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• Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce the release today of several products: ASP.NET MVC 3 NuGet IIS Express 7.5 SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Orchard 1.0 WebMatrix 1.0 The above products are all free. They build upon the .NET 4 and VS 2010 release, and add a ton of additional value to ASP.NET (both Web Forms and MVC) and the Microsoft Web Server stack. ASP.NET MVC 3 Today we are shipping the final release of ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install ASP.NET MVC 3 here.  The ASP.NET MVC 3 source code (released under an OSI-compliant open source license) can also optionally be downloaded here. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a significant update that brings with it a bunch of great features.  Some of the improvements include: Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to continuing to support/enhance the existing .aspx view engine).  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, with Razor you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type.  You can learn more about Razor from some of the blog posts I’ve done about it over the last 6 months Introducing Razor New @model keyword in Razor Layouts with Razor Server-Side Comments with Razor Razor’s @: and <text> syntax Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor Layouts and Sections with Razor Today’s release supports full code intellisense support for Razor (both VB and C#) with Visual Studio 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. JavaScript Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3 enables richer JavaScript scenarios and takes advantage of emerging HTML5 capabilities. The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 now use an Unobtrusive JavaScript based approach.  Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 “data-“ attribute convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well – including IE6). This keeps your HTML tight and clean, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries.  ASP.NET MVC 3 now includes built-in support for posting JSON-based parameters from client-side JavaScript to action methods on the server.  This makes it easier to exchange data across the client and server, and build rich JavaScript front-ends.  We think this capability will be particularly useful going forward with scenarios involving client templates and data binding (including the jQuery plugins the ASP.NET team recently contributed to the jQuery project).  Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC included the core jQuery library.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now ships the jQuery Validate plugin (which our validation helpers use for client-side validation scenarios).  We are also now shipping and including jQuery UI by default as well (which provides a rich set of client-side JavaScript UI widgets for you to use within projects). Improved Validation ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a bunch of validation enhancements that make it even easier to work with data. Client-side validation is now enabled by default with ASP.NET MVC 3 (using an onbtrusive javascript implementation).  Today’s release also includes built-in support for Remote Validation - which enables you to annotate a model class with a validation attribute that causes ASP.NET MVC to perform a remote validation call to a server method when validating input on the client. The validation features introduced within .NET 4’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace are now supported by ASP.NET MVC 3.  This includes support for the new IValidatableObject interface – which enables you to perform model-level validation, and allows you to provide validation error messages specific to the state of the overall model, or between two properties within the model.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class in .NET 4.  ValidationAttribute now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated.  This enables richer scenarios where you can validate the current value based on another property of the model.  We’ve shipped a built-in [Compare] validation attribute  with ASP.NET MVC 3 that uses this support and makes it easy out of the box to compare and validate two property values. You can use any data access API or technology with ASP.NET MVC.  This past year, though, we’ve worked closely with the .NET data team to ensure that the new EF Code First library works really well for ASP.NET MVC applications.  These two posts of mine cover the latest EF Code First preview and demonstrates how to use it with ASP.NET MVC 3 to enable easy editing of data (with end to end client+server validation support).  The final release of EF Code First will ship in the next few weeks. Today we are also publishing the first preview of a new MvcScaffolding project.  It enables you to easily scaffold ASP.NET MVC 3 Controllers and Views, and works great with EF Code-First (and is pluggable to support other data providers).  You can learn more about it – and install it via NuGet today - from Steve Sanderson’s MvcScaffolding blog post. Output Caching Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC supported output caching content at a URL or action-method level. With ASP.NET MVC V3 we are also enabling support for partial page output caching – which allows you to easily output cache regions or fragments of a response as opposed to the entire thing.  This ends up being super useful in a lot of scenarios, and enables you to dramatically reduce the work your application does on the server.  The new partial page output caching support in ASP.NET MVC 3 enables you to easily re-use cached sub-regions/fragments of a page across multiple URLs on a site.  It supports the ability to cache the content either on the web-server, or optionally cache it within a distributed cache server like Windows Server AppFabric or memcached. I’ll post some tutorials on my blog that show how to take advantage of ASP.NET MVC 3’s new output caching support for partial page scenarios in the future. Better Dependency Injection ASP.NET MVC 3 provides better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. With ASP.NET MVC 3 you no longer need to author custom ControllerFactory classes in order to enable DI with Controllers.  You can instead just register a Dependency Injection framework with ASP.NET MVC 3 and it will resolve dependencies not only for Controllers, but also for Views, Action Filters, Model Binders, Value Providers, Validation Providers, and Model Metadata Providers that you use within your application. This makes it much easier to cleanly integrate dependency injection within your projects. Other Goodies ASP.NET MVC 3 includes dozens of other nice improvements that help to both reduce the amount of code you write, and make the code you do write cleaner.  Here are just a few examples: Improved New Project dialog that makes it easy to start new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects from templates. Improved Add->View Scaffolding support that enables the generation of even cleaner view templates. New ViewBag property that uses .NET 4’s dynamic support to make it easy to pass late-bound data from Controllers to Views. Global Filters support that allows specifying cross-cutting filter attributes (like [HandleError]) across all Controllers within an app. New [AllowHtml] attribute that allows for more granular request validation when binding form posted data to models. Sessionless controller support that allows fine grained control over whether SessionState is enabled on a Controller. New ActionResult types like HttpNotFoundResult and RedirectPermanent for common HTTP scenarios. New Html.Raw() helper to indicate that output should not be HTML encoded. New Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords. And much, much more… Learn More about ASP.NET MVC 3 We will be posting lots of tutorials and samples on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the weeks ahead.  Below are two good ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials available on the site today: Build your First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application: VB and C# Building the ASP.NET MVC 3 Music Store We’ll post additional ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials and videos on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the future. Visit it regularly to find new tutorials as they are published. How to Upgrade Existing Projects ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it should be easy to update existing MVC projects to ASP.NET MVC 3.  The new features in ASP.NET MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release.  MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones. You can upgrade existing ASP.NET MVC 2 projects by following the manual upgrade steps in the release notes.  Alternatively, you can use this automated ASP.NET MVC 3 upgrade tool to easily update your  existing projects. Localized Builds Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 release is available in English.  We will be releasing localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 (in 9 languages) in a few days.  I’ll blog pointers to the localized downloads once they are available. NuGet Today we are also shipping NuGet – a free, open source, package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use open source libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, and Class Libraries).  You can download and install it here. NuGet enables developers who maintain open source projects (for example, .NET projects like Moq, NHibernate, Ninject, StructureMap, NUnit, Windsor, Raven, Elmah, etc) to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable.  The client-side NuGet tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on. NuGet handles dependency management between libraries (for example: library1 depends on library2). It also makes it easy to update (and optionally remove) libraries from your projects later. It supports updating web.config files (if a package needs configuration settings). It also allows packages to add PowerShell scripts to a project (for example: scaffold commands). Importantly, NuGet is transparent and clean – and does not install anything at the system level. Instead it is focused on making it easy to manage libraries you use with your projects. Our goal with NuGet is to make it as simple as possible to integrate open source libraries within .NET projects.  NuGet Gallery This week we also launched a beta version of the http://nuget.org web-site – which allows anyone to easily search and browse an online gallery of open source packages available via NuGet.  The site also now allows developers to optionally submit new packages that they wish to share with others.  You can learn more about how to create and share a package here. There are hundreds of open-source .NET projects already within the NuGet Gallery today.  We hope to have thousands there in the future. IIS Express 7.5 Today we are also shipping IIS Express 7.5.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  It works for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC project types. We think IIS Express combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into Visual Studio today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.  You can also optionally redistribute IIS Express with your own applications if you want a lightweight web-server.  The standard IIS Express EULA now includes redistributable rights. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and IIS Express blog post to learn more about what it enables.  SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Today we are also shipping SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (aka SQL CE 4).  SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Tooling Support with VS 2010 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET Projects.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE 4 blog post to learn more about what it enables.  Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Today we are also releasing Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Microsoft Web Farm Framework V2.  These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.NET applications onto either a single server, or across a web farm of machines. You can learn more about these capabilities from my previous blog posts on them: Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Visit the http://iis.net website to learn more and install them. Both are free. Orchard 1.0 Today we are also releasing Orchard v1.0.  Orchard is a free, open source, community based project.  It provides Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging System support out of the box, and makes it possible to easily create and manage web-sites without having to write code (site owners can customize a site through the browser-based editing tools built-into Orchard).  Read these tutorials to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own Orchard site. Orchard itself is built as an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage).  Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project – and add new ASP.NET MVC Controllers/Views to it.  WebMatrix 1.0 WebMatrix is a new, free, web development tool from Microsoft that provides a suite of technologies that make it easier to enable website development.  It enables a developer to start a new site by browsing and downloading an app template from an online gallery of web applications (which includes popular apps like Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla).  Alternatively it also enables developers to create and code web sites from scratch. WebMatrix is task focused and helps guide developers as they work on sites.  WebMatrix includes IIS Express, SQL CE 4, and ASP.NET - providing an integrated web-server, database and programming framework combination.  It also includes built-in web publishing support which makes it easy to find and deploy sites to web hosting providers. You can learn more about WebMatrix from my Introducing WebMatrix blog post this summer.  Visit http://microsoft.com/web to download and install it today. Summary I’m really excited about today’s releases – they provide a bunch of additional value that makes web development with ASP.NET, Visual Studio and the Microsoft Web Server a lot better.  A lot of folks worked hard to share this with you today. On behalf of my whole team – we hope you enjoy them! Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta supports IIS Express

