Just code - Tamir Khason : soft

New year – new blog or how to migrate Community Server to any other engine, supports XML-RPC

Tamir Khason — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:33:04 GMT

Please update your bookmarks, because the new url of this blog is http://khason.net/ (you have not update RSS feeds, it will be done automatically). Why I did it? Why I decided to go to “stand-alone”… Well. there are some reasons. Generally, I do not want to explain all those here, but trust me, there are some. The main reason is, that there is no responsible person in charge for this blog platform in Microsoft Israel. This why, if your blog is popular and you have a respect to your blog visitors, you cannot host it here… Take a look into new comments notifications in my inbox. Would you answer your readers with such “small amount” of SPAM and capcha, that cannot be fixed already for three years in this platform? This how my inbox looks like for last three years. So now, you should not ask me, why I not answered your email or comments. Aren’t you? :)

Currently, all comments in this blog are disabled, so if you want to comment, please use new url of posts (this will appear shortly in the beginning of each post). Also, this post will not be syndicated in RSS.

So, this post is the last. I loved this platform, and loved people started it. But, unfortunately, it seemed, that bloggers community is not important enough for new platform managers.

Also, If you want to learn how to use C# and XML-RCP to migrate from CS2007, used in this platform, visit my new home :)

Have a great year and, as always, be good people. This post marked with all possible tags automatically. Sorry.

Issues, you reported were fixed

Tamir Khason — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:35:46 GMT

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Hi, folks. And thank you for reporting issues with WpfPerf Performance Profiling tool. Now it was fixed, so, download and use new and fixed version.

Keep reporting, as you can see, you have the power to change!

Imaginary by Malcolm Dare

Free Microsoft Expression series video training catalogs

Tamir Khason — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 07:44:55 GMT

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MSDN download center just published video catalogs, where you can find sample chapters of Total Training’s video series for Microsoft Expression studio. Worth to download and see. Here the breakdown by products

Expression Blend 2 [Windows / Mac]
Expression Encoder 2 [Windows / Mac]
Expression Design 2 [Windows / Mac]
Expression Media 2 [Windows / Mac]
Expression Web 2 [Windows / Mac]

Also, if you are “in” Office development, it makes sense to take a look in to Data Connectivity Components for Office 2007 System. It can be used by non-Microsoft Office applications to read data from Office system files.

Happy downloading!

Nokia Mail for Exchange 2.7 is out

Tamir Khason — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:47:58 GMT

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New version of outstanding Exchange synchronization tool for Nokia phones is out. There are no big changes, except heart beat implementation of ActiveSync and fixes to contacts mapping bug is there. The main feature of this version is, that it can now run on any S60 phone (including 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 devices), not only on E and N series. Full list of changes can be found here.

The bad news is, that Nokia MFE 2.7 still does not support inbox folders synchronization. This is the main feature missing in this great software. However, according the update rate, it should arrive soon.

Download Nokia Mail for Exchange 2.7 >>

Visual Studio snippet designer

Tamir Khason — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:48:12 GMT

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Chicks love CodePlex as well as Microsoft loves it too and today they release extremely useful tool, that was internal for more, then three years. It named: “Visual Studio Snippet Designer”.

As you can, probably, understand. This tools is used to create and manage VS time savers - snippet files (introduced in VS2005)

This is great tool, that will help you a lot to save your time during regular everyday development. Any other word is unnecessary. Download, install and use it!

Vista batter saver got Danish locale! + RC2 branch

Tamir Khason — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:52:02 GMT

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Great thank (how will it be in Danish?) to Bjarke Istrup Pedersen for Danish translation of Vista Batter Saver.

Download public beta 2 r2 with Danish locale >>

If you would like to take a challenge and test new RC2, you can do it also (no locale yet). It includes additional functionality and dozen bugs fixes.

