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We're hiring interns!

posted Sep 22, 2014, 9:03 PM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Sep 27, 2014, 9:46 PM ]

1. Web graphical designer (Vacancy: 1)

[Job Description] 
  • Candidate should have experience in Photoshop, Illustrator, or other design / web design software.
  • Must have knowledge of Web Design.
  • Have a strong eye for design and able to execute ideas from the Creative Director.
  • Independent and are able to work with little supervision.
[Employment Type]
  • Full time/Part time
[Requirement]
  • Even you have no relevant experience, we'll still consider you as long as you have passion in design.

2. Front end developer (Vacancy: 2)

[Job Description]
  • Convert the graphical design to HTML pages.
  • Implement the front end effect via Javascript.
[Employment Type]
  • Full time/Part time
[Requirement]
  • Even you have no relevant experience, we'll still consider you as long as you have passion in learning new technology.

Please send your CV to : hire(at)softhinker.com   (Replace (at) with @)

A new Softhinker

posted Feb 1, 2014, 6:49 PM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Feb 5, 2014, 4:43 PM ]


25th of January 2014 is a milestone day to Softhinker who has converted from a sole proprietor to private limited company in Singapore. Meanwhile, the business scope has also been extended from a system integrator to a data mining provider in education.

Why education? Softhinker team has a strong belief that education is the key factor to civilization, and everyone has an equal right to receive education. To achieve this goal, data mining technique is one of the best way to optimize the teaching performance.

Devoting to education is a long journey with joyful experience, which has been practiced by great teachers and will be assisted by Softhinker from 2014 onward!

Vision:       Everyone could learn anything in their own way.
Mission:     Discover the learning pattern for everyone.
Values:      Everyone has unique learning pattern.
Strategy:    Subject by subject, the personal learning pattern is formed.

How to make Jenkins support Subversion 1.7?

posted Apr 18, 2012, 3:13 AM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Apr 18, 2012, 7:18 AM ]


Up to Jenkins 1.460, its Subversion plugin 1.39 hasn't supported Subversion 1.7, so you may hit error like below screen shot : 



Instead of waiting for the plugin to be updated, there is a workaround : 

1. Install the latest CollabNet Subversion Client to the server, which provides svn command-line tool.
2. Put all maven commands into a shell, i.e. bat for Windows.
3. Use maven-antrun-plugin to execute that shell.
4. In Jenkins configuration page, just use 'antrun:run' as the 'Goals and options'.

It works because the shell will use the system variable where PATH includes the latest CollabNet path rather than the old svn path used by Jenkins.

Jenkins issue 11381 describes it.

Respond to XMPP Ping to keep idle client alive

posted Mar 4, 2012, 7:24 PM by Softhinker Qin

Projects using XMPP server/client may encounter an issue that XMPP server will kill client connection if it's idle for some time. Of course, you can set it to never disconnect client but it puts another problem on board which is messages will be lost if client gets offline irregularly. XMPP server caches offline message only when the client status shows offline on server side. That's why in most of cases people will choose to set an idle time for client to be killed so that messages sent after disconnection of client will be queued in server side. However, how long the idle time should be set is still a case by case skill, which is actually out of the topic in this article. 

What I'm going to showcase today is how to implement XMPP Pong on client side answering to XMPP Ping sent from server side to keep client alive when idle time is set. As you can see, XMPP Ping is the way the XMPP server is used to detect whether client is still alive or not, so according to XMPP Protocol, two options you have to respond XMPP Ping : a) Pong b) Pong not supported.

As not every XMPP client library supports XMPP Pong, i.e. Smack API 3.0.0.beta1, below sample implementation is provided based on the 2nd comment in this discussion : 

1) Create class Ping extends IQ implements IQProvider



2) Create PingProvider



3) Create PingPacketFilter to filter out XMPP Ping sent from server side.



4) Create Pong based on the protocol. In this case, we choose 'b' option which is to implement 'Pong not supported'.


