Screenr Business: Add Screencasting To Your Site With A Few Clicks (And Preserve Your Sanity)

Posted by jasper22 at 15:03 | Monday, June 20, 2011

“Do you see the ‘File’ option at the top? No, higher, at the very top of the screen. Click that. What do you mean it went away? What went away? What did you press? No, stop clicking for a second. I AM BEING PATIENT… sigh”

Ah, the pleasures of describing a computer problem over the phone, doubtless experienced by many of the people reading this post. And while most of us have only had to deal with tech support questions to help our friends, family, and dorm-mates, there are plenty of businesses that face the same challenges every day — and for them, money is on the line. And now Screenr, a company that offers a web-based screen recorder that lets you make screencasts directly from your browser without requiring additional downloads, has an answer.

This week Screenr is launching Screenr Business, a service that makes it very easy for any site to integrate the company’s browser-based screencast technology. In other words, they’ll make it super easy for your customers to file support tickets by video.

Say you have a standard support site for your product, which includes basic help information and a submission form where customers submit descriptions of their problems — descriptions that often aren’t very specific or may be difficult to understand. Using Screenr, you could now embed a button at the top of your support site that invites users to quickly capture a screencast of their issue, which they can then immediately send to your company’s support staff. Pretty cool.

Security Alert: Malware Found Targeting Custom ROMs (jSMSHider)

Posted by jasper22 at 14:46 |

The Threat

Recently we discovered a new Trojan in the wild, surfacing in alternative Android markets that predominately target Chinese Android users. This Trojan, which we’ve dubbed jSMSHider due to the name used inside the APK, predominantly affects devices with a custom ROM. Custom ROMs are custom built versions of Android, which have been released by third-party groups. The manufacturer or carrier do not traditionally endorse custom ROMs. (If you do not know what a custom ROM is, and do not think you’ve downloaded a custom ROM, you are probably not affected.)

Who is Affected

To date, we have identified eight separate instances of jSMSHider and because the distribution is limited to alternative app markets targeting Chinese Android users, the severity for this threat is low. This Trojan, jSMSHider, predominantly affects devices where the owner has downloaded a custom ROM or rooted phone.

Due to where the malware was found and the limited number of devices the malware could infect, we believe the impact to be limited. All Lookout users are automatically protected from this malware.

How it works

The application follows the common pattern of masquerading as a legitimate application, though a few extra permissions have been added. At first glance, it appears like other recent Android Trojans that tries to take control over the mobile phone by rooting the phone (breaking out of the Android security container), but instead jSMSHider exploits a vulnerability found in the way most custom ROMs sign their system images. The issue arises since publicly available private keys in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) are often used to sign the custom ROM builds. In the Android security model, any application signed with the same platform signer as the system image can request permissions not available to normal applications, including the ability to install or uninstall applications without user intervention.

Japan Criminalizes Virus Creation

Posted by jasper22 at 13:56 |

Japan's parliament enacted legislation Friday criminalizing the creation or distribution of computer viruses to crack down on the growing problem of cybercrimes, but critics say the move could infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed privacy of communications. With the bill to revise the Penal Code passing the House of Councillors by an overwhelming majority, the government intends to conclude the Convention on Cybercrime, a treaty that stipulates international cooperation in investigating crimes in cyberspace.'

התגלה: טרויאני לגניבת BitCoins

Posted by jasper22 at 13:54 |

חברת סימנטק מדווחת על גילוי סוג חדש של סוס טרויאני, אשר תפקידו לגנוב לכם את הארנק הוירטואלי המכיל את מטבעות ה-BitCoins שלכם.

wallet.dat

הסוס הטרויאני החדש נוצר כדי לחפש במחשבים הנגועים את הקובץ של הארנק הוירטואלי המחזיק בנתונים של מטבעות ה-BitCoins שבבעלות המשתמש במחשב. עם איתור הקובץ הספציפי, הסוס הטרויאני לוקח את הקובץ ומעביר אותו באמצעות FTP אל כותבי הטרויאני. נזכיר, כי כל שיטת ה-BitCoins מבוססת על כך שהתיעוד של המטבעות שבבעלותכם מאוחסנת כקובץ במחשב שלכם. בעל הקובץ, הוא בעל ה-BitCoin.

