Scarica il mio Curriculum Vitae (Italiano) Download my Resume (Italian)

My name is Angelo Scicolone and I am the only man behind Zik Software.
I was born in Gela, Sicily, 24 years ago, and now I'm studing for a master degree in Computer Science at University of Turin, where I live at the moment.

I started to play with computers back in 1988, when I was 5 years old, with a Commodore 64. At 9, I learned the BASIC programming language. One year later, I had my first Macintosh, an LC II, and soon I learned to love that insanely great computer company which is Apple. I early started to write programs for the Mac, at first with HyperCard and ResEdit. After a while I started to use REALbasic, which is still my favourite IDE even if I also know other programming languages such as Java and C.

In 2000, when I was still 16, I started "Zik Software", my one-man software company specialized in Mac OS applications development, through which I post some of my software on the Internet, some in the form of freeware or open source software, others as shareware. My work has been rewarded by some well known international magazines, such as MacWorld (USA, UK, Italy), MacAddict (USA), MacUser (UK), MacLIFE (Japan), Applicando (Italy) and others, which reviewed my software and published them on their CDs.

In 2001 I started my collaboration with Applicando, an Italian Macintosh magazine now published by Il Sole 24 Ore Business Media group, for which I still regularly write technical tutorials, reviews and other articles: you can see the updated list of writings on this page.

In 2002 I won a REALbasic Cubie Award (now renamed "Design Award"), an international prize for the best applications made with the REALbasic integrated development environment, with PrefsOverload, which was rated first in the "Best Utility" category.
The same year I started Emerasoft, a software company specialized in desktop publishing systems. The company's premiere product, called LPS, was mostly developed by me.

In 2005, with the arrival of new associates, Emerasoft S.r.l. became a limited company and extended its market as a thrid-party software distributor also. Since that moment I was Vice President for Research & Develpment for a year, after which I quit the company. During the almost 4 years of work in Emerasoft, I collected many experiences as enterprise level developer and system integrator, working for big italian and foreign companies like SEAT Pagine Gialle S.p.A. and Polarion Software GmbH.

In 2006 I obtained a degree in Computer Science at University of Turin, with a thesis about Grid Computing which included the full development and deployment of an installation CD-ROM for a computational grid based on PBS Professional and SLAX (Linux) operating system.

At the moment, I'm studing for a master degree in computer science, while working mainly as a freelance developer.

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Kudos
Here I collected some of the most important pages speaking about me, either on the Web than offline. Click an icon on the left to open the corresponding document.

	AliasMultiplier 2.6 Review - by REALbasic Developer magazine [Apr '03, English]
	LA SICILIA 13/10/2002 - Article about me on Sicily's most important newspaper [Oct '02, Italian]
	"Genio Italiano" - About the Cubie Award 2002 [Sep '02, Italian]
	REALbasic Cubie Award 2002 - These pages are grabbed from the Internet Archive, since award pages prior to 2004 were removed from REAL Software's site [Aug '02]
	AliasMultiplier 2.5 Review - by Cuk.ch [Apr '02, French]
	"Piccoli, Grandi Programmatori Mac" - My Interview on MacProf [Dec '01, Italian]
	AliasMultiplier 2 Review - by Tevac.com [Dec '01, Italian]
	"Italians do It better" - Article about me on Applicando.com [July '01, Italian]

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Custom Development and Consulting

If you need some custom development, like adding new features to an existing project or creating a new UI design or building a completely new software for corporate in-house use, just ask me. I've been professionally developing software for the Macintosh platform since 2000, and I have also extensive experience in developing Microsoft Windows, Linux and cross-platform applications.

I can port a Visual Basic application to Mac OS and Linux platform in a few days. I can also build robust dynamic websites and web applications, covering the entire development process from coding to web design, using unexpensive technologies such as Java and Mysql.

I have already worked with many different companies, at various titles, such as: SEAT Pagine Gialle S.p.A., Emerasoft S.r.l., Polarion Software GmbH, Eco di Biella, Sprint & Sport, and others.

Here are my main skills:

Operating Systems: Apple Mac OS X and Mac OS 9, Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Linux (RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Slackware), Sun Solaris;

Programming Languages and IDEs: REALbasic, VisualBasic, Java, C, AppleScript;

Web Technologies: JSP, Servlet, Apache, Tomcat, HTML, XML, DTD, XSL, CSS;

Relational Databases: MySql, Oracle;

Experience in networks engineering and development of client-server TCP/IP

software.

Software Engineering: UML, E-R, Borland Together ControlCenter;

Grid Computing: Altair PBS Professional, Apple Xgrid;

Other Applications: Microsoft Office, QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Apple iLife, Apple iWork.