Download latest RC1 >>

The Original Tetris on Windows Vista

Tamir Khason — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:12:07 GMT

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For last days I’m very busy with Bidi support for Silverlight development. Working a lot of hours in order to finish it until TechEd. So, I’m very tired and need relaxation. What can be better, then Tetris? But, there are millions of Tetrises. What to choose? What’s the question? The original one.

This genius game was developed by Vadim Gerasimov, Alexey Pajitnov and Dmitry Pavlovsky about 20 years ago and it still working on Windows PC (even in Vista). This how to build software. As far as I know, today Vadim works in Google, Alexey in WildSnake and Vadim is commercial director somewhere in Russia.

So, download and play Tetris now. Unfourchantely, 16 bit Antrix requires full screen emulation, that is not supported on Vista.

Phone history or why I throw my Tytn II

Tamir Khason — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:44:56 GMT

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I decided to throw out my HTC TYTN II (Actually AT&T Tilt) and get old Nokia E61 back. Why I’m doing it? Tytn is much better, then old Nokia? It’s 3.75G/HSUPA mobile phone, running latest Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. It also has full QUERTY keyboard, 2.8” LCD monitor, 3MP camera and even very good integrated GPS. Nokia has neither. It’s processor is x4 faster and memory x3 bigger. Why I cannot use it? Why I want my old “keyboard brick” back?

First of all, I need phone. Not “freaky damn good uber extensible device”. I want to push one button to receive/make call, push another button to read/answer email. That’s all I need. I need business phone. I do not want to be worry about battery/alarms/meeting/time offset/current time/something wrong/too much processes/no memory/fault/occasionally shutdown/my ears near end call or mute button and all other “goodies” come with TYTN 2 device. I want to be able to dial number without looking on device. I want to be able to do it either when its sunny day outside. I want to push one button to refuse receive call, send “I’m sorry” SMS and turn ring off simultaneously. And I do not want to reinstall ROMS to figure one with small amounts of bugs and then reinstall 300 programs that allows me to do it. I want business phone, that knows what I need.

Just see the regular flow phone usage – make call:

Click power/unlock button
Enter password (there is exchange policy). To do this you have to look on screen. If you wont you’ll absolutely unable to know where each button on screen. Windows mobile using different keyboard for lock and phone utility.
You should press left hardware button. It is not very easy task, ‘cos if your phone doing something now, you’ll wait for response between 1-2 seconds. If you’ll press it twice – you’ll arrive into calendar utility (only for this layout everyone in UX team of Windows Mobile should be fired.
Press Phone button opens dialer utility. If you want any of your last incoming/outgoing/missed calls, you should press another soft button on screen (up jog button not always responses as required)
Choose phone to call (another non-responsive hardware up/down buttons) and then
Press middle big button…
Nothing happes… “OK” button?
You arrived to the contact information (I want to call)!!! Just side note, Windows Mobile is very smart system and if you have more, then one number per contact (work/mobile/office/text) it will call this number by default forever.
Finally I choose a number I want to call (if you choose Text field of contact it brings your SMS interface instead of dialer) and calling the contact
Busy… Redial? Automatic redial? Nothing. Now you should keep sitting and trying to process all above steps each time you want to redial…

Very useful, very easy tool. Isn’t it? Now let’s call the contact with E61

Click unlock button
Enter password (your keyboard is always the same and you should not look into it to dial 5 button is marked)
Move jog up
Move jog down
Move your finger left and up (each button has its unique profile and you can feel it)
Dial
Busy? E61 will redial for you until it’ll catch the contact or you’ll cancel operation. You even do not need to hold phone near ear. Once it success, you’ll hear gentle sound from external speaker.

Should not it work this way? It should, because it is phone, not PDA device.

What about exchange synchronization? Works perfectly. I do not want E61I (successor of E61) it much slower and bugger, then E61. I’m waiting for E71 (smaller) to see if it good for me. but meanwhile, I’m paying $300 to get my E61 back. Someone want to buy my Tilt? Bid in comments.

All above is the reason I do not want IPhone. It’s toy. Very cool and beautiful toy. It is not tool I need everyday.

