Yeap I know I make alot of spelling mistankes on this blog, but for once this one is intensional. Movember! The month of the MO! The flat has decided to partake in this age old tradition. How can you win?

Well keep an eye here as towards the end of the month I will update an bump this post to the top with photos showing a month of growth. Vote for your favorite and a winner will be selected from those who voted for the favorite.

Whats up for grabs?
The winner will recieve a limited edition special X$!Ve branded air guitar (signed by me), the runner up will win a copy of Macromedias own Flex Builder 2.0 Alpha. Excited? Well you probably shouldnt be but its all in good fun.

The culprates:

(From right to left) Richard, Huzz, and Mee!
If you have any suggestions for crazy mo’s I am listening. At this point in time I considering the idea of joining my mo up with my sideburns, And if Macromedia sponsors me I could do it in a M for macromedia……….or Macrobe……or an A for………. The funniest thing is that I have blonde hair but somehow get a ginga beard

Anyway the month has begun (we get it here first in NZ) so let the competition begin!
Yes I know we all look drugged in the photos but it was after letting off fireworks outside (its also coming up to Guy Fawkes here too which means fireworks mischief) And I think I might have to hide from the public eye for the month.

 Traditionally Movember participants gather sponsors for mens health related charities…..So if I start to get serious I may call in a few favours for $5.

 Is anyone else keen to compete….I think I can get another air guitar made in time if you want to join in on the challenge

Wow is all that left my lips when I happend across Darron Schall's post about Flash VNC. He doesn't get into alot of detail but basically it is a swf interface to a VNC server. If you not sure what VNC or Virtual Network Computing is check out the Wiki HERE but basically its controling another computer from a remote location. What you see on screen is pretty much what you would see if you were physically right infront of the remote controled computer.

The cool thing (which I cant wait to see but probably cant justify the cost of) is the source of his encryption class and socket protocols. Nun the less its early days so Im sure well see all the diferent network related technologies emulated in flash.

This is the point of this post really. It has only been 10 days scince the release of Flex 2 and the 8.5 flash player but we are begining to see all the oportunities open up in peoples little tests. I think its safe to say that AJAX will have its place on the web (Googles RSS Reader) but Flash will be taking it 2-3 steps futher.

So go check out Darrons blog post which outlines the project in a little more detail, and get a glimps of what to come.

Bring on the next generation of web applications, but the sad thing is I have to go back to work on Monday and enter the mundane world of .Net and  again   anyone want a Flex developer in New Zealand ? I bet that will be the wish of a few hardened flash developer (the uber geek kind ) all over the place.

In other news I have been playing with Remobjects .net remoting server to see what possibilities there are for intergration with flash. If I can prove that it will be a preformer then I may be able to swing some Flex work with my employer when the 8.5/9? player is released. Be a whole lot cooler then. By the way I work for RightHemisphere creating web interfaces to thier 3d processing server. Might be time for an about page on this site me thinks. And I could stick something up in the flash site.

Hi all, well for the last couple of nights I have been staying up late trying to figure out a roadblock I hit with the msn messenger Flex version. I have uploaded the source for people to play with but if you manage to solve my problem please let me know. If nothing else just use it as an example of sockets in flash 8.5. If you have any questions please post in the comments.

SETTING THE SCENE:
Msn Messenger logs onto the messenger server, shakes hands then is sent away to get a ticket from an SSL connection. Thats where my php script (included) steps in. Flash cannot open sockets lower than 1024 (. So I had to find a way to get the ticket from the SSL MSN server then pass it back to flash. If you know your PHP your thinking fsockopen(). Burrrrr… wrong. Micro$oft has changed its protocols and is at somewhere about version 9. Through doing this they have tried to stop people like me obviously. So I used cURL to get a connection read the page ( i have an echo commented out in the php if you want to see the output), find the ticket and pass the ticket back to flash.

All works well at this point. Flash recieves the ticket passes it off to the Msn Server……and the server fails my authentification . Im not sure if it records ip addresses so runing the php off localhost might fix it.

 Included in this bundel it the .AS file and the .PHP file (but you can use the one on my server if you want, just please dont hammer);

For more info on the msn protocol etc click HERE . 

Download the zip HERE . 

It doesnt do much visually but if you watch the debug panel youll see the comunication. like:

>>> VER 2 MSNP8 CVR0
<<< VER 2 MSNP8 CVR0

>>> CVR 3 0×0409 winnt 5.1 i386 MSNMSGS 4.7.3001 WindowsMessenger example@hotmail.com
<<< CVR 3 1.0.0000 1.0.0000 1.0.0000 http://msgr.dlservice.microsoft.com http://messenger.msn.com

>>> USR 4 TWN I example@hotmail.com
<<< XFR 4 NS 207.46.2.59:1863 0 65.54.239.140:1863

>>> VER 5 MSNP8 CVR0
<<< VER 5 MSNP8 CVR0

>>> CVR 6 0×0409 winnt 5.1 i386 MSNMSGS 4.7.3001 WindowsMessenger example@hotmail.com
<<< CVR 6 1.0.0000 1.0.0000 1.0.0000 http://msgr.dlservice.microsoft.com http://messenger.msn.com

>>> USR 7 TWN I example@hotmail.com
<<< USR 7 TWN S lc=1033,id=507,tw=40,fs=1,ru=http%3A%2F%2Fmes…
 

NOTE: this application will send you username and password in clear txt across the internet as it stands (using the remote php script) So if you have pissed off any geeks and they have a packet sniffer on your network they can see them. To fix use the php script on your local host and make sure you have cURL module installed as a part of you build, else use the testing script on my server.

Good spotting by www.beedigital.net  on finding this cool little chat program intergrating google maps. See the post HERE   or see the chat application Click HERE  

Now lets see someone build it with flex 2.0, alothough looking at the source I can see a flash chat application in a frame. Looks like they are already onto it. Might pay to keep an eye on this one. See the flash chat app in the pic below….hmmmmm!

Why oh why did Macromedia put a restriction on the port number for socket connections (Any one from MM please feel free to comment). In all honesty I realise there is probably some big security reason but its sooooo anoying.

So far I have a flex class the connects to the MSN messenger server and goes through all of the right steps to be authenitcated…..Except I cant connect to the passport server through SSL (port 443). You actually cant connect to a port below 1024 in flex due to a security restriction. So there goes http socket connections too. .

Why not do a URLLoader call? Well you see the passport authentification server doesnt actually return any html data….only header data. And flash can access header data of requests but I am unsure if it can access headers of responses. (if you know please help)

So I now have to wait for my Website hosting to include ssl in my build of php and Ill do the passport authenification  through php and return the vars through a ssl to flash using URLLoader.

Anyway I have the messenger package working and I can manually authenticate, and pass the vars to the flex swf. Have started doing all the usual like showing contacts etc and sending messages.

My big gripe is really why restrict Socket connections port numbers?. Once I have Ssl in my php ill post an example.

If you have any idea about this please comment.