Silverlight 5 3D + SLARToolkit Augmented Reality = Win!

Posted by jasper22 at 16:34 | Thursday, April 14, 2011

It's almost been a year since I wrote a sample for my open source Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit - SLARToolkit. The release of the new Silverlight 5 hardware accelerated 3D API was a nice occasion to finally make a new one.

In my last blog post I wrote a summary of all the Silverlight 5 beta features and some notes about the new low-level, XNA 3D API.

This post provides the new demo for SLARToolkit which leverages this fast GPU-based rendering to draw some nice effects with 60 frames per second. You can try the live sample if you have the Silverlight 5 beta installed or watch a video instead.

The SLARToolkit project description from the CodePlex site:

SLARToolkit is a flexible Augmented Reality library for Silverlight with the aim to make real time Augmented Reality applications with Silverlight as easy and fast as possible. It can be used with Silverlight's Webcam API or with any other CaptureSource or a WriteableBitmap. SLARTookit is based on the established NyARToolkit and ARToolkit.

Live

A webcam and at least the Silverlight 5 beta runtime must be installed to run the sample. It's available here. Alternatively there is also a video of the new sample embedded below.

If you want to try it yourself you need do download the SLAR and / or L marker, print them and hold them in front of the camera. The marker(s) should be printed non-scaled at the original size (80 x 80 mm) and centered for a small white border. As an alternative it's also possible to open a marker file on a mobile device and to use the device's screen as marker. Also make sure the camera is set up properly and the scene is illuminated well without hard shadows. See the SLARToolkit Markers documentation for more details.

Read more: Codeplex

Posted via email from Jasper-net

DuckDuckGo

Posted by jasper22 at 16:23 |

DuckDuckGo is a search engine.

Use it for:

• More instant answers

Zero-click info above the links (red box).

• Less spam and clutter

We ban those useless sites with just ads.

• Lots of goodies

Special searches, syntax & settings.

• Real privacy

We don't track you!

Please give us feedback. We listen!

Migrate a Web Site from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7

Posted by jasper22 at 16:20 |

This quick guide will help you migrate a Web site from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7 by using the Web Deployment Tool.

What kinds of migrations can I accomplish with the Web Deployment Tool?

Migrate 1 or 1,000 Web sites from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7 including all the configuration settings, content and certificates

Migrate a single application

Migrate an entire server (all Web sites, application pools, etc.) from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7

Migrate a custom manifest comprised of sites, application pools, assemblies, COM objects, registry keys, content and more from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7

Prerequisites

This guide requires the following prerequisites:

.NET Framework 2.0 SP1 or greater

Web Deployment Tool 1.1

Note: If you have not already installed the Web Deployment Tool, see Installing Web Deploy.

Part 1 - View your site's dependencies

1. Get the dependencies of the Web site by running the following command:

msdeploy -verb:getDependencies -source:metakey=lm/w3svc/1

2. Review the output of the dependencies and look for any script maps or installed components in use by the site. For example, if Windows Authentication is in use by the Web site, you will see <dependency name="WindowsAuthentication" />.

3. If your site is inheriting any script maps, these will not be listed in the dependencies and you should also review the script maps for your site manually.

4. Compile a list of the components needed on the destination.

For detailed steps on analyzing the output of getDependencies, see Viewing Dependencies.

Part 2 - Configure the target

1. Review the list of dependencies and install them on the destination server.

For example, let’s assume you had the following in use for your Web site:

ASP.NET

Windows Authentication

Anonymous Authentication

Based on this analysis of your dependencies, you would install the corresponding components and modules.

Part 3 – Migrate your site to the target by using a package file

Silverlight 5: 3D Physics Demo

Posted by jasper22 at 16:20 |

Silverlight 5 introduces new support for hardware accelerated 3D which makes it possible to create truly unique experiences. Unfortunately, the 3D API provided is very low-level, and probably not easily picked up by the average developer.

In this blog post, I’ll show you how to leverage existing libraries and tools to (relatively) easily create a 3D Physics based game or simulation using the new 3D features of Silverlight 5.

[DOWNLOAD SOURCE] [VIEW DEMO] * REQUIRES SILVERLIGHT 5 BETA 1 *

To accomplish our 3d scene and physics, we’ll be using two open source libraries:

1. Balder 3D Engine: this engine was created by Einar Ingebrigtsen and allows Silverlight to load and display 3D models. Balder has been around for quite some time, but because of the lack of native 3D support in previous versions of Silverlight, performance was very limited. With the addition of native 3D support in Silverlight 5, much more is possible with Balder.

2. JigLibX Physics library: this 3D physics engine has had many incarnations. It started as a C++ physics library, and was later ported to C# and XNA. Since there is no official Silverlight version of JigLibX, I created a slightly modified version of JigLibX with thanks to the great start on this work item.

Creating the 3D Models

There are so many different 3D model formats out there, it can be quite overwhelming. 3D Studio (.3DS), Wavefront (.OBJ) and Lightwave (.MDD) are just a few. Balder requires a model be in an ASE format (ASCII Scene Exporter), which is a popular format for 3D game frameworks.

Many tools can convert to ASE format, including the free Blender modeling software. You can download Blender 2.5 Beta here, and there is a Python script for Blender which enables ASE exports here. Also, MilkShape exports to ASE and can import a bunch of different formats and is just $35 US.

Balder also supports texture mapping of ASE models, but just be sure the texture is in either JPG or PNG format (often, modeling software uses a BMP format which Balder cannot display). You also need to make sure the reference inside the ASE file is correct for the texture file. ASE files are just plain text, so you can open up the file in an editor and look for any BITMAP references like this:

*BITMAP "crate.jpg"

Majestic-12

Posted by jasper22 at 16:02 |

Majestic-12 is working towards creation of a World Wide Web search engine based on concepts of distributing workload in a similar fashion achieved by successful projects such as SETI@home and distributed.net. You can read more details on the project here. Below you can see recent news highlights, but for full details its best to check our forum.

Localize a Silverlight 4 Application

Posted by jasper22 at 12:43 |

In this article, I will demonstrate how to localize a Silverlight application. In simple words, localization is the customization of applications for a given culture or locale. If you have been doing ASP.NET development, you probably are already familiar with localizing applications. The process of localizing a Silverlight application is quite similar, i.e. using Resource files. You create a resource file for each culture or language your application plans to support and Silverlight will use the CurrentUICulture of the UI thread to decide which resource to use. Let us see the steps in detail.

Note: Whenever I talk to developers about localization, they often refer to localization as translation of text in different languages. Although that’s true, localization is much more than that. Depending on the culture, you can display icons, images, flow of text (right to left or vice-versa), audio and much more, for a specific culture or language that your application supports.

Step 1: Create a new Silverlight project and call it ‘SliverlightLocalize’. Drag and drop a textbox from the Toolbox to the Silverlight designer.

Step 2: Right click your Silverlight project > Add > New Item > Select ‘Resources File’ and rename it as localstring.resx. In the resource file, add a Name and Value as shown below

Also make sure the access modifier combo box says ‘Public’.

Step 3: Let us add support for the Spanish language in our application. Make a copy of this resource file by copying it from the project in the Solution Explorer and pasting it back ‘twice’ inside the project. Rename it to localstring.es.resx and localstring.es-ES.resx. What we have done is created an invariant resource file (es), as well as a culture-specific resource file(es-ES). This is a good practice often referred to as the fallback culture practice and you should adopt this for every language/culture you support.

