"Scott is a fool"

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:35:56 GMT

When I wrote about my experience at the LIFT08 conference in Geneva I used a plugin developed by Scøtt Lovegrove to add the picture to the post. More specifically a plugin that enables easy embedding of a picture from your own Spaces photo album. When Scøtt got in touch we me shortly after that on Messenger I thought it would be a nice idea to interview Scøtt and tell you a a little bit more about his interest in Windows Live. Oh and as for the title of this post, Scøtt's nickname is scottisafool, but I'll let him tell you where that is coming from.

Hello Scott, tell us a bit more about yourself? Who is Scott Lovegrove? And how do I get to write the that O in your name as it's supposed to be? ;)

Well, I'm a Software Test Engineer for a UK Software firm, and have been for just over a year now. I've always been into computers, and did a short lived stint at University doing Software Engineering, but during that time I lost interest in software development, although over the last couple of years, that has come screaming back and I'm now loving firing up Visual Studio and sticking my head in some code. I'm also a keen tester (which shows by what job I'm in), and have been testing Microsoft products since Office 2003, although with Microsoft products recently I have spent less time testing them, and more time developing *for* them, using the APIs that are currently available. Over the last 18 months I have also been a regular poster on LiveSide (www.liveside.net) which is a community site dedicated to Windows Live and Microsoft's Online Services. My main area on LiveSide is developing against Windows Live, and any news that comes out relating to the Windows Live Platform.

As for the ø, it's alt+0248 on the number pad ;)

First things first, we've taken this title for a reason as you know. You're nickname is scottisafool, where does that come from?

When I first wanted to create my email address, I wanted something that people would remember, something they wouldn't have to write down to remember, so that combined with my own random sense of humour gave me scottisafool, and you know what, no-one ever had to write it down ;)

So Scott, you're a Windows Live Platform MVP. I can imagine not everybody is familiar with that term, can you tell us what that means?

Sure, Windows Live Platform is the renamed competency that used to be Windows Live Developer. The MVPs in this category are those who have helped people out when it comes to developing using Windows Live services, whether it's Search, Contacts, Virtual Earth, or any of the many other services that can be developed against; I myself am very prominent when it comes to writing Windows Live Writer plugins.

MVP stands for Microsoft Valuable Professional. How do you get to become an MVP?

To become an MVP you have to have been helping out within the technical community. What do I mean by this? Helping out in forums, newsgroups, writing articles, help guides, giving talks/presentations, organizing user groups. Things like that. Now doing those doesn't guarantee you an MVP status, and Sean O'Driscoll who headed up the MVP program until recently once said you can't work towards being an MVP, it's just something you are in terms of mentality. But you won't get anyway if you're not helping out in the community in some way :)

So far you have developed quite a few things on the Windows Live Platform already. I count 15 Windows Live Writer plugins and a Windows Live Toolbar button. How do you get to develop these? Where are the ideas coming from?

The ideas for some of my plugins come from the most random of places at times. Sometimes I will see a new technology that I want to learn, and so I have found the easiest way for me to learn it is to build a plugin around them, an example of that is the Feed Reader plugin, where I wanted to learn about using XML in C#. Some plugins come as requests (like the IMMe Plugin that Angus Logan requested), and some come from me reading someone's blog and thinking, "they do <something> quite often," and then I'll think if that could be made into a plugin.

The toolbar button actually came from me just wanting to have a look at what you have to do to create your own button so that I could write a blog post about it for LiveSide, and at the time, like most people, I was using Facebook a lot, so decided that would be the best way to combine the two things.

What's your most popular plugin so far?

Without a doubt it's the video plugin, which currently has had over 11,000 downloads off Live Gallery alone, let alone the downloads of it I had before I put them on Gallery. What I'm proud of with my video plugin, is not only that it was the first video plugin to really use some of the Live Writer APIs, but since beta 3 of Live Writer, the program actually comes with its own Video plugin yet the downloads of my own plugin are still very much in the ascendancy. The plugin that has been more popular than I thought it would is my Google Translate plugin, which seems to get quite a few downloads every month.

Since you're an MVP and you have this experience with the platform, does that mean you get to feedback to the development teams in Redmond as well?

I don't give my feedback directly to the developer teams in Redmond (well, I do with Live Writer, but then anyone who posts a suggestion on the Live Writer Forum will do, as Joe Cheng is one of the developers who frequents that forum). Most of the feedback I give back to the Platform guys goes through Angus Logan and he usually does an excellent job of passing across any suggestions or problems I encounter with any of the Platform services.

The annual MVP summit in Redmond is soon, will you be going? Have you been there already in the past? What is exciting about the summit?

Aye, I will most certainly be there. I have only been to the one summit thus far, which was last year, my first year of being an MVP. Back then I was a Windows Live Messenger MVP, so will be interesting this year seeing some of the more developer orientated things. The most exciting part of the summit is being able to meet up with some of the people you speak to on a near daily basis on email/IM and actually speak face to face. Of course, the trip to the company store isn't a bad thing either ;)

Do you have any projects with the Windows Live Platform that you're working on now? That you can share with us?

I am one of the developers working on a project called LiveNet, which I'm writing with Luke Smith, which is basically a .NET wrapper for Windows Live APIs. Currently LiveNet supports Windows Live Spaces Photos API and Silverlight Streaming API, but we will be adding more along the way, currently we're working on the Live Contacts API.

I have also recently finished writing an article for Code Magazine about developing plugins for Live Writer which will be published in a special Windows Live edition of the magazine that is being done for Mix08.

Well thanks a lot Scøtt, great to talk to you! I'm hoping to see a lot more of your development on Windows Live and in the meantime enjoy the summit in Redmond. You can all find Scøtt's blog here on Spaces, or check out one of his plugins in the Windows Live Gallery. More information on the Windows Live APIs can be found at http://dev.live.com/

As a final question, we asked Scøtt to pass on this interview to someone else and he mentioned 'dwergs' from (http://www.mess.be) and Stephan Welcher (http://www.live-writer.de/) - both also MVPs - so expect to hear something from these 2 soon ;)

- Kris Hoet (Marketing Manager)

Live in Europe: Interview

"Scott is a fool"