5) Create PingPacketListener to answer XMPP Ping


6) Client responds to the server


At this point of time, you should be able to see the IllegalArgumentException thrown on server side, i.e. OpenFire, as below shown : 


This exception is designed and acceptable according to the protocol, so it should good enough to keep client connection alive.

iOS MDM vendor CSR signing

posted Dec 18, 2011, 11:04 PM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Dec 22, 2011, 8:24 PM ]





On 3rd of October 2011, Apple announce its Mobile Device Management(MDM) reference available on iOS provisioning portal. However, the sample code in the reference is fragmentary, especially on 'MDM Vendor CSR Signing Overview' section, which is to generate pList.

Softhinker works out below guidline to facilitate developers on pList generating process :
- There are two roles involved in the entire process : vendor and customer.
- As a vendor, 
- create a CSR using any toolkit, i.e. KeyChain Access on MacBook, then export private key as 'vendor.p12'
- log in to Apple Member Center, and go to 'iOS Provisioning Portal'
- select 'Certificates' on the left navigation bar, and click 'Other' tab on the center.
- follow the instruction on that page, and upload the CSR you created.
- then the certificate for you as a MDM vendor will be available to download on the 'Other' tab. And download it.
- execute below openssl command to convert MDM vendor certificate, WWDR certificate, and Apple root certificate to PEM format one by one : 
openssl x509 -inform der -in mdm_identity.cer -out mdm.pem
openssl x509 -inform der -in AppleWWDRCA.cer -out intermediate.pem
openssl x509 -inform der -in AppleIncRootCertificate.cer -out root.pem
- As a customer,
- create a CSR using any toolkit, i.e. openssl : 
openssl genrsa -des3 -out customerPrivateKey.pem 2048
openssl req -new -key customerPrivateKey.pem -out customer.csr
- convert customer.csr to der format : 
openssl req -inform pem -outform der -in customer.csr -out customer.der
- Then use the attached Java program to generate encoded plist, and upload to https://identity.apple.com/pushcert/
- remember to replace the placeholder in the package with your own ones : 
customer.der, vendor.p12, mdm.pem, intermediate.pem, root.pem
- please note that generated plist.xml is not the one to upload, plist_encoded is.

Currently, iOS MDM Push Cert portal has a problem so that all plist uploaded will get a 'Invalid Certificate Signing Request', and a fix is supposed to be installed on January 2012.

Please like or +1 if you find it helpful. Thanks!

| Attachments: Softhinker.zip

Why customers trust Google Apps with their business data(10)

posted Nov 27, 2011, 2:00 AM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Dec 19, 2011, 11:52 PM ]




This is the final post of this Series.

10. Google Apps helps reduce the risk of data breaches

The use of laptops, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices increases the risk of data breach if you're using traditional application which stores a local copy of your data, especially when mobile devices get lost or stolen, like what happened to Hong Kong star Edison Chen.

Google Apps can help reduce the risk of a data breach by limiting the data that is stored on your devices. When you check email or work on a document in a browser with Google Apps, the data is stored in our data centers, not on your device. That means that if your device gets lost or stolen, there is lower overall risk of a data breach. Similarly, if you collaborate with others in Google Docs, you don’t need to send them a copy of the document. You can enable and disable access to the document with a simple set of sharing controls and your collaborators access it from their browser. The document does not need to be stored locally on their device for them to collaborate on it. 

For those times when you want to access Google Apps but you don’t have an Internet connection, we recently released an offline capability for Gmail and for Google Docs. The offline capability does involve some local data storage on devices. The amount of stored data is likely to be smaller as only a limited amount of documents and email are synchronized to the device for offline access. If you decide that this local data storage poses a risk, you can easily disable offline access.

As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, Softhinker hopes you gain confidence on Google Apps solution through this series of posts, and we'd like to hear from you for further discussion.

--------------------

Why customers trust Google Apps with their business data(9)

posted Nov 27, 2011, 1:35 AM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Dec 19, 2011, 11:53 PM ]




9. Google’s information security team - working to protect your data

How will you feel when you know Google hires a team of world's leading security researchers to protect your day-to-day data, like Gmail, Google Docs, etc.? It feels cool, doesn't it?