Now type the Spanish translation for Hello World in both the files as shown below

Simplified Smartphone

Posted by jasper22 at 12:30 |

Best of Digital and Analog Reading

Posted by jasper22 at 11:51 |

Sony Ericsson announces Android Market channel

Posted by jasper22 at 10:17 |

Sony Ericsson has announced the launch of its very own Android Market channel in a post on its official product blog. The manufacturer is among the first to launch its own Market channel, which will offer exclusive first-party apps for Sony Ericsson phone owners, as well as a selection of "recommended" third-party offerings. Sony Ericsson expects the updated Market app, with the new channel, to begin rolling out to its handsets from today.

What this also means is that the "My Apps" link in the Market app on Sony Ericsson phones will soon be replaced with a link to the manufacturer's channel, though "My Apps" will still be available by pressing the menu button. Predictably, though, the comments area under this latest post is now full of irate Xperia owners complaining about the loss of the "My Apps" link.

Customizing the Action Bar

Posted by jasper22 at 09:54 |

Since the introduction of the Action Bar design pattern, many applications have adopted it as a way to provide easy access to common actions. In Android 3.0 (or Honeycomb to its friends) this pattern has been baked in as the default navigation paradigm and extended to take advantage of the extra real-estate available on tablets. By using the Action Bar in your Honeycomb-targeted apps, you'll give your users a familiar way to interact with your application. Also, your app will be better prepared to scale across the range of Android devices that will be arriving starting in the Honeycomb era.

Just because Action Bars are familiar, doesn’t mean that they have to be identical! The following code samples and accompanying project demonstrate how to style the Action Bar to match your application’s branding. I’ll demonstrate how to take Honeycomb’s Holo.Light theme and customise it to match this blog’s colour scheme.

…

</style>

Icon

This step is easy; I’ll use the wonderful Android Asset Studio to create an icon in my chosen colour scheme. For extra credit, I’ll use this image as a starting point to create a more branded logo.

Navigation

Next up, the navigation section of the Action Bar operates in three different modes; I’ll tackle each of these in turn.

Standard

The Action Bar’s standard navigation mode simply displays the title of the activity. This doesn’t require any styling... next!

List

To the left, a standard list drop-down; to the right, the effect we want to achieve.

BEST FREE GPS APPS FOR ANDROID

Posted by jasper22 at 09:51 |

The invention of the global positioning system, or GPS, has been a great advantage to those who are unable to find themselves out of a paper bag. With the use of a cell phone, you can find your way no matter what.

Here, we'll look at some of the best free GPS applications for Android devices.

Global Positioning Systems

Global positioning systems have always been a way in which to find a way to particular place or even person. The popularity of it may stem from online mapping systems, such as MapQuest and Google Maps. In essence, GPS allows for someone to get to point A to point B, even knowing how long it will take in order to get there.

Many people have such devices in their cars in order to get point by point directions; even more people have this ability to use on their smartphones and cell phones. Android users can also utilize these methods, with a host of different apps that can be downloaded in to not only find places and people, but find themselves when truly lost.

Here, we'll take a look at some of the best free GPS applications for Android devices.

1. Google Maps

2. Glympse

3. Where?

4. VZ Navigator

New Cool 3D Launcher – Regina 3D for Android

Posted by jasper22 at 09:50 |

I am sure that you have seen the launch of the ever popular SPB Shell 5 for Android platforms. This old timer has finally made its way from the world of Windows Mobile all the way to the little green guy’s door step. However, we are all very much used to seeing paid apps in Android that are in the US$1 to US$3 range. SPB seems to have been left in time because they are charging roughly the same as they used to charge for the SPB MS Windows Mobile versions (close to US$20 in case you were wondering). You want the nice 3D effects, the smooth scrolling, and all the different goodies that this UI has to offer, don’t you? Well, XDA member syrenz has pointed us to a very nice alternative that will give you all the 3D goodness that you (and your device) can handle. Regina 3D is a new UI for Android devices that offer widgets, 3D transitions, task manager, new drawer options, and much more. An interesting option is that you can give each one of your screens a different background, which is a nice alternative in case you are tired of the scrolling background that Android normally offers. Best of all? The UI is free!

Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 RTM Redistributable MFC Security Update

Posted by jasper22 at 09:30 |

Overview

A security issue has been identified leading to MFC application vulnerability in DLL planting due to MFC not specifying the full path to system/localization DLLs. You can protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart.

DBX vs. Visual Studio and WinDbg: Part 2C, Memory Access Breakpoints, Revisited

Posted by jasper22 at 09:29 |

Today’s post revisits the concept of memory access breakpoints. Before I started this series, I wrote a post showing a proof of concept technique for setting a memory breakpoint on a wide range of memory using SDbgExt’s !vprotect command, PAGE_GUARD pages, and WinDbg. However, there’s more to be said about memory access breakpoints than meets the eye.

As I have mentioned in the previous post, hardware breakpoints on Intel x86/x64 CPUs can be configured to fire on reads or writes to a specific memory location, whose size cannot exceed the size of the system word*. DBX, on the other hand, allows access breakpoints on memory ranges of arbitrary size. Furthermore, DBX allows you to configure the breakpoint to fire before or after the memory access has taken place, as opposed to hardware breakpoints that are always fired after the event has occurred.

Below is an example of using DBX’s memory access breakpoints:

(dbx) list

28 getchar();

29 ms2.next = &ms2;

30 getchar();

31 ms.y = 14;

32 ms1.y = 13;

33 getchar();

(dbx) stop access wb &ms

(3) stop access wb &ms, 12

(dbx) cont

watchpoint wb &ms (0x8068f04[12]) at line 31 in file "stl.cc"

31 ms.y = 14;

(dbx) print ms.y

ms.y = 0

...

(dbx) list

26 getchar();

27 a.arr[678] = 'a';

28 getchar();

(dbx) stop access w &a

(3) stop access wa &a, 1000

(dbx) cont

watchpoint wa &a (0x8047846[1000]) at line 27 in file "stl.cc"

27 a.arr[678] = 'a';

(dbx) print a.arr[678]

a.arr[678] = 'a'

There are two things worth noting here: first, there is no need to specify the size of anything—DBX deduces size information from the variable itself; second, the memory breakpoint indeed works for a range that is larger than what hardware breakpoints allow.

Posted via email from Jasper-net

CLR Execution Process

Posted by jasper22 at 09:28 |

Choosing the Source Code language compiler.

At this stage we can choose the source code language for .NET. The primary languages available are C#, VB.NET and Python.

Compiling the source code to MSIL assemblies using the language compiler.

Compiling the source code using the language compiler generates the corresponding assembly containing the MSIL. The assembly can be either a .exe or a .dll depending on the entry point defined in the Application.

Executing the code by CLR

The operating system loader checks the COFF header for a managed module. When a bit in the COFF header is set on then that denotes a managed module. If the loader detects a managed module it loads mscoree.dll which denotes the runtime execution engine; mscoree.dll loads and executes the .Net assemblies.

At execution time the CLR converts the MSIL to native code using the JIT compiler at runtime. There is one more way of compiling the MSIL to native code as discussed below.