  - by DigiMortal

  Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta and ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 were both announced today. I made a little test on one of my web applications to see how Visual Studio 2010 works with IIS Express. In this posting I will show you how to make your ASP.NET MVC 3 application work with IIS Express. Installing new stuff You can install IIS Express using Web Platform Installer. It is not part of WebMatrix anymore and you can just install IIS Express without WebMatrix. NB! You have to install IIS Express using Web Platform installer because IIS Express is not installed by SP1. After installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta on my machine (it took a long-long-long time to install) I installed also ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2. If you have Async CTP installed on your machine you have to uninstall it to get ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 installed and run without problems. Screenshot on right shows what kinf of horrors my old laptop had to survive to get all new stuff installer. Setting IIS Express as server for web application Now, when you right-click on some web project you should see new menu item in context menu – Use IIS Express…. If you click on it you are asked for confirmation and if you say Yes then your web application is reconfigured to use IIS Express. After configuration you will see dialog box like this. And you are done. You can run your application now. Running web application When you run your application it is run on IIS Express. You can see IIS Express icon on taskbar and when you click it you can open IIS Express settings. If you closed your application in browser you can open it again from IIS Express icon. Modifying IIS Express settings for web application You can modify IIS Express settings for your application. Just open your project properties and move to Web tab. IIS and IIS Express are using same settings. The difference is if you make check to Use IIS Express checkbox or not. Switching back to Visual Studio Development Server If you don’t want or you can’t use IIS Express for some reason you can easily switch back to Visual Studio Development Server. Just right-click on your web application project and select Use Visual Studio Development Server from context menu. Conclusion IIS Express is more independent than full version of IIS and it can be also installed and run on machines where are very strict rules (some corporate and academic environments by example). IIS Express was previously part of WebMatrix package but now it is separate product and Visual Studio 2010 has very nice support for it thanks to SP1. You can easily make your web applications use IIS Express and if you want to switch back to development server it is also very easy.

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• IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system.  When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site.   Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV HSUELTArBggrBgEFBQcDAQYIKwYBBQUHAwIGCisGAQQBgjcKAwMGCWCGSAGG+EIE ATBPBgNVHSAESDBGMDoGCysGAQQBsjEBAgIHMCswKQYIKwYBBQUHAgEWHWh0dHBz Oi8vc2VjdXJlLmNvbW9kby5jb20vQ1BTMAgGBmeBDAECATApBgNVHREEIjAggg8q Lndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb22CDXdlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wHQYDVR0OBBYEFEVLAyO8gDiv lsfovKrx9mHPyrsiMIIFMAYJKwYBBAGCNw0BMYIFITCCBR0wggQFoAMCAQICEQDu 1E1T5Jvtkm5LOfSHabWlMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMHIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkdCMRsw GQYDVQQIExJHcmVhdGVyIE1hbmNoZXN0ZXIxEDAOBgNVBAcTB1NhbGZvcmQxGjAY BgNVBAoTEUNPTU9ETyBDQSBMaW1pdGVkMRgwFgYDVQQDEw9Fc3NlbnRpYWxTU0wg Q0EwHhcNMTQwNTA3MDAwMDAwWhcNMTUwNjA2MjM1OTU5WjBdMSEwHwYDVQQLExhE b21haW4gQ29udHJvbCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsTFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBX aWxkY2FyZDEYMBYGA1UEAxQPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAiyKfL66XB51DlUfm6xXqJBcvMU2qorRHxC+WjEpB amvg8XoqNfCKzDAvLMbY4BLhbYCTagqtslnP3Gj4AKhXqRKU0n6iSbmS1gcWzCJM CHufZ5RDtuTuxhTdJxzP9YqZUfKV5abWQp/TK6V1ryaBJvdqM73q4tRjrQODtkiR PfZjxpybnBHFJS8jYAf8jcOjSDZcgN1d9Evc5MrEJCp/90cAkozyF/NMcFtD6Yj8 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+XZ8bhM7vsAS+pZionR4MyuQ0mYIt/lDcsZVZ91KxTsIm8rNMkkYGFoSIXjQ0+0t CbxMF0i2qnpmNRpA6PU8l7lxxvPkplsk9KB8QIPFrR5p/i/SUAd9vECWh5+/ktlc rfFP2PK7XcEwWizsvMrNqLyvQVNXSUPTMYIBrzCCAasCAQEwgYcwcjELMAkGA1UE BhMCR0IxGzAZBgNVBAgTEkdyZWF0ZXIgTWFuY2hlc3RlcjEQMA4GA1UEBxMHU2Fs Zm9yZDEaMBgGA1UEChMRQ09NT0RPIENBIExpbWl0ZWQxGDAWBgNVBAMTD0Vzc2Vu dGlhbFNTTCBDQQIRAO7UTVPkm+2Sbks59IdptaUwCQYFKw4DAhoFADANBgkqhkiG 9w0BAQEFAASCAQB8PNQ6bYnQpWfkHyxnDuvNKw3wrqF2p7JMZm+SuN2qp3R2LpCR mW2LrGtQIm9Iob/QOYH+8houYNVdvsATGPXX2T8gzn+anof4tOG0vCTK1Bp9bwf9 MkRP+1c8RW/vkYmUW4X5/C+y3CZpMH5dDTaXBIpXFzjX/fxNpH/rvLzGiaYYL3Cn OLO+aOADr9qq5yoqwpiYCSfYNNYKTUNNGfYIidQwYtbHXEYhSukB2oR89xD2sZZ4 bOqFjUPgTa5SsERLDDeg3omMKiIXVYGxlqBEq51Kge6IQt4qQV9P9VgInW7cWmKe dTqNHI9ri3ttewdEnT++TKGKKfTjX9SR8Waj -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- Clearly there’s something very different between this an my original request! And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter  though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Deploy ASP.NET Web Applications with Web Deployment Projects