P.S. I think Microsoft should think a lot about Windows CE 5.x, used as WM. It is not OS for phones, it’s OS for devices with some tools to be able to make calls. Microsoft never be the favorite of mobile market (like Steve Ballmer want it to be), unless they understand, that CE is not operation system for phones. Just in case, currently Nokia holds 33% of the market, next is Motorola (20%), and Samsung (13%). Pay attention all three companies have phone operation system. It’s not about coolness of the device. It’s all about usability of tools.

P.P.S Yes, it’s much easier to find or develop additional tools for Windows Mobile, rather then for Symbian. But I’m ready to pay this bill if I’ll be able to use my phone as phone.

Backup and restore your wireless networks settings by using WirelessMigrator

Tamir Khason — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:58:00 GMT

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I had to reinstall my working notebook, so I begun to backup all it’s settings. I almost finished, when recognize, that Windows Vista has no tool for backup and restore wireless networks settings (tnx to Daniel Petri). You can manually add or remove it. You can even change the priorities, but you cannot backup or restore it.

What to do? How to save all my passwords for networks and all certificates. Digging a bit deeper I found a way to do it, by using command line prompt.

“netsh wlan show profiles” will show you all wireless network profiles in your system
”netsh wlan export profile name=”name” folder=”folder”” will export each profile to xml file (you can also run netsh wlan export profile” to export them all as bunch
”netsh wlan add profile filename=”name”” will restore each one of profiles and returns them into the system

For some reason, I cannot see my mother doing it… More then this, I cannot see myself remember all those command and doing it manually for each one of saved profiles (and I have a lot of them)

What’s the solution? Build handy tool! I’m developer after all and know to solve my and other’s problems by code.

Let me introduce you WirelessMigrator

What is WirelessMigrator? Wireless Migrator is a handy small program, that knows to backup and restore all wireless networks setting from your computer by one click. For some reason, there is no way to do it by using regular Windows Vista tools.
This feature is extremely useful, when you have to reinstall your computer or use the same settings of wireless networks for different machines. In order to use the program, all you have to do is to run it once. The program generate small file, can be handled and transferred in diskette. Later if you'll run this generated file, all settings of wireless networks will be restored on target machine.

Run “BackupWireless.exe” to backup

And “RestoreWireless.wnb” to restore

That’s all, folks. Now you can save and restore your settings for wireless networks for migration easily.

Download Wireless Migrator >>

At first run, the program will request elevation on Windows Vista, to assign backup archive extension with the program and be able to restore with one click. To completely remove all registry nodes, wrote by program, from the registry, use BackupWireless.exe /remove option. To reinstall the program, just run it for the first time. That’s what I’m calling SmartClient. This is not “real” installation it also not very “web” application.

WirelessMigrator has very advanced and smart user interface

Now a little bit about the user interface of this program. I though a lot about it and decided not to make any user interface for it. Theoretically, it was possible to make kind of “Funky-Vista-Glow” list of all available networks and three buttons “Backup”, “Restore” and “Cancel”. I even done it with half an hour in WPF. But wait a moment. Is it really necessary to have user interface for such program? It wont be more functional by having it. All it have to do, done automatically and you have nothing to do if something going wrong.

So, I build text-only progress bar and key switches to show progress (with will not take more, then 3 seconds), but that’s all. ‘m really interested to know what do you think about it?

Download Wireless Migrator >>

Your feedback is really important for me. Please take a moment and tell me what’s good and what’s bad with this program in order me to be able to continue it’s development. Full source of the program is available under MS-PL from CodePlex.

My other open source projects, you may be interested with

Have a nice day and be good people.

Quick note: New TechEd downloads

Tamir Khason — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:25:15 GMT

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There is TechEd in Orlando, and this means, that there are a lot of new announcements. Let’s fill up our download managers with expensive fuel and start.

