I hold an M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence and I have always found great pleasure in utilizing the programming skills and scientific thinking acquired for that degree to provide instruments with which the humanities and social sciences can use the proliferation of web, and big, data for research. As the lead programmer and technical director of the Digital Methods Initiative, one of Europe’s leading Internet Studies research groups, I developed, or supervised the development of, almost one hundred tools for the retrieval, analysis, and visualization of web data for social and cultural research. Developing such tools allowed me to understand not only the front-end but also the backend of all the main new online media, as well as many of the generally understudied devices and platforms.

My most well known academic tools are the Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset (DMI-TCAT) and Contropedia, in addition to those listed on tools.digitalmethods.net.