Application Performance Monitoring in production – A Step-by-Step Guide – Part 1

Posted by jasper22 at 09:26 |

Setting up Application Performance Monitoring is a big task, but like everything else it can be broken down into simple steps. You have to know what you want to achieve and subsequently where to start. So let’s start at the beginning and take a top-down approach

Know what you want

The first thing to do is to be clear of what we want when monitoring the application. Let’s face it: we “do not want to” ensure CPU utilization to be below 90 percent or a network latency of under one millisecond. We are also not really interested in garbage collection activity or whether the database connection pool is utilized. We need to monitor all of these things in order to reach our main goal. And the main goal for this article series is to ensure the health and stability of our application and business services. To ensure that we need to leverage all of the mentioned metrics.

What does health and stability of the application mean though? A healthy and stable application performs its function without errors and delivers accurate results within a predefined satisfactory time frame. In technical terms this means low response time and/or high throughput and low to not existing error rate. If we monitor and ensure this than the health and stability of the application is likewise guaranteed.

Define your KPIs

At first we need to define what satisfactory performance means. In case of an end-user facing application things like first impression and page load time are good KPIs. The good thing is that satisfactory is relatively simple as the user will tolerate up to 3-4 seconds but will get frustrated after that. Other interactions, like a credit card payment or a search have very different thresholds though and you need to define them. In addition to response time you also need to define how many concurrent users you want, or need, to be able to serve without impacting the overall response time. These two KPIs, response time and concurrent users, will get you very far if you apply them on a granular enough level.

If we are talking about a transaction oriented application your main KPI will be throughput. The desired throughput will depend on the transaction type. Most likely you will have a time window in which you have to process a certain known number of transactions, which dictates what satisfactory performance means to you.

Resource and Hardware usage can be considered secondary KPIs. As long as the primary KPI is not met, we will not look too closely at the secondary one. On the other hand, as soon as the primary is met optimizations must always be towards improving this secondary KPI.

If we take a strict top-down approach and measure end-to-end we will not need more detailed KPIs for response time or throughput. We of course need to measure more detailed than that in order to ensure performance.

RawCap

Posted by jasper22 at 09:24 |

RawCap is a free command line network sniffer for Windows that uses raw sockets.

Properties of RawCap:

Can sniff any interface that has got an IP address, including 127.0.0.1 (localhost/loopback)

RawCap.exe is just 17 kB

No external libraries or DLL's needed other than .NET Framework 2.0

No installation required, just download RawCap.exe and sniff

Can sniff most interface types, including WiFi and PPP interfaces

Minimal memory and CPU load

Reliable and simple to use

Usage

You will need to have administrator privileges to run RawCap.

F:\Tools>RawCap.exe --help

NETRESEC RawCap version 0.1.2.0

http://www.netresec.com

Usage: RawCap.exe <interface_nr> <target_pcap_file>

0. IP : 192.168.0.17

NIC Name : Local Area Connection

NIC Type : Ethernet

1. IP : 192.168.0.47

NIC Name : Wireless Network Connection

NIC Type : Wireless80211

2. IP : 90.130.211.54

NIC Name : 3G UMTS Internet

NIC Type : Ppp

3. IP : 192.168.111.1

NIC Name : VMware Network Adapter VMnet1

NIC Type : Ethernet

4. IP : 192.168.222.1

NIC Name : VMware Network Adapter VMnet2

NIC Type : Ethernet

5. IP : 127.0.0.1

NIC Name : Loopback Pseudo-Interface

NIC Type : Loopback

Example: RawCap.exe 0 dumpfile.pcap

Lock-free algorithms: Update if you can I'm feeling down

Posted by jasper22 at 09:23 |

A customer was looking for advice on this synchronization problem:

We have a small amount of data that we need to share among multiple processes. One way to protect the data is to use a spin lock. However, that has potential for deadlock if the process which holds the spinlock doesn't get a chance to release it. For example, it might be suspended in the debugger, or somebody might decide to use TerminateProcess to nuke it.

Any suggestions on how we can share this data without exposure to these types of horrible failure modes? I'm thinking of something like a reader takes the lock, fetches the values, and then checks at status at the end of tell if the data is valid. Meanwhile, a writer tries to take the lock with a timeout, and if the timeout fires, then the writer just goes ahead anyway and updates the values, and somehow sets the status on the reader so it knows that the value is no good and it should try again. Basically, I don't want either the reader or writer to get stuck indefinitely if a developer, say, just happens to break into the debugger at the worst possible time.

This can be solved with a publishing pattern. When you want to update the values, you indicate that new values are ready by publishing their new location.

Let's say that the data that needs to be shared is a collection of four integers.

struct SHAREDDATA {

int a, b, c, d;

};

Assume that there is a practical limit on how often the value can change; this is usually a safe assumption because you'll have some sort of external rate limiter, like "This value changes in response to a user action." (Even if there is no such limit, most solutions will simply posit one. For example, the SLIST functions simply assume that a processor won't get locked out more than 65535 times in a row.) In our case, let's say that the value will not change more than 64 times in rapid succession.

#define SHAREDDATA_MAXCONCURRENT 64

SHAREDDATA g_rgsd[SHAREDDATA_MAXCONCURRENT];

UINT g_isd; // current valid value

void GetSharedData(__out SHAREDDATA *psd)

{

*psd = g_rgsd[g_isd];

}

Reading the data simply retrieves the most recently published value. The hard part is publishing the value.

25 things you can do with VLC Media player!

Posted by jasper22 at 09:19 |

VLC is beyond doubts the most popular open source, cross-platform media player and multi-media framework written by VideoLAN projects. VLC player is small in size,

just about 17 Mb and immensely powerful! In this post we will explore the player and list 20+ things you can do with VLC player.

1- Run/Install VLC from flash drives

VLC can be installed or run directly from a flash or other external drive. It is light weight and small in size.

2- Portability: Play any DVD on the go, ignoring region coding

For the new bees, I will throw some light on DVD regions. According to Wikipedia there are six different official regions and two informal variations. Any DVD discs may use one code, a combination of codes (Multi-Region), most codes (Region 0) or every code/no codes (Region All). Any commercial DVD player specification requires that a player to be sold in a given place not plays discs encoded for a different region. Put it simply;

DVDs manufactured for one region will not play in players made for a different region. Usually to play dvds from other region you often require illegal DVD region spoofing programs. However VLC player is so powerful that it can play DVD’s encoded for any region .i.e. it ignores region coding. This feature is so helpful if you are an international traveler and require playing DVD outside the country.

3- Play anything, audio or video!

VLC player can play any common audio formats (OGG, MP3, WAV ,WMA....) and almost all kinds of video file formats, including rare file formats, without installing external codecs. VLC player is an ideal replacement for even ITunes . That is to say you would never get the annoying notifications saying it ”your player needs a codec for MP4, FLAC or Raw DV…”! play anything you want!

4- AirTune Streaming

AirTunes is functionality for Apple’s Airport Express. This functionalities allows one to play media files on your home stereo speakers. This feature was initially developed to work with iTunes, but now VLC has officially added the support for AirTunes streaming as well.

