Long gone are the times when 64 bit memory addressing was the prerogative of Itanium, SPARC, RISC processors, PowerPC, etc. Now almost every desktop PC is built on the x86-64 architecture, let alone servers. x64 has become cheap, opening new horizons for a variety of applications. Surely, those who already run (or are about to run) x64 platforms have long-term thinking: taking the pains to migrate to x64 today will pay off manifold in the long run.

Migrating to x64 becomes an especially sensible issue when it comes to image processing. If you haven’t dealt with anything larger than 5000x5000 pixels, you would not probably be reading this article. Otherwise, you might witness your applications throw ‘out of memory’ errors from time to time – and think about lifting the 2-Gb-per-process curse. Install more memory (if necessary) and switch to x64 platform – it’s often just as simple as that. This was essentially the main idea behind porting Graphics Mill to x64 here at Aurigma.

However, the (often seemingly) cumbersome and costly nature of migrating to x64 is often the key factor in saying ‘no’ to the natural solution to the problem. So, developers are forced to find roundabouts for ‘out of memory’ troubles. Some of those ‘remedies’ are highly performance taxing and are fraught with development and debugging implications. These often outweigh the possible benefits. Also, the added development\debugging cost would often exceed the cost of migration of an entire farm to x64.

On the other hand, more and more applications and services are ported to x64 and some are native x64 – and those are no longer limited to scientific computing and complex mathematical modeling tasks. In fact, x64 for servers has become an industry standard for quite a while. So, if having a legacy 32 bit application prevents you from switching your IIS permanently to 64 bit, I would reply with a marketer-standard call to action: ‘Think big – go x64!’, or even more pesky – ‘Enlarge your address space now!’.

So, what are the costs of saying bye-bye to ‘out of mem’? For Graphics Mill for .NET, it means replacing a couple of DLLs in the API. If you ask me, I would say it’s certainly worth a try at the least. Eventually, it’s up to you to decide whether to ‘stay x86 and reinvent the page file’ or ‘harness the brute raw power of x64’ (I think I’ll can those two for future use).

Recently we got a report that Image Uploader suffers from buffer overrun vulnerability. A BID was submitted by Elazar Broad to http://www.securityfocus.com, and he emailed us to inform about it. I am taking an  opportunity to thank Elazar for all his help with it. Here is this BID:  

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/26537

It happened on weekends, so we had to go to the office on Sunday. Fortunately the problem was not difficult to locate and fix. So we have released version 4.5.70 which does not have this proble, and now we are informing all our customers to update Image Uploader on their websites.

You may wonder why this issue is so important. The problem is that buffer overrun vulnerability means that malicious persons can execute arbitrary code (including malware of course) on each computer where Image Uploader is installed. Many millions of people who visit websites of our customers are under the risk. If you are interested what buffer overrun is, here is a Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overrun 

So we urge everybody who uses Image Uploader to upload files to their websites to install the latest version. It is downloadable from the Image Uploader download page. 

Now here is a small FAQ.

Q: What versions of Image Uploader are vulnerable? 

A: All Image Uploader builds of 4.x family, except of 4.5.70 of course.

Q: What about previous versions?

A: This issue appeared when we added possibility to navigate to the arbitrary folder through the JavaScript. This feature was introduced in the 4.0 version. So if you are using version 3.5 or earlier, this issue does not affect you. 

However if you received version 3.x after we officially discontinued it, please contact us. We need to check it out.

Q: Where to download the fixed version?

A: First of all, you can download the latest version from the Image Uploader download page:

http://www.aurigma.com/Products/ImageUploader/FreeTrial.aspx

Q: How to install the update?

A: The update installation process is the same as described in documentation. In short:

1. Download the latest .cab file (it should be version 4.5.70 or later).
2. Replace it on your server.
3. Update the version number in Image Uploader initialization block. It should be looking like this: iu.activeXControlVersion = "4,5,70,0";

A: This is a minor update. According to our upgrade policy, minor updates are free.

Q: I still have questions. Where I can get more information?

A: Please email us at info@aurigma.com.

From the first version of Graphics Mill for .NET our customers report our technical support department with “out of memory” problem. The problem arises when somebody tries to handle images of large size. And the most annoying moment that errors take places sometimes, it means that the application worked with the file yesterday but today you get “out of memory” when you try to open it.

Mainly this issue is based on the limitation of Windows architecture. It is well known that 32bit Windows provides a process with 2 GB of address space only. 2GB of memory per process is not so much for image processing. Say we need to load RGB image of 10000x7500 pixels. It requires about 225MB of memory – and it is almost 1/8 of available memory for a process. Moreover the address space is always fragmented. And it is not guaranteed that memory manager will find a memory block of enough size. As a result we will get “out of memory” problem.

