Darren Sim's Blog

Is your Phishing toolbar really reliable?

Identity theft is on the rise, daily, and many of these attacks are done in combination with Spam Attacks as well as Phishing. Vishing, another new phenomena, is also increasing seen in the information security industry.

So what exactly is Vishing? Vishing is the notion where someone calls you, claiming to be from a bank, and gives you a specific URL by phone, to login to change your password. Or they could even be asking you to change your password via phone (meaning asking you to tell them ur current password).

Some crafty individuals, even go to the extend of telling you that there were many phishing emails sent out, thus to protect bank customers, the bank had decided to engage their company's service to call customers to alert them about it and advice them to change their passwords over the phone.

Well, we cannot prevent these, as identity thieves are getting creatives by the day. At best, we can mitigate the risks.

Some of us might turn to solutions such as Anti-Phishing filters. But just exactly how accurate are they? I happen to come across a research paper, done by 4 students from the CyLab in Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), focusing on which anti-phishing tool is really useful, and which ones cases more harm then good.

http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/files/cmucylab06018.pdf

Free Windows Vista and Office 2007 @ PowerTogether Event

Hi Folks,

If you're thinking about getting Vista and Office12 for free, here's how you could do it.

Visit: http://www.powertogether.com/ to register for the event. However, you must be a US Legal Resident to be qualified though.

Text Generation Tool for webdesign

If you're designing a website and have no idea what kind of text to be placed in as place holders for clients? You definitely do not want the sentense of

"The big bad wolf jumps over the sea. The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea.The big bad wolf jumps over the sea."

don't you? It looks ugly doesn't it?

Is there any solution then? Yes of course!

Make use of Lorem Ipsum, which is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.

It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker (well, i guess now it's Adobe PageMaker?)including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

The above description had been adapted from http://www.lipsum.com/, and you could visit the same URL to generate your dummy now!

Apple to unvail new Tablet PC

Years ago, Apple attempted to introduce a tablet PC kinda computer, but it failed to make it a success. However, years later, Microsoft, together with several hardware partners came together to create the tablet PC which runs on windows.

Australian site Smarthouse pointed out, through sources in Taiwan ,that Apple has built a working prototype of a Mac tablet with several hardware companies.

Let's see what apple have up it's sleeves soon.

iPhone is something not to be missed out too!

Many thanks to friends in redmond!

I've been searching locally within the local subsidary in Microsoft, in search for a software that's not released in MSDN/MVPs yet, which I'd have to present in less then 2 week time, but had been banging against the hard wall in all attempts. 

Kinda scary huh!

Finally after talking to several friends working in Microsoft Redmond, one of them had finally found a way for me to get access to this software legally! Finally! yay!!!

To the guys in redmond (if you guys are reading this), many thanks again! I really appreciate your kind help and I look forward to working with you guys closely on the labs.

I guess I'd have to keep the software's title undisclosed for now as it's still under NDA. Would keep this post updated as soon as the NDA seal is removed.

New Gadgets?

I had been thinking to get myself a new MP3 Player.

However, I am also considering, if I should just totally do away with Windows Mobile 5.0 all together, and go back to a Nokia phone? 02 has served me pretty well, but I am not very impressed with their support, especially in Singapore.

The camera on the 02 phone is also not impressive. The picture that comes out of the camera on the phone, is really terrible.The audio playing capability is also bad. 02 didnt really come out with a good headphone (their headphone really looks like some cheap piece of plastic they put together, for the sake of having it).

SMSing on the phone is really a pain when you have to type out each word.

I have 2 options

• Just buy a new MP3 Player
• Dump my 02 Atom, and get a new phone which has
• MP3 Player
• Camera (with a good lense)

My MP3 Player Options

So why am I not getting a Zune or IPod? I've head enough bad news about IPod, and Zune's not going to have good support (or even any) if I ship it in from US. Changes of me getting the Sumsung one is higher, as the SanDisk had a not so nice button and the graphics on the screen of the SanDisk is not exactly too impressive.

My New Phone Option

 (Nokia N93)

Sony Erricson K800i

XML Notepad 2007 is out

When I was in Seattle 4 months ago, Microsoft launched the XML Notepad 2006. 5 months later, they launched XML Notepad 2007.

I could not seem to open it. It executes, but is always in minimized state, never allowing me to see anything. Strange though...

Maybe I should try to restart my computer and see what happens. (Btw, after installing XMLNotepad 2007, XMLNotepad 2006 no longer works).

Here are some of the features I was supposed to be enjoying.

