Shaun's day job

Shaun is a Web editor for the (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal. Previously, he was assistant copy chief at Forbes.com, a copy editor at Men's Journal, and the managing editor of Delaware Today magazine.

Shaun's side projects

Shaun is the creator and designer of Correlated.org, which reveals surprising correlations between seemingly unrelated things.

Shaun was the creator of the now-defunct UnofficialCensus.org, which asked the same questions that are asked on the 2010 U.S. Census.

He also created Catholics Amassed, a Techmeme-style news and commentary aggregation site featuring more than 50 primary sources.

Shaun is the founder of ParishNetwork.org, a free social networking site for Catholic parishes and parishioners. ParishNetwork currently supports 13,586 parishes in 125 U.S. dioceses.

He is also the founder of Truyoo.com, which offers Web sites that accept user comments a simple way to ensure that those comments conform to their terms of service, banishing trolls and abusive users for good. Truyoo is FREE to implement, and its technique is so foolproof that it's guaranteed. The Truyoo Good Behavior Guarantee: "If a Truyoo-verified user violates your site's terms of service, you'll get $1 -- and they'll get banned for good."

Shaun's personal blog is here. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's friends-only.

His wedding site is here. (Be sure to watch the proposal video!)

Some of his old clips are here, including two columns that were written without the letter "e."


Here are a few of Shaun's personal Web projects:

Alliteration Analyzer lets you "paste a passage and review the results." It uses several algorithms to determine how alliterative a particular text is.

Shaun's Fill-in-the-Blanks Percentage Calculator is hands-down the easiest way to figure out percentages. If you've ever struggled with questions like "What percent larger is A than B?" this is the tool for you.

Take Me Warmer! lets you enter your ZIP code and a desired warmer temperature, and it displays a Google map showing you how far you'd have to travel to reach that warmer temperature.

The Pressbin.com Homeland Reassigner: We're born into our native countries by the luck of the draw. The Homeland Re-Assigner uses world population data to simulate this process. It produces statistically accurate representations of where else you might have ended up.

The Vatican, Obama-fied: An overhaul of the Vatican's website, in the style of WhiteHouse.gov.

The Pressbin.com Soulmate Seeker: As with the Homeland Reassigner, the Soulmate Seeker uses world population data to generate a statistically accurate "best guess" about where in the world your soulmate lives. Hint: It's probably far away.

The Pressbin.com Chord Transposer: Drop in a bunch of chords, then specify which key you'd like to change them to. Very handy for guitar players, but useful for practically any instrument.

IntelliCAPS: Intelligently convert ALL CAPS text to small caps.

Shaun's Word Count Tool allows you to instantly get the word count, character count, and paragraph count of any string.

Shaun's urlencode/urldecode tool allows you to paste in a text string and convert it between normal text and a URL-encoded string. This tool uses PHP's urlencode() and urldecode() functions.

The DART Bus Stop Locator allows you to enter a street address and view a map of the closest DART bus stops. Works for all addresses in New Castle County, Delaware.


Facebook applications built by Shaun:

Unrestricted Status: Normally, Facebook status updates are limited to 420 characters and can't contain line breaks. But with the Unrestricted Status application, you can post status updates of up to 10,000 characters, including line breaks.

Like Notifications: Receive an instant e-mail notification whenever someone 'Likes' your status update.

Monitor Your SuperFriends: Receive an instant e-mail notification whenever a designated SuperFriend posts a status update.

Discover Your Comment Stalkers: See the 10 friends who comment on your status updates most frequently.

Who 'Likes' You the Most?: See the 10 friends who have 'liked' your status updates most frequently.