The Ultimate List of Freely Available .NET Libraries

Posted by jasper22 at 09:19 |

A lot of people keep asking about a good list of .net libraries. Hence, we are building this list to save your time and to spread the knowledge. Some of these libraries will definitely help us developing better solutions. We will do our best to keep updating this list, hope you find this list useful, here we go

Ajax

Ajax Control Toolkit - Microsoft
AJAXNet Pro

Build Tools

Prebuild - Generate project files for all VS version, including major IDE's and tools like SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop, NAnt and Autotools
Genuilder - Precompiler which lets you transform your source code during the build. Thanks Harry McIntyre (April 13, 2011)

Charting/Graphics

Microsoft Chart Controls for ASP.NET 3.5 SP1
Microsoft Chart Controls for Winforms
ZedGraph Charting
NPlot - Charting for ASP.NET and WinForms

Compression

SharpZipLib
DotNetZip
YUI Compressor (CSS and JS minification)
AjaxMinifier (in other downloads) (CSS and JS minification. Also includes MSBuild task)
SevenZipSharp to pack, unpack a lot of different packages (including RAR, 7ZIP, etc).
ZipStorer A Pure C# Class to Store Files in Zip

Controls

Data Mapper

Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control

Design by Contract

7.5 Reasons to Look Forward to Fedora 15

Posted by jasper22 at 09:15 |

It looks like Fedora 16 won't be a Beefy Miracle, but at least Fedora 15 is getting close to release. What's new in Fedora 15? New features from top to bottom — a new init replacement, networking changes, and major bump for GNOME.

One of the reasons I watch Fedora closely is that it's a precursor for enterprise Linux. Not just Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), though that's certainly true. But advancements in Fedora usually make their way into other major distributions, and Fedora is often the first distro to ship cutting (sometimes bleeding) edge software. That's not to say that the other community distros never do this, but Fedora makes a habit of pushing the envelope.

Fedora 15 is no exception — it has quite a few major new features, as well as a few enhancements that will likely influence the entire Linux landscape in the near future. Let's get started.

New initd Replacement: systemd

One of the major changes in Fedora 15 will probably be invisible to many users, but it's going to be very important for developers and system administrators — systemd, a drop-in replacement for sysvinit.

Wait, didn't we replace sysvinit just a while ago with Upstart? Yes. Yes we did. But Lennart Poettering got to thinking about it and came up with systemd, which looks to be the up-and-coming init replacement for not only Fedora, but openSUSE (and eventually SUSE Linux Enteprise as well) and probably Debian and Ubuntu.

If you're working with Linux as an admin, developer, or enthusiast, you'll probably want to try Fedora 15 just for systemd.

GNOME 3

Another, long-awaited, update for Fedora 15 is GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell. Fedora 15 won't be the only distribution to ship GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell, but it's going to be one of the first out the door with G3 and Shell.

Deep Dive MVVM samples #mix11 #deepdivemvvm

Posted by jasper22 at 09:03 |

Here is the sample code I demoed in my MIX11 session “Deep Dive MVVM”. Please download the Zip file, and then unblock it in Windows Explorer by right-clicking it, and then selecting Properties. If you see an “Unblock” button, please click it. You can then extract the content of the Zip file on your hard drive.

The slides are also available for download.

Last year’s session

To fully understand this session, an understanding of what MVVM is should be available. I recommend the following links:

“Understanding the MVVM pattern” is the session I presented at MIX10.

Sample code for “Understanding the MVVM pattern”.

MVVM Light Toolkit “Get Started” page.

MVVM Light Toolkit on Codeplex.

Prerequisites

To execute the samples, you should have Visual Studio 2010 as well as the Windows Phone 7 tools installed.

Snippets

For your convenience, I added the snippets of code that I was dragging/dropping from the Toolbox during the session.

00 JsonDemo – Start

This is the start state, which will compile and run fine, but without the added functionality we built in during the session.

01 JsonDemo - After wiring up

Silverlight 5: Using the SoundEffect Class for Low-Latency Sound (and play WAV files in Silverlight)

Posted by jasper22 at 08:59 |

In some applications, particularly touch-screen kiosk apps and casual games, it is desirable to be able to play a sound immediately upon a user action. For example, you may want to play a "click" sound when they press a key on an on-screen keyboard, or play a series of laser sounds when their on-screen spaceship fires its weapons.

Please note that this article and the attached sample code was written using the Silverlight 5 Beta, available at MIX11 in April 2011.

In previous versions of Silverlight, developers used a variety of tricks, including pre-loading sounds into a round-robin buffer of MediaElements in order to provide as low latency as possible. Windows Phone 7 introduced the XNA SoundEffect class to Silverlight developers. Silverlight 5 now includes that class as well.

Project Setup

Create a regular Silverlight 5 application. Most of the Xna libraries are in the core Silverlight runtime (some additional ones will be in the samples for the beta, and eventually in the SDK for release), so you don't need to add any additional references. Add some wav files to the project (see notes below about format). I have a couple included in the source code with this post. In MainPage.xaml, add a button and a click event handler. I called the button "ClickMe"

Loading and Playing a Sound Effect

Once you have a wav file in your project (as content), you can load it using the GetResourceStream method of the Application object. You then pass the stream to the FromStream method of the SoundEffect class and you're all set to play. Assuming you have a wav file in the root of your project, with its build action set to content and its name set to "laser_shot.wav", this is all you need to play sound. Put this code in the click event handler for the button.

var laserStream =

Application.GetResourceStream(

new Uri("laser_shot.wav", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute));

effect = SoundEffect.FromStream(laserStream.Stream);

effect.Play();

While that was really easy to do, with SoundEffect, the devil's in the details. SoundEffect is notoriously picky about what kind of wav files you provide it. Make sure you are using PCM encoded files, 8 or 16 bit mono or stereo (no 24 bit floating point samples) and either 22.5, 44.1 or 48khz sample rates. The SoundEffect class will fail to load other formats. This is consistent with the implementation on XNA desktop and XNA/Silverlight on the phone.

Controlling Volume, Pitch and Pan

The Play method shown above has an overload which accepts three float values for volume, pitch, and pan.

SharpCompress

Posted by jasper22 at 08:58 |

Project Description

sharpcompress a compression library for .NET/Mono/Silverlight/WP7 that can unrar and zip/unzip (soon others)

The major feature is support for non-seekable streams so large files can be processed on the fly (i.e. download stream).

Source: https://github.com/adamhathcock/sharpcompress

Organization of the library should be akin to Apache Commons Compress (http://commons.apache.org/compress/)

This is a fork of my work from NUnrar (http://nunrar.codeplex.com) to keep nunrar rar-focused.

The Zlib code has been forked from the project (http://dotnetzip.codeplex.com/)

Even simpler MVVM with Simple MVVM Toolkit v2 (think "NuGet'able, new features, new Project Templates, bug fixes and generally good and tasty stuff")

Posted by jasper22 at 08:56 |

I have just released version 2.0 of the Simple Mvvm Toolkit on CodePlex, NuGet and the Visual Studio Extensions Gallery.

Now all you have to do to get it is open Visual Studio and select Extensions Manager from the Tool menu, then search for “Simple Mvvm Toolkit” and click the Download button. Launch SimpleMvvmInstaller.exe and you’ll get the whole shebang: binaries, project and item templates, code snippets, samples and source code, copied to the SimpleMvvmToolkit directory in your Program Files folder. The ReadMe.txt file lists all the prerequisites you’ll need to install before using the toolkit. The installer will even add the toolkit to Visual Studio’s referenced assemblies, so that it appears in the list of assemblies when you show the Add Reference Dialog.

