Viral marketing at its best.

When doing a text search in Visual Studio it sometimes happens that no appropriate matches are returned at all. This although you are sure that the correct search options are set and the queried text really does exist. By pure coincidence the following workaround was found: Just press Ctrl-Scroll and studio is back on the path!
This behaviour occurs in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 as well.

If you declare a read-only property as defined by the two ways below, you cannot bind a property to it by using IDE (database icon is not available in this case):

1.

Although there exists a crippled way to make it happen anyway here's the statement of the Microsoft Product Group :

"General guidance is that read only properties should not be bound. The UI allows it due to the bug. In dev10 we will fix this and it should no longer be possible through the designer, but probably still possible in code. Please avoid using this pattern. We know it works, but it’s not supported or tested. Anyway, we will not disable it in code, since we now know someone has a dependency on it."

A quite new portal worth mentioning is Downloadpedia. It is a free content software encyclopedia project and can be seen as a 'wikipedia' for software running under the open source label.

It took me quite a time finding useful hints on how to play MP3 with Windows Mobile. So here is what was found:

Tested with Windows Mobile 6.

Playing around with stereo images I wanted to judge the 3D effect immediately. To do so I created a small tool displaying the image by alternating between the left eye / right eye picture. Maybe it is also useful for you.  

See the binaries or the sources.

Catching oneself using a mobile phone as replacement for a torch? This simple windows mobile app does nothing more than displaying the brightest white in fullscreen mode. Sometimes quite useful :)

Developed for PPC 2003, Windows Mobile 5 and 6. The .NET Compact Framework 2.0 (Service Pack 1 Redistributable) is also required. Torchy was tested successful on WM6, but not on the other platforms. Maybe someone out there wants to try it out and drop a comment.

Download the installer or the sourcecode.

Public request for instant-on mechanisms on hardware coming along with decreasing prices on flash memory, tend manufactures to enhance their devices by flash based techniques. Some months ago Erdgeist and Frank Rieger held a nice talk about this trend and security related issues coming along. I like to sensitize by listing some of the main points:

• Flash buffered hard drives could mean writing back whole main-memory content to flash.
• Keep in mind that crypto-keys could be contained in memory dumps and so they also could be copied to the flash memory without your intend.
• Flash memory is accessed via FAT mechanisms. Deleting a file will not delete its information physically; it just deletes an entry in the FAT. So watch out selling your old cards on eBay or be amused buying them :)
• When a cell dies the current state (0/1) can still be read. So dead memory cards are nice toys for computer forensic investigators.
• Flash memory cells write-cycles are limited to 10K or 1M times.
• To avoid that some cells are massively accessed while others do not, manufactures built in algorithms to distribute access to the cells. So sensitive data could be automatically copied and is now spread multiple times on the card without your intention.
• So before selling used memory, fill the cards with large files of useless data before deletion.
• Use encryption for sensitive data.

Along with every security related issue: It is not meant to spread paranoia but it doesn't hurt knowing what's possible with our beloved daily gadgets.

The complete content can be found here or here.