המטבע עצמו נשמר על המחשב שלכם כקובץ אותו ניתן לאחסן כמו כל קובץ אחר על הדיסק קשיח או כל מדיה אחרת. באותו אופן, הוא גם יכול "ללכת לאיבוד". אם הולך לכם לאיבוד הזיכרון הנייד שעליו קובץ ה-BitCoin, אבד גם הכסף, כאילו אבד לכם הארנק הפיזי. אם קרס לכם הדיסק הקשיח, ולא הספקתם לעשות גיבוי לקובץ ה-BitCoin, אבד הכסף. בנוסף, יכול לקבל ולהחזיק ב-BitCoin רק מי שיש לו חשבון ברשת, עם מספר ייחודי משלו. ובהקשר של הטרויאני החדש, אם לוקחים לכם את הקובץ, לוקחים לכם את הכסף.

ניתן להגן?

אם אתה משתמשים ב-BitCoins, ההמלצה כרגע של סימנטק היא להצפין את קובץ הארנק שלכם עם סיסמא ארוכה במיוחד, כזאת שתקשה על הפורץ שחטף לכם את הקובץ לגשת אל התוכן שלו. בפועל, גם אם אתם יכולים להעביר את קובץ הארנק שלכם למדיה ניידת ולמחוק אותו מהמחשב המחובר לאינטרנט, הרי שברגע שתרצו להשתמש בארנק הוירטואלי תצטרכו ממילא לחבר אותו שוב לאותו מחשב, ולחשוף אותו לאותה סכנה, אם המחשב שלכם חשוד ככזה שאולי נדבק בסוס הטרויאני החדש.

How to Create Custom Cover Pages in Microsoft Word 2010

Posted by jasper22 at 12:25 |

A great cover page draws readers, and if you know Word, then you are in luck, because Word gives ready to use cover pages. But did you know that Word lets you create your own cover pages?

Head over to the “Insert” ribbon and you’ll find that Microsoft Office gives some cover pages that you can use.

List of standard icons for Windows Phone 7 (WP7)

Posted by jasper22 at 12:24 |

Maybe I’m simply a total failure at The Google(s) and The Bing(s) but I went looking for the list of standard icons for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) and couldn’t find it anywhere.

After a ton of hunting, I found the icons in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Icons.

Posted via email from Jasper-net

Developing a Simple HTTP Server in C#

Posted by jasper22 at 11:03 |

This short video clip shows how to use the HttpListener class in order to develop a simple HTTP server in C#. This video clip was developed as part of the 'C# Fundamentals' course available for free personal usage at www.abelski.com.

Android UI pattern - Workspaces

Posted by jasper22 at 11:02 |

Workspaces is a renamed pattern UI pattern from patterns "scrollable lists". I don't think the pattern only applies to lists hence the new name.

Workspaces is a horizontally scrolling composite component that consists of tabs and data container, often a list. This component provides easy navigation between a lot of data that is hierarchically on the same level.

Pattern card

Problem

Displaying a lot of data and user navigation between the data is not simple on a small smart phone screen.

Seek Droid Is Free to Download Today and Tomorrow

Posted by jasper22 at 17:17 | Sunday, June 19, 2011

Alan Henry — If you didn't download Seek Droid the last time we mentioned it, now you have a chance to grab it free of charge. The developers behind the app, which allows you to find your lost Android phone whether it's in your home or in the back of a cab, remotely lock or wipe it, or just view it on a Google Map so you can go get it, are making the app available for free today and tomorrow in the Amazon App Store.