Visual Studio integration is nice, but the killer feature of v2 is the new Visual Studio project templates. You heard right, the installer not only gives you the item templates and code snippets you had in v1, but it also provides four project templates: Silverlight, Windows Phone, WPF and RIA Services. Each of these gives you a ready-made Visual Studio project that references the toolkit and includes Models, Views, ViewModels, ServiceAgents, and a ViewModelLocator. All you have to do is open the included ReadMe.txt file and follow the simple instructions, using each of the provided classes as examples. To get started just open Visual Studio, select File, New Project, then click on the Mvvm category beneath Windows (for WPF), Silverlight, or Silverlight for Windows Phone.

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Disqus Helper for ASP.NET Web Pages

Posted by jasper22 at 08:55 |

Project Overview

The Disqus Helper for WebMatrix provides an easy way to integrate Disqus on your WebMatrix site. With a few lines of code you'll able to show Disqus threads in your pages and let your users interact through your site.

Read more: Codeplex

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Debugging XAML Binding with Silverlight 5

Posted by jasper22 at 08:54 |

Well hope that you were aware of Silverlight 5 Beta release announcement today and its latest feature , if not make sure to have a look at my earlier posthere. In this post we will discuss about XAML binding debugging ,a new feature available in Silverlight5 .Be sure that you read my last line carefully its XAML Data Binding debugging not XAML debugging .

For any data driven application with declarative data binding, with in XAML ,this brand new feature is the significant in many ways.Personally I remember most of the time i used to skip XAML way of binding as it lacked debugging feature.Now with Silverlight 5 my previous approach will surely take a back seat and will allow me to consider both ways equally.

Prerequisites

Makes sure that you have downloaded latest version Silverlight Toolkit SDK .If not download from here .Also make sure that you are running on VisualStudio SP1.

The XAML Data binding

The example demonstrated here implement basic XAML data binding with DomainDataSource control , lets look at the XAML binding of one of the controls.

Nothing fancy , simple binding.

The XAML Debugging

SETTING UP BREAKPOINT

As of now the XAML allows to apply breakpoint on Binding syntax only.Once break point applied ,it hits the breakpoint when ever push and pull triggeredfor that control.The image bellow shows the breakpoint with in XAML.

Facebook to be 'biggest bank' by 2015

Posted by jasper22 at 16:15 | Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The explosion of social networking commerce will lead to the unlikely candidate of Facebook becoming the world’s biggest bank by the middle of the decade, according to a technology observer and entrepreneur.

People who don’t have a Facebook account should get one or risk having a financial profile created for them says founder and president of Metal International, Ken Rutkowski.

“My Facebook rank is number 29 of all the users and I have raised $100 million in funding for a few different companies,” Rutkowski said.

“Old school media companies have a market capitalisation of $US241.7 billion but the new school media companies are worth $319.7 billion,” he said.

Of the “new school” media companies Google has the largest share with Facebook coming up behind it. Facebook, however, has more ambitions in its sights than just social networking.

“Facebook has 680 million users and that’s massive,” he said. “Who doesn’t have a Facebook profile? Let me tell you why it’s important why you do.”

“Facebook will be the largest bank by 2015. I hear you say ‘how can they be a bank’ what’s going on?”

Untitled

Posted by jasper22 at 15:05 |

Posted via email from Jasper-net

drag2up – Upload Files To Multiple File Sharing Services From Firefox & Chrome

Posted by jasper22 at 14:52 |

Out of staggering number of content sharing websites, one has to find the best service which should be used for sharing text, image, videos, and other types of files. drag2up is an extension for both Google Chrome and Firefox which makes sharing content with others over the web utterly simple. It supports all major content sharing websites, such as, img.ur, pastebin, droplr, min.us, CloudApp, hotfile, twitgoo, flickr, twitpic, and importantly Dropbox with many others to quickly upload and share files. From all these services, you will have to pick 3 for sharing images, text, and binary host file. Services can be switched back & forth anytime by simply dragging them into selected content sharing services list. Furthermore, it supports a wide range of URL shortners, including, bit.ly, goo.gl, is.gd, voizle, j.mp, etc., to shorten the URL of uploaded file on the fly. Before getting started, drag any file to bottom-right corner of the browser window to open settings page. Now drag the services to right sidebar which you wish to use for uploading images, text and binary files. Once list is defined, pick favorite URL shortner and close the window.

Control Twitter And View Timeline Updates In Gtalk With Chitter.im

Posted by jasper22 at 14:38 |

Chitter.im is small intermediary bot for Gtalk which brings Twitter to your favorite IM client. It was written for users who use Gtalk heavily and love to keep an eye on their Twitter timeline to check out latest tweets from their followers. Chitter.im not only lets you view your Twitter timeline but adds a slew of options as well, such as, send tweets, quote tweets, send direct messages, quickly follow and unfollow Twitter users, and show incoming friendships, thus making it utterly simple to control your Twitter account via simple Gtalk conversation window.

So how does it work? The usage is simple. First, you need to visit Chitter.im web service and connect its service with both Google and Twitter by allowing the access. Once the chitter.im is connected, it will send add request to your Gtalk. You just need to add chitter.im bot into Gtalk contact list and open the private message window. Now, enter /h to view all the commands which you can execute to receive Twiiter timeline update, send direct message, follow / unfollow Twitter users and so on. If you for instance want to to follow a Twitter user, enter /f <username>, it will send follow request right from Gtalk to Twitter. Similarly, you can execute all the commands which are shown in the screenshot below.

iDroid Project

Posted by jasper22 at 13:03 |

Welcome to the iDroid Project Wiki

The iDroid Project's goal is to fully port the Linux kernel and the Google Android OS to Apple's iDevices. With the utilisation of our 'OpeniBoot' bootloader, we have gained the ability to boot the Linux Kernel therefore enabling us to boot Google Android & any other Linux based operating system easily.

iDroid itself is distributed either as a binary download package or using the projects official iOS application Bootlace which enables you to install iDroid & OpeniBoot without the need for a computer.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the forums. You can also talk to developers directly in #iphonelinux or #idroid-dev on irc.freenode.net

Windows Already Up and Running On ARM Architecture

Posted by jasper22 at 12:58 |

Over at Microsoft's MIX Developer Conference in sunny Las Vegas, Microsoft has demoed a new preview build of Internet Explorer 10 (which you too can take for a spin, if you feel so inclined), and also dropped a little premature Easter egg – the build of IE10, and the underlying Windows OS, were both running on a 1GHz ARM chip. Sneaky

Layar 5.0 for Android available now – adds facebook and twitter sharing functionality

Posted by jasper22 at 11:26 |

Layar is a popular app that makes looking for information around you fun and intuitive by providing an augmented reality browsing experience. There are over 2,000 layars to choose from now within the app, and they’ve recently added some animation to the 3D objects, as well as Twitter and facebook functionality for sharing those gems you may find in your travels.

The new version 5.0.1 will work on any Android OS version 1.5 and up and has the following additions in its release;

Layar 5.0.1 fixes a force close problem after installation of 5.0 and of course still includes our new features:
The ability to take screenshots in AR view and share them or layers with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Layer are no longer limited to static content. Now icons and 3D models can come alive with animation.
It’s easier to keep track of your favorite and most recently viewed layers with an improved and easier to use user interface.

