I haven’t yet had any responses to my job applications at universities, but when I contacted my old friends at OutsourceiT in Denver they had a project for me. I’ll be adding some features to the University of Colorado’s Center for Computational Biology website. They want features like user logins, mailing lists, and news items that are increasingly popular these days. Most of this can be done with software known as a Content Management System (CMS). I’ve been playing with some of the free CMS packages out there, and they’re pretty cool. I think they will eventually replace blogging software, which essentially does one specific type of content management.

Of course the problem with this project is that most existing packages won’t do exactly what the client wants, so I have to decide whether to customize existing software, write new software, or pester them to change their requirements. It should make for an interesting few weeks, and maybe make me some contacts at CU.