eSellerate today released major enhancements to its anti-piracy technology, eSellerate Product Activation. The update offers software developers these advantages:

• License management/product deactivation – customers may be given the ability to deactivate your application on one machine and reactivate it on another
• Improved security – stronger encryption and advanced activation restrictions by country and geo-IP locations
• Enhanced activation capabilities – allows for more flexibility and creativity when using product activation for your applications
• Date-stamped verification – lets your application periodically check for legal registration of your products

Enhancements to the eSellerate Sales Manager for this release include:

• Activation sets now allow setting country restrictions, and regulating the number of times customers can deactivate products through the new deactivation options.
• A new Enhanced setting makes eSellerate Standard Serial Numbers more secure. This setting is enabled by default for all new Standard serial number sets.
• The following administrative reports now allow searching by date range: Activation History Export and Activation Failures Export.
• The Activation Detail page now shows deactivation data.
• Country restriction sets now show activation data.

The following SDKs were updated to version 3.6.5 for this release:

• eSellerate libraries for Macintosh
• eSellerate libraries for Windows
• eSellerate ActiveX control
• eWeb libraries for Macintosh

Functions that were added to these SDKs in support of the product activation enhancements are:

• DateActivation – returns the date of the last valid activation
• DeactivateSerialNumber – deactivates a serial number for purposes such as moving software to a new computer
• ConfirmSerialNumber – confirms that a serial number is valid within the eSellerate system
• StandardizeSerialNumber – corrects common input errors to prepare an eSellerate Standard Serial Number for use with ActivateSerialNumber
• Today – returns the current date

The new SDKs are available for downloading at http://www.esellerate.net/downloads.

How to transition to the new SDK

To update applications for the version 3.6.5 SDKs:

1. Depending on your development environment, update eSellerate SDK items as follows:
   • For static libraries, add the latest header files and libraries to your development project.
   • For ActiveX options, prepare to install and register the latest ActiveX control.
2. Create a Product Activation set. Notice that the Product Activation Set ID is longer than in previous versions. This change enhances security.
3. Copy the Product Activation Set ID from the new Product Activation set, and use it to replace outdated (short version) IDs in your application’s source code.
4. Implement new SDK functions as desired.
5. Update your install methods to use the latest eSellerate Engine. Most SDK options provide an InstallEngine API for this purpose.
6. If you’re using eSellerate Standard Serial Numbers, do the following:
   • Create a Standard serial number set, and leave Enhanced checked.
   • Assign the new serial number set to all SKUs that should use it.
   • Copy the Publisher Key from the serial number set, and use it in your application’s source code when calling the ValidateSerialNumber API.
7. Complete your usual testing procedures.
8. Make the updated application available to your customers.

Release notes

• Publisher Key is now a required parameter for validating eSellerate Standard Serial Numbers with the ValidateSerialNumber API.
• The new Embedded Web Store SDK for Macintosh addresses some compatibility issues with Mac OS X Leopard.
• The system requirements for Integrated eSellers on the Macintosh platform are now Mac OS 9.1 or later with CarbonLib 1.5 or later, or Mac OS X v10.2 or later. Although previous versions of the SDK can work with non-Carbon systems, this support has been removed for version 3.6.5.
• eSellerate Engines on Windows 95/98 will not be able to self-update to version 3.6.5. Those engines will continue to work with previous versions of the SDK, but they will not work with version 3.6.5.
• eSellerate Engines that self-update to version 3.6.5 will continue to work with previous versions of the SDK.
• The recommended install location for the eSellerate Engine (and the ActiveX control, when applicable) is different for Vista than other Windows versions. See the SDK documentation for details.

For questions about this information, contact support@esellerate.net.