Is this thing on? Smile

I am going to pick up blogging again. It’s been a while! First off, I want to give an update on what I’ve been up to for the last few years since my last post. I was the development lead on SkyDrive from its initial release up through our Wave 4 release about 4 years ago. It was a lot of fun helping SkyDrive grow from a small beta (Windows Live Folders) up to a major service that tightly integrates with several other properties in Microsoft including Office and Windows Phone 7.

As of a year ago, I’ve moved over to be the development manager in the Engineering Platform team in Windows Live. My team is in charge of the infrastructure that runs Windows Live. This includes:

  • Our build system including our automated test and builds to keep the team running efficiently.
  • Our system for packaging and deploying client builds, including Windows Live Essentials and the new Windows 8 applications.
  • The system we use to manage our services (Hotmail, Messenger, SkyDrive, etc) including deployment, monitoring and repair.
  • Our analytics system that is used to monitor service health and understand how users are using our clients and services.

There are lots of hard problems in these areas and I’ve been learning a lot over the last year.

I’ve also been doing some Windows Phone development in my free time and recently published my first application (WiFi Scale Tracker). I’m planning to do some blog posts both about Windows Phone development and what we are doing in Windows Live.