StackPanel

Finally the unbelievable has happened. Yahoo and MSN Live instant messengers can talk to each other now. Yesterday when I saw a link on top of my messenger window that lead me to this page. The bad thing is you’ve to manually add contacts from one messenger to your messenger client of the other. There is no inbuilt contact list download built into neither of them. But it is still worth it. Two competitors have joined hands. Looks like they will never get together with Google.

I wish Google talk had the ability to talk to both Yahoo and MSN. Hopefully soon I expect that to happen.

Beginning this year I got a brilliant opportunity to work on a product that is based upon Visual Studio extensibility using the VSIP SDK. Having worked earlier in a mightier product that involved a runtime environment this made me more than happy to dive into it. This time it was building something from scratch. Experience that is so valuable to build it that way. It is a simple management system for table based data, consisting of rows and columns, with multiple categories of data, vast array of data.
Salient features of the product:

1. XML file based data.
2. Custom editor (web based XSLT applied to XML file) to manage XML.
3. Custom file extensions for XML files (like .abcx) to differentiate categories of data.
4. Visual Studio Integrated (using VSIP SDK)
5. Project system integrated with VSS within Visual studio to maintain versions.

Few important reasons why we had to extend Visual Studio (using VSIP) to accomplish this:

1. Maintain a history of changes (add/delete/modify) performed on a XML file using VSS integrated right within Visual Studio.
2. Automatic live C# code generation and ability to build this .Net assembly within Visual Studio. This assembly is later used in other systems for calculations.
3. Ability to visually see the representation of data in XML file format that the user is acting upon. i.e.Design and XML view in editor.
4. Common integrated development environment (VS.Net) for users such that they don’t have to learn any tool specifically. Familiarity with property grid, project system, solutions etc.
5. Users are developers who act upon C# code, XML file etc
6. Ability to do releases of data files, labelling using VSS, ability to compare versions using VSS, such capabilities are already built into vss integrated visual studio which can be utilised.
7. Movement of data from different servers in and out of the system is much easier for XML file based system and are less issue-prone than SQL server based data. And managing file based data using a custom editor is very familiar capability in Visual Studio.
8. Leveraging on the vast capabilities built into Visual studio, a common IDE than a separate winforms or web-based system is easier and faster, especially for file based system.

Couple of days ago, I came across Rajesh Setty’s blog - life beyond code. Rajesh is an enterpreneur, author, teacher and academic. He is the author of the ebook on Personal branding. I was highly impressed by what I read in the ebook, that I ordered a copy of his book - “Beyond Code”. This book is supposed to talk about how to distinguish yourself in today’s work environment for IT consultants and alikes. I am sure the book will be interesting read as well as it might be very helpful in my career. I don’t read too many self-improvement books but this one looks very promising to me.

Currently there is an offer as well if you buy this book from 800-CEO-Read