Jose Miguel Hernandez
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Meca Communications

Software Engineer · 2005–2006 · San Luis Obispo

Software Engineer prototyping instant messaging, social networking, and music applications, and rebuilding mecamessenger.com as a white-label social network frontend.

This was 2005-2006, my first professional engineering role after UC Santa Cruz. I shipped three production systems from that work — the start of a pattern (protocol integration, device integration, SaaS architecture) I'd keep building on for the next two decades.

  • Java/JSP
  • ASP.NET
  • AJAX
  • SQL Server

Overview

Early full-stack work across messaging and white-label social networking.

  • White-label platform

    Built branded social-networking surfaces with auth, admin tooling, and customer isolation.

  • Federated presence

    Integrated AIM, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, ICQ, and MySpace presence into one interface.

  • SaaS fundamentals

    Worked through multi-tenant data, customer boundaries, deployment upgrades, and supportability.

Key projects

Selected work from the Meca years.

  1. Meca Messenger white-label messaging interface

    White-label social messaging platform

    SaaS platform

    Built a multi-tenant messaging platform that partners could deploy under their own brands. Implemented user authentication, account settings, message flows, archive/search, and configuration-driven UI customization with admin tools for partner operations.

  2. Branded Meca Messenger skin showing partner-customized instant messaging surface

    Federated IM presence system

    Protocol integration

    Engineered a unified presence layer across AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, XMPP/Jabber, ICQ, and MySpace. The system normalized different authentication models, status formats, polling behavior, and failure modes into one buddy-list experience.

  3. Multi-tenant data and operations model

    Full-stack foundation

    Built across ASP.NET, C#, IIS, SQL Server, and JavaScript to implement production SaaS fundamentals: tenant-scoped data access, account recovery flows, deployment upgrades, and partner configuration. Debugged customer-specific behavior in the shared platform.

About Meca Communications

Meca Communications was an early social networking and instant messaging startup building white-label communication infrastructure before the dominant Web 2.0 social platforms fully settled the category.

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