Jelle Druyts

Background

I started rewriting my pet project from scratch in .NET 2.0 last summer, and I'm proud to announce version 2.0 of E = m c² (or should I say E = m c^2.0) is now finally all polished and ready! I'm actually pretty happy with it (and using it all day every day), so to make it stand out a bit more, I've created a separate site for it at http://jelle.druyts.net/emc/. That's where you can find all the information and download this free tool.

By the way, E = m c² (apart from a silly little formula relating an object's mass to its energy content) stands for Extensible Message Checker 2.0, because it's a tool that can check for messages (in the broadest sense) and, well, it's extensible (fully driven by plugins that you can easily create yourself).

Introduction

E = m c² is a utility that can check various sources for messages, then filter and redistribute them.

A typical example is checking your mailbox and showing you a popup window if there are new messages, but it goes far beyond that since it's fully extensible using plugins. For example, you can check RSS files for new blog posts, monitor when a server comes online or goes offline, play a soundfile when new messages arrive, send a summary email, run a program, write to an RSS file, ...

Basically, you can make E = m c² do all you can think of! And it can do your laundry too (Pro version only)!

Features

Runtime

• Fully extensible using plugins.
• Settings are saved to an xml file so you can easily edit and copy it.
• Certain settings can be encrypted if needed by plugins (e.g. passwords).
• Runs in the background, it's basically just an icon in the system notification area.
• Easy to install, set up and remove (if you could live without it).

Plugins

• Check POP3 and IMAP email.
• Check Outlook Web Access (OWA) and Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) email.
• Check RSS 2.0 feeds.
• Monitor the file system, i.e. get notified when directories or files change.
• Monitor server status (by ping or by checking a url).
• Filter messages by content.
• Write new messages to a text file or an RSS 2.0 feed.
• Show a desktop alert, a message box or a rich message viewer when messages arrive.
• Run a program, change the desktop background, play a sound or send an email when messages arrive.
• ...And you can easily write your own!

Alright, enough already, where is it?

You can find all information, screenshots, downloads, and even tutorials on writing plugins at the dedicated website: http://jelle.druyts.net/emc/. Did I mention it's free?

Woohoo, I've just been awarded as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft!

Dear Jelle Druyts,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2007 Microsoft® MVP Award!

The Microsoft MVP Award is our way of saying thank you and to honor and support the significant contributions you make to communities worldwide. As a recipient of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award, you join an elite group of technical community leaders from around the world who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing your real world expertise with users and Microsoft. Microsoft salutes all MVPs for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success everyday. To learn more about the MVP Program, visit: www.microsoft.com/mvp.

Your extraordinary efforts in Visual Developer - Visual C# technical communities during the past year are greatly appreciated.

On behalf of everyone at Microsoft, thank you for your ongoing contributions to Visual Developer - Visual C# technical communities.

Sincerely,

Candice Pedersen, MVP Program Manager

On a related note (Tom already mentioned it briefly), I was also "awarded" with a full time employee contract by Microsoft So this effectively means I've changed jobs to the Microsoft Services division at Microsoft BeLux (no, not Microsoft Corp like the other MVP's of this country seem to do all the time ) as of this week. I've had a great time at the Compuware Professional Services division the last years, and I really want to wish the team all the best! Now, I'm taking up the challenge of representing Microsoft for our customers as a development consultant, and making sure their development efforts are running as smoothly as possible!

Right after my session at the Developer & IT Pro days last week, I was interviewed by the Wygwam team - which was pretty cool  It also serves as a pretty good 5-minute introduction to Guidance Automation Toolkit, so check it out!

Video: DevITProDays - Jelle

I had a great time at the Belgian Developer & IT Pro Days in Ghent last week, many thanks to the organizing team (great job Tom, David, Arlindo, Ritchie, Wim and everybody else)!

If you came to my sessions last year, you might remember that I ended a little early (25 minutes!) on my Framework Design talk and a little late (10 minutes!) on the Application Development talk with Steven Wilssens, so I was pretty happy that I finished right on the minute this year

You can download the slides here: A Deep Dive Into The Guidance Automation Toolkit (3 MB). And don't forget about the Guidance Automation Series that goes into much more detail.

Now for a quick shout out to my fellow community members: congratulations Jan on the birth of your first child Fran! From the pictures, it looks like she's already well into the Microsoft spirit And congratulations Bart on joining Microsoft Corp on the WPF team! I'm sure you'll fit right in with the rest of the brainiacs on campus! Say hi to Steven from me