• Added keyboard accelerators for find again (F3) and reverse find (SHIFT+F3).
• Added support for loading IXmlBuilder and IXmlEditor implementations from different assemblies using new vs:assembly attribute.
• Made source code localizable by moving all error messages and dialog strings to .resx files.
• Added a default XSL transform.
• New icons, a play on the Vista "Notepad" icons.

• Fixed install on Windows Vista machines using Windows Installer XML 3.0.
• Performance of expand node when validating.
• Fixed bug where changed schemas and transforms were not being re-loaded.
• Fixed spurious warnings about file being changed on disk.
• Fixed handling of very long text nodes.
• Fixed round trip of DTD content in <!DOCTYPE> tags.
• Fixed validation of elements with xsi:type attributes.
• Scroll bar not updating when node expanded/collapsed in some cases.
• Tree view needs horizontal scrollbar.
• When XML Notepad is minimized and file changes on disk, the file reload prompt is confusing. Notepad should be restored first.
• XSL output window should pick up new xsl-transform based on input document.
• Fixed unhandled exception when closing a group of XML notepad windows.
• Added registration of "Edit" action for .xml file extension.
• Move source code to CodePlex.

You could download this from http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5827243 at your own risk! =)

Expression Webdesigner will not be in MSDN

The announcement had been made days ago, that Expression Webdesign WILL NOT be available to MSDN suscribers, due to the fact that Expressions is more positioned to designers, rather then developers.

However, if you're from an academic institute, you might be lucky this time round, as Expression Web would be available to the MSDN Acad (and it's only for academics).

Expression has just changed so much since it's first inception. You'd be expecting quite a fair bit of changes, in months to come. Keep a lookout!

Resources for Learning .NET 3.0

If you're thinking about picking up .NET 3.0, but have no idea where to start from, following are some resources that might be able to get you started.

Videos

·          WinFX (.NET 3.0) - Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), InfoCard (Windows CardSpace) & Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Training

·          NETFXGuide

·          Free Vista / .NET 3.0 E-Learning: All courses listed here

·          See the New Capabilities: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio 2005: Learn about Windows Presentation Foundation and more new capabilities provided by the .NET Framework 3.0. Free collection from Microsoft Learning. Click here or here.

·          Get Started With Windows Workflow Foundation: Free clinic from Microsoft Learning: See the functionality and architecture of Windows Workflow Foundation, and learn how to use it with Visual Studio 2005 to build workflow-enabled applications. Click here.

·          Introduction to Developing with Windows Communication Foundation and Visual Studio 2005: Free clinic from Microsoft Learning: Learn how to create Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services and clients, and enhance WCF services. Click here.

·          .NET University Hands on Labs

·          .NET University schedule

WPF Blogs

·          The WPF Blog

·          WPF Community Blog

·          Expression Team Blog

·          WPF Visual Designer

·          XAML Only

·          Karsten Januszewski

WPF Whitepapers

·          WPF for Windows Developers

·          Fundamentals, Data, Graphics and Media 

WPF Videos

·          NY Times Reader demo

·          Karsten Januszewski, a technical evangelist focusing on WPF

·          Designer Demos

·          Developer/Designer Workflow in WPF

WPF Presentations

·         .NET University Windows Presentation Foundation PPTs

WPF Training

·         Excerpted Invaluable 5 day course from Karsten Januszewski  blog post:

1.       Watch Developing a WPF Application

2.       Michael Wallent's presentation from MIX

3.       Watch A Designer's Overview of WPF 

4.       Introducing Microsoft Tools for Professional Designers

WPF Sample Applications

·         Cine.View: A WPF viewing application that exposes the NetFlix catalog and ordering capabilities created by the thirteen23 company. They also have a great viewer for Flickr.

·         New York Times Reader: A WPF content application that provides a rich browsing and reading experience for the paper's news content online in a Windows application. 

·         Karen Corby's Woodgrove Finance application: This is a WPF XAML Browser application that provides rich visualization of stock market data in a multi-paned WPF app that runs in the browser.

·         More samples

WCF Blogs

·         Nicholas Allen’s Blogs, Program Manager - WCF.

