dev.martani [Developer <Fun/>] is merged here

With the change to my main blog http://martani.net with a lighter cleaner theme (please let me know if you prefer this one or the old one, and any problem or compatibility issue with your browser), I decided to close the blog at http://dev.martani.net which was mainly about programming and merge its contents here.
From now on, if you look for old posts that were posted on Developer <Fun/> you will find them on this blog, also future posts will be posted directly here.
Because the two blogs discuss Tech subjects and development in general, which makes them too close, and the fact that maintaining multiple blogs is not as easy as one blog, also targeting the reader in one blog is better to have a loyal public.
About <Martani/> iThink, it will stay always there, since it talks about philosophic - political thoughts, so don’t forget to take a look in there from time to time :)

Finally, you can subscribe to my RSS from here : http://feeds.feedburner.com/MartaniTechBlog
and the RSS of iThink from here : http://ithink.martani.net/feeds/posts/default
Have fun reading my ideas :)

a test, pls ignore this : http://twitpic.com/oo81a

Pro Decrypting VBScript Viruses [memories]

It has been almost 20 months now from the publishing of the small tutorial about decrypting / decoding VBScript viruses, and today doing some GoogleFu I discovered a lot of academic papers that were based on my small tutorial :)

First of all, I want to mention that this little tutorial (books as it called, maybe;) was written almost two years before, when I was 19 years old, I wrote it, to express what world I live in, and the idea of writing this book is too funny actually. One day I was with my friends from INI (specifically Badrou, Issam and Paipo I guess) and we were doing some computer networking stuff, then I plugged in a flash disk in my laptop and double clicked it, and whoop! the virus was loaded from the VBScript file.

I took the challenge to show it's source code to them, so I opend the .vbs file which looks like the following picture, because I was doing this for years already. -I don't know how I learnt to decode them but I do-. the fact that I was doing something familiar to me, but too strange to my friends, gave me the hint to write some tutorials on how to decrypt such viruses, because for others, this picture is sincerely "no meaning" :D

How an encoded VBscript virus looks like

Well, that being said, I wrote a small 40 pages describing the whole process of decrypting a VBScript virus, which is a generic process that can be applied on any sort of script-like program.

The were some amazing people contacting me by email asking about VB in general, even some of them developed small utilities to analyze VBS files on flash disks and neutralize them once a threat detected using information they read from the book.

This is what someone send me after answering all his questions about VB ;)

Other guys, did some academic papers, like this one from the Informatics Engineering Program, Institute Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia. This was the title of his paper, translated from Indonesian by the Google Translation Servcies:

Implementing Cryptography on a computer virus

Kenny Enrich - NIM 13506111
Informatics Engineering Program, Institut Teknologi Bandung
Jl. Ganesha 10, Bandung

You can read the original paper here, or the translated version here.

Without forget of course the 56 600 Google unique results referencing the book.

To download or read the book, with the source code for free, follow this link.

PS : Actually it's Decoding and not Decrypting, also you can forgive a 19 years old kid for his grammatical mistakes and poor english style. I thank BOUABDALLAH Abdelmoumen for his valuable help rechecking grammatical mistakes.

And yep, I'm proud of my 19 years old self ;)

Augmented 3D reality and the 6th sense, a vision to the future

This is a poke of an old post which deserve to be updated from time to time. 

Augmented reality is according to Wikipedia :

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with-, or augmentedby virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, like for example sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable

Today I’m going to show you how to try it yourself without any need of special hardware or software (see further for some AR software).

First I want to show this video which is the Microsoft vision for the year 2019, just watch and admire :)

Microsoft Vision For 2019

If you think this might be a dream or something that won’t come in the coming years, just remember 10 or 15 years before! when 95% of us are using command line in their daily work, and how we now use the iPhone and other touch/voice devices to do the same work!

Still not convinced? take a look at Microsoft Project Natal here which will be available so soon maybe after the next PDC, or the sixth sense from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT

Microsoft Project Natal

the sixth sense from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT

Ok, you wanna try something yourself? you don’t need a special hardware or software to do this, just a webcam and a piece of paper, and here you go, these are the results I’ve got!

