Hanselman hits Calgary

Yesterday the Alberta.NET User Group hosted a session with the glucose pilot himself, Scott Hanselman. Scott presented an overview of DasBlog, the blogging software he currently is the keeper of, and some ideas around how to leverage concepts that DasBlog uses (like having people use RSS in say a Bug Tracking system rather than filling up your inbox with emails). This is a key concept in that it’s not that RSS is just a tool for blogs (yeah, they use them) but it’s a mechanism that you can employ in your own business apps.

One example he gave was a crappy COM application (that will remain nameless) that he wrapped a .NET assembly around and then RSS enabled it with code from DasBlog. The result? An RSS feed that you could consume in any aggregator from a legacy tool that was written long before RSS was a wet dream. Scott is the chief architect at a company called Corillian and one of the examples he showed was using the RSS component from DasBlog in his finance software for retrieving bank balances and account information. RSS isn’t just for blogs.

I highly suggest you to check out DasBlog if you haven’t already. The source is available and contains a lot of great examples and patterns of good design and implementation (and some not so good, but hey, it’s an evolutionary process).