Larry Duff of the Project team wrote a very nice article describing how to test column values when making calls to the Project Server PSI: http://blogs.msdn.com/lduff/archive/2006/12/06/testing-columns-in-a-dataset.aspx
DavidK remarked in a comment that the PSI offers methods to handle the case where a column in the result set does not have a value. If you use these, you don't need to do a try-catch:
private string GetWSSSite(Guid projectGuid) { ProjectWS.ProjectDataSet pds = ProjWebSvc.ReadProject(projectGuid,ProjectWS.DataStoreEnum.PublishedStore); return (pds == null) || (pds.Project.Rows.Count == 0) || pds.Project[0].IsWPROJ_STS_SUBWEB_NAMENull() ? String.Empty : pds.Project[0].WPROJ_STS_SUBWEB_NAME;}
Before the holidays, everyone on our team visited with various small business owners in the Redmond area in an effort to learn more about how their businesses work, and how Microsoft products help (or hinder!) them. This was the first time I was directly involved in one of these visits. Chris and I met with Ivan Perez at Eastside Executive Transportation. One thing that struck me was how Ivan structured his business in order to focus on his strengths - interacting with customers, handling logistics, delivering personalized service. Technology is usually more helpful you are intentional about how to apply it, and Ivan definitely knows what he wants out of his tools. Ivan had a Windows Mobile device that he seemed to be able to run most of his business off of. While we were talking with Ivan I got a chance to see this happen, and it was fun to watch.
One thing that Ivan mentioned to us was that "simplicity comes from user customization." Customization allows people to use technology to solve problems in ways that make the most sense to them. As Chris put it, "think of what it means if customization is a core tenet of the product instead of just a partially implemented feature." One quick example: as much as many project managers have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft Project, the VBA programming ability on the client and the PDS (now PSI) framework on the server are two big reasons why Project is so widely used. However, customizability is so deeply woven into the fabric of Excel that I think Project users sometimes turn to Excel even when Project could have done the job.
I really like Hugh McLeod's blog. I can't decide whether I like this post or the cartoon above it more. But anyway, regarding #20:
Blogging will never be a mainstream activity so long as being able to write [A] well, [B] often and [C] about stuff THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT remain the main barriers to entry.
Thankfully, these barriers go away if you don't care too much if anyone is actually reading! (Or if you're targeting a very specific audience, like friends and family.)
So to answer the question in the title, as far as blogging goes the answer for me is "go home".
AdCenter labs hosted its 3rd annual DemoFest yesterday on campus. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it but here's the press release that describes what it was about. If you're looking for hard info on what was actually presented, this site seems to be a little more helpful. Also the adCenter labs site has some cool stuff on it.
The DemoFest itself got a surprising amount of coverage - in the last two days I have noticed two articles in the PI alone:
The latter article provides a bit of a reality check (or perhaps a challenge):
Microsoft has some serious catching up to do. The company got a late start in online search and advertising, and it attracts significantly less business than its main rivals do. For example, Google reported more than $1.5 billion in ad revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30.
By comparison, Microsoft's ad revenue was $374 million for the same period.