My "USB BOfH Stick" now has a few new additions - Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird (Portable Sunbird didn't make it). Those are USB stick-optimized versions of the respective desktop versions, especially well-received on my end is the optimization to extend the stick's live (Flash memory does indeed have a limited life when it comes to the number of r/w operations).

This can be pretty useful to get an idea which open source projects are available, and today I did it (again) for C#. Of course you will see the usual suspects (NUnit, NAnt, RSS Bandit, NHibernate and a lot of others), as well as ones you haven't yet heard of, such as dotLucene (I knew of the Java one) or Report.NET. And on occasion you stumble upon something really wacky, such as Pr0nspider, which is a multithreaded sample for the WebSpider library... this sample definitely drives home the concept!

The article U.S. leads the dirty dozen spammers shows that the US has a comfortable lead when it comes to sending out spam. This indigestible rendition of Hormel's rightly famous SPAM is my favorite least favorite topic because I manage two mail servers, one of which serves mailing lists for the German .NET community. The time spent administering (because of spam) could be better spent helping my colleagues on the lists... kismet.

This is the most current version of the Team Foundation Installation Guide for the December 2004 CTP release of Visual Studio Team System. It contains any changes that were made to the guide since the public release of the December 2004 CTP release of Visual Studio Team System.

I previewed the search feature last week with a couple of screenshots. Today I did what I promised to do (review the new code thoroughly), and now I'd like to invite you to download the latest version of the registry editor (0.8.2 dated 12/20/2004).

Note on the search feature: it is pretty intuitive in Tree View mode which node is the search root. However, in List View mode, things are inferred in a way that I hope is intuitive enough: when no subkey is selected, then the search root is the current key whose subkeys / values are currently displayed.

Also of note: deployment to the SmartPhone is now easier, please see the PDF for details (I am now using RapiDeploy).

I just finished the search feature, which means I haven't had the time for thorough testing and code review (no download today, next week). But I have a few screenshots for you to whet your appetite.

Go to the key where you want to start your search (tree view or list view doesn't matter even if it is shown here in tree view):

Choose Search (now option #1) from the menu:

This brings up the search form. Nothing really stellar, but it does the trick. By clicking Search, you kick off the search thread (yes, this thingie is multithreaded!):

The search results are shown in a listview of its own right, with values and keys mixed. Note that there is an infobox at the bottom which tells you where it found the key / value:

Now for the cool stuff - clicking on the key takes you to the listview you already know:

When you now do Menu / Search again, you are back at the search results:

Guess what - clicking on a value opens the value editor. I think I got the user interface right on this one.

The Mobile and Embedded Application Developer Center has a nice Developer Resource Kits page. Especially interesting are the WeRock247.NET & Football247.NET Training DVDs, of which you can download the WeRock247.NET SmartClient Training DVD (Football 247.NET is order only).

For me, the most interesting parts are (as in I have the DVDs) the bonus sessions that are included on the DVDs. I wanted to blog about those Learn247 projects for a long time, but kept forgetting about it - now the Resource Kits page reminded me once again, for good this time.

RapiDeploy is a command-line that can be used to deploy files to devices connected via ActiveSync (this includes the Pocket PC 2003 Emulator). In addition, if you are deploying CAB files, you can use the optional /install switch to install the CAB's contents. Download

Will be included in the next drop of the Registry Editor for easier installation.

Finally found some time to add a few missing things to the registry editor: most importantly editors for string[] (REG_MULTI_SZ) and byte[] (REG_BINARY), as well as some other improvements (mostly behind the scenes).

Like last time: please read doc\Program Notes (4 Dev and User).pdf before installing!

Details from ChangeLog.txt:

- Byte[] editor added (needs to be improved user-input-wise)
- String[] editor added
- Editors are now loaded via Hashtable and Reflection (easier to maintain)
- Menu restructuring (New Value submenu)
- KeyPress event for DWORD editor modified to only allow numbers to be entered
- New project directory structure

Download (795KB)

The Microsoft ASP.NET v1.1 Membership Management Component Prototype contains classes that allow a developer to more easily authenticate users, authorize users, and store per-user property data in a user profile. The authentication feature validates and stores user credentials which a developer can use to manage user authentication on a web site. The authorization feature lets you treat groups of users as a unit by assigning users to roles such as manager, sales, member, and so on. Combined with ASP.NET's built-in authorization functionality, Windows Shared Hosting developers have end-to-end support for maintaining user-to-role mappings and authorizing users based on this information. The profile feature enables you to provide users of your Web site with a custom experience. By defining and using profile properties, you can track any custom information your application requires, including user information and user preferences. Download