As a way to get more familiar with the Socket class in Flash, I decided to write a simple Opennap chat client.

Have a look at http://www.arenddeboer.com/flashnap/ ViewSource is enabled for a peak inside.

You can use any username / password combo as long as it doesn’t exist yet.

update:
Due to a take-down notice from the BPI connecting with this client is currently not possible.

Update:
Server back online with filesharing disabled.

For an Adobe AIR program I wanted an official code signing certificate to get rid of the big fat “publisher: UNKNOWN” warning clients face while installing my software.

Visiting verisign.com you will see a one year Code Signing Certificate will set you back  US $ 499,-

According to Adobe’s Flash Builder documentation only Certificates from the big four CA’s are trusted:

“A developer can use any class-3, high-assurance certificate provided by any CA to sign an Adobe AIR application. However, only ChosenSecurity, GlobalSign, Thwarte, and VeriSign come pre-installed on most end user’s machines (Mac OS X or Windows) and are trusted by the operating systems.”

These companies ask an amazing amount of money for a certificate, luckily there are better alternatives. The one I got was available for $75,- a year. This of course raises the question whether this certificate will be accepted, but I did found a couple of blog posts that reassured me this shouldn’t be a problem.

Hop over to author.tucows.com, register for an account and you will be able to purchase a Comodo Certificate through tucows.
The process will take some time. You will have to email documents to proof  your business/person identity and they probably call you as well. After receiving the certificate and signing the AIR package I was able to install my signed software successfully on:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Mac OS X (10.6).

Unfortunately Ubuntu Linux 10.04 fails to recognize/trust the certificate out of the box (thanks to Jaap for testing this)

Before:

After: