blog.sallarp.com

This week we finally got around to upgrade our old Exchange 2003 server, fortunately we waited a few extra months and skipped Exchange 2007 for 2010. The upgrade was handled by our friendly neighbor and also our new ISP: DGC. We did encounter one problem after the upgrade that I assume others will face as well. Some accounts, mine included, couldn’t get the iPhone ActiveSync to work, it worked before the migration to 2010.

Cannot get mail. The connection to the server failed.

After the migration it didn’t. I tried the test service from Microsoft: Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer and it clearly indicated that something was wrong with my account but suggested it had something to do with forms authentication being enabled, which it wasn’t. I found this error message in the event log on our new Exchange 2010 server:

Exchange ActiveSync doesn’t have sufficient permissions to create the “CN=Björn Sållarp,OU=Users,OU=Avantime Development,OU=Avantime Production,DC=avantime,DC=local” container under Active Directory user “Active Directory operation failed on KELLY.avantime.local. This error is not retriable. Additional information: Access is denied.
Active directory response: 00000005: SecErr: DSID-03151E04, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0
“.
Make sure the user has inherited permission granted to domain\Exchange Servers to allow List, Create child, Delete child of object type “msExchangeActiveSyncDevices” and doesn’t have any deny permissions that block such operations.

Details:%3

Right.. This basically means the account lack permissions in the Active Directory. I figured out that because my account has been added to what’s called a “protected group” such as Domain Admins the setting for my account to inherit permissions has been removed by Active Directory. This excellent blog post explains how to get the inherited permissions back. http://www.ffoutpost.net/2009/11/10/resolve-issues-with-activesync-not-working-in-exchange-2010 remember to remove the account from the protected group before you enable inheritance, otherwise inheritance will be removed again by Active Directory within an hour or so.

If you want to buy a certificate for your Exchange 2010 server, and I suggest that you do instead of generating a self signed cert, have a look over at Entrust. We recently bought a 4 year cert from Entrust by recommendation of DGC whom helped us migrate from Exchange 2003 to 2010. So what’s great about Entrust? They allow you to insert multiple domains (10) in one cert without huge costs. This enables you to buy one certificate and it will cover the autodiscovery sub domain as well until you reach 10 unique domains. Find out more here: http://www.entrust.net/ssl-certificates/unified-communications.htm

The only negative part of ordering from Entrust is the rigorous validation process which takes up to a day or two. They will email you a couple of times and also call you which if you live in Europe will happen while you are sleeping. Fortunately you can call them and leave a voice mail to confirm that you really gave them the correct information.

I attended and spoke at a breakfast seminar hosted by Philips and DoRight Group together with Mårten Wahlström from Svensk Fastighetsförmedling last week. Mårten spoke about their NET TV initiative and I spoke about our experiences at Avantime when we developed the NET TV application “Hitta Hem” I’ve written about earlier. I was very happy to hear that Philips were so impressed by our application that they use it for promotion purposes in Europe!

Philips started the seminar by presenting their roadmap for NET TV what was happening with the platform in general. Apparently sales were a success, there are 80.000 NET TV enabled homes in europe already! How many NET TV enabled TVs that has been sold in Sweden still remains a secret though. Philips had some good news about the support from other manufacturers, many of the major TV manufacturers are already sitting in the CE-HTML boat or are about to join. This is huge for the CE-HTML standard and for companies looking to develop NET TV applications! I would love to see Samsung, LG and Panasonic to use the same platform. » Public SDK and Hitta Hem NET TV code

Spotify is an awesome app for the iPhone, however, you need a premium account. Or do you? Most users will probably use the off-line mode to avoid the sometimes overly expensive data plans. If you don’t want or need to stream music it turns out you really don’t need a premium account! At least not one account per device.

I noticed it this morning when I installed the Spotify app on my girlfriends’ iPod touch. I’ve been a premium customers since the launch and my girlfriend has a free invite from my account. While my iPhone was streaming music I logged into the same account on the touch and started offline sync’ing some playlists. The iPhone didn’t even stop streaming! I could off-line sync playlists on both devices at the same time. When i started playing a track on both devices however one got a message about the account being used elsewhere, even though the tracks were offline’ed. So as long as your devices remain unconnected to the net you can share your account with others.

I don’t know if this is intentional by Spotify but you could easily share one premium account with all your friends for iPhone/iPod use. It would be rather simple for Spotify to pair an account with one device but that could potentially annoy some customers. In my opinion that would be reasonable and perhaps they will add some kind of account sharing protection if it’s widely abused.

Happy account sharing while it lasts!

This time it’s actually there! Lots of confusion about a week ago when Spotify announced that it was available for iPhone when it in fact was just accepted by Apple. Early this morning it appeared on AppStore! Here’s a video showing off the application.

And here’s the proof that that the app really exist. Taken on my iPhone.

After a quick run through of the app I must say it’s really awesome! Offline mode is great and it’s quite fast to download the songs. You can even listen to other music, create new playlists etc as the tracks are downloaded for offline use! The only thing I lack is the top-lists features from the PC/Mac client, hopefully they will add that later.

For those who wonder what Spotify is, their site is here: www.spotify.com. To use the iPhone app you must be a paying customer (have a premium account), which I find totally reasonable, it’s just 99 SEK / month (approx. 12-13 USD).

Svensk Fastighetsförmedling continue their strive together with Avantime to be not only the best on the web but also being the first to utilize new cool technology to attract customers and market real estate for their clients. Svenkfast.se has won the web service awards two years in a row, Svenskfast was the first real estate company in Sweden, and among the first in the world, to market their houses on the iPhone. This time they are the first real estate company in the world to join Philips‘ new NET TV initiate. Owners of a NET TV enabled Philips TV can now find their dream house, apartment or vacation house sitting comfortably in their sofa!

NET TV brings the best of web to your TV through an easy to use portal without needing a HTPC or other set-top boxes. Svenskfast, YouTube and SL are among the first applications available on the Swedish portal and part of Philips marketing of this new ground breaking feature. I’m very proud of our initial application which was designed by one of our newer Avantime Group family members, Mattias Olsson, at Dreamsville. Here’s what the application looks like on the TV (filmed at Avantime), unfortunately it’s not easy to film a TV screen.

So what is NET-TV, how does it work? Read on to find out »

iPhone apps come in all shapes and form. Some are really basic and doesn’t fill any other purpose than showing how much of a geek you are, others are just for laughs or passing time, some are really useful and practical. Personally I’m not much of geek app fan although you will find the Lightsaber app on my iPhone. Useful apps tend to have one thing in common: they depend on internet connections and communicate with a central server/back end. There are a few useful apps that don’t fall into this category, an example is the excellent FastContacts. From comments on this blog, emails and forums I get the impression that there are quite a few who struggle with their internet enabled apps. I want to share some ideas, tips and techniques that can simplify and improve your app. Keep reading, there’s more »

Get list items by lookup id, not value:

<Eq>
    <FieldRef Name="Category" LookupId="TRUE" />
    <Value Type="Integer">10</Value>
</Eq>

Notice that LookupId=”TRUE” is added to the FieldRef and that the value type is Integer, not Lookup.

Get list items that are assigned to the current user ([Me]).

<Eq>
    <FieldRef Name="AssignedTo" />
    <Value Type="Integer"><UserID Type="Integer"/></Value>
</Eq>

The UserID element in CAML is the same as [Me] in a list filter.