Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California specializing in the platform web, syndication, video publishing and widgets. Niall is President of Hat Trick Media, a consulting and product company providing the technical expertise, strategy and implementation businesses need to stay competitive on the ever-changing Web. Niall prefers to write software in Python using the Django framework and YUI JavaScript libraries on Google App Engine cloud computing platform and contributes code and expertise to each. He is actively involved in web performance, search engine content discovery best practices, and online publishing including contributions to the HTML5 specification in web storage and video, OpenSearch, OpenSocial REST APIs, Firefox, YSlow, WordPress, and other open-source software and specifications.

Niall’s past work experience includes building a RSS infohub platform for Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform division and managing syndication, community, and developer APIs for blog search engine Technorati. Niall has published websites since 1993, when the Web was still a command line, including his first commercial website in 1995. In the past two decades his work has scurried down a crater on Mars, helped geeks find the cheapest Palm Pilot, indexed millions of bloggers minutes after publication, attempted to predict the financial future, and rode the edge of the Web technology for business gain.

Niall is an nationally-recognized soccer coach with a past that includes international, professional, and college programs. He has provided coaching support for the United States Soccer Federation, San Jose Clash and Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer, and UCLA. He has managed talented teams of up to 25 players, recruited top talent into the organization, confronted international press incidents, and developed top-notch defenders.

Niall is a published photographer, an amateur foodie, and a developer bleeding on the Web’s cutting edge so you don’t have to.