arenddeboer.com » Flash

Flash AS3 Opennap / Napster Client using the binary Socket class

Arend — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:53:40 +0000

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.

Cheap Code Signing Certificate for $75,-

Arend — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:50:20 +0000

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:

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Google maps API for Flash

Arend — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:46:57 +0000

The nice folks at google have made a Flash library-api for google maps.
I have made a sample application which displays my “current” position on the map.

How it works:

Mobile phone
On the Mobile Phone, a Windows Mobile 6.1 ( HTC Touch Diamond) runs a .NET CF 3.5 application that sends the current GPS-location to the server. This is done every second, or on a chosen interval.

Live tracking application

The server
On the server there is a simple php script that stores the GPS-location and device-id, send by the phone, in a database.

The web-application
The web-application is build in Adobe Flex Builder 3 and fetches the last known GPS-location from the server.
It then draws a marker on the map and starts updating again.

To get an idea of how it works without me being on the run (and running the gps mobile application) use the simulation mode.
I have recorded two sample tracks, a walking track and a track by car.

Things to do:
Smooth map movement
Select mobile device(s) to show, and zoom map to show all selected mobile devices.
Show (last known) direction, speed, distance, top speed..

(this is partly implemented in the html/javascript version on http://www.arenddeboer.com/liveTracking/)