frodeste's shared items in Google Reader

SelfSTS: when you need a SAML token NOW, RIGHT NOW

vibro — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:15:06 PDT

A little new toy for you claims-based identity aficionados to play with! Available here. Tokens are the currency on the identity market. Any identity solution you develop will require you to acquire & consume tokens (& associated claims) at some point. ADFS2 is super-easy to install, but does require Active Directory and as a result it is not always readily available at development time, especially if you are not targeting a departmental application or a classic federation scenario. And even in that case, you don’t always have a test endpoint set up. When you test a payment service you don’t move real money right away, there’s no reason to do the same with identities: do you have a test account for all the role values you want to test? The standard solution, one that has been used big time also in out training kit and other examples, is creating a custom STS. Almost three years have passed since the very first preview we gave in Barcelona of what became WIF, and I still remember Barry in the first row facepalming at the sight of one STS built in under 10 minutes. Well, with the WIF SDK tooling now that happens in seconds (or less, if your machine has an SSD ;-)) hence it’s incredibly easy to set up a test STS. However, after you’ve done that hundreds of times (and believe me, I did) even that can start to wear you off; writing new fed metadata every time you change something takes time; and above all, creating many custom STSes can litter your IIS and certificates stores if you are not disciplined in keeping things clean (I’m not). Also, if you are packing your solution for others (in my case for making labs and sample code available to you, more commonly you need to do that when something is not working and you want the help of others) you need to include some setup, which has requirements (IIS, certificate stores, etc) and impact on the target machine. Well, enter SelfSTS. SelfSTS is a little winform app which will not deny a token to...

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Celebrating A Year Of Apple Pondering Google Voice

Jason Kincaid — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:13:07 PDT

My, how quickly things change. It wasn’t much more than a year ago that Apple and Google were happy partners — at least from the public’s perspective — working in tandem to push technology forward at a clipping pace. Google’s search and various apps complemented the iPhone perfectly, and the existing Android phones merely affirmed how much better the iPhone was than everything else on the market. And then everything went to hell. Late last July, we broke the news that Apple blocked Google’s official Voice application and removed any third-party applications that supported the service, sparking an FCC inquiry into why Google Voice was banned from the iPhone. Today marks the one year anniversary of Apple’s response to the FCC, in which it gave a remarkably disingenuous explanation as to why Google Voice wasn’t on the iPhone: Apple was still “pondering” the matter. A year later, it apparently still is. Google Voice is nowhere to be found on the App Store, and while Google has developed an impressive web version for the iPhone, it can’t provide the same performance or ‘native feel’ of a native app and it can’t access the phone’s local contacts directory (at least, not yet). In light of today’s milestone I reached out to both Apple and Google to see if there’s been any progress. Both declined to comment. Of course, Google Voice itself was never the key issue at play — the service was only available in a private beta when it was blocked from the iPhone. Indeed, most of the outcry stemmed from the fact that Apple was blatantly using its control over the App Store’s walled garden for anti-competitive reasons. Before the Voice fiasco Apple had drawn plenty of heat over its inconsistent App Store approval policies, but most of these removals could be ascribed to the notion that Apple was censoring apps to help maintain the quality and safety of the App Store. That clearly wasn’t the case here: Apple saw Google’s increasing presence on the iPhone as a threat, so it...

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Contact and User Conflicts Resolved in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Joel Lindstrom — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:54:03 PDT

In prior posts we have discussed conflicts that can happen when a contact and a user share the same e-mail address. Traditionally, if the same email exists on a user and a contact record, it could cause problems when activities like e-mails were tracked in CRM. Sometimes these issues were minor, such as the activity being connected to the contact record instead of the user, but other issues were more major—the most troubling one was when you tracked a meeting request that included the email address that was duplicated in CRM, sometimes when it synched back to outlook from CRM, it would resolve to the contact instead of the user, which would cause the appointment to be removed from the user’s outlook calendar—not good when it is an important meeting getting removed from your calendar so you forget about it. As mentioned in an earlier post, Update Rollup 12 for Dynamics CRM fixes this issue. The way that the duplicate e-mail synch conflicts are resolved is by giving the user record top priority. When resolving a tracked activity using the email address, CRM now first matches against the User records. If it finds a match, it stops. This is a great improvement and should make life easier in those cases where you need to have people as both contacts and users. del.icio.us Tags: Users,contacts,Microsoft CRM,Dynamics CRM

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A New First for Microsoft Dynamics CRM ~ Update 12 Podcast

Jim Glass — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:27:00 PDT

For the first time, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Premier Field Engineering team has released a podcast regarding Update Rollups, specifically Update Rollup 12 . In it I describe how CRM Update Rollups are produced, how they work, popular methods of client rollup...(read more)

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Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

CRM Team Blog — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:25:00 PDT

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering (SE) team released Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 12 on Thursday, July 29, 2010. The links below will take you to the necessary information about Update Rollup 12. Microsoft Download Center: http...(read more)

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Norway's largest paper: iPhone 4 Antennagate is a US problem

(author unknown) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:00:00 PDT

After testing Apple's iPhone 4 against competing HTC and Nokia models in a remote area on the edge of Norwegian carrier Telenor's mobile coverage, the county's largest paper has concluded that its antenna design is "just as good and bad as competitors," rather than suffering any defect.