  - by Ben Griswold

  One may quickly build and deploy an ASP.NET web application via the Publish option in Visual Studio.  This option works great for most simple deployment scenarios but it won’t always cut it.  Let’s say you need to automate your deployments. Or you have environment-specific configuration settings. Or you need to execute pre/post build operations when you do your builds.  If so, you should consider using Web Deployment Projects. The Web Deployment Project type doesn’t come out-of-the-box with Visual Studio 2008.  You’ll need to Download Visual Studio® 2008 Web Deployment Projects – RTW and install if you want to follow along with this tutorial. I’ve created a shiny new ASP.NET MVC project.  Web Deployment Projects work with websites, web applications and MVC projects so feel free to go with any web project type you’d like.  Once your web application is in place, it’s time to add the Web Deployment project.  You can hunt and peck around the File > New > New Project… dialogue as long as you’d like, but you aren’t going to find what you need.  Instead, select the web project and then choose the “Add Web Deployment Project…” hiding behind the Build menu option. I prefer to name my projects based on the environment in which I plan to deploy.  In this case, I’ll be rolling to the QA machine. Don’t expect too much to happen at this point.  A seemingly empty project with a funny icon will be added to your solution.  That’s it. I want to take a minute and talk about configuration settings before we continue.  Some of the common settings which might change from environment to environment are appSettings, connectionStrings and mailSettings.  Here’s a look at my updated web.config: <appSettings>   <add key="MvcApplication293.Url" value="http://localhost:50596/" />     </appSettings> <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp from="[email protected]">         <network host="server.com" userName="username" password="password" port="587" defaultCredentials="false"/>     </smtp>   </mailSettings> </system.net> I want to update these values prior to deploying to the QA environment.  There are variations to this approach, but I like to maintain environment-specific settings for each of the web.config sections in the Config/[Environment] project folders.  I’ve provided a screenshot of the QA environment settings below. It may be obvious what one should include in each of the three files.  Basically, it is a copy of the associated web.config section with updated setting values.  For example, the AppSettings.config file may include a reference to the QA web url, the DB.config would include the QA database server and login information and the StmpSettings.config would include a QA Stmp server and user information. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <appSettings>   <add key="MvcApplication293.Url" value="http://qa.MvcApplicatinon293.com/" /> </appSettings> AppSettings.config  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="server=QAServer;integrated security=SSPI;database=MvcApplication293"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>   </connectionStrings> Db.config  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <smtp from="[email protected]">     <network host="qaserver.com" userName="qausername" password="qapassword" port="587" defaultCredentials="false"/> </smtp> SmtpSettings.config  I think our web project is ready to deploy.  Now, it’s time to concentrate on the Web Deployment Project itself.  Right-click on the project file and open the Property Pages. The first thing to call out is the Configuration dropdown.  I only deploy a project which is built in Release Mode so I only setup the Web Deployment Project for this mode.  (This is when you change the Configuration selection to “Release.”)  I typically keep the Output Folder default value – .\Release\.  When the application is built, all artifacts will be dropped in the .\Release\ folder relative to the Web Deployment Project root.  The final option may be up for some debate.  I like to roll out updatable websites so I select the “Allow this precompiled site to be updatable” option.  I really do like to follow standard SDLC processes when I release my software but there are those times when you just have to make a hotfix to production and I like to keep this option open if need be.  If you are strongly opposed to this idea, please, by all means, don’t check the box. The next tab is boring.  I don’t like to deploy a crazy number of DLLs so I merge all outputs to a single assembly.  Again, you may have another option and feel free to change this selection if you so wish. If you follow my lead, take care when choosing a single assembly name.  The Assembly Name can not be the same as the website or any other project in your solution otherwise you’ll receive a circular reference build error.  In other words, I can’t name the assembly MvcApplication293 or my output window would start yelling at me. Remember when we called out our QA configuration files?  Click on the Deployment tab and you’ll see how where going to use them.  Notice the Web.config file section replacements value.  All this does is swap called out web.config sections with the content of the Config\QA\* files.  You can reduce or extend this list as you deem fit.  Did you see the “Use external configuration source file” option?  You know how you can point any of your web.config sections to an external file via the configSource attribute?  This option allows you to leverage that technique and instead of replacing the content of the sections, you will replace the configSource attribute value instead. <appSettings configSource="Config\QA\AppSettings.config" /> Go ahead and Apply your changes.  I’d like to take a look at the project file we just updated.  Right-click on the Web Deployment Project and select “Open Project File.” One of the first configuration blocks reflects core Release build settings.  There are a couple of points I’d like to call out here: DebugSymbols=false ensures the compilation debug attribute in your web.config is flipped to false as part of build process.  There’s some crumby (more likely old) documentation which implies you need a ToggleDebugCompilation task to make this happen.  Nope. Just make sure the DebugSymbols is set to false.  EnableUpdateable implies a single dll for the web application rather than a dll for each object and and empty view file. I think updatable applications are cleaner and include the benefit (or risk based on your perspective) that portions of the application can be updated directly on the server.  I called this out earlier but I wanted to reiterate. <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">     <DebugSymbols>false</DebugSymbols>     <OutputPath>.\Release</OutputPath>     <EnableUpdateable>true</EnableUpdateable>     <UseMerge>true</UseMerge>     <SingleAssemblyName>MvcApplication293</SingleAssemblyName>     <DeleteAppCodeCompiledFiles>true</DeleteAppCodeCompiledFiles>     <UseWebConfigReplacement>true</UseWebConfigReplacement>     <ValidateWebConfigReplacement>true</ValidateWebConfigReplacement>     <DeleteAppDataFolder>true</DeleteAppDataFolder>   </PropertyGroup> The next section is self-explanatory.  The content merely reflects the replacement value you provided via the Property Pages. <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU'">     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\AppSettings.config">       <Section>appSettings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\Db.config">       <Section>connectionStrings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\SmtpSettings.config">       <Section>system.net/mailSettings/smtp</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>   </ItemGroup> You’ll want to extend the ItemGroup section to include the files you wish to exclude from the build.  The sample ExcludeFromBuild nodes exclude all obj, svn, csproj, user, pdb artifacts from the build. Enough though they files aren’t included in your web project, you’ll need to exclude them or they’ll show up along with required deployment artifacts.  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU'">     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\AppSettings.config">       <Section>appSettings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\Db.config">       <Section>connectionStrings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\SmtpSettings.config">       <Section>system.net/mailSettings/smtp</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\obj\**\*.*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**\*.*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**\*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\*.csproj" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\*.user" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\bin\*.pdb" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\Notes.txt" />   </ItemGroup> Pre/post build and Pre/post merge tasks are added to the final code block.  By default, your project file should look like the following – a completely commented out section. <!– To modify your build process, add your task inside one of        the targets below and uncomment it. Other similar extension        points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.   <Target Name="BeforeBuild">   </Target>   <Target Name="BeforeMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterBuild">   </Target>   –> Update the section to remove all temporary Config folders and files after the build.  <!– To modify your build process, add your task inside one of        the targets below and uncomment it. Other similar extension        points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.     <Target Name="BeforeMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterMerge">   </Target>     <Target Name="BeforeBuild">      </Target>       –>   <Target Name="AfterBuild">     <!– WebConfigReplacement requires the Config files. Remove after build. –>     <RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\Config" />   </Target> That’s it for setup.  Save the project file, flip the solution to Release Mode and build.  If there’s an issue, consult the Output window for details.  If all went well, you will find your deployment artifacts in your Web Deployment Project folder like so. Both the code source and published application will be there. Inside the Release folder you will find your “published files” and you’ll notice the Config folder is no where to be found.  In the Source folder, all project files are found with the exception of the items which were excluded from the build. I’ll wrap up this tutorial by calling out a little Web Deployment pet peeve of mine: there doesn’t appear to be a way to add an existing web deployment project to a solution.  The best I can come up with is create a new web deployment project and then copy and paste the contents of the existing project file into the new project file.  It’s not a big deal but it bugs me. Download the Solution

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• Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media Player

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of the cool features of Windows Home Server is the ability to stream photos, music, and video to other computers on your network. Today we take a look at how to enable streaming in WHS to Windows Media Player in Vista and Windows 7. Turn on Media Streaming on WHS To enable Media Streaming from Windows Home Server, open the Windows Home Server Console and click on Settings. Now in the Setting screen select Media Sharing, then in the right column under Media Library Sharing turn on Library Sharing for the folders you want to stream.   If you have a Windows 7 machine on your network make sure media streaming is enabled. You should then see the server under Other Libraries and can start streaming your media collection.   Stream Video to Media Player 11 Now let’s say you want to stream videos to another member of your household who’s using a Vista machine in another room through Windows Media Player 11. Open WMP and click on Library then Media Sharing. Now click the box next to Find media that others are sharing then click Ok. Now you should see the server listed under Library…where in this example it’s geekserver. Since we only enabled Video streaming for this example, we need to click on the category icon and select Video. Now you can scroll through the available videos… And start enjoying your favorite videos streamed from the server through WMP 11 on Vista. Of course you can use this method to stream photos and music as well, you just need to enable what you want to stream from the Home Server Console. You can also stream your media to Windows Media Center and Xbox which we will be covering soon. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Share Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerShare and Stream Digital Media Between Windows 7 Machines On Your Home NetworkInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab

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• What&rsquo;s new in RadChart for 2010 Q1 (Silverlight / WPF)

  Greetings, RadChart fans! It is with great pleasure that I present this short highlight of our accomplishments for the Q1 release :). Weve worked very hard to make the best silverlight and WPF charting product even better. Here is some of what we did during the past few months.   1) Zooming&Scrolling and the new sampling engine: Without a doubt one of the most important things we did. This new feature allows you to bind your chart to a very large set of data with blazing performance. Dont take my word for it give it a try!   2) New Smart Label Positioning and Spider-like labels feature: This new feature really helps with very busy graphs. You can play with the different settings we offer in this example.     3) Sorting and Filtering. Much like our RadGridview control the chart now allows you to sort and filter your data out of the box with a single line of code!   4) Legend improvements Weve also been paying attention to those of you who wanted a much improved legend. It is now possible to customize the look and feel of legend items and legend position with a single click.     5) Custom palette brushes. You have told us that you want to easily customize all palette colors using a single clean API from both XAML and code behind. The new custom palette brushes API does exactly that.   There are numerous other improvements as well, as much improved themes, performance optimizations and other features that we did. If you want to dig in further check the release notes and changes and backwards compatibility topics.   Feel free to share the pains and gains of working with RadChart. Our team is always open to receiving constructive feedback and beer :-)Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• What&rsquo;s new in RadChart for 2010 Q1 (Silverlight / WPF)