Then how do they work? They monitor our applications and systems continuously, using sophisticated automated systems that are designed to detect unusual activity and block it or flag it for immediate analysis by our monitoring team. They provide end-user features including 2-step verification, which defeats many common attacks such as trying to break into an account using a stolen password. Their Safe Browsing service helps protect users against malware and phishing. All of this technology and expertise comes together to enhance the security of your Google Apps data, allowing your IT staff to focus more of their attention on your business’s strategic needs.

Other than above, Google also works to educate users about online safety. To that end, one of the most important things you can do to improve the security of your Google Apps accounts is to start using 2-step verification. Google encourages you to set it up and start exploring other ways to better protect your information.

Why customers trust Google Apps with their business data(8)

posted Nov 27, 2011, 1:08 AM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Dec 19, 2011, 11:54 PM ]





8. Protecting your data with encrypted connections

Google Apps allows you to be productive anywhere. For example, you may want to check your email or work on a document in a coffee shop, airport or hotel using a public wireless network. Google Apps protects your data in these situations by establishing an encrypted connection while you work. Without it, an unauthorized person could potentially hijack your session and gain access to your account. Using an Internet standard known as HTTPS, we encrypt your data as it travels from your browser to our servers. This makes it much harder for an imposter to access your account this way. We’ve supported encrypted connections from the day Google Apps launched over five years ago, and we made it the default setting for all users at the beginning of 2010. 

Why customers trust Google Apps with their business data(7)

posted Nov 27, 2011, 12:55 AM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Dec 19, 2011, 11:54 PM ]




7. Google Apps data protections - verified by third parties

In such a world where Cloud Computing is being talked everywhere, how do you distinguish who is the trusted Cloud Computing provider?

Cloud computing companies use the the SSAE 16 Type II audit, and its international counterpart ISAE 3402 Type II audit, to document and verify the data protections in place for their services. These auditing standards are defined by the The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB), respectively. These audit standards have replaced the SAS 70 Type II audit, which Google Apps first completed in 2008. In Google's audits, they specify the confidentiality, integrity and availability controls that our customers are most concerned about, which are then verified by our auditors. Google recently announced that they’ve successfully completed the SSAE 16 and ISAE 3402 Type II audits for Google Apps, Postini services, Google Apps Script, Google Storage for Developers and Google App Engine. 

Google Apps for Government has also received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification from the U.S. Government. The FISMA certification includes a rigorous evaluation of the security processes and data protections in place in Google Apps for Government and is required by U.S. federal government customers, who must comply with FISMA by law. 

Just $5/user/month will enhance your business with edge technology powered by Google, and Softhinker provides a hassle-free service to help your company equiped with excellent Google Apps!

Why customers trust Google Apps with their business data(6)

posted Nov 26, 2011, 7:01 PM by Softhinker Qin   [ updated Dec 19, 2011, 11:55 PM ]




6. New apps status dashboard improves visibility

Do you know what's the best merit of Google products I like? Open.

Merely sharing source codes to the world is not open in my dictionary. Google shares more than that. App status is one of what Google opens to the world, no matter the status is good or bad, though which users know how long is the downtime for Gmail recently, or was there a disruption or outrage for Google Sites?

Please don't regard this innovation as redundant or insignificant, especially when you're choosing which service/product is worth to invest. The best evidence is the statistics of its history, isn't it? Then how many service providers out there dare to provide the real app status to all of the world? Many of them just want to polish a beautiful financial report to the stock holders, rather than tell the truth. Google has the confidence to its technology, so it's open.

Let's take a look at some real data to gain more feeling. Last year, Gmail was up and running 99.984% of the time, and in the first half of 2011 Google has delivered 99.99% availability—that’s less than 5 minutes of downtime, on average, per month. A new App Status Dashboard gives you accurate information faster, which can be used to evaluate Google products before investing on it.

Once your confidence is established, please drop us an email, and Softhinker would like to bring amazing Google Apps solutions to your organization!

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