Microsoft has released x64 family of operation systems which are good way to get rid of memory limitation problem. All previous versions of Graphics Mill work on these operating systems perfectly because Microsoft included backward compatibility with 32bit code. But to get all advantages of operating system and support more than 2GB of memory, we needed to adopt source code and recompile Graphics Mill with 64bit option of C++ compiler. Now we are on the finish line. 64bit version of Graphics Mill passes the major part of unit tests and we are ready to give Graphics Mill x64 publicity.

Graphics Mill x64 is available as beta version. The new beta would certainly be of interest to developers of memory critical solutions, such as high-demand pre-print preparation and document imaging systems. To download Graphics Mill x64 Beta you need to sign up for beta testing program on our site in beta testing section.

Graphics Mill x64 Beta requires the following:

• If you have Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 which includes II7.0, you need to make sure that you have the optional "IIS 6 Management Compatibility" option installed within IIS7 before installing Graphics Mill x64.
• You need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64). You can download it from Microsoft site.

We appreciate any feedback concerning the functionality and runtime of Graphics Mill x64. Relevant reports and requests will be considered and answered with highest priority.

Today I found very interesting article The business Value of Social Netwoking Applications.

This paper discusses the main features of enterprise social networks. One of the main author's ideas is that these integrated social network applications bring new value to the enterprise by linking individuals to each other and providing relevant content and tools across the organization. And this networking can extend beyond the firewall to engage partners and customers in the dialog. Then author shows the typical types and benefits of enterprise social networks. Strictly speaking social networks can be involved in the most of company business processes:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Development
• And so on

In spite of this article is sponsored by HiveLive – the company which promotes its own solution for enterprise social network – it is useful to read it. This paper gives the understanding why companies use social networks and forecasts common tendencies on this market.

At the Max 2007 developer conference Adobe product manager Geoff Baum gave a demo of Photoshop Express, the Flash-based image editor that runs inside a Web browser: http://www.news.com/Adobe-flashes-more-looks-at-online-Photoshop-Express/8301-10784_3-9790168-7.html?part=dht . This press-release says that PhotoshopExpress will targeted to low-end market to compete with free desktop photo editors. This product has the following functionality:

• red eye removal
• thumbnail generation
• varoius photo effects like sepia
• interactive undo/redo
• color correction
• and so on

This press-release http://www.news.com/Adobe-to-take-Photoshop-online/2100-7345_3-6163015.html says that the product will be free, Adobe is going to monetize it using online advertising.

Image Uploader 5.0 Dual is going to be released in the middle of December 2007. Here is the list of main improvements in this version:

1. Native view on Vista.
2. Enhanced capabilities of One Pane mode:
   • DropFilesHere image – you can show any image instead of text now.
   • Background image – you can put your logo right to upload pane.
   • Cusmomizible button view – you can specify specific image for any button state.
   • Instant upload - upload process starts right after selecting files.
3. More control over upload process:
   • Additional events: PackageBeforeUpload, PackageError, PackageComplete and PackagProgress.
   • Ability to uncheck specific files from JavaScript.
   • Restore upload pane content to implement any several steps order etc.
4. Zip-archive compression – you can compress files before uploading, not only make thumbnails.
5. Image Uploader POST request format changing – you can change the format of upload request to add Image Uploader to any popular CMS, blogging system etc. without server side scripts changing.

Here is how it looks now on Vista:

So if you are interesting feel free to write us.

We have a huge feedback from our clients: we have a lot of emails, forum messages, calls etc. every day. And you know, sometimes we get brilliant ideas about how to use our products for different tasks. Also we have a lot of questions about how to do this and how to do that. Some ideas are interesting for a lot of our clients. Thus we will make Aurigma Forge, the resource where such ideas implementation articles will be stored.

At the nearest time I'm going to post some articles there. I will describe the new samples of Image Uploader usage. Other members of our team will write their articles too. And we are waiting for such posts from you. I'm sure there are more tasks our products could help with so let's put these ideas together.

At the nearest time the new resource will be created. It will be named Aurigma Forge. We know that our clients have a lot of experience in using such popular products as Image Uploader and Graphics Mill for .NET so Aurigma Forge will be the best place to show your skills to the others. We are going to post our ideas here too.

I am watching the buzz around social network application platforms - Facebook, MySpace, and now - Google with OpenSocial. The idea seems to be brilliant, and it advances the web world. Moreover, it brings us new customers (I will not publish any names, but some of them are really well-known Facebook platform apps developers). We should be happy.

However there are also some menacing tendencies. Let's look what benefits OpenSocial gives to developers:

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/details-revealed-google-opensocial-to-be-common-apis-for-building-social-apps/

But what is about privacy? Google allows to gather together different information about users and this info may become as detailed as archives of secret special servies. When I write in one social network that, say, I am a guitar player, and I like to listen to Ramones, and write in another where I am working, and submit on Google to specific RSS feeds, I do not expect someone to glue these data together and use it to make money on me. What I want is to let other people with similar interests to find me. I do not want anyone to estimate my interests, my paying capacity, my information channels, and sell something based on this info.

Just wondering whether they regulate it in some way? If not, some time later social networking industry may face the problem that people remove accounts or stop leaving personal information.