  Greetings, RadChart fans! It is with great pleasure that I present this short highlight of our accomplishments for the Q1 release :). Weve worked very hard to make the best silverlight and WPF charting product even better. Here is some of what we did during the past few months.   1) Zooming&Scrolling and the new sampling engine: Without a doubt one of the most important things we did. This new feature allows you to bind your chart to a very large set of data with blazing performance. Dont take my word for it give it a try!   2) New Smart Label Positioning and Spider-like labels feature: This new feature really helps with very busy graphs. You can play with the different settings we offer in this example.     3) Sorting and Filtering. Much like our RadGridview control the chart now allows you to sort and filter your data out of the box with a single line of code!   4) Legend improvements Weve also been paying attention to those of you who wanted a much improved legend. It is now possible to customize the look and feel of legend items and legend position with a single click.     5) Custom palette brushes. You have told us that you want to easily customize all palette colors using a single clean API from both XAML and code behind. The new custom palette brushes API does exactly that.   There are numerous other improvements as well, as much improved themes, performance optimizations and other features that we did. If you want to dig in further check the release notes and changes and backwards compatibility topics.   Feel free to share the pains and gains of working with RadChart. Our team is always open to receiving constructive feedback and beer :-)Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Friday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you a racing fan in need of a short (or long) break from work? Then get ready to enjoy a mid-day speed boost with the 3D Rally Racing extension for Google Chrome. 3D Rally Racing in Action This is the opening screen for 3D Rally Racing. You can start game play, view current best times, and read through the instructions from here. The first thing that you should do is have a quick look at the instructions to help you get set up and started. Click on “Play” to start the process. Before you can go further you will need to choose a “User Name”. Once you have done that click “Select Track”… Note: The extension will retain your name for later use even if you close your browser. When you first start out you will only have access to two tracks…the others require reaching a certain score/level to unlock them. Once you select a track you will be taken to the next screen. After you have selected a track you will need to choose your car and car color. All that is left to do afterwards is click on “Go Race”. Note: You will be competing against three other vehicles in the race. Here is a look at the “Desert Race Track”… And a look at the “Snow Race Track”. This game moves quickly and it is easy to fall behind if you are not careful! You can have a lot of fun playing this game while you are waiting for the day to end. Conclusion If you love racing games and want a fun way to waste the rest of afternoon at work, then you should definitely give 3D Rally Racing a try. Links Download the 3d Rally Racing extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Uphill RushFriday Fun: Racing Fun with SuperTuxKart RacerHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented Switch TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Friday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you a racing fan in need of a short (or long) break from work? Then get ready to enjoy a mid-day speed boost with the 3D Rally Racing extension for Google Chrome. 3D Rally Racing in Action This is the opening screen for 3D Rally Racing. You can start game play, view current best times, and read through the instructions from here. The first thing that you should do is have a quick look at the instructions to help you get set up and started. Click on “Play” to start the process. Before you can go further you will need to choose a “User Name”. Once you have done that click “Select Track”… Note: The extension will retain your name for later use even if you close your browser. When you first start out you will only have access to two tracks…the others require reaching a certain score/level to unlock them. Once you select a track you will be taken to the next screen. After you have selected a track you will need to choose your car and car color. All that is left to do afterwards is click on “Go Race”. Note: You will be competing against three other vehicles in the race. Here is a look at the “Desert Race Track”… And a look at the “Snow Race Track”. This game moves quickly and it is easy to fall behind if you are not careful! You can have a lot of fun playing this game while you are waiting for the day to end. Conclusion If you love racing games and want a fun way to waste the rest of afternoon at work, then you should definitely give 3D Rally Racing a try. Links Download the 3d Rally Racing extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Uphill RushFriday Fun: Racing Fun with SuperTuxKart RacerHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented Switch TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Disable Opera Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 Taskbar

  - by Asian Angel

  If you are one of the people who does not care for the Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Windows 7 then we have a quick and easy way for you to turn them off in Opera Browser. Before Here is our Opera Browser with four tabs full of HTG Network goodness… Hovering the mouse over the Taskbar Icon gives a nice preview of each tabs content. Looking closer you can see the fanned edge on the Taskbar Icon indicating that there are multiple tabs open. This is all good but what if you just want something simpler? Disabling the Previews If you want to disable the Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Opera you will need to type opera:config in the Address Bar and press Enter. Once you have done that, you will see a condensed listing for all of Opera’s preferences. There is one Preference Category that we need to look for…User Prefs. Note: While a Quick Find Search could be conducted for the entry that needs to be modified, we have chosen to show the full method here. After scrolling down and finding the User Prefs category you will need to expand the section. Notice the size of the scrollbar in comparison with the screenshot above…there is quite a lot that you can look at and finesse in Opera if desired. Scroll down until you find the Use Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnails entry. Uncheck the box but do not close the opera:config Tab yet…or your changes will not take effect. Scroll down once more until you reach the end of the User Prefs category and click Save. With this particular modification you will need to restart Opera after clicking OK. After restarting Opera the Taskbar Icon and Taskbar Thumbnail Preview will revert to the minimal Windows 7 default as shown here. You can see Opera’s Tab Bar in the thumbnail and the Taskbar Icon no longer has a “fanned edge”. Conclusion If you want to disable Opera’s Taskbar Thumbnail Previews on your Windows 7 system, then this quick modification will help get it sorted out in just a few moments. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable IE 8 Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 TaskbarIncrease the size of Taskbar Preview Thumbnails in Windows 7Vista Style Popup Previews for Firefox TabsEnable Thumbnail Previews for Firefox in Windows 7 TaskbarWorkaround for Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Previews Not Showing Correctly TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides

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• Create and use a Button class on AS3.0

  - by Madcowe

  I am currently working on a game and it is all going well. On the shop screen there are several buttons that affect the player's stats for when the player restarts the game. The button's names (with a text on the left), however, are rather cryptic and it's hard to figure out what they do unless you test or something. So the solution I came up with, is to create an InfoBox with an InfoText inside so that when the cursor is over the button it appears with the description, cost and etc. This I managed to do too however, the way I was about to do it would mean that I had to create 3 event listeners per button (CLICK, ROLL_OVER, ROLL_OUT) and, obviously, 3 functions connected to each event listener. Now, I don't mind much about having 1 event listener per button, for the click, but since the other events are just to make a box appear and disappear as well as display some text, I thought it was way too much of a mess of code. What I tried to do: I created a new class called InfoBoxButton, and this is the class' code: package { import flash.display.SimpleButton; import flash.display.MovieClip; import flash.ui.Mouse; import flash.events.MouseEvent; public class InfoBoxButton extends SimpleButton { public var description:String; public var infoBox:InfoBox; public function InfoBoxButton(description) { this.addEventListener( MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, displayInfoText, false, 0, true); this.addEventListener( MouseEvent.ROLL_OUT, hideInfoText, false, 0, true); } private function displayInfoText() { infoBox.infoText.text = description; infoBox.visible = true; } private function hideInfoText() { infoBox.infoText.text = ""; infoBox.visible = false; } } } But now I don't have an idea how to associate it with the button, I have tried this: public var SoonButton:InfoBoxButton = new InfoBoxButton("This is merely a test"); The SoonButton is a button I made on the shopscreen, SoonButton is it's instance name, but I can't think of a way of associating one button to the other... I have been fiddling with the code for like 3 hours yesterday and no luck... can anyone give me some pointers on how I should go about doing it?

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• Mark Messages As Read in the Outlook 2010 Reading Pane

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you ever feel annoyed that Outlook 2010 doesn’t mark messages as Read as soon as you click and view them in the Reading Pane?  Here we show you how to make Outlook mark them as read as soon as they’re opened. Mark as Read By default, Outlook will not mark a message as read until you select another message.  This can be annoying, because if you read a message and immediately click Delete, it will show up as an unread message in our Deleted Items folder. Let’s change this to make Outlook mark messages as read as soon as we view them in the Reading Pane.  Open Outlook and click File to open Backstage View, and select Options. In Options select Mail on the left menu, and under Outlook panes click on the Reading Pane button. Check the box Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane to make Outlook mark your messages as read when you view them in the Reading Pane.  By default, Outlook will only mark a message read after you’ve been reading it for 5 seconds, though you can change this.  We set it to 0 seconds so our messages would be marked as read as soon as we select them. Click OK in both dialogs, and now your messages will be marked as read as soon as you select them in the reading pane, or soon after, depending on your settings. Conclusion Outlook 2010 is a great email client, but like most programs it has its quirks.  This quick tip can help you get rid of one of Outlook’s annoying features, and make it work like you want it to. And, if you’re still using Outlook 2007, check out our article on how to Mark Messages as Read When Viewed in Outlook 2007. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Outlook 2007 Mark Items as Read When Viewed in Reading PaneMake Mail.app’s Reading Pane More Like OutlookIntegrate Twitter With Microsoft OutlookSort Your Emails by Conversation in Outlook 2010Find Emails With Attachments with Outlook 2007’s Instant Search TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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• Force.com presents Database.com SQL Azure/Amazon RDS unfazed

