety of internal web development for the company, helping to streamline their publication and editorial process as well as producing reporting and data-aggregation services to ease growing pains the company has experienced as they employ more writers, editors, and copywriters than they ever have before.

On top of the development I’ve done for Ars, I’ve also served in the capacity of writer, then editor, then writer again, and finally as correspondant for a number of technology-related events and conferences. In 2004 I helped the company expand their acclaimed daily publication and reviews into a number of niche journals covering topics ranging from Apple to Microsoft to gadgets, gaming, science & medicine, computer hardware, and free & open software. For over a year I served as head of content development for Journals.ars as well as primary journalist for Infinite Loop, perhaps the most well-respected source of Apple news and analysis on the web.

In more recent times, I’ve contributed preeminent reviews of Apple hardware such as the Mac Mini, Apple TV, Airport Extreme, iPod video, iPod Classic, original iPod nano, iPhone, and MacBook. I’ve also served as correspondant covering events like Apple’s WorldWide Developer’s Conference, TechCrunch40, Macworld, and more.