About the Author

Mary Kirtland is the program manager of the Microsoft COM team. Since joining the COM team in January 1997, she has harassed the developers and testers of technologies including Structured Storage, DCOM for Microsoft Windows 95, and COM Internet Services. In addition, she has written white papers and magazine articles about the COM team's technologies and has delivered presentations at developer conferences around the world. Now that she has finished this book, she is hard at work on Inside COM+, also for Microsoft Press.

Before joining the COM team, Mary spent three years in Microsoft Developer Support, helping customers resolve problems with MFC, COM, and other technologies. In case you're starting to wonder whether Mary has ever done any real development work, rest assured that in the eight years between giving up on a Ph.D. in chemistry and joining Microsoft, Mary developed numerous data acquisition and analysis applications for MS-DOS, Windows, and embedded systems.

When she's not thinking about COM, Mary tries to keep her house from becoming a public eyesore or health hazard, reads every historical mystery she can get her hands on, listens to classic jazz, and collects animation art. You can reach Mary at [e-mail].