  - by Sarang

  At the DreamForce 2010 event in San Francisco Force.com unveiled their next big thing in the Fat SaaS portfolio "Database.com".  I am still wondering how would they would've shelled out for that domain name. Now why would a already established SaaS player foray into a key building block like Database? Potentially allowing enterprises to build apps that do not utilize the Force.com stack! One key reason is being seen as the Fat SaaS player with evey trick in the SaaS space under his belt. You want CRM come hither, want a custom development PaaS like solution welcome home (VMForce), want all your apps to talk to a cloud DB and minimize latency by having it reside closer to you cloud apps? You've come to the right place sire! Other is potentially killing foray of smaller DB players like Oracle (Not surprisingly, the Database.com offering is a highly customized and scalable Oracle database) from entering the lucrative SaaS db marketplace. The feature set promised looks great out of the box for someone who likes to visualize cool new architectures. The ground realities are certainly going to be a lot different considering the SOAP/REST style access patterns in lieu of the comfortable old shoe of SQL. Microsoft suffered heavily with SDS (SQL Data Services) offering in early 2009 and had to pull the plug on the product only to reintroduce as a simple SQL Server in the cloud, SQL Windows Azure. Though MSFT is playing cool by providing OData semantics to work with SQL Windows Azure satisfying atleast some needs of the Web-Style to a DB. The other features like Social data models including Profiles, Status updates, feeds seem interesting as well. (Although I beleive social is just one of the aspects of large scale collaborative computing). All these features start "Free" for devs its a good news but the good news stops here. The overall pricing model of $ per Users per Transactions / Month is highly disproportionate compared to Amazon RDS (Based on MySQL) or SQL Windows Azure (Based on MSSQL). Roger Jennigs of Oakleaf did an interesting comparo based on 3, 10, 100, 500 users and it turns out that Database.com going by current understanding is way too expensive for the services on offer. The offering may not impact the decision for DotNet shops mulling their cloud stategy or even some Java/MySQL shops thinking about Amazon RDS, however for enterprises having already invested in other force.com offerings this could be a very important piece in the cloud strategy jigsaw. One which would address a key cloud DB issue of "Latency" for them at least it will help having the DB in the neighborhood. The tooling and "SQL like" access provider drivers (Think ODBC/JDBC) will be available later this year. Progress Software has already announced their JDBC driver stack for Database.com. It remains to be seen how effective the overall solutions proves to be in the longer run but for starts its a important decision towards consolidating Force.com's already strong positioning in the SaaS space. As always contrasting views are welcome! :)

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• New HTML 5 input types in ASP.Net 4.5 Developer Preview

  - by sreejukg

  Microsoft has released developer previews for Visual Studio 2011 and .Net framework 4.5. There are lots of new features available in the developer preview. One of the most interested things for web developers is the support introduced for new HTML 5 form controls. The following are the list of new controls available in HTML 5 email url number range Date pickers (date, month, week, time, datetime, datetime-local) search color Describing the functionality for these controls is not in the scope of this article. If you want to know about these controls, refer the below URLs http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh547102.aspx http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_form_input_types.asp ASP.Net 4.5 introduced more possible values to the Text Mode attribute to cater the above requirements. Let us evaluate these. I have created a project in Visual Studio 2011 developer preview, and created a page named “controls.aspx”. In the page I placed on Text box control from the toolbox Now select the control and go to the properties pane, look at the TextMode attribute. Now you can see more options are added here than prior versions of ASP.Net. I just selected Email as TextMode. I added one button to submit my page. The screen shot of the page in Visual Studio 2011 designer is as follows See the corresponding markup <form id="form1" runat="server">     <div>         Enter your email:         <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" TextMode="Email"></asp:TextBox     </div>     <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Submit" /> </form> Now let me run this page, IE 9 do not have the support for new form fields. I browsed the page using Firefox and the page appears as below. From the source of the rendered page, I saw the below markup for my email textbox <input name="TextBox1" type="email" id="TextBox1" /> Try to enter an invalid email and you will see the browser will ask you to enter a valid one by default. When rendered in non-supported browsers, these fields are behaving just as normal text boxes. So make sure you are using validation controls with these fields. See the browser support compatability matrix with these controls with various browser vendors. ASP.Net 4.5 introduced the support for these new form controls. You can build interactive forms using the newly added controls, keeping in mind that you need to validate the data for non-supported browsers.

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• ASP.NET Dynamic Data Deployment Error

  - by rajbk

  You have an ASP.NET 3.5 dynamic data website that works great on your local box. When you deploy it to your production machine and turn on debug, you get the YSD Server Error in '/MyPath/MyApp' Application. Parser Error Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately. Parser Error Message: Unknown server tag 'asp:DynamicDataManager'. Source Error: Line 5:  Line 6:  <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" Runat="Server"> Line 7:      <asp:DynamicDataManager ID="DynamicDataManager1" runat="server" AutoLoadForeignKeys="true" /> Line 8:  Line 9:      <h2><%= table.DisplayName%></h2> Probable Causes The server does not have .NET 3.5 SP1, which includes ASP.NET Dynamic Data, installed. Download it here. The third tagPrefix shown below is missing from web.config <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.DynamicData" assembly="System.Web.DynamicData, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> </controls></pages>     Hope that helps!

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• How to Use and Manage Extensions to Safari 5

  - by Mysticgeek

  While there have been hacks to include extensions in Safari for some time now, Safari 5 now offers proper support for them. Today we take a look at managing extensions in the latest version of Safari. Installation and Setup Download and install Safari 5 (link below). Make sure to download the installer that doesn’t include QuickTime if you don’t want it. Also, uncheck getting Apple updates and news in your email. Then decide if you want to install Bonjour for Windows and have Safari automatically update or not. Once it’s installed, launch Safari and select Show Menu Bar from the the Settings Menu. Then go into Preferences \ Advanced and check the box Show Develop menu in the menu bar. Develop will now appear on the Menu Bar…click on it and select Enable Extensions. Using Extensions Now you can find and start using extensions (link below) that will work with Safari 5. In this example we’re installing PageSaver which takes an image of what is showing in your browser. Click on the link for the Extension you want to install…   Then you’ll get a confirmation asking if you want to open or save it. Opening it will install it right away. Click Install in the dialog that asks if you’re sure you want to. Here we see the Extension was successfully installed and you can see the camera icon on the Toolbar. When you’re on a portion of a webpage you want to take an image of, click on the camera icon and you’ll have the image saved in your Downloads folder. Then you can open it up in a browser or image editor. Go into Preferences \ Extensions and from here you can turn the extensions on or off, uninstall, or check for updates. If you’re a Safari user, or thinking about trying it, you’ll enjoy proper support for extensions in version 5. At the time of this writing we couldn’t find any extensions on the Apple site, but you might want to keep your eye on it to see if they do start listing them.  Download Safari 5 for Mac & PC Safari Extensions Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Web Searches In SafariMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaCustomize Safari for Windows ToolbarMake Your Safari Web Browsing PrivateSave Screen Space by Hiding the Bookmarks Toolbar in Safari for Windows TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos

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• One National Team One Event &ndash; SharePoint Saturday Kansas City

  - by MOSSLover

  I wasn’t expect to run an event from 1,000 miles away, but some stuff happened you know like it does and I opted in.  It was really weird, because people asked why are you living in NJ and running Kansas City?  I did move, but it was like my baby and Karthik didn’t have the ability to do it this year.  I found it really challenging, because I could not physically be in Kansas City.  At first I was freaking out and Lee Brandt, Brian Laird, and Chris Geier offered to help.  Somehow I couldn’t come the day of the event.  Time-wise it just didn’t work out.  I could do all the leg work prior to the event, but weekends just were not good.  I was going to be in DC until March or April on the weekdays, so leaving that weekend was too tough.  As it worked out Lee was my eyes and ears for the venue.  Brian was the sponsor and prize box coordinator if anyone needed to send items.  Lee also helped Brian the day of the event move all the boxes.  I did everything we could do electronically, such as get the sponsors coordinate with Michael Lotter on invoicing and getting the speakers, posting the submissions, budgeting the money, setting up a speaker dinner by phone, plus all that other stuff you do behind the scenes.  Chris was there to help Lee and Brian the day of the event and help us out with the speaker dinner.  Karthik finally got back from India and he was there the night before getting the folders together and the signs and stuffing it all.  Jason Gallicchio also helped me out (my cohort for SPS NYC) as he did the schedule and helped with posting the speakers abstracts and so did Chris Geier by posting the bios.  The lot of them enlisted a few other monkeys to help out.  It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but it worked.  Around 100+ attendees ended up showing and I hear it was  a great event.  Jason, Michael, Chris, Karthik, Brian, and Lee are not all from the same area, but they helped me out in bringing this event together.  It was a national SharePoint Saturday team that brought together a specific local event for Kansas City.  It’s like a metaphor for the entire SharePoint Community.  We help our own kind out we don’t let me fail.  I know Lee and Brian aren’t technically SharePoint People they are honorary SharePoint Community Members.  Thanks everyone for the support and help in bringing this event together.  Technorati Tags: SharePoint Saturday,SPS KC,SharePoint,SharePoint Saturday Kanas City,Kansas City

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• How to prevent screen locking when lid is closed?

