I have officially launched Commuter, a podcast playlist manager for iTunes. Commuter finds all of your podcast subscriptions and builds a continuous playlist of episodes. Listen to the playlist on your way to work. Dock your iPod when you get home.

I started this project almost a year ago. Along the way, I have learned WPF, enhanced Update Controls, and built Correspondence to support this application. Here are some of the stories from the journey.

• Modeling an iTunes application
• The Commuter View Model
• How to draw a car in Expression Blend
• A View Model based approach to star ratings
• Structure of a WPF view
• Multi-threaded view model using Update Controls

There is still much to say about what I’ve learned from working on this application. Be expecting posts about inertial navigation, 3D modeling in WPF, and synchronization.

Just found this extension method in my team’s code:

public static int ConvertNull(this int? value, int defaultValue)
{
    if (value == null)
        return defaultValue;
    return ((int)value);
}

Um, what’s wrong with the null coalescing operator?