Android, With the Help of Lookout, Tracks a Stolen Car; Cops Find Car in 17 Minutes

Posted by jasper22 at 11:25 |

We love Android, because it’s so versatile. We can tailor it to our user experience, it can transcribe our words to text messages, we can make video calls, and we can play games. But right now, there’s a woman in Peoria, Arizona who loves Android because it helped the police recover her stolen car.

Lookout Security has been our Android security app of choice since we first got some hands-on time with it, and we’ve sung the praises of Lookout Labs on more than one occasion. Not surprisingly, we were quite proud — as were they — when, back in December, their security app led to the arrest of a car thief by using the app’s ‘Track my phone’ feature to catch the perp…within the hour. Well, our friend Alicia at Lookout just gave us a heads-up that they’ve done it again, catching the car thieves in just 17 minutes. Normally we wouldn’t advocate leaving your cell phone in your car, but this time it paid off…and, with Android tablets being mounted on dashboards, this app could become even more powerful in the near future.

Groupon.Net

Posted by jasper22 at 10:41 |

Project Description

A .NET Client Library for the Groupon API.

This code uses the Groupon API V2

Groupon API

http://sites.google.com/site/grouponapiv2/home

USAGE

Client.ClientID = "myclientid";

Deal mochaDeal = Client.GetDeal("livemocha-charlotte");

List<Deals> = Client.GetDeals();

Read more: Codeplex

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Lock-free algorithms: The try/commit/(try again) pattern

Posted by jasper22 at 10:40 |

The singleton constructor pattern and the InterlockedMultiply example we saw some time ago are really special cases of the more general pattern which I'll call try/commit/(try again). I don't know if this pattern has a real name, but that's what I'm calling it for today.

The general form of this pattern goes like this:

for (;;) {

// capture the initial value of a shared variable we want to update

originalValue = sharedVariable;

... capture other values we need to perform the operation ...

... these values must be indepedent of sharedVariable ...

newValue = ... calculate the desired new result

based on originalValue and other captured values ...

// Xxx can be Acquire, Release, or null

if (InterlockedCompareExchangeXxx(

&sharedVariable,

newValue, oldValue) == oldValue) {

break; // update was successful

}

... clean up newValue ...

} // loop back and try again

We calculate the desired new value based on the initial value, combining it with other values that vary depending on the operation you want to perform, and then use an InterlockedCompareExchange to update the shared value, provided the variable hasn't changed from its initial value. If the value did change, then that means another thread raced against us and updated the value before we could; in that case, we go back and try it again. Maybe the next time through we won't collide against somebody.

Life lessons

Posted by jasper22 at 10:24 |

Lesson 1: Naked Wife

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.” After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.

After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks,…

“Who was that?” “It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies. “Great!” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

Moral of the story:

If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish” “Me first! Me first!” says the administration clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.” Poof! She’s gone. “Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii,relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.” Poof! He’s gone. “OK, you’re up,” the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”

Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 3

A priest offered a lift to a Nun. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun said,”Father, remember Psalm 129?” The priest removed his hand. But,changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?” The priest apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.” Arriving at the convent, the nun went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”

Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 4

A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A rabbit asked him,”Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” The crow answered: “Sure, why not.” So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested.

A fox jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up.

Caliburn.Micro RTW’s (Think a”Lighter/smaller/micro MVVM Framework for WPF, WP7 & Silverlight)

Posted by jasper22 at 10:19 |

Today, I’m proud to announce the v1.0 RTW of Caliburn.Micro for WPF, Silverlight and Window Phone 7! The idea was born last year at Mix10 after my Build Your Own MVVM Framework talk received overwhelmingly positive feedback. I want to give a big thanks to the developers who put their time into this. Thanks Christopher, Marco and Ryan! Also, I want to say thanks to the community. It’s been exciting to see how fast a rich community of developers has grown up around this project and to see how many people are speaking about Caliburn.Micro at their local user groups, code camps and even major conferences such as Codestock and teched.

Along with his release comes a number of bug fixes and even a few new features, such as the new WindowManager for WP7 which provides View-Model-First modal dialogs with animations designed after the native MessageBox. Be sure to thank Marco for that. After you thank Marco, you need to give props to Ryan who spearheaded the NuGet package development. As of right now, Caliburn.Micro can be installed quite easily from Visual Studio. If you have NuGet 1.2 or later installed, from the Package Manager Console, just type:

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Microsoft Support Emergency Removal Tool

Posted by jasper22 at 10:18 |

שלום לכולם,

כאן דן ויזנפלד מצוות התמיכה של Microsoft.

ב-11/04/2011 הושק כלי חדש מבית Microsoft להסרה של וירוסים, תוכנות רוגלה ומזיקים נוספים. שמו של הכלי החדש הינו Microsoft Support Emergency Removal Tool, או בקיצור –MSERT.

MSERT מחליף את קודמו בתפקיד, Live OneCare, והוא ניתן להורדה בחינם ממרכז האבטחה של Microsoft: http://microsoft.com/security.

אחד היתרונות המרכזיים של MSERT, מלבד מאגר הנתונים הגדול ויכולותיו המתקדמות לטיפול במזיקים, הוא אופן הפעלתו – וזאת בצורה שאינה מבוססת על מנגנון Windows Installer. מנגנון ההתקנה Windows Installer הינו יעד מרכזי למזיקים רבים, המעוניינים למנוע מהמשתמשים מלהסיר אותם (על ידי התקנת תוכנות אנטי-וירוס).

מאחר וה-MSERT אינו מבוסס Windows Installer, משתמשים לא צפויים להיתקל בבעיה בהפעלתו במחשבים נגועים.

MSERT זמין להורדה למערכות הפעלה בגרסאות 32 ו-64 סיביות, במספר שפות, כשהרלוונטית יותר לנו, הישראלים, היא אנגלית.

אדגים את תהליך הורדת כלי ה-MSERT:

1. כניסה לאתר מרכז האבטחה של Microsoft.

2. לחצו על Get a free PC safety scan.

MIX 2011 - IE10 Platform Preview 1 Available Now

Posted by jasper22 at 10:14 |

The first key note is over is MIX 2011,Microsoft Talked about the future of IE and show some cool demos of IE10 capabilities.

And release the IE10 Preview to public. - http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Info/Downloads/Default.html

Kinect framework (WPF) by Tequilarapido

Posted by jasper22 at 10:14 |

Project Description

This project helping people to develop with Microsoft Kinect device.

It's based on OpenNi and NITE, and allow you to develop with WPF "natively".

Giving you controls to build your UI :

- KinectPointer

- KinectButton

- KinectListbox

- KinectScrollViewer

- KinectContextMenu

Installation notes

Here's a tutorial to install kinect on your PC

http://www.xboxgen.fr/installer-kinect-pc-article-4815-1.html

Once you've installed it, just run our sample project /Kinect.ShowCase, showing you all gesture, and controls included.

Don't miss to install the Kinect Project template located here : /Visual.Studio.2010.Addins you will have a "Kinect Projet Template" to create your window and begin playing with them.