New WM 6.1 images (both standard and professional) – absolutely required if you’re programming Windows Mobile
Managed Extensibility Framework – I blogged about it a little in the past. Really cool approach for adding extensibility features to your applications. Krzysztof explains new features there.
Windows Live Writer new CTP + new SDK – the best tool to post into your blog.
New CTP of Microsoft Project Codename “Velocity” – great approach for development applications, using high performance in memory cache. Here the deep explanations in the team blog + quick start and samples.

Silverlight 2.0 beta 2 + Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 June preview will be available for download very soon. Keep watching. Meanwhile, you can start learn about new TabControl, VisualStateManager, new templating system and cross-domain policy from Tim Heuer’s blog. Also there are some news about event bubbling in beta 2 in Jesse’s blog.

How to protect your Intellectual Property or some words about next generation obfuscation

Tamir Khason — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:41:03 GMT

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Not once customers asking me about protecting their IP (not address). The regular answer was “obfuscation”. You want more, then this? Use third party unmanaged hash providers (such as RemoteSoft, which is the best so far). However it not enough. the best we can do is to provide sensitive code as remote service. The only way to “hack” such protection is by hacking remote server, which is much more complex mission, in comparison to hacking managed or even native code.

For a long time Microsoft has no ultimate answer to IP issues of managed code. Sun experienced the same problems with Java. what to do? The answer is to provide comprehensive solution for server side code encoding. This is exactly what was done in Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection Services. This is not free, however it can provide you with comprehensive solution for IP protection, licence management and secure software distribution.

After applying to this service, your code will looks like this

return SLMRuntime.SVMesecMethod(a);

Where SVMesecMethod is server side method, rather then

return MyEncriptor.DecodeString(a);
string DecodeString(string a) {
for ( long offset = 0; offset < a.Length ; offset++ )
                {
                    i = ( i + 1 ) % a.Length ;
                    j = ( j + a[i] ) % a.Length ;
                    byte temp = a[i];
                    a[i] = a[j];
                    a[j] = temp;
                    byte a = a[offset];
                    byte b = a[(a[i]+a[j])% a.Length ];
                    a[offset] = (byte)((int)a^(int)b);
                }
}

Where DecodeString is maybe complicated (this code actually does not work), but easy reflected source.

SLP service is not new approach. It widely used by different companies to protect their software. Also it’s very common way to distribute Smart Client applications. However this is first time Microsoft provides such service widely for ISVs.

You can request evaluation of this service today, by visiting SLP website.

OpenUp Sidebar gadget

Tamir Khason — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:52:26 GMT

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OpenUp competition is on the air? Authors of contributed projects are stressed and want to know what’s going on with their pet project on CodePlex.

What can they do about stress? To get it under control and download new gadget, I built to help them to relieve stress. Just look on your side bar and see three top rated projects (by CodePlex)

Click on it or drag it out of SideBar to see all submitted projects and it’s rating

Take it easy and return to work. You should continue development of your projects.

Download OpenUp gadget >>

Note: this is very first version with number of bugs. Those days I have no time to fix them, so you can either use it “as-is” or fix bugs and resubmit.

What’s new in MSDN Downloads?

Tamir Khason — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:02:41 GMT

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Just look how many new releases those days in MSDN Download web site.

Virtual PC 2007 SP1 – download and release notes
Scriptomatic 2.0 - download (uses PowerShell 1.0)
Windows PowerShell V2 CTP2 - download
Office Live Update 1.1 - download
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 beta – download
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta - download
Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - download
Microsoft Office for MAC SP1 – download
Windows XP SP3 – download as ISO or as NEP + release notes
Symbols package for Microsoft XP Service Pack 3 – download
Outlook 2007/2003/2002 Add-in for Personal Folder Backup – download
XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP – download

Too much – too cool. Turn your download managers on

Have a nice day

Gas Price Windows Vista SideBar gadget – new version is available for download

Tamir Khason — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:56:00 GMT

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This post is dedicated to some people in Microsoft and it’s subsidiaries. It begun about year ago, when I developed Gas Price information gadget (do not download it there). Before I started, I sent some personal email to those in MSN, who maintains it’s Auto section. I wait two days and got no response, so wrote this post about HTML scrapping and then I finished the gadget, that uses this technology.

