Blog

Deploying Network Services behind Corporate Firewalls: Net.TCP Port Sharing in WCF

Just found a good feature of WCF, which seems quiet useful for distributed application developing/deployment practices. Through Net.TCP Port Sharing Service, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) allows different processes to share the same TCP Ports. Now you can deploy your .Net based network services side-by-side with IIS on port 80 or 8080, the standard HTTP and HTTP Proxy ports you find open in many firewalls by default. No need to mess around with client

uTorrent for Mobile

Wait a minute… you think you can leech some bits of torrents from every public hotspot that comes your way? No sir, that’s not the case (at least for now). This neat piece of software is not a torrent client, it actually lets you control the uTorrent from your mobile, ideally on Wi-Fi in home or office, where you have uTorrent running with WebUI installed.

I just happen to setup WebUI for myself and had this wild idea to get the remote control on my mobile, and guess what, “Your best idea is already copyrighted.” proves true again!

These guys here have done a great job actually. The uTorrent Remote Control is done in J2ME, with a simple interface, lets you control and monitor torrent activity on your uTorrent application.

I also found some other useful bits here on the same site, but I’m in love with this torrent thingy I tell you that. Go try it for yourself!

Cheers,

// ch3ckmat3

More e-paper, more e-book readers

The scene has now become interesting with a number of e-paper based portable e-book readers on the market, and we are getting a brand new gadget every once in a while in this pool now.

Just like BeBook, yet another cool e-book reader on the block…but still no luck with the prices…the asking price for this gizmo is huge 329.95 EUR with converts to almost 510 USD!!!

The success of Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle Reader proves that even latest large screen mobile phones and other hand-held media gadgets are insufficient for reading books, specifically for mature readers.

For other options available, here is a good Feature Matrix on E-book Readers I found on MobileRead Wiki.

cheers,

// ch3ckmat3

Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 2

SilverlightScott Guthrie of Microsoft enlightens us on upcoming and highly anticipated Beta 1 of Silverlight 2. Link to his blog post here.

For those who don’t know about Silverlight, here it is… in a nutshell:

Silverlight is a (cross)browser plug-in, just like Adobe Flash Player… with a rich set of UI controls and application programming framework, just like Adobe Flex. It uses a declarative language (XAML) for UI definitions and JavaScript + .Net Framework languages for programming logic… just like Adobe’s MXML and ActionScript. Microsoft also has a rich tool-set for developing Silverlight applications (MS Expression and VS 2008)… just like Adobe Flash designer tool and Adobe Flex IDE.

Well… Silverlight is certainly much more than that… just like Adobe Flash is… but I suppose that a comparative approach would make it easier to understand for almost everyone.

Scott’s post is quiet comprehensive for everything else you need to know about Silverlight.

happy lightening

// ch3ckmat3

UI Design Patterns for Effective Applications

Just found a cool resource on Web 2.0 user interface design practices:

Logo

I  must say that this folk Anders Toxboe has done a great job by bringing many cool best practices of modern UI design in one place. And as he says, this is not the first site for this kind of effort, Yahoo Developer Network  and Welie.com also has rich collections if UI design patterns as well.

I think these are good reads for software architects, information architects, usability engineers and certainly for web designers and SQA pros of today for building effective business applications of tomorrow.

Visit now:

Cheers,

// ch3ckmat3

SWF2Go Professional 1.5 now available through Orison Store

SWF2Go BoxOur website made SWF2Go Professional version 1.5 publicly available through our online store, which was previously distributed to existing customers only.

SWF2Go is a professional tool for Adobe FlashLite mobile applications developers. Faisal has more on his blog post. Checkout product website for details.

 

// ch3ckmat3

Launch Command Prompt & ASP.Net 2.0 Web Server on any Folder

Here are a couple of quick registry hacks to quickly launch Command Prompt and ASP.Net 2.0 Web Server on right-click action of any folder. Particularly useful for ASP.Net developers and testers using command-line tools and  managing multiple asp.net web sites. Thanks to Faisal for the tips.

Simply paste the below text in notepad and save as .reg file, and double-click to execute and save the changes to the registry (You must have admin rights to do so).

Save this as “Start Web Server Here.reg”

 Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\VS2005 WebServer]
@=”ASP.NET 2.0 Web Server Here”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\VS2005 WebServer\command]
@=”C:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v2.0.50727\\Webdev.WebServer.exe /port:80 /path:\”%1\” /vpath:\”/\””

And save this one as “Command Prompt Here.reg”

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt]
@=”Command Prompt Here”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt\command]
@=”cmd.exe /k cd \”%1\””

Using these examples, you can add your own custom actions to context menu for folder or files.

Added: Some of my colleagues were having difficulties with the copy-paste method, due to web encoding of some characters in the above registry dump. So i decided to upload a file:

File Attachment: RegistryHacks.zip (717 bytes)

cheers,

// ch3ckmat3