Tag Archives: mobile

Reach Out, Touch Me

I just saw a question on life hacker about why you would want a touch screen PC. The thing I found interesting is the talk of ‘Gorilla arm’ whereby your arm gets fatigued because of having to be in an unnatural position for long periods. There are studies done on this topic such as ‘Human arm stiffness characteristics during the maintenance of posture’ and ‘Dynamic and loaded impedance components in the maintenance of Human Arm Posture’.

The biggest thing you have to remember is

  • Ergonomics are important whether you’re using a laptop, desktop, mobile or tablet
  • As a developer you should imprint ergonomics into your daily routine. Reduce your stress, stay healthy, alternate between a standing and seated desk and most importantly, be considerate to your poor wrists.
  • If you’re not a developer, but still use technology, learn about the best ergonomical positions for that device. Then teach your family, kids especially about this. The sooner you teach them and imprint upon them the importance of ergonomics, the better it will be for them in the long run by reducing injuries.

There are numerous studies done on tablet size and usage position:

The image above shows just how complicated ergonomics is from a business perspective. Getting businesses to change their approach to ergonomics is a slow process and neither you or I have the time to pursue such a goal. Take matters into your own hands. After all this is your health and your life. So what can you do?

Companies have been creating ergonomic products to use with computers for a while. Ergotron is probably the best known manufacturer of single and multiple monitor arms.

See LifeHackers post on Ergonomics for more info. Here are some noteworthy posts.

If you do one thing this year, invest in your health. We need you. (NOTE TO SELF: EXERCISE YOU LAZY SOD!)

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Zeep Mobile: SMS with Ads

I recently started working on integrating Zeep Mobile into an app. The documentation provided by Zeep is not the best or accurate but they do provide source code examples in…python, pearl, java. I asked about c# and the response was “i’m sure someone has posted something, search the group”. Well, no-one posted a solution so I went about coding and iteratively developing the code to send an SMS. Running into an issue, I even tried StackOverflow but that wasn’t too helpful either.

Well I finally managed to get my code working. Here is some sample c# code to send messages using the zeep framework.

I hope you all looking for c# code find this helpful.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Net.Security;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Handlers;
using System.IO;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
class Program
{
public static string API_KEY = “YOUR_API_KEY_GOES_HERE! INCLUDE DASHES!”;
public static string SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = “YOUR_SECRET_KEY_GOES_HERE!”;

static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine(“BLAST – \r\n\r\n”);
BlastTcpPost();

Console.WriteLine(“SEND – \r\n\r\n”);
SendTcpPost();
}

///

/// Send a BLAST to all users in your ZEEP account.
///

public static void BlastTcpPost()
{
SendSMS(
https://api.zeepmobile.com/messaging/2008-07-14/blast_message”, // URL for Send_Message
“You are on blast”, // Message to send
string.Empty // No UserId to send.
);
}

///

/// Send a single message to a user in your ZEEP account.
///

public static void SendTcpPost()
{
// Note:- 22 I use for the UserId is just a user I have signed up. Yours may be different and you
// might want to pass that in as a parameter.

SendSMS(
https://api.zeepmobile.com/messaging/2008-07-14/send_message”, // URL for Send_Message
“You are a user…good job!”, // Message to send
“22” // User Id in your system.
);

}

///

/// Uses a TCPClient and SSLStream to perform a POST.
///

/// URL that the POST must be directed to. /// Message that is to be sent. /// UserId in your Zeep System. Only required if your sending a Single Message to a User.
/// Otherwise, just send a string.Empty. /// Response from the server. (although it will write the response to console)
public static string SendSMS(string requestUrl, string body, string user)
{
string parameters = “”;
string requestHeaders = “”;
string responseData = “”;

// FORMAT must be Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
string http_date = DateTime.UtcNow.ToString(“r”);

// Clean the text to send
body = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(body, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);

if (user.Length > 0) parameters += “user_id=” + user + “&”;
if (body.Length > 0) parameters += “body=” + body;

// String that will be converted into a signature.
string canonicalString = API_KEY + http_date + parameters;

//————START HASH COMPUTATION———————
// Compute the Base64 HMACSHA1 value
HMACSHA1 hmacsha1 = new HMACSHA1(SECRET_ACCESS_KEY.ToByteArray());

// Compute the hash of the input file.
byte[] hashValue = hmacsha1.ComputeHash(canonicalString.ToByteArray());

String b64Mac = hashValue.ToBase64String();
String authentication = String.Format(“Zeep {0}:{1}”, API_KEY, b64Mac);
//———–END HASH COMPUTATION————————

string auth = String.Format(“Zeep {0}:{1}”, API_KEY, b64Mac);

System.Uri uri = new Uri(requestUrl);
System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient client = new System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient(uri.Host, uri.Port);
string requestMethod = “POST ” + uri.LocalPath + ” HTTP/1.1\r\n”;

// Set Headers for the POST message
requestHeaders += “Host: api.zeepmobile.com\r\n”;
requestHeaders += “Authorization: ” + auth + “\r\n”;
requestHeaders += “Date: ” + http_date + “\r\n”;
requestHeaders += “Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n”;
requestHeaders += “Content-Length: ” + parameters.ToByteArray().Length + “\r\n”;
requestHeaders += “\r\n”;

// Get the data to be sent as a byte array.
Byte[] data = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(requestMethod + requestHeaders + parameters + “\r\n”);
// Send the message to the connected TcpServer.
NetworkStream stream = client.GetStream();

// SSL Authentication is used because the Server requires https.
System.Net.Security.SslStream sslStream = new System.Net.Security.SslStream(
stream,
false,
new System.Net.Security.RemoteCertificateValidationCallback(ValidateServerCertificate));
sslStream.AuthenticateAsClient(uri.Host);

// Send the data over the SSL stream.
sslStream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
sslStream.Flush();

// Receive the TcpServer.response.
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) { if (stream.DataAvailable) { break; } System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100); } Byte[] bytes = new byte[1024]; System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder(); while (stream.DataAvailable) { int count = sslStream.Read(bytes, 0, 1024); if (count == 0) { break; } sb.Append(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes, 0, count)); } responseData = sb.ToString(); Console.WriteLine(responseData); // Close everything. client.Close(); return responseData; } // The following method is invoked by the RemoteCertificateValidationDelegate. // We want to make sure the SSL has no Policy errors and is safe. public static bool ValidateServerCertificate( object sender, X509Certificate certificate, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors) { // Somehow the cert always has PolicyErrors so I am returning true regardless. return true; //if (sslPolicyErrors == SslPolicyErrors.None) // return true; //Console.WriteLine("Certificate error: {0}", sslPolicyErrors); //// Do not allow this client to communicate with unauthenticated servers. //return false; } } public static class Extensions { public static byte[] ToByteArray(this string input) { UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding(); return encoding.GetBytes(input); } public static string ToBase64String(this byte[] input) { return Convert.ToBase64String(input); } } } [/sourcecode]

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