Couple of weeks later, Senior Channel Manager of MSN Marketplace replayed to me. He asked whether I want to convert this gadget to “legal” one by gifting all rights to Microsoft. I asked about my benefits of doing it (my time costs money) and the conversation ended – he even did not responded. I was waiting for “YES” or “NO”, but got only silent.

Year after he mailed me again with warning, that they going to “protect” Auto section in order to prevent unauthorized content grabbing. He asked again about possibility to “legalize” the gadget – I told, that they can do with this gadget whatever they want, so handed it off to MSN team. Nothing happened. No one took care on this.

A month later, I asked again by proposing to allow Windows Vista SideBar referrer too aside with affiliate sites for MSN Auto images, thus the gadget can continue to work and MSN remains protected from other “grabbers”. But he demand to completely remove any reference to MSN from the gadget. The same time I got some proposals of using another data for this very popular gadget and populize other resources instead of very unpopular crappy MSN.

I decided to build new version of the gadget (here you can download) and did it today (my spare time – not work [this is for my manager]). This version even better, then previous one. It contains more information, that updates more frequently. I also includes distance from station and gas stations in Canada. So, this how it looks today

As you can see this one is much better and uses Automotive.com information. So what I have to do? Submit it instead of old one, right? This the response, I got from automatic system upon submission.

“Your item appears to be either missing a valid signature or a valid certificate. You may also want to check the signature to make sure that it includes the date”

Just to make things clear, I signed the code with private signature. They want me to sign it with Trusted Authority. This is very smart request, however I do not want to pay $200-$400 to make their sidebar better! There is neither ROI, nor benefit for me to pay money for something, I’m giving for free to anyone.

Just in case, signing code with certificate, trusted by authority even do not removes regular live gallery end-user warning.

“Unverified submission.

Only install applications from developers you trust. This is a third-party application, and it could access your computer's files, show you objectionable content, or change its behavior at any time.”

So why me to pay? Only because I want to be nice to Microsoft and replace my old gadget by new one to serve dozen thousands of people, who using Windows Vista with SideBar and my gadget?

NO WAY! I will not submit it there. I will never contribute anything for free to Windows Vista Live Gallery. They want me (and million of other developers) to submit it to Google or Yahoo? I’ll do it! I’ll force my customers to use 3rd party addons and visit 3rd party websites to get the information they want to get without paying anyone. At least their marketing guys know how to make developer not to suffer from his own good wish.

Thank you and good buy! You want to win web? You just impossible to do it.

Download Gas Price gadget for Windows Vista SideBar >> (it signed with personal certificate, so do it for your own risk :) )

P.S. Next week, I have a meeting with Steve Ballmer and I’m going to ask him all those questions. If you have any questions and want me to ask him, please send it to me or leave a comment.

UPD (18-May): Some issues were fixed (zips starting with 0, negative prices, sorting). You can download new version of the gadget from the same url and update your local version. Great thank to all, who reported issues.

OpenUp and my Open Source submissions

Tamir Khason — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:12:31 GMT

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Amir Shevat from Microsoft Israel DPE department started cool competition, named OpenUp. I decided to give hand to this initiative and posted sources of some of my applications on CodePlex and submit it to the competition.

Currently, my submission includes (except old Vista Battery Saver and Windows Live Writer Plugins):

WebCam control for WPF
Silverlight controls library
Duplicate images finder (yes, yes I posted sources for this application too)

Later I’ll submit my other applications (first I have to make it’s code to looks “submittable” :) ). This will include generic plugin based free hosting upload tool, some applications for Windows Mobile, some Time Tracking applications and others. Keep tracking

For more information about OpenUp, visit its website

Vote for me and see you in PDC

Just code - Tamir Khason : soft

New year – new blog or how to migrate Community Server to any other engine, supports XML-RPC

Issues, you reported were fixed

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Free Microsoft Expression series video training catalogs

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