The road to DigsbyToGo: Encryption fully implemented!
I’m pleased to announce the DTG is now fully encrypted. There is no need to worry about your sensitive conversations being read by ANYONE but you. The new DTG Client (Build 6b) includes these features:
- Triple DES Encryption on ALL meaningful personal data being sent. This means contact names, timestamps, messages, open windows– it’s all completely encrypted. I couldn’t see your information–nobody could.
- Windows Credentials Management – Windows is now in charge of your user name and password. There is still a settings.dtg file that stores the URL to DTG, but log-on credentials are stored and maintained by windows.
- Windows Vista UAC support. You’ll no longer have to right-click on the EXE and run it as an administrator to install skin hooks. The skin installer is now integrated with UAC and you will be prompted when opening it.
- I’ve tracked the WLM bug – there is a bug in Digsby’s skin parser that needs to be corrected before I MSN/WLM contacts (and possibly networks other than AIM) can be shown. Sorry – I can’t do anything about this.
The web interface may seem slower to load now – the javascript is redundant and not optimized. It is on my task list but the UI needs to be brought up to snuff before I can do that.
Digsby-ToGo current issues
This is a list of the current known issues with DTG:
- When there are not any IM windows open, the contact list will be blank and offer no indication that there are not any open windows.
- When a window is closed locally, the remote client does not remove the page. This functionality is expected, however the ability to Send still exists, even though is will fail.
- There is a case where a window cannot be located even when the window cache is built, I’m working to find this one.
- When another session is created, or the session is cleared, you may receive the You have been logged out. Message more than once.
- If there is an error contacting the web server (From the bridge), that message will be lost. I am working to build a queue so requests are never lost.
- There is no visual indication in the IM window that DTG is active. I’m working to build a solution that would show this visually without getting in the way.
- There is not any indication when a new IM comes in to the remote client. I’m looking for a solution to this.
- Internet Explorer is not supported by the remote client: This is expected, since the site is currently Gecko/WebKit specific. I will be building a desktop-browser solution soon. If anyone is willing to help with this (looking for someone experience in building pretty websites), let me know.
- The client constantly reconnects every X (likely 5 minutes) and checks for messages even though there isn’t any need – this is expected, but will be optimized to not do so soon.
- The bridge application opens slowly: this is due to connecting at startup, this will be fixed soon. My web server isn’t exactly speedy, and sometimes connect times are relatively high.
- There isn’t any way to see more than 20 (or so) lines on the remote client: This is expected, however I think I have found a solution which will allow the user to toggle between “functional” and “history” modes, viewing past lines.
- Emoticons are not supported: This will be coming soon, however I am not sure whether it would be best to convert to text, or convert to images, perhaps a setting.
- Login and registration pages don’t look good: They are temporary, I will replace them with iPhone/browser specific ones when I can.
- UAC does not prompt for elevation for the Skin Installer under Windows Vista: A fix is in the works for this.
- Requests often get queued up on top of each other, and messages are added to the same window twice: I need to figure out how that is possible before I fix it.
- Status messages and “day change” time stamps are displayed strangely – I’ll have a fix for this soon.
With all these changes, I will soon be implementing a version check–you will need to be using the latest build every time you restart the bridge.
If you find any other bugs, please email or IM them to me so I can be aware–and fix them, as fast as possible!
Digsby ToGo is officially in beta!
It’s been quite a while since I’ve udpated this, but I’ve spent this weekend working most on the Digsby ToGo project. I’ve opened it up for a limited beta. Send me an email containing a user/pass pair if you’d like to get access. Register at the DTG homepage.
How to get Digsby-ToGo:
- Get your username and password. I’ll put a registration page up soon so you won’t have to contact me.
- Download the Digsby-ToGo package from The DTG homepage.
- If you are using Windows Vista, you will need to open the application as an administrator in order to run the Skin Installer.
- Run the Bridge application.
Before you login, run the Skin Installer to install the hooks in the skin that will get your messages into Digsby ToGo.
Select your skin from the menu – change the location if you didn’t install Digsby to C:\Program Files\Digsby\. Once you select your skin, click Install Hooks. Once this is do Make absolutely sure you restart Digsby. It doesn’t do any harm – but the results will be inconsistent and erroneous. If your skin isn’t compatible with the installer, please let me know. zip a clean version (i.e. no hooks install) without any extra images and email it to me.
Once the skins are installed, you can login to Digsby-ToGo.
The Log tab provides mostly debug information. You can minimize of close the program and it will go to the tray. Your IM’s will be routed to my webserver and you will be able to login on your iPhone or iPod Touch and access them.
Please note that there is not any encryption at this time.
Digsby ToGo, and Digsby URL resolution!
I’ve been too busy the last couple of days to update, but I would like to showcase two small projects I have been working on.
First, is Digsby ToGo:
Digsby ToGo is a remote access solution, similar to Trillian Anywhere. It allows you to access your current conversations from a web browser, and to interact exactly as how you would at the desktop. This solution is seemless to the chat partner.
And the other project, is to have Digsby resolve URL’s in conversations. So a link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgpzUo_kbFY – which carries no meaning, will replaced with the title of the page, far more descriptive. This all happens in the background.
More to come!