Paul Reinheimer

It all began when my mother bought one of those computer games books for the Commodore 64, then threw the disk away (which in hindsight, was kind of mean of her). I quickly discovered that I could play sooner if I skipped the lines starting with "REM". Since then, I’ve become incredibly interested in the Web and what makes it fast, secure, and frankly a pleasure to use. In 2006, I wrote a book titled Professional Web APIs with PHP, and since then I've had a variety of jobs, from training the next generation of PHP programmers with php|architect, to building high-traffic websites, to my current position supporting clinical trials research, working in biomedical informatics at Social and Scientific Systems. I'm a member of the PHP documentation team, and have had the pleasure and privilege to speak at numerous international conferences – many of my talk slides are online at joind.in.

While helping people who are working to cure AIDS and cancer keeps my days busy, my nights are spent working on WonderNetwork with Will Roberts. WonderProxy began in 2009 as the solution to a problem my then-employer was having, it has since grown into an ever-growing network of servers in over 85 cities around the world, and we have developed a suite of products that harnesses that infrastructure. WonderProxy provides granular Geo-IP testing opportunities for developers who want to ensure that their sites are displaying properly around the world, not just back home; Where's It Up? (and its new API) provides global site status details including diagnostic information (ping, traceroute, DNS), enabling site administrators to automagically monitor the status of their site; and Natural Load Testing enables developers to test the performance of their sites before they go live / viral.

While WonderNetwork and WonderProxy keep me very busy, there's always time for another project, mostly recently working on XHGui with Mark Story and on a news aggregator with Allison Moore. Away from the computer, I enjoy cycling, baking, and photography. I’ve also been fortunate enough to spend a few summers volunteering with Children’s International Summer Villages, a group focused on global peace education.