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The State of Enterprise Architecture

Mike Walker — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:15:13 PDT

Recently there was a panel discussion regarding "The State of Enterprise Architecture: Vast Promise or Lost Opportunity?". It was actually a very interesting panel discussion. Take a peek when you have a moment.Here are a few excerpts that I really agree with: In a lot of cases, we make a big deal about the technical expertise of architects, but in a lot of architectural engagements that I have been involved in, I didn’t actually know anything at all about the subject matter that I was being asked to architect. What I did know how to do was ask the right questions, find the people who knew the answers to those, and help the people who actually had the information orchestrate, arrange, and understand it in a way that allowed them to solve the problem that they really had.This is very true. It is all about asking the right people the right questions and even more often it's about asking those same people the next two or three questions that are the real answers you are looking for. This also isn't something that is easy for anyone to pick up. While the occasional cheat sheet/checklist is good as a refresher to make sure you tied everything off it should be used as the end all be all. Questions alone with out the right people asking them are not effective. In terms of its maturity as a profession, it may be 100 or 200 years back, compared to law or medicine, but on the other hand, the quality of the practice is much more like where medicine and law were 50 year, 25 years ago.I have to agree on a lot of fronts. It is somewhat the EA Wild West out here. There are so many competing frameworks, certifications and methods that it is difficult for the EA community to have a common vocabulary or measurement. The fundamental with leadership in EA is that architects don’t own things. They are not responsible for the business processes. They are not responsible for the sales results. They are responsible for leading a group of people to that transformation, to that happy...

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Premiering tonight: Tony Robbins’ TV series on NBC

tedstaff — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:32:07 PDT

Tonight (Tuesday, July 27) on NBC TV stations, Tony Robbins debuts his first-ever TV series, Breakthrough with Tony Robbins. In the six-episode series, Robbins works with six people facing an extreme life challenge, inspiring them to become more resilient and find the inner resources to build better lives and relationships. Find more information on the Breakthrough mini-site, or watch the trailer above for a sample — or watch Tony Robbins’ TEDTalk to get a sense of his energetic, empowering style.

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Why 'iPad Killers' are Already Dead

(author unknown) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:07:00 PDT

Analysis: Apple has already locked up access to manufacturing materials for tablets, along with our hearts and minds. Apple - IPad - Macintosh - IPhone - Apple II

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endpoint.tv - Workflow and Custom Activities - Best Practices (Part 4)

ronjacobs — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:45:47 PDT

In this episode, Windows Workflow Foundation team Program Manager Leon Welicki drops in to show us the team's guidelines for developing custom activities. In Part 4, we cover more Activity Design guidelines including Body vs. Children Variables Overriding CacheMetadata Activity Design For more information endpoint.tv - Workflow and Custom Activities - Best Practices (Part 1) endpoint.tv - Workflow and Custom Activities - Best Practices (Part 2) endpoint.tv - Workflow and Custom Activities - Best Practices (Part 3) Workflow Foundation developer center on MSDN WF4 Activities Best Practices Sample Code

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The iPhone 4 Redux: Analyzing Apple's iOS 4.0.1 Signal Fix & Antenna Issue

(author unknown) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:28:00 PDT

In case you haven’t noticed, the iPhone 4’s antenna design has come under considerable scrutiny. In our iPhone 4 review, we investigated the iPhone 4 antenna and came to two conclusions. First, that iOS 4 was displaying signal bars in an overly optimistic manner, compressing the dynamic range of possible signal bars users can see. Second, we identified a worst case signal drop of around 24 dBm when the iPhone 4 is cupped tightly in the left hand, covering the black strip and possibly detuning the antennas and adding additional attenuation from the presence of the hand. Since those initial measurements, we’ve been working tirelessly to both characterize the problem, fully understand the mechanisms behind it, and report on a number of possible solutions. Update: We just confirmed that our analysis based on iOS 4.1 beta applies to iOS 4.0.1 that was just released.