Augmented Reality | Wind Trubine

Augmented Reality | Solar Energy

Just head to the GE Ecomagination website, print the paper and there you go. If you want more stuff like this, and to experiment more, try theses links :

• http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1903121
• http://www.boffswana.com/news/?p=498
• http://www.boffswana.com/news/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si0RT2p3pjM
• http://www.vimeo.com/1320756
• http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/319/

And hey, did you hear about the Microsoft Surface already or not? I tried it myself on the MS TechDays 2009 and it totally rocks, just a new touch of the future.

Microsoft Surface - The Possibilities

For a real world example, I’m using for the moment an application on my Google Android G2 called Wikitude, there are also some apps for the iPhone out there.

If you are interested in how to develop such services then the ARToolkit is the dominant for now (FLARToolkit too), and the Windows Surface SDK which is available only for the MSDNAA subscribers for the moment :) (drop me an email if you want it).

I hope you got a little insight of the future, although a lot of them exist now.

First hands on HTC Magic

The new Google phone called Android G2 or HTC Magic launched earlier on July 2009 is one of the most great phones ever, that are supposed (the Android family) to be an iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm killer.

If you are a Google fan, then a Google phone is all what you need , it's running the Google Android platform and everything from Google could be found inside.

Two days ago I got an HTC magic and it's just wonderful, it's design, the touch screen and keyboard, it's support for Google apps natively, and many more features.

Compared to an iPhone it's a little smaller and lighter, it's touch abilities are great but no fluid like the iPhone's, if the touch functionalities on the iPhone are 10/10, HTC magic can get 9/10 easily :)

Also Android supported phones has full access to the Android Market where you can download and purchase new application, it's equivalent to the Apple Store, and you can find almost any application you need. If you don't find your application you can develop yours easily, and yes, you don't need a Mac to develop for Android; Windows, Linux and Mac are all supported to run the Android SDK.

Another point that makes the HTC Magic better than an iPhone (at least my view point) is that it's multi task, means you can run simultaneous applications at the same time, which is not available on the iPhone even with the new OS 3.0. For example, I use it while opening Google Talk chatting with friends, and I get twitter notifications from the #twidroid application, emails from Gmail while listening to music or even taking a tour in Google Street View, and all this happens simultaneously :)

On the other side, you can connect to internet using data connection (3G, Edge, Gprs) or use Wifi, for me I use Wifi all the time since my Subscription does not include full internet access (18€ / month for 1H + 15€ internet if I had full internet), so if you are like my case, I advise you to download this application called #apndroid which changes the APN settings on your phone to ban it from connecting to (3G, Edge, gprs), you may also download 3G watchdog that will help you track you data usage (mine is 0% for the time :D ). Even if you are not browsing the internet many applications still try to connect in the background so be careful if you don't have an internet subscription. It costs 0.34€ / minute which means if you run a twitter application for 24 hours you will pay 8.16€ for just one day! more that 150€ a month yay!!!

Before digging into the technical details, just to mention that the price of the phone bought online (from SFR, and no no, I don't advertise for anyone, it's just a great phone) is 149€ with a subscription of 18€/month during 12 months, 349€ "forfait bloqué" and 449€ for others. so seriously getting it for 149€ with a very careful moderated usage not going online except with Wifi is the best deal I did before.

The HTC Magic has an integrated 3.2 megapixels camera with Camcoder for videos, it has Gmail, Gtalk, Google Maps with street View, YouTube; Android Market, gps, compass and a lot of other features, of course you can get Google Sky, social web application, news, weather and everything else you can imagine from the Android Market. it's integrated touch keyboard is very sensitive and responsive too, sharing photos or videos has never been easier before with Picasa, YouTube, email, twitter or many many other services.

What really impressed me, is the Google Maps and Street View, first Google Maps can show your location with a very high accuracy, Google Street View is sensitive to the compass, so whenever you turn you can see the other sides of the street too :

And if you are a fan of astronomy or wondering what's the name of that star, Google sky show real time/space information, check it out here :

What is good about HTC Magic :

• YouTube™, Gmail™, Google Maps™, Google Talk™, Google Calendar™, Google™ Search… it’s just Google.
• it’s Google Android, so all Google is in your pocket.
• Android Market : anything you need, anytime you need
• it’s fluid, fast, customizable
• you can easily develop your own applications
• gps and compass : you will never be lost again :)
• microSD card : unlike the iPhone you can extend the storage of the HTC Magic anytime you want, it’s extensible to 32Go.
• 3.2-inch touch-sensitive screen with HVGA (320 X 480 pixel) resolution.