ICANN To Allow .brandname Top-Level Domains

Posted by jasper22 at 17:16 |

Brand owners will soon be able to operate their own parts of the Web — such as .apple, .coke or .marlboro — if the biggest shake-up yet in how Internet domains are awarded is approved. After years of preparation and wrangling, ICANN, the body that coordinates Internet names, is expected to approve the move at a special board meeting in Singapore on Monday. ... The move is seen as a big opportunity for brands to gain more control over their online presence and send visitors more directly to parts of their sites — and a danger for those who fail to take advantage.

Premature cries of Silverlight / WPF skill loss. Windows 8 supports all programming models

Posted by jasper22 at 16:36 |

Summary

Windows 8 supports applications being built in C# / XAML / VB.Net / C++ / HTML+JS.
The new UI framework ‘Jupiter’ allows applications to be written in your language of choice. This is similar to how the .Net framework allowed people to code against the framework in their language of choice.
Jupiter seems to be a ‘Next generation’ XAML based framework
I’m more excited about the new possibilities coming in the new Jupiter XAML programming model than the misconception that HTML+JS is the only way to create apps.

History

In the last few weeks, the internet has been in frenzy over the newly released demo video of Windows 8. In the video there is only mention of the new “Immersive applications” being created in a mixture of HTML + Javascript. People took this as more evidence that WPF & Silverlight are dead. Which hasn’t helped after the lack of attention which caused events like Silverlight Firestarter to be needed, or the http://FixWPF.org movement. It also doesn’t help when Microsoft have remained tight lipped even after an outcry from developers. The famous thread on the Silverlight forums has seen over 13,000,000 views. Which is more than the forums usually see in a single month.

Digging into the Windows 8 leak

A few people have been digging into the Windows 8 Milestone 3 leak and peeking into the UI framework and .dlls that exist. The most vocal of these have been @JoseFajardo and people in this forum thread http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak

What people have found so far is that while yes it is possible to create applications using HTML + Javascript, there is a whole new framework laying underneath that can be programmed against by almost any language / framework.

The first piece of the puzzle comes from the new application model for creating applications. There are a number of codenames here that need to be sorted out

DirectUI: The underlying framework that creates, draws the visual elements on the screen.
Jupiter: The new packaging format of applications on Windows 8. Allows apps to be written in language of choice.
Immersive applications: Current theory is that these are apps that execute within the ‘new shell’ in windows 8. And are aware of being split paned and resized. Like was shown with the RSS feed reader.

Panorama Template

Posted by jasper22 at 16:34 |

Since the release of all the juicy news on windows 8 and XBOX in the last few weeks, I thought it would be cool to whip up a template to show you how you can create a cool little panorama similar to the ones seen on the new platform.

18,000 accounts compromised in BioWare hack

Posted by jasper22 at 16:33 |

Mass Effect developer the latest victim as mindless hacks sweep the industry

The sensitive personal data of more than 18,000 BioWare customers has been compromised in a new data hack, the EA studio has said.

BioWare discovered on Tuesday that an unauthorised user had gained access into its community servers associated with the Neverwinter Nights forums.

Personal data compromised includes usernames, passwords, email addresses and birth dates, BioWare has said.

No credit card data has been taken.

“We have emailed those whose accounts may have been compromised and either disabled their accounts or reset their EA Account passwords,” read a BioWare statement.

Help yourself in Debugging by using Call Stack and Immediate Window

Posted by jasper22 at 16:33 |

Here I am going to show you the two important window of the Visual Studio which is useful when you debugging the project and to get the result on the fly during debug mode.

Call Stack Window

Most of the developer get confuse when they are debugging application “From which function call came from up to my debug point”, this happens when they are working the code design by some one else or debugging code of the dll.

Following is one common scenario which I notice number of time developer does.

In the three tier application developers always put the break point in presentation layer when the break point get hit they always check the data and the do wonder that which business layer method called >> database layer method get called by presentation layer to get this data.

