Technology Nomad

My love for all things technology found its way to a career in late 1996. And like most generation X'ers, I love gadgets. Realizing that I couldn't maintain the cost of keeping hardware current, I began to lean towards the software side of technology.

I remember reading about one of the first browsers, Erwise, but my first hands-on experience was with Mosaic. Consequently, that got me reading about SGML, and HTML followed shortly after that. Given that some of the "servers" of the company I was working for at the time were Unix, I quickly became interested in the platform (and later many of its flavors). From there, I started to convert hundreds of call center documents (copied over & over again to give to agents answering the phones) into HTML files, making them accessible on the computers that every one already had in front of them.

Subsequently, my interest in software was no longer just about applications, but about the Internet and the web itself. From then on, reading & learning to keep up with evolving technologies and solutions became my career, my pass-time hobby and even my passion. Unlike expensive gadgets, which I still follow, the world of software only required my time (reading, coding, installing, etc.).

Naturally, as computers became household items and the Internet became mainstream, I was the family "technical guy" for any hardware and software needs. As a career and a hobby, technology became an around-the-clock constant. And while that may have a negative connotation to it, it wasn't at all. I enjoy it to this day. This enjoyment, this passion, is how Technology Nomad was born.

Technology Nomad is about what I learn. It's about what I come to know. It's about the shortcuts and techniques that help you do things better, faster and smarter. And not in a Kanye kind of way. Technology Nomad is a blog about the nomadic nature by which I approach technology --Specifically, web technologies. Technologies like cloud computing, web 2.0, social media, web applications, etc. But also covers things like music online, free alternatives to commercial software, open source, and many others. My goal is to, once a week, cover at least one topic.

My name is Ahmad al-As'ad and I am a technology nomad. And I invite you to become a technology nomad too by contributing an article, submitting a topic you'd like to see covered, and/or become one of our loyal readers & commentators. We would all benefit from hearing your solutions, your ideas or whatever technology (especially web technology) you come across out there in the good ol' World Wide Web.

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Posted in: on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:11 AM