I'm pleased to announce the addition of Steven Harding to our Community Dev Expert team joining Niall and Andrew.

Steven is the author of Yougle, MoreWithMyMusic and EMUCenter for Windows Media Center in Windows Vista and several other experiences built for prior versions of Windows Media Center. He also has created a poker game timer which tells you the current blinds, the current ante and how long until they next go up -- all with text-to-speech announcements of blind increases and warnings when they are getting near.

In addition, he is a contributor to the The Digital Lifestyle Developer Blog (part of the excellent group of resources made available by Ian Dixon over at http://thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/).

Steven has contributed over 400 posts to our developer forums over at http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com making him one of the most prolific and helpful individuals in the community. His passion for Windows Media Center and the platform shine through in his postings and advocacy on behalf of other developers.

You can identify Steven in the forums by his rather esoteric alias of IgnoranceIsBliss in the forums (perhaps he'll comment here on how he decided on that moniker) as well as a new banner in his postings that looks like this:

Congratulations, Steven -- certainly well deserved.

I'm pleased to announce our first Windows Media Center Community Development Experts over at http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com, Niall Ginsbourg (mobilewares) and Andrew Cherry (andyc). These guys have been really active in our forums and have given great advice and help to others in the community. Here is more about them...

Niall is a freelance software developer/solution architect (with over 15 years experience) from Melbourne, Australia - and runs mobilewares.net - a small company with a passion for producing personal video recording (PVR), interactive television (ITV) and mobile phone related applications and services. Prior to starting mobilewares, Niall worked for several high profile Australian companies (and Microsoft Partners) in the enterprise and e-commerce space. Niall's current focus has been developing applications for Windows Vista using the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Media Center Presentation Layer Application (managed code + Media Center Markup Language aka 'MCML').

Andrew lives in the UK and has over 20 years experience in corporate and commercial IT. He has been using and working with Media Center since 2004, and has been involved with both hardware and software development for the platform.  He has written commercial and custom software for the platform, initially for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and most recently for Windows Media Center in Windows Vista.

Look for their new role icons to show up in the forums -- they look like this...

Congrats to Andrew and Niall...!!!