What should HTC Magic improve :

• compared to an iPhone, HTC Magic still not have the speed an iPhone have.
• some Android Market problems : for me I can’t download applications when I’m on public insecure Wifi
• the battery lifetime : should hold better than this
• the Android support for a lot of languages : I can’t read Arabic for example on it

Well that was a quick tour covering 1% of what HTC Magic (aka Android G2) has to offer, for more information refer here :http://www.htc.com/www/product/magic/overview.html

How to bypass the google's local country domain redirections

As you may all know Google returns differents search results according the domain you are performing the query from. ".com", ".fr", ".ch" or others.

For me as for a lot of you, the ".com" is the most suitable one (maybe you also saw the difference in the bing USA and the other domains).

The problem is that whenever you request the google.com url you are directly redirected to the local domain of your country. that really bother me so I decided to ask for it... and guess where, on the yahoo answers :) here http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090711111739AA5yuL1&r=w

After a short time I've recieved 3 answers, logic ones but just one was perfect :

1. the first one suggested that I leave france (true but difficult to do just for the .com domain XD)
2. google "google.com" in the google.fr domain then be redirected there... well not really true because it will redirect you to the fr domain after all
3. the third one and the one suggest that I navigate to the http://www.google.com/ncr and it's done.

The ncr in "http://www.google.com/ncr" stands for No Country Redirect and it maps you to the .com domain directly, what is good about it is that you have to visit it just one to be redirected everytime to the .com domain, without having to enter ncr each time.

so just go here once http://www.google.com/ncr and your trouble are done!

How to add [a free] contact me form to your blogger:

Most of websites and blogs have the Contact Me form, which let users leave you comments or feedback and even ask you private questions and requests. Unfortunately blogger doesn’t have this functionality built in (as far as I know), so you have to walk your way with third party plug-in.

There are many third party providers that make this functionality so easy to have but most of them are not free.

Today I’m going to show you how to add a contact me form to your blogger and receive the messages on your email directly, you can try mine here Contact me.

A very good website offering such service is http://creator.zoho.com/ which offer very advanced database application that can be implemented in few clicks.

As you see you can sign up for free and login with you Google or Yahoo account directly.

After logging in, choose Zoho creator from the list of services provided

You’ll be asked to choose a plan, you can stick with the free plan for now, since our contact form doesn’t need anything special.

The following step, is to create the application and configure it as in the following picture :

Fill in the application name and the form name and choose “create from scratch”, you may also want to take a look at the templates provided. Finally choose “public” for the application type, and hit “Create now”.

Now you’ll be redirected to a page where you can design your form, you can drag and drop lot of elements you may someday need in a form.

In our case, we will use a “single line” control for the name, an “email” control for the email, a “url” for the webpage location, and “multi line” control for the message body.

When you drag and drop a control to the form, you will be asked to provide some configuration settings for the control as follows

In our case, all the fields are required except for the url which is optional.

You can also check to deny duplicates, in fact those forms are mutli purpose, you can built even very advanced applications with for your business without the need to design your own database or to handle the form input and errors checking.

Our end form looks like this

Ok now we will configure the form to send us the messages once users submit the form for that, hover on “more actions” and choose “send mail notifications” :

(that far if you use google chrome it won’t show up, so try a different browser)

In the form that will show up, fill in the email that you want to receive the notifications on, and check “include user submitted data” so that you won’t need to login to zoho in order to see the messages, and you might also add a subject for your notifications so you can make filters for then in you email.

Now everything is ready, hit “access this application”

At this point you are on the form your users will see to send you messages, click “more actions” and choose “embed in your website”

Now you can see the code of the form that you can embed in you blog, there are advanced options to customize your form too, like the success message and the Next url that the form will be redirected to after submission, colors, width…

Now all the work done just login to you blogger create a new post and copy past the code above to your post, you may also want to disable comments and backlinks for that post.

Of course you can imagine many advanced uses for such a plugin, from making simple feedback to date time managmenet and meeting, I'll leave that to you creativity :).

You can see the end result here Contact me.