Fellow Team System MVP Mike Azocar has announced an awesome new contest to stir up the Team System tools ecoystem.  There are some really cool prizes so far including a free license for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 w/ MSDN Premium subscription and there are more donated prizes coming...  Get the full details at his blog post:  Want to be famous- Enter the Coolest Team System Gadget Contest!

Have you created a useful gadget for Team System? Do you have one in mind? I am looking for the coolest community built tool for VSTS. It can be something for TFS, for Visual Studio, or something that is stand alone. The winner will receive a one year subscription to MSDN with Team Suite!

To enter, submit a screen cast (up to 3 minutes long) which tells everyone why your gadget is the coolest and the source code. All submissions will be released to the public as free source to use and enjoy (with you getting all the credit of course). Videos will also be made available to the public to help make you famous! This should be something new (i.e. not on Codeplex or previously released) and not something repackaged. Submissions accepted up until August 31st 2008. Winner will be announced September 15th 2008.

Judges will be Mike Azocar, Martin Woodward, and I so this is going to be a lot of fun!

Ed B.

There is a new book about VSX out from Wrox called “Professional Visual Studio Extensibility” and looks pretty promising if you are first starting out to learn add-ins and VSPackages.  It's actually the first one that I've seen get released so I hope it does well.  VSX is a topic that I have a keen interest in.

• A quick overview of Visual Studio Shell and Domain-Specific Languages Tools
• Techniques for creating, debugging, testing, and deploying your add-ins
• Ways to work with user interface elements, Windows Forms, and controls via code in your add-ins
• Steps for extending Visual Studio functionality using VSPackages
• Tips for writing and managing code snippets to make your coding process easier
• Using Visual Studio templates to save time when writing code for common projects
• How to use MSBuild to write custom builds for Visual Studio and .NET applications
• New techniques for recording, developing, debugging, deploying, and running macros

Ed B.