Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released

I don't want to announce the obvious, but just point you to a great blog to check for the news. Go to Scott Gu's Blog for the latest news about the Visual Studio and .NET features.

Microsoft is ready to ship Visual Studio 9 (Orcas) by the end of this year.

Great news!!! Microsoft is ready to ship Visual Studio 9 (Orcas) by the end of this year:

· The product team at Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 as we speak now. We are on track to shipping these products before the end of November 2007. We will have the marketing launch for these along with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 at the end of February.

For more announcements check Somasegar's WebLog.

Part 1- Securing Client Stream with SSL

Most of the communications outside of your home network are secured and encrypted. The most popular kind of a secured communication today is the SSL. In most cases it is not even required to do any configuration for the end user.

Let's assume: we have a server that requires that all the incoming connections be secured with SSL. The following post shows an example of how this can be accomplished.

I'll show you the implementation by securing the POP3 communication while retrieving e-mails from the Gmail POP3 servers by the POP3 tunneling client. This client was introduced by Bart De Smet in this series of posts:
Pop3 Tunneling

Note that authentication of the client is optional. This allows us to use the SSL only for the channel encryption without any client authentication and authorization. This is why the HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) is widely popular - the end users are not required to issue and configure their own certificates and the server-side issued certificates are used to encrypt the traffic.

   1:  // The following method is invoked by the RemoteCertificateValidationDelegate.
   2:  private bool ValidateServerCertificate(
   3:      object sender,
   4:      X509Certificate certificate,
   5:      X509Chain chain,
   6:      SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors)
   7:  {
   8:      if (sslPolicyErrors == SslPolicyErrors.None)
   9:          return true;
  10:  
  11:      Console.WriteLine("Certificate error: {0}", sslPolicyErrors);
  12:  
  13:      // Do not allow this client to communicate with unauthenticated servers.
  14:      return false;
  15:  }
  16:  
  17:  SslStream sslStream = new SslStream(client.GetStream(), false,
  18:          new RemoteCertificateValidationCallback(ValidateServerCertificate), null);
  19:          sslStream.AuthenticateAsClient(server);
  20:          stream = sslStream;

The modified Pop3Client (Pop3ClientSecured) code can be downloaded here. The package includes a test application as well, so you're welcome to try it against your Gmail account (if you have it or any other POP3 account).

Anouncement! WCF and WFF posts series

Recently I've been doing a very interesting research and, as a result of this, I've built a very interesting piece of technology. Since, at this moment, I can’t reveal it to the general public, due to my oblications to my employer, I can though talk about it in the general terms. This is leading me to publish a series of posts that will allow us to built step by step a very interesting and powerful application.

Stay tuned …

MyOrganizer now supports Outlook/Exchange

Just uploaded a new version of MyOrganizer plug-in. Now it supports Outlook/Exchange calendar in addion to the previous Google support.

http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/Extensions-Plugins/MyOrganizer

Stakka storage device automation

Published a first stage of the Stakka Storage Device automation project.

You're welcome to read more about it on the dedicated page as well as to play with the Stakka automation test tool.

The test tool wraps the Stakka USB protocol in C# code.

Motion-activated TimeLapse Video Recorder

Creates a time-lapsed videos from web/ip cameras, JPEG/MJPEG streams as well as from AVI files. It can be configured to record video only if any motion detected.

More information can be found on my web site.

Check out a time-lapsed video created from the Stuttgart airport's MJPEG stream - shtutgard_airport.avi

Published (and checked-in) an IE-based Web Browser plug-in for the Media Portal. It supports zoom in and out of the hosted web page.

More info can be found on my Wall-Top dedicated page.

Careful! Watch the stairs!

Who stole the stairs?!!

Keyword mix

Some companies are trying to gain your attention by using as many keywords as possible. Often they create very funny mixes.


Remember the "Let's analyze this"?

- This is a great car - one owner is loaded and you can fit 2 more bodies in the trunk !!! ;-)