  - by Joe Casadonte

  I have Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome 3 (no Unity), gnome-screen-saver has been removed and replaced with xscreensaver. The screensaver stuff all works fine -- no complaints there. When I close my laptop lid, even for a second, the screen locks (and the dialog box asking for my password is xscreensaver's). I'd like for this not to happen... Things I've tried/looked at already: xscreensaver settings - the "Lock Screen After" checkbox is not checked (though I've also tried it checked and set to 720 minutes) gconf-editor - apps -> gnome-screensaver -> lock_enabled is not checked System Settings - Power - "When the lid is closed" is set to "Do nothing" for both battery and A/C System Settings - Screen - Lock is "off" gconf-editor - apps -> gnome-power-manager -> buttons -> lid_ac && lid_battery are both set to "nothing" dconf-editor - apps -> org -> gnome -> desktop -> screensaver -> lock_enabled is not checked Output from: gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power: org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power active true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-hibernate 'hibernate' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-power 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-sleep 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-suspend 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power critical-battery-action 'hibernate' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-brightness 30 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-ac false org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-battery true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-time 10 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-ac-action 'nothing' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-battery-action 'nothing' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power notify-perhaps-recall true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-action 2 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-critical 3 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-low 10 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power priority 1 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-ac 600 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-battery 600 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac false org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 0 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery true org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout 0 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-type 'suspend' org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-action 120 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-critical 300 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-low 1200 org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power use-time-for-policy true gnome-settings-daemon is running: <~> $ ps -ef | grep gnome-settings-daemon 1000 1719 1645 0 19:37 ? 00:00:01 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon 1000 1726 1 0 19:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-printer 1000 1774 1645 0 19:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-fallback-mount-helper Anything else I can check? Thanks!

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• AuthnRequest Settings in OIF / SP

  - by Damien Carru

  In this article, I will list the various OIF/SP settings that affect how an AuthnRequest message is created in OIF in a Federation SSO flow. The AuthnRequest message is used by an SP to start a Federation SSO operation and to indicate to the IdP how the operation should be executed: How the user should be challenged at the IdP Whether or not the user should be challenged at the IdP, even if a session already exists at the IdP for this user Which NameID format should be requested in the SAML Assertion Which binding (Artifact or HTTP-POST) should be requested from the IdP to send the Assertion Which profile should be used by OIF/SP to send the AuthnRequest message Enjoy the reading! Protocols The SAML 2.0, SAML 1.1 and OpenID 2.0 protocols define different message elements and rules that allow an administrator to influence the Federation SSO flows in different manners, when the SP triggers an SSO operation: SAML 2.0 allows extensive customization via the AuthnRequest message SAML 1.1 does not allow any customization, since the specifications do not define an authentication request message OpenID 2.0 allows for some customization, mainly via the OpenID 2.0 extensions such as PAPE or UI SAML 2.0 OIF/SP allows the customization of the SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest message for the following elements: ForceAuthn: Boolean indicating whether or not the IdP should force the user for re-authentication, even if the user has still a valid session By default set to false IsPassive Boolean indicating whether or not the IdP is allowed to interact with the user as part of the Federation SSO operation. If false, the Federation SSO operation might result in a failure with the NoPassive error code, because the IdP will not have been able to identify the user By default set to false RequestedAuthnContext Element indicating how the user should be challenged at the IdP If the SP requests a Federation Authentication Method unknown to the IdP or for which the IdP is not configured, then the Federation SSO flow will result in a failure with the NoAuthnContext error code By default missing NameIDPolicy Element indicating which NameID format the IdP should include in the SAML Assertion If the SP requests a NameID format unknown to the IdP or for which the IdP is not configured, then the Federation SSO flow will result in a failure with the InvalidNameIDPolicy error code If missing, the IdP will generally use the default NameID format configured for this SP partner at the IdP By default missing ProtocolBinding Element indicating which SAML binding should be used by the IdP to redirect the user to the SP with the SAML Assertion Set to Artifact or HTTP-POST By default set to HTTP-POST OIF/SP also allows the administrator to configure the server to: Set which binding should be used by OIF/SP to redirect the user to the IdP with the SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest message: Redirect or HTTP-POST By default set to Redirect Set which binding should be used by OIF/SP to redirect the user to the IdP during logout with SAML 2.0 Logout messages: Redirect or HTTP-POST By default set to Redirect SAML 1.1 The SAML 1.1 specifications do not define a message for the SP to send to the IdP when a Federation SSO operation is started. As such, there is no capability to configure OIF/SP on how to affect the start of the Federation SSO flow. OpenID 2.0 OpenID 2.0 defines several extensions that can be used by the SP/RP to affect how the Federation SSO operation will take place: OpenID request: mode: String indicating if the IdP/OP can visually interact with the user checkid_immediate does not allow the IdP/OP to interact with the user checkid_setup allows user interaction By default set to checkid_setup PAPE Extension: max_auth_age : Integer indicating in seconds the maximum amount of time since when the user authenticated at the IdP. If MaxAuthnAge is bigger that the time since when the user last authenticated at the IdP, then the user must be re-challenged. OIF/SP will set this attribute to 0 if the administrator configured ForceAuthn to true, otherwise this attribute won't be set Default missing preferred_auth_policies Contains a Federation Authentication Method Element indicating how the user should be challenged at the IdP By default missing Only specified in the OpenID request if the IdP/OP supports PAPE in XRDS, if OpenID discovery is used. UI Extension Popup mode Boolean indicating the popup mode is enabled for the Federation SSO By default missing Language Preference String containing the preferred language, set based on the browser's language preferences. By default missing Icon: Boolean indicating if the icon feature is enabled. In that case, the IdP/OP would look at the SP/RP XRDS to determine how to retrieve the icon By default missing Only specified in the OpenID request if the IdP/OP supports UI Extenstion in XRDS, if OpenID discovery is used. ForceAuthn and IsPassive WLST Command OIF/SP provides the WLST configureIdPAuthnRequest() command to set: ForceAuthn as a boolean: In a SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest, the ForceAuthn field will be set to true or false In an OpenID 2.0 request, if ForceAuthn in the configuration was set to true, then the max_auth_age field of the PAPE request will be set to 0, otherwise, max_auth_age won't be set IsPassive as a boolean: In a SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest, the IsPassive field will be set to true or false In an OpenID 2.0 request, if IsPassive in the configuration was set to true, then the mode field of the OpenID request will be set to checkid_immediate, otherwise set to checkid_setup Test In this test, OIF/SP is integrated with a remote SAML 2.0 IdP Partner, with the OOTB configuration. Based on this setup, when OIF/SP starts a Federation SSO flow, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer>   <samlp:NameIDPolicy AllowCreate="true"/></samlp:AuthnRequest> Let's configure OIF/SP for that IdP Partner, so that the SP will require the IdP to re-challenge the user, even if the user is already authenticated: Enter the WLST environment by executing:$IAM_ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh Connect to the WLS Admin server:connect() Navigate to the Domain Runtime branch:domainRuntime() Execute the configureIdPAuthnRequest() command:configureIdPAuthnRequest(partner="AcmeIdP", forceAuthn="true") Exit the WLST environment:exit() After the changes, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ForceAuthn="true" ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer>   <samlp:NameIDPolicy AllowCreate="true"/></samlp:AuthnRequest> To display or delete the ForceAuthn/IsPassive settings, perform the following operatons: Enter the WLST environment by executing:$IAM_ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh Connect to the WLS Admin server:connect() Navigate to the Domain Runtime branch:domainRuntime() Execute the configureIdPAuthnRequest() command: To display the ForceAuthn/IsPassive settings on the partnerconfigureIdPAuthnRequest(partner="AcmeIdP", displayOnly="true") To delete the ForceAuthn/IsPassive settings from the partnerconfigureIdPAuthnRequest(partner="AcmeIdP", delete="true") Exit the WLST environment:exit() Requested Fed Authn Method In my earlier "Fed Authentication Method Requests in OIF / SP" article, I discussed how OIF/SP could be configured to request a specific Federation Authentication Method from the IdP when starting a Federation SSO operation, by setting elements in the SSO request message. WLST Command The OIF WLST commands that can be used are: setIdPPartnerProfileRequestAuthnMethod() which will configure the requested Federation Authentication Method in a specific IdP Partner Profile, and accepts the following parameters: partnerProfile: name of the IdP Partner Profile authnMethod: the Federation Authentication Method to request displayOnly: an optional parameter indicating if the method should display the current requested Federation Authentication Method instead of setting it delete: an optional parameter indicating if the method should delete the current requested Federation Authentication Method instead of setting it setIdPPartnerRequestAuthnMethod() which will configure the specified IdP Partner entry with the requested Federation Authentication Method, and accepts the following parameters: partner: name of the IdP Partner authnMethod: the Federation Authentication Method to request displayOnly: an optional parameter indicating if the method should display the current requested Federation Authentication Method instead of setting it delete: an optional parameter indicating if the method should delete the current requested Federation Authentication Method instead of setting it This applies to SAML 2.0 and OpenID 2.0 protocols. See the "Fed Authentication Method Requests in OIF / SP" article for more information. Test In this test, OIF/SP is integrated with a remote SAML 2.0 IdP Partner, with the OOTB configuration. Based on this setup, when OIF/SP starts a Federation SSO flow, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer>   <samlp:NameIDPolicy AllowCreate="true"/></samlp:AuthnRequest> Let's configure OIF/SP for that IdP Partner, so that the SP will request the IdP to use a mechanism mapped to the urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:ac:classes:X509 Federation Authentication Method to authenticate the user: Enter the WLST environment by executing:$IAM_ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh Connect to the WLS Admin server:connect() Navigate to the Domain Runtime branch:domainRuntime() Execute the setIdPPartnerRequestAuthnMethod() command:setIdPPartnerRequestAuthnMethod("AcmeIdP", "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:ac:classes:X509") Exit the WLST environment:exit() After the changes, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer>   <samlp:NameIDPolicy AllowCreate="true"/>   <samlp:RequestedAuthnContext Comparison="minimum">      <saml:AuthnContextClassRef xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion">         urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:ac:classes:X509      </saml:AuthnContextClassRef>   </samlp:RequestedAuthnContext></samlp:AuthnRequest> NameID Format The SAML 2.0 protocol allows for the SP to request from the IdP a specific NameID format to be used when the Assertion is issued by the IdP. Note: SAML 1.1 and OpenID 2.0 do not provide such a mechanism Configuring OIF The administrator can configure OIF/SP to request a NameID format in the SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest via: The OAM Administration Console, in the IdP Partner entry The OIF WLST setIdPPartnerNameIDFormat() command that will modify the IdP Partner configuration OAM Administration Console To configure the requested NameID format via the OAM Administration Console, perform the following steps: Go to the OAM Administration Console: http(s)://oam-admin-host:oam-admin-port/oamconsole Navigate to Identity Federation -> Service Provider Administration Open the IdP Partner you wish to modify In the Authentication Request NameID Format dropdown box with one of the values None The NameID format will be set Default Email Address The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress X.509 Subject The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:X509SubjectName Windows Name Qualifier The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:WindowsDomainQualifiedName Kerberos The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:kerberos Transient The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient Unspecified The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:unspecified Custom In this case, a field would appear allowing the administrator to indicate the custom NameID format to use The NameID format will be set to the specified format Persistent The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent I selected Email Address in this example Save WLST Command To configure the requested NameID format via the OIF WLST setIdPPartnerNameIDFormat() command, perform the following steps: Enter the WLST environment by executing:$IAM_ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh Connect to the WLS Admin server:connect() Navigate to the Domain Runtime branch:domainRuntime() Execute the setIdPPartnerNameIDFormat() command:setIdPPartnerNameIDFormat("PARTNER", "FORMAT", customFormat="CUSTOM") Replace PARTNER with the IdP Partner name Replace FORMAT with one of the following: orafed-none The NameID format will be set Default orafed-emailaddress The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress orafed-x509 The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:X509SubjectName orafed-windowsnamequalifier The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:WindowsDomainQualifiedName orafed-kerberos The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:kerberos orafed-transient The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient orafed-unspecified The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:unspecified orafed-custom In this case, a field would appear allowing the administrator to indicate the custom NameID format to use The NameID format will be set to the specified format orafed-persistent The NameID format will be set urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent customFormat will need to be set if the FORMAT is set to orafed-custom An example would be:setIdPPartnerNameIDFormat("AcmeIdP", "orafed-emailaddress") Exit the WLST environment:exit() Test In this test, OIF/SP is integrated with a remote SAML 2.0 IdP Partner, with the OOTB configuration. Based on this setup, when OIF/SP starts a Federation SSO flow, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer> <samlp:NameIDPolicy AllowCreate="true"/></samlp:AuthnRequest> After the changes performed either via the OAM Administration Console or via the OIF WLST setIdPPartnerNameIDFormat() command where Email Address would be requested as the NameID Format, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ForceAuthn="false" IsPassive="false" ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer> <samlp:NameIDPolicy Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress" AllowCreate="true"/></samlp:AuthnRequest> Protocol Binding The SAML 2.0 specifications define a way for the SP to request which binding should be used by the IdP to redirect the user to the SP with the SAML 2.0 Assertion: the ProtocolBinding attribute indicates the binding the IdP should use. It is set to: Either urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST for HTTP-POST Or urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:Artifact for Artifact The SAML 2.0 specifications also define different ways to redirect the user from the SP to the IdP with the SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest message, as the SP can send the message: Either via HTTP Redirect Or HTTP POST (Other bindings can theoretically be used such as Artifact, but these are not used in practice) Configuring OIF OIF can be configured: Via the OAM Administration Console or the OIF WLST configureSAMLBinding() command to set the Assertion Response binding to be used Via the OIF WLST configureSAMLBinding() command to indicate how the SAML AuthnRequest message should be sent Note: the binding for sending the SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest message will also be used to send the SAML 2.0 LogoutRequest and LogoutResponse messages. OAM Administration Console To configure the SSO Response/Assertion Binding via the OAM Administration Console, perform the following steps: Go to the OAM Administration Console: http(s)://oam-admin-host:oam-admin-port/oamconsole Navigate to Identity Federation -> Service Provider Administration Open the IdP Partner you wish to modify Check the "HTTP POST SSO Response Binding" box to request the IdP to return the SSO Response via HTTP POST, otherwise uncheck it to request artifact Save WLST Command To configure the SSO Response/Assertion Binding as well as the AuthnRequest Binding via the OIF WLST configureSAMLBinding() command, perform the following steps: Enter the WLST environment by executing:$IAM_ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh Connect to the WLS Admin server:connect() Navigate to the Domain Runtime branch:domainRuntime() Execute the configureSAMLBinding() command:configureSAMLBinding("PARTNER", "PARTNER_TYPE", binding, ssoResponseBinding="httppost") Replace PARTNER with the Partner name Replace PARTNER_TYPE with the Partner type (idp or sp) Replace binding with the binding to be used to send the AuthnRequest and LogoutRequest/LogoutResponse messages (should be httpredirect in most case; default) httppost for HTTP-POST binding httpredirect for HTTP-Redirect binding Specify optionally ssoResponseBinding to indicate how the SSO Assertion should be sent back httppost for HTTP-POST binding artifactfor for Artifact binding An example would be:configureSAMLBinding("AcmeIdP", "idp", "httpredirect", ssoResponseBinding="httppost") Exit the WLST environment:exit() Test In this test, OIF/SP is integrated with a remote SAML 2.0 IdP Partner, with the OOTB configuration which requests HTTP-POST from the IdP to send the SSO Assertion. Based on this setup, when OIF/SP starts a Federation SSO flow, the following SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest would be generated: <samlp:AuthnRequest ProtocolBinding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST" ID="id-E4BOT7lwbYK56lO57dBaqGUFq01WJSjAHiSR60Q4" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2014-04-01T21:39:14Z" Destination="https://acme.com/saml20/sso">   <saml:Issuer Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:entity">https://sp.com/oam/fed</saml:Issuer>   <samlp:NameIDPolicy AllowCreate="true"/></samlp:AuthnRequest> In the next article, I will cover the various crypto configuration properties in OIF that are used to affect the Federation SSO exchanges.Cheers,Damien Carru