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WPC 2010 News Roundup

Joel Lindstrom — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:00:22 PDT

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC 2010) is happening in Washington DC this week. In case you didn’t have a chance to attend, here’s some of the biggest news coming from WPC regarding Dynamics CRM: Introducing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 – the next version of CRM (aka CRM 5 or CRM.Next) has officially been named Dynamics CRM 2011. CRM Online has been expanded to 40 countries and 41 languages The public beta of CRM 2011 will be available in September. You can register to be notified when the beta is available. See the keynote from Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division. Start watching at about the 3 hour 12 minute point. Dynamics CRM has 23,000 customers with 1.4 million users CRM 2011 will be available Online by end of this year, on premises beginning of 2011. Microsoft is launching an online store of Dynamics CRM solutions that will be available in September 2010. It will be a online marketplace of solutions that you can try and buy. New demo vpc for CRM 4 is available for partnersource and customersource members. Includes the portal accelerators and a tool that caches pages to increase performance Lots of exciting stuff—we’ll have more information about CRM 2011 in the next few weeks—stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Dynamics CRM 2011,Microsoft CRM,WPC 2010

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 beta coming in September

Jim Glass — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:31:49 PDT

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the next version of Microsoft's customer relationship management software, will be released to beta in September and officially released by the end of this year, Microsoft announced today. Microsoft is demoing the upcoming...(read more)

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FaceTime and Why Apple’s Massive Integration Advantage is Just Beginning

Guest Author — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 09:17:56 PDT

Editor’s note: Guest author Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies. His last guest post was on Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.” Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this. Apple eliminated this friction by innovating at the confluence of hardware and software—hit one button mid-call and the feature just works. It really is amazing (yes, I am channeling Steve Jobs). But FaceTime is just a teaser of Apple’s deep integration capabilities. Below the surface of hardware / software, Apple is on the cusp of differentiating on a much deeper level, a result of its strategy to vertically integrate at the component level. The advantages of integrating so deeply are subtle but incredibly powerful. Feature Bloat in Components Benefits Apple: I recently discussed why innovation in mobile is happening at an unprecedented pace. One primary driver is incredible component innovation. But this rapid innovation—which is good overall—causes a negative byproduct: “feature bloat.” The HTC EVO, which crams in 4G wireless, epitomizes this best (sorry, but mobile 4G is not ready for primetime, and I firmly believe Apple won’t even include it on next year’s iPhone 5). The temptation for companies to differentiate via features is a virtuous cycle: component vendors (Broadcom, TI, Qualcomm) compete aggressively based on integration levels. Handset OEMs like HTC push vendors to release features prematurely, and...

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iPhone 101: Quitting apps in iOS 4

Erica Sadun — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:30:00 PDT

Filed under: iPhone, iPhone 101 iOS 4 makes it easy to leave apps without quitting, but what happens when you actually do want to terminate an application? Quitting applications can really help with older apps that have not been updated for iOS 4 "multitasking" and that do not properly return to the state they previously were in when resumed. The most common type of app that fits this profile supplies Bonjour services that might not properly continue after resuming the application. Another app that reportedly has this issue is Gmail. TUAW reader Kefz writes, "Gmail does not work unless you force quit the mail application. If it is sitting in the multitasking task bar, [notifications aren't] automatically pushed to the phone...You'd have to open the mail app and have it check for new mail." There's are two ways you can quit, according to Apple's documentation, although neither one is particularly obvious. Read on to learn what they are.TUAWiPhone 101: Quitting apps in iOS 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Apple issues iOS 4 fix for Exchange ActiveSync issues

(author unknown) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:00:00 PDT

Apple has issued a configuration profile that addresses an issue in iOS 4 that may cause sync problems with Microsoft Exchange or Google Mail and Calendar.

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Introducing the WF Security Pack CTP 1 on wf.codeplex.com

Dr.Cliffe — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:54:00 PDT

Today, we would like to announce the release of the WF Security Pack CTP 1 on http://wf.codeplex.com. Where did it come from? Quite simply, from you: real WF 4 customers who have spent time banging their heads against the wall trying to get certain security scenarios working with WF 4. From your feedback, we’ve put together this Activity Pack to fill in some gaps that you have identified. Let’s take a quick look at what is covered. The Microsoft WF Security Pack CTP 1 is a set of 7 security-related activities, designers, and the associated source code based on WF 4 and the Windows Identity Foundation (WIF). The scenarios we targeted were the following: Impersonating a client identity in the workflow. In-workflow authorization, such as PrincipalPermission and validation of Claims. Authenticated messaging using ClientCredentials specified in the workflow, such as username/password or a token retrieved from a Security Token Service (STS). Flowing a client security token through a middle-tier workflow service to a back-end service (claims-based delegation) using WS-Trust features (ActAs). Now, my question for you is: are these the right set of scenarios to target for the next .NET framework release? What is missing? Which is the most important? Again, we want your feedback so that we can make the right decisions for the long-term benefit of the product. Use the Discussions tab, our WF 4 Forums, a carrier pigeon, whatever it takes to get us some feedback. Ok, here are three great ways to get started: Download the WF Security Pack CTP 1 from wf.codeplex.com, add a reference to the Microsoft.Security.Activities.dll in your WF 4 project, and check out the “Security” tab in the Toolbox. Take a quick read through the User Guide introduction to get a feel for what is included. Download the WF Security Pack CTP 1 Source code, open up the WorkflowSecurityPack.sln, and take a look at the activity APIs and the rest of the moving pieces of the implementation. In...