Tips

If you want to use multiple hand tracking modify your config file located there : C:\{Program Files}\Prime Sense\NITE\Hands\Data\Nite.ini

Read more: Codeplex

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Windows 8 Secrets: News from Around the Web

Posted by jasper22 at 10:04 |

Part of a series of co-posts by "Windows 8 Secrets" co-authors Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott.

When we set out to divulge some of the secret new features in Windows 8, we knew that we had information no one else was going to get. We also knew that doing so was risky, and that Microsoft might ask us to stop or, worse, shut us out of future, legitimate briefings and reviewer workshops. Indeed, the original plan was to silently collect this information in advance of our next book, but with builds leaking publicly and various enthusiast blogs trumpeting their finds, we felt we had to act.

And while we do have more to share, we feel the point has been made: Sure, anyone can download a leaked build and take a few screenshots. But when it comes to really delving into the next version of Windows, we feel that we offer a unique and more compelling perspective on Microsoft’s plans than any of the other blogs. But we do have a book to write. And we’re not interested in goading Microsoft into action.

So, after a week of unexpected silence from the company, we simply stopped. We’ll publish more when we can, of course, but in the meantime we wanted to at least try to wrap up this first series of posts with a look at what’s going on out in the web, on the blogs, and with the others who are as enthusiastic about this next Windows version as we are.

Facebook Login

Posted by jasper22 at 09:48 |

A very simple ASP.NET project showing how to easily add "Login with Facebook" to your ASP.NET app

I was looking for something similar myself, but there was nothing like this! All I found was either abandoned buggy open-source initiatives - or big, complex, heavy authentication libraries working with OpenID/Twitter/Facebook/blackjack-and-hookers...

So I dived into the Facebook's developer docs (the ugliest docs I've ever read BTW) and I created this very simple project that you can extend. Just two files, 10 lines of code each.

The only "library" I use here is the JSON serializer (to make the whole thing work under ASP.NET 2.0)

No download, just get the latest source code, the solution is very small, 3 files...

Read more: Codeplex

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Your Resume: Go Visual

Posted by jasper22 at 09:47 |

I (mostly) diligently update my resume twice a year. I do this regularly because I use the updating process as sort of a retrospective on where I’m at, what I’ve done, and what I want to do moving forward. I try to get one of the updates in a few months before my formal review comes up at work – not because I’m fearful of what’s going to happen, but because I want to make sure I’m on track with goals my manager and I had laid out.

This year I decided to do something different: create a visual resume. Pal Ben Carey once had a Tweet or link about visual resumes, and I started exploring around. I’ve seen a number of them around over the years and have really been impressed by the concept. Visual resumes definitely speak to organizations with a creative, curious mindset, and I think they’re a great way for younger workers to better highlight things in their short careers. For old farts like myself visual resumes enable a much better understanding of one’s career timeline and milestones.

First Look: Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview

Posted by jasper22 at 09:46 |

Just when you were expecting to hear more about IE9 on this opening day of Mix '11, and today we'll be talking about the IE10 Platform Preview. IE10 builds on IE9 with support for even more standards like CSS3 gradients, and grid layouts. In this video Rob Mauceri walks us through some of the new features of IE10 including an example of flowing of content in multi-column layouts.

Binding and Using Friendly Enums in WPF

Posted by jasper22 at 17:07 | Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Introduction

As .NET developers, we know about and have probably used Enums before. For those that haven't used enums before, this is what MSDN has to say about them:

"The enum keyword is used to declare an enumeration, a distinct type consisting of a set of named constants called the enumerator list. Every enumeration type has an underlying type, which can be any integral type except char."

So when we use enums, we can actually do things like

enum Hardware {DiskDrive=1, Keyboard, GraphicsCard, Monitor};

Now this is all well and good, but imagine if we wanted to display a list of enums within a list, and we actually wanted to have more descriptive values, friendly names if you like, but still maintain the underlying enum value selected where required.

This article will show you how to do the following, using WPF:

Bind to a Enumeration of enum values

Display friendly names for enums, to aid the user experience

Bind to a Enumeration of Enum Values

The first thing that we might want to do is display a list of all possible enum values, such that a current value may be selected within this list, or allow the user to select a new enum value. This is easily achievable using the following technique:

<ObjectDataProvider x:Key="foodData"

MethodName="GetValues"

ObjectType="{x:Type sys:Enum}">

<ObjectDataProvider.MethodParameters>

<x:Type TypeName="local:FoodTypes" />

</ObjectDataProvider.MethodParameters>

</ObjectDataProvider>

We can then use this to bind to within the XAML as follows:

<ComboBox x:Name="cmbFoodType"

ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource foodData}}"

....

</ComboBox>

Where I have a demo enum declared as follows (if you could just ignore the LocalizableDescriptionAttribute for the moment, more on that later) :

public enum FoodTypes : int

{

Pizza = 1,

Burger = 2,

SpagBol = 3

}

Apple AirPlay Private Key Exposed

Posted by jasper22 at 14:28 |

James Laird has reverse engineered the Airport Express private key and published an open source AirPort Express emulator. 'My girlfriend moved house, and her Airport Express no longer made it with her wireless access point. I figured it'd be easy to find an ApEx emulator — there are several open source apps out there to play to them. However, I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there's a private key hiding inside the ApEx. So I took it apart (I still have scars from opening the glued case!), dumped the ROM, and reverse engineered the keys out of it'

17 Security bulletins today!

Posted by jasper22 at 12:50 |

Get ready for a massive update round this month, affecting Windows, Office, Office web app and Visual Studio.

Bulletin ID Maximum Severity Rating and Vulnerability Impact Restart Requirement Affected Software

Bulletin 1 Critical Remote Code Execution Requires restart Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer

Bulletin 2 Critical Remote Code Execution Requires restart Microsoft Windows

Bulletin 3 Critical Remote Code Execution Requires restart Microsoft Windows

Bulletin 4 Critical Remote Code Execution May require restart Microsoft Windows

(more...)

WoW player reaches level 85 without killing

Posted by jasper22 at 12:32 |

Well I did it lol, it was certainly a different way of levelling, requires lots of patience, but I did get to see the whole game in a new light.

Being on the ground and sneaking around mining and herbing and eventually archaeology, going everywhere to get every single point of discovery xp that you can, really gives you a chance to see an amazing world up close and personal. I spent hours swimming around reefs and flying to the farthest reaches of the maps.

If you like to explore, and enjoy a challenge I really REALLY recommend this, I have been playing since day 1 on other characters and I even have an original Loremaster (you know, back when it was hard) and I saw so MANY new things with Everbloom that it really made it worthwhile for me to continue on with this character, and each level was a major achievement!

I would like to ask Blizzard to possibly look into changing the "Invitation to the Argent Tournament" scripted event so that it doesn't flag you as having completed a quest when you haven't actually completed a quest, that almost broke my heart when I logged in and checked my stats page to find my 0 kills 0 quest stats had gone to 0 kills 1 quests completed when all I did was open a letter.

I opened a ticket and requested the quest be removed but was told it is not possible and that I should mention it on the forums in the hope that Blizzard changes it.

SO now I am server transferring this one to Antonidas to join the guild which is a 0 kills guild that was started there for us alternate advancement people! I think most of the guild is searching out quests that require no killing, but I shall stick to my 0 kills 0 quests attempt yet again! Come join the ... fun? ;)

Communicating between running activities

Posted by jasper22 at 12:31 |

SDK Version: M3

Starting a new activity from another and passing some data to it is a simple and basic thing in android. But if you want an already running activity to come to foreground, and pass data to it, it can be a bit tricky.