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• Windows and SQL Azure Best Practices: Affinity Groups

  - by BuckWoody

  When you create a Windows Azure application, you’ll pick a subscription to put it under. This is a billing container - underneath that, you’ll deploy a Hosted Service. That holds the Web and Worker Roles that you’ll deploy for your applications. along side that, you use the Storage Account to create storage for the application. (In some cases, you might choose to use only storage or Roles - the info here applies anyway) As you are setting up your environment, you’re asked to pick a “region” where your application will run. If you choose a Region, you’ll be asked where to put the Roles. You’re given choices like Asia, North America and so on. This is where the hardware that physically runs your code lives. We have lots of fault domains, power considerations and so on to keep that set of datacenters running, but keep in mind that this is where the application lives. You also get this selection for Storage Accounts. When you make new storage, it’s a best practice to put it where your computing is. This makes the shortest path from the code to the data, and then back out to the user. One of the selections for the location is “Anywhere U.S.”. This selection might be interpreted to mean that we will bias towards keeping the data and the code together, but that may not be the case. There is a specific abstraction we created for just that purpose: Affinity Groups. An Affinity Group is simply a name you can use to tie together resources. You can do this in two places - when you’re creating the Hosted Service (shown above) and on it’s own tree item on the left, called “Affinity Groups”. When you select either of those actions, You’re presented with a dialog box that allows you to specify a name, and then the Region that  names ties the resources to. Now you can select that Affinity Group just as if it were a Region, and your code and data will stay together. That helps with keeping the performance high. Official Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh531560.aspx

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• Why is /dev/rfcomm0 giving PySerial problems?

  - by Travis G.