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iPhone 4 takes great pictures, breaks up robbery

Michael Rose — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:00:00 PDT

Filed under: iPhoneThere are many iPhone 4 photos already populating the Interwebs, but relatively few of those galleries end with law enforcement activity. Fox & Friends weekend anchor Clayton Morris (also the host of the Gadgets and Games Web show, where I'm pleased to be an occasional guest) was heading home from his early shift on Sunday, and he decided to avail himself of the fine morning light to snap a few 5 MP shots with the new and improved camera. He produced a nice gallery of pictures (especially the downstairs shot of the Broadway Apple Store), but the last three are a little bit oddly composed. It kinda looks like a guy running away from something, and that's exactly what it was; Morris happened to walk by a store robbery in progress (!) and snapped a few pictures of the suspect fleeing the scene. He also used his iPhone to call 911 and followed the perp long enough to guide the police in for an arrest. It's likely that these are the first iPhone 4 photos of a crime -- but if you've got one-of-a-kind iPhone pics to share, let us know in the comments!TUAWiPhone 4 takes great pictures, breaks up robbery originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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6 Things to Know About Microsoft StreamInsight

Richard Seroter — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:42:47 PDT

Microsoft StreamInsight is a new product included with SQL Server 2008 R2. It is Microsoft’s first foray into the event stream processing and complex event processing market that already has its share of mature products and thought leaders. I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time with the product over the past 8 months and thought I’d try and give you a quick look at the things you should know about it. Event processing is about continuous intelligence. An event can be all sorts of things ranging from a customer’s change of address to a meter read on an electrical meter. When you have an event driven architecture, you’re dealing with asynchronous communication of data as it happens to consumers who can choose how to act upon it. The term “complex event processing” refers to gathering knowledge from multiple (simple) business events into smaller sets of summary events. I can join data from multiple streams and detect event patterns that may have not been visible without the collective intelligence. Unlike traditional database driven applications where you constantly submit queries against a standing set of data, an event processing solution deploys a set of compiled queries that the event data passes through. This is a paradigm shift for many, and can be tricky to get your head around, but it’s a compelling way to compliment an enterprise business intelligence strategy and improve the availability of information to those who need it. Queries are written using LINQ. The StreamInsight team chose LINQ as their mechanism for authoring declarative queries. As you would hope, you can write a fairly wide set of queries that filter content, join distinct streams, perform calculations and much more. What if I wanted to have my customer call center send out a quick event whenever a particular product was named in a customer complaint? My query can filter out all the other products that get mentioned and amplify events about the target product: var filterQuery = ...

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iOS 4 walkthrough

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:24:31 PDT

Complete feature guide to Apple’s latest iOS 4 iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS 4 or iPhone 4.0) continues Apple’s relentless yearly mobile OS cycle. If 2007 was the mainstreaming of the multitouch user interface, 2008 all about the app store, and 2009 filling in the feature list, then iOS 4 promises to be… well, that’s why we’re here. (And yes, iOS. That’s the new name Apple has licensed from trademark holders Cisco to represent the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — and maybe soon Apple TV and who knows what else — family.) Back on April 8 at the sneak preview event, Apple promised 7 “tent-pole” features and 100+ general user features overall, along with 1500 major new API for developers. TiPb’s going to walk you through the ones that matter most. Note: this is an updated version of our original beta walkthroughs, based on the GM (gold master) seed released at WWDC 2010. If anything changes in the general release slated for June 21, we’ll update again. (For more on the hardware, see TiPb’s iPhone 4 preview.) What Hasn’t Changed As always, we’ll start off by telling you what hasn’t change so we can clear the deck for what has. For more information on any functionality that’s pretty much identical to past versions, check out our previous walkthroughs: iPhone 3.1 iPhone 3.0 iPhone 2.2 iPhone 2.1 iPhone 2.0 And here’s a quick list of the unchanged apps in iOS 4: YouTube: Accounts were a big addition in iPhone 3.0, YouTube sits this iOS update out, at least so far. Stocks: Similarly, Stocks got landscape and a slew of swipe-able data last time, so the update love gets skipped this time. Weather: Almost comedically at this point, it’s still unchanged from iPhone 1.0. Still no HTC TouchFlo 3D style animations, no landscape mode with more/different information. Not even a Calendar-style icon update to show current local weather. Nada. Voice Memo: Introduced in iPhone 3.0, it looks pretty much the same in iOS 4. Clock: With nothing but a lap feature...

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