First of all by default if you call an activity with an intent, a new istance of that activity will be created and displayed, even if another instance is already running. To avoid this the activity must be flagged that, it should not be instantiated multiple times. To achieve this we will set the launchMode of the activity to singleTask in the AndroidManifest.xml

This way when we call this activity using an intent, if there is an existing instance, the system will route the request to it. Hoever the onCreate method, where we usually process the passed extraData, will not run this time.

As its name shows it runs when the activity is created and this time it already exists, so the method called onNewIntent() will be called.

protected void onNewIntent(Intent intent) {

super.onNewIntent(intent);

setIntent(intent);//must store the new intent unless getIntent() will return the old one

processExtraData();

}

Do not forget that we can receive data in the normal way in onCreate, when the activity is first created, and since the system can easily kill activities in the backround, if this happens, the onCreate method will be called instead of onNewIntent.

How to Enable Certificate Revocation Checking on a Remote Desktop Gateway Client

Posted by jasper22 at 12:30 |

This blog is intended for Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) users who want to turn on certificate revocation checking on the RD Gateway client as a security best practice.

An RD Gateway server is configured with a server authentication certificate that is used for authenticating and securing the communication between the RD Gateway client and the RD Gateway server. To learn more about certificates on RD Gateway, see the blog Introduction to TS Gateway certificates.

To help maintain the integrity of an organization's public key infrastructure (PKI), the administrator of a certification authority (CA) must revoke a certificate if the subject of the certificate leaves the organization, if the certificate subject's private key has been compromised, or if some other security-related event dictates that it is no longer desirable to have a certificate considered valid. When a certificate is revoked by a CA, it is added to that CA's certificate revocation list (CRL). To learn more, see the TechNet article Revoking certificates and publishing CRLs.

The RD Gateway client by default is not configured to check whether the certificate installed on the RD Gateway server is revoked or not. As such, if you want to enable your RD Gateway clients to check for certificate revocation and proceed with the connection only if the server certificate is not revoked, run the following command on a command prompt on the RD Gateway client computer:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Gateway\Transports\Rpc" /v CheckForRevocation /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Posted via email from Jasper-net

MySQL.com and Sun hacked through SQL injection

Posted by jasper22 at 12:30 |

Proving that no website is ever truly secure, it is being reported that MySQL.com has succumbed to a SQL injection attack. It was first disclosed to the Full Disclosure mailing list early this morning. Hackers have now posted a dump of usernames and password hashes to pastebin.com.

Most embarrassingly, the Director of Product Management's WordPress password was set to a four digit number... his ATM PIN perhaps? Several accounts had passwords like "qa". The irony is that they weren't compromised by means of their ridiculously simple passwords, but rather flaws in the implementation of their site.

MySQL's parent company Sun/Oracle has also been attacked. Both tables and emails were dumped from their databases, but no passwords.

Session: Debugging .NET Applications with WinDbg

Posted by jasper22 at 10:56 |

If you ever had a hang, performance issue, memory leak, crash, or cryptic exception in a .NET application that you couldn't fix, then maybe it is time to pull out the big guns and start looking at windbg and sos. Join Tess as she walks through a number of these issues and talks about how to debug them. This demo-intensive session also shows you how you can use new features in Visual Studio .NET 2010 to look at post-mortem dumps and troubleshoot these types of issues.

IBM getting into the HTML5 authoring game with open source Maqetta

Posted by jasper22 at 10:31 |

IBM announced Maqetta, an HTML5 authoring tool for building desktop and mobile user interfaces, and also announced the contribution of the open-source technology to the Dojo Foundation.

LAS VEGAS – At the IBM Impact 2011 conference here, IBM announced both Maqetta as well as the open source contribution of its Maqetta HTML5 visual authoring tool to the Dojo Foundation.

Maqetta is an open source project that provides WYSIWYG visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces using drag and drop assembly, and supports both desktop and mobile user interfaces. The Maqetta application itself is authored in HTML, and therefore runs in the browser without requiring additional plug-ins or downloads. Maqetta is available under a commercial-friendly open source license. Ands users can download the source code and install it on their own server, customize the code to fit their needs and contribute improvements to the open source project.

IBM officials said HTML5 is an umbrella term for dozens of new features that ship in modern browsers (desktop and mobile) that allow rich user interfaces, graphics, multimedia and fast performance using open standards. HTML5 ships in the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari, and on modern smartphones, including iPhone, Android, RIM BlackBerry and Windows 7 Mobile.

Installing Silverlight OOB application using a setup project

Posted by jasper22 at 10:24 |

Introduction

In this article we are going to see about how to install a Silverlight OOB application through a setup project. Silverlight OOB applications shortly OOBs are much like desktop applications that can be installed, launched and uninstalled. These OOBs are normally installed from the browser by right clicking the Silverlight control and selecting Install app into this computer, but there are times we have to look into alternate ways of installation for example when we want the OOB app to be easily distributable from machine to machine or to install the OOB as part of batch installation etc. This article helps to understand how to install an OOB application through a setup project.

I've split the article into below main sections to help readers understand easily.

A little theory - In this section we are going to see about what is the sllauncher and how we can use it to manually install, uninstall an OOB application from the command prompt.

Project Plan - In this section we are going to discuss about our project plan and what are the things need to be configured in the setup project.

Custom Installer - In this section we will see about the Installer base class methods that need to be overridden and how to practically invoke the sllauncher for installing or uninstalling a sample application.

Let's dive into the article!

A little theory

a. What is the sllauncher?

When we install the Silverlight plugin a set of things are downloaded to the machine. If we navigate to the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Silverlight\ folder we can see the following.

40 High Quality Free Portfolio PSD Web Templates

Posted by jasper22 at 10:23 |

Free Photoshop (PSD) files are a great way to learn from other designers. In this post, you’ll find some high quality, free portfolio website templates in PSD format. You also find web design tutorial which were wrote easy and clearly understanding. These PSD web templates are all free to use in your projects, but be sure to read the terms of use about modifying for commercial use.

Настройка Web-сервера apache под Ubuntu

Posted by jasper22 at 10:20 |

1)Установливаем классическую связку — Apache + PHP + MySQL:

#apt-get install apache2 mysql-server-5.0 php5 php5-gd php5-mysql acl

2)Создаем каталог для сайта и распакуем туда предварительно закаченную CMS joomla:

# mkdir /var/www/joomla

3)Сменим владельца каталога:

chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/joomla/

4)и права на каталог:

chmod -R 755 /var/www/joomla/

5)Создадим виртуальный хост для CMS joomla:

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/joomla.conf

Допишем в созданный файл:

ServerAdmin

admin@joomla.ru

DocumentRoot /var/www/joomla

AllowOverride all

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

</Directory>

ServerName joomla

</VirtualHost>

6)В /etc/apache2/apache2.conf допишем:

ServerName localhost

7)Включим сайт:

a2ensite joomla

8)После выполнения этих команд обновим конфигурацию работающего apache:

# /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

9)Создадим БД для сайта:

#mysql -p

CREATE DATABASE joomla;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON joomla.* TO joomla_admin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Дополнительно:

Archive

Random sites

Followers

Search This Blog

Subscribe To