  I am connecting my Ubuntu box to a wireless readout setup over Bluetooth. I wrote a Python script to send the serial information through /dev/rfcomm0. The script connects fine and works for a few minutes, but then Python will start using 100% CPU and the messages stop flowing through. I can open rfcomm0 in a serial terminal and communicate through it by hand just fine. When I open it through a terminal it seems to work indefinitely. Also, I can swap the Bluetooth receiver for a USB cable, and change the port to /dev/ttyUSB0, and I don't get any problems over time. It seems either I'm doing something wrong with rfcomm0 or PySerial doesn't handle it well. Here's the script: import psutil import serial import string import time sampleTime = 1 numSamples = 5 lastTemp = 0 TEMP_CHAR = 't' USAGE_CHAR = 'u' SENSOR_NAME = 'TC0D' gauges = serial.Serial() gauges.port = '/dev/rfcomm0' gauges.baudrate = 9600 gauges.parity = 'N' gauges.writeTimeout = 0 gauges.open() print("Connected to " + gauges.portstr) filename = '/sys/bus/platform/devices/applesmc.768/temp2_input' def parseSensorsOutputLinux(output): return int(round(float(output) / 1000)) while(1): usage = psutil.cpu_percent(interval=sampleTime) gauges.write(USAGE_CHAR) gauges.write(chr(int(usage))) #write the first byte #print("Wrote usage: " + str(int(usage))) sensorFile = open(filename) temp = parseSensorsOutputLinux(sensorFile.read()) gauges.write(TEMP_CHAR) gauges.write(chr(temp)) #print("Wrote temp: " + str(temp)) Any thoughts? Thanks. EDIT: Here is the revised code, using Python-BlueZ instead of PySerial: import psutil import serial import string import time import bluetooth sampleTime = 1 numSamples = 5 lastTemp = 0 TEMP_CHAR = 't' USAGE_CHAR = 'u' SENSOR_NAME = 'TC0D' #gauges = serial.Serial() #gauges.port = '/dev/rfcomm0' #gauges.baudrate = 9600 #gauges.parity = 'N' #gauges.writeTimeout = 0 #gauges.open() gaugeSocket = bluetooth.BluetoothSocket(bluetooth.RFCOMM) gaugeSocket.connect(('00:06:66:42:22:96', 1)) filename = '/sys/bus/platform/devices/applesmc.768/temp2_input' def parseSensorsOutputLinux(output): return int(round(float(output) / 1000)) while(1): usage = psutil.cpu_percent(interval=sampleTime) #gauges.write(USAGE_CHAR) gaugeSocket.send(USAGE_CHAR) #gauges.write(chr(int(usage))) #write the first byte gaugeSocket.send(chr(int(usage))) #print("Wrote usage: " + str(int(usage))) sensorFile = open(filename) temp = parseSensorsOutputLinux(sensorFile.read()) #gauges.write(TEMP_CHAR) gaugeSocket.send(TEMP_CHAR) #gauges.write(chr(temp)) gaugeSocket.send(chr(temp)) #print("Wrote temp: " + str(temp)) It seems either Ubuntu must be closing /dev/rfcomm0 after a certain time or my Bluetooth receiver is messing things up. Even when the BluetoothError arises, the "connected" light on the receiver stays illuminated, and it is not until I power-cycle to receiver that I can reconnect. I'm not sure how to approach this problem. It's odd that the connection would work fine for a few minutes (seemingly a random amount of time) and then seize up. In case it helps, the Bluetooth receiver is a BlueSmirf Silver from Sparkfun. Do I need to be trying to maintain the connection from the receiver end or something?

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• AxCMS.net 10 with Microsoft Silverlight 4 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

  - by Axinom

  Axinom, European WCM vendor, today announced the next version of its WCM solution AxCMS.net 10, which streamlines the processes involved in creating, managing and distributing corporate content on the internet. The new solution helps reducing ongoing costs for managing and distributing to large audiences, while at the same time drastically reducing time-to-market and one-time setup costs. http://www.AxCMS.net Axinom’s WCM portfolio, based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 4, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Silverlight 4, allows enterprises to increase process efficiency, reduce operating costs and more effectively manage delivery of rich media assets on the Web and mobile devices. Axinom solutions are widely used by major European online brands in IT, telco, retail, media and entertainment industries such as Siemens, American Express, Microsoft Corp., ZDF, Pro7Sat1 Media, and Deutsche Post. Brand New User Interface built with Silverlight 4By using Silverlight 4, Axinom’s team created a new user interface for AxCMS.net 10 that is optimized for improved usability and speed. WYSIWYG mode, integrated image editor, extended list views, and detail views of objects allow a substantial acceleration of typical editor tasks. Axinom’s team worked with Silverlight Rough Cut Editor for video management and Silverlight Analytics Framework for extended reporting to complete the wide range of capabilities included in the new release. “Axinom’s release of AxCMS.net 10 enables developers to take advantage of the latest features in Silverlight 4,” said Brian Goldfarb, director of the developer platform group at Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft is excited about the opportunity this creates for Web developers to streamline the creating, managing and distributing of online corporate content using AxCMS.net 10 and Silverlight.” Rapid Web Development with Visual Studio 2010AxCMS.net 10 is extended by additional products that enable developers to get productive quickly and help solve typical customer scenarios. AxCMS.net template projects come with documented source code that help kick-start projects and learn best practices in all aspects of Web application development. AxCMS.net overcomes many hard-to-solve technical obstacles in an out-of-the-box manner by providing a set of ready-to-use vertical solutions such as corporate Web site, Web shop, Web campaign management, email marketing, multi-channel distribution, management of rich Internet applications, and Web business intelligence. Extended Multi-Site ManagementAxCMS.net has been supporting the management of an unlimited number of Web sites for a long time. The new version 10 of AxCMS.net will further improve multi-site management and provide features to editors and developers that will simplify and accelerate multi-site and multi-language management. Extended publication workflow will take into account additional dependencies of dynamic objects, pages, and documents. “The customer requests evolved from static html pages to dynamic Web applications content with the emergence of rich media assets seamlessly combined across many channels including Web, mobile and IPTV. With the.NET Framework 4 and Silverlight 4, we’re on the fast track to making the three screen strategy a reality for our customers,” said Damir Tomicic, CEO of Axinom Group. “Our customers enjoy substantial competitive advantages of using latest Microsoft technologies. We have a long-standing, relationship with Microsoft and are committed to continued development using Microsoft tools and technologies to deliver innovative Web solutions in the future.”  

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• Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home Server

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you use Windows Home Server to backup the machines on your network, your in luck if you accidentally delete important files or they become corrupted. Today we take a look at getting your data back from backups on your home server. Open Windows Home Server Console and click select the Computers and Backup tab. Right-click on the computer you need to restore files for and select View Backups. This will open a list of your recent backups. Highlight the one you want to open, then click the Open button in the Restore or View Files section. If this is the first time you’re restoring a file, you’ll be asked to verify installation of the device software. Check the box next to Always trust software from Microsoft Corporation and click Install. Now wait while the backup data is retrieved. After the backup data has been retrieved, an explorer windows opens up to drive (Z:) which is the backup data. It’s just like if you were opening a drive on your local machine. Now you can browse through the backup and find the files your missing. You can open the files directly, or drag them onto your machine to the location you want to restore them.   Restoring your data is actually a very easy process with Windows Home Server. Of course you’ll want to make sure the computers on your network are being backed up to WHS. if you need help with that, check out our article on how to configure your computer to backup to WHS. If you want to backup your home server shares, check out our article on how to backup WHS folder to an external drive. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips GMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerRestore Your PC from Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscInstalling Windows Home ServerConfigure Your Computer to Backup to Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• How to Disable Access to the Registry in Windows 7

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you don’t know what your doing in the Registry, you can mess up your computer pretty good. Today we show you how to prevent users from accessing the Registry and making any changes to it. Using Local Group Policy Editor Note: This method uses Group Policy Editor which is not available in Home versions of Windows. First type gpedit.msc into the Search box in the Start menu. When Group Policy Editor opens, navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates then select System. Under Setting in the right panel double-click on Prevent access to registry editing tools. Select the radio button next to Enabled, click OK, then close out of Group Policy Editor. Now if a user tries to access the Registry… They will get the following message advising they cannot access it.   Using Registry Enabler & Disabler 3 If you’re using Home or Starter version of Windows 7, you can use a neat utility called Registry Enabler & Disabler (link below). This app works on XP and Vista as well. There is no installation involved so you can run it from a flash drive, disable the registry, then take the flash drive with you while a the user is on the machine.   Again, if the user tries to access the Registry they will get the following error… Using one of these options will stop users from gaining access to the Registry or running any registry hacks. Of course if you have a shared computer, you may want to set up other users with a Standard Account, as they won’t be able to make changes to the Registry anyway. Download Registry Enabler & Disabler 3 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable Notification Balloons in XPDisable/Enable Lock Workstation Functionality (Windows + L)Disable Windows Mobility Center in Windows 7 or VistaRegistry Hack to Disable Writing to USB DrivesSpeed Up Disk Access by Disabling Last Access Updating in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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