The Solution is Call Stack Window which is part of the Visual Studio. Shortcut for it is

Ctrl + Alt + C or go to menu Debug >> Windows >> Call Stack

Hebrew Date by Code

Posted by jasper22 at 16:32 |

הנה קוד להצגת תאריך עברי (מבוסס על המאמר כאן):

DateTime TodayDate = DateTime.Now;

System.Globalization.CultureInfo CultureInfo_ =

System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("he-IL");

CultureInfo_.DateTimeFormat.Calendar =

new System.Globalization.HebrewCalendar();

MessageBox.Show(TodayDate.ToString("dd MMMM y", CultureInfo_));

Sega Confirms Cyberattack

Posted by jasper22 at 16:11 |

TOKYO—In the latest cyberattack to hit the videogame industry, Sega Corp. said an intruder stole the personal information of nearly 1.3 million users of its online service from a company database.

Sega said the names, birthdays, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords registered ...

Howto Send and Read SMSs using a GSM modem, AT+ commands and PHP

Posted by jasper22 at 16:09 |

I need to send/read SMS with PHP. To do that, I need a GSM modem. There are few of them if we google a little bit. GSM modems are similar than normal modems. They’ve got a SIM card and we can do the same things we can do with a mobile phone, but using AT and AT+ commands programmatically. That’s means we can send (and read) SMSs and create scripts to perform those operations. Normally those kind of devices uses a serial interface. So we need to connect our PC/server with a serial cable to the device. That’s a problem. Modern PCs sometimes dont’t have serial ports. Modern GSM modems have a USB port, and even we can use serial/USB converters. I don’t like to connect directly those devices to the PC/server. They must be close. Serial/USB cables cannot be very long (2 or 3 meters). I prefer to connect those devices using serial/ethernet converters. Because of that I will create a dual library. The idea is enable the operations when device is connected via serial cable and also when it’s connected thought a serial/ethernet converter.

The idea is the following one: We are going to create a main class called Sms. It takes in the constructor (via dependency injection) the HTTP wrapper or the serial one (both with the same interface). That means our Sms class will work exactly in the same way with one interface or another.

Let’s start. First we’re going to create a Dummy Mock object, sharing the same interface than the others. The purpose of that is to test the main class (Sms.php)

<?php

class Sms_Dummy implements Sms_Interface

{

public function deviceOpen()

{

}

public function deviceClose()

{

}

public function sendMessage($msg)

{

}

public function readPort()

{

return array("OK", array());

}

private $_validOutputs = array();

public function setValidOutputs($validOutputs)

{

$this->_validOutputs = $validOutputs;

}

Web Site Attack Vulnerabilities

Posted by jasper22 at 16:08 |

Mr. Jordan Ehrlich wrote a excellent presentation that provider a good overview on Web Site Attack Vulnerabilities.

The presentation can be download from the following link.

What are the most interesting HTML/JS/DOM/CSS hacks that most web developers don't know about?

Posted by jasper22 at 16:07 |

You can quickly run HTML in the browser without creating a HTML file:

Enter this in the address bar: data:text/html,<h1>Hello, world!</h1> (This won't work in IE)

You can make a page's CSS editable in the browser without using JS:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<body>

body { color: blue }

</style>

</body>

</html>

(This also won't work in IE)

You can have the browser parse a URL for you like this:

var a = document.createElement('a');

a.href = url;

// any property of window.location works here:

document.write('The hostname of ' + url + ' is ' + a.hostname);

Windows 8 Milestone 3 build 7989 leaks

Posted by jasper22 at 14:55 |

A Milestone 3 version of Windows 8 leaked publicly on Saturday.

The build is currently being distributed on FTPs and file sharing sites after an anonymous leakster posted the bits to the win7vista site. The build is a sample of Microsoft’s work from April with Windows 8 and does not reflect the current state of winmain builds. The build is currently available on private FTP sites and is expected to be made available on the usual torrent and file sharing sites in the next few hours.

6.2.7989.0.amd64fre.winmain.110421-1825 includes a new wallpaper and unlockable UI bits with the usual red pill trick. It’s not yet clear whether the build includes Microsoft’s new Start Screen interface. Microsoft has also updated the bootscreen to include a betta fish, similar to the one used in Windows 7 beta builds.

Jasper22.NET