·         Mattavis's WebLog: Migrating .NET Remoting to WCF

WF Training

·         Clinic 5137 AE: Introduction to Developing with Windows Communication Foundation and Visual Studio 2005

WF Whitepapers

·         MSDN: From .NET Remoting to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

WF Presentations

·         .NET University Windows Communication Foundation PPTs

WCF Webcasts

·         MSDN Architecture Webcast: Using Windows Communication Foundation with BizTalk Server 2006 (Level 200)

·         MSDN Architecture Webcast: Building Powerful AJAX-Style Solutions with ASP.NET "Atlas" and Windows Communication Foundation (Level 200)

·         MSDN Webcast: Working with Operations and Calls in Windows Communication Foundation (Level 200)

WCF Videos

·         MSDN TV: BizTalk Server and Indigo

·         Laurence Melloul and Craig McMurty: WCF Tracing

WCF Sample Applications

·         ATLAS.ASP.NET: Using Windows Communication Foundation with "Atlas"

WF Blogs

·         MasteringBizTalk.com: Using WF to run a page-flow

·         MSDN Blogs: Windows Workflow Foundation vs BizTalk Server

WF Whitepapers

·         A look at the BizTalk roadmap

·         Working with Windows Workflow Foundation in ASP.NET Working with Windows Workflow Foundation in ASP.NET

·         Windows Workflow Foundation for Web services

·         Deploy Distributed Business Processes With Windows Workflow And Web Services

WF Training

·         Clinic 5136 AE: Introduction to Developing with Windows Workflow Foundation and Visual Studio 2005

WF Presentations

·         .NET University Windows Workflow Foundation PPTs

WF Lab

·         Ajax based Windows Workflow Designer

WF Videos

·         WinFX (.NET 3.0) - Workflow Foundation (WF)

·         MSDN Webcast: Live From Redmond: ASP.NET: An Overview of ASP.NET and Windows Workflow Foundation Integration

CardSpace Whitepapers

·         Windows Vista Developer Center:A Guide to Supporting InfoCard (now CardSpace) v1.0 Within Web Applications and Browsers

CardSpace Presentations

·         .NET University Windows CardSpace PPTs

CardSpace Sample Applications

·         Introduction to CardSpace with Internet Explorer 7.0

Changes between XNA Beta 1 to XNA Beta 2

If any of you guys have been following XNA since the Beta 1 days, you'd have noticed that the Update() and Draw() methods were really neat features which had thus taken away your job of writing the timer methods.

However, in Beta 2, we'd be seeing some changes in these 2 methods. Following is an abstract of the XNA Blog regarding the changes.

Game

Game is for the most part the same.  We renamed some things and moved some things around based on feedback including improving device management and made resource loading and unloading easier.  Here’s a list of the changes:

• Starting event and OnStarting method were removed.
• Initialize was added and replaces what Starting was used for.  You should hook up your dependencies and load your non-graphics content here.
• Added LoadGraphicsContent and UnloadGraphicsContent.  You no longer have to hook up the various device events (either from GraphicsDevice or IGraphicsDeviceService).  We now do all of that for you and call these two methods at the appropriate times.
• Added BeginRun and EndRun. These are protected virtual that you can override if you need to perform some one time scene setup before running, or saving high scores after running.
• Update and Draw now take a GameTime parameter.  GameTime provides a snapshot of time passed into these methods.
• Time related properties have been removed from Game.  As mentioned, GameTime provides timing data, so we don’t need them on Game anymore.
• Added BeginDraw and EndDraw.  These are used by Game to provide a bit more device management. BeginDraw will verify that the device is in a valid state to be used.  If it is not, then Draw will not be called.  This removes the need for EnsureDevice, which we had in the beta.  EndDraw calls Present for you. You can override either of these to have more control, but you usually will not need to.
• UpdateComponents and DrawComponents have been removed.  You now call base.Update and base.Draw, which is as it should be.

So, if your Beta 1 games don't work, this might be something you wana start looking into. Happy coding!

.NET 3.0 Myths

"I've just learnt .NET 2.0! Is Microsoft crazy? Coming out with an entire new framework so soon?" is the common misconception that many developers have about .NET 3.0.

 Just to dimystify the myth, .NET 3.0 is just an addition to .NET 2.0, with 4 main components

• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows CardSpaces

ASP.NET 2.0, C# 2005, VB 2005 and etc remains exactly the same. There be changes in ASP.NET and the likes in .NET 3.5 which might be launched next year.

 So another question would arise "So what about 'Atlas' ?". "Atlas" had been given the offical name of "ASP.NET Ajax" or "Microsoft Ajax Library", which would be released as a separate release from .NET 3.0. You'd have to download it from the ASP.NET website until .NET 3.5, where it'd then be integrated together with the framework.

 Just to let you guys take a quick preview on what Microsoft Ajax Library is all about, I'd worked with Microsoft couple of months back to develop a Proof-of-Concept (POC) for a local mapping company in Singapore. You could visit http://demo.virtual-map.com/v1/default.aspx to take a sneak preview.

Windows Vista Product Map

Source: Microsoft

 If you hadn't heard of Windows Vista, Office 2007, .NET Framework 3.0, Longhorn Server and the likes, you might want to take a look at this map to see how it all maps together to be one big eco-system, which you could leaverage on your development projects.