Create Flex/AS3 applications for Mobile Devices
Yup! Flex Apps on your mobile. And I'm not talking about Flash Lite and you won't need CS5 either.
ELIPS Studio converts the Flex code in native code for Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, iPhone and mass-market mobiles. It's still beta and you have to register for a beta account to get it but I think will do wonders for the mobile dev. world.
And in their words:
"ELIPS Studio 3 is a plug-in for Adobe Flex Builder, a widely used IDE for internet & desktop application. Our plug-in allows Flex to go mobile!
The product offers a mobile-optimized Flex Framework, plus numerous Flex extensions, including mobile UI components & access to mobile device features (voice call, SMS, access to calendar and contacts, to the camera, etc.)
The product includes a form-factor device simulator allowing you to see your application behavior on different devices. It also includes a network simulator allowing to generate calls, SMS, etc."
So..get it while it's hot 
Static files locked by Jetty in Eclipse
If you use Jetty you might notice that once it's running you can't edit any static files because it says they are already in use and locked.
Why ? Because Jetty buffers static content for webapps such as html files, css files, images etc and uses memory mapped files to do this if the NIO connectors are being used. The problem is that on Windows, memory mapping a file causes the file to be locked, so that the file cannot be updated or replaced. This means that effectively you have to stop Jetty in order to update a file.
In case this happens follow these steps:
1. Extract the runjettyrun_1.0.1.jar in the eclipse plugin directory
2. Extract the jetty-6.1.6.jar in the lib directory of the previous jar.
3. Edit the file org\mortbay\jetty\webapp\webdefault.xml and change the "useFileMappedBuffer" to false. It should look like the following:
1 2 3 4 | <init -param> <param -name>useFileMappedBuffer</param> <param -value>false</param> </init> |
4. Pack everything back up and overwrite the runjettyrun jar in the plugin directory.
5. If you still get the error after step 4 start eclipse.exe with -clean and then recreate the Jetty configuration. (It just need to replace whatever jar's it copies in your workspace .plugins dir)
Free Windows serials keys and more
Belarc Advisor is a free personal PC Audit software that builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware.
What this tool also does is identifing licenced software and unlicenced ones. Stupid enough, it makes a list of those licences, and for some reason, different websites publish this hidden somewhere on their website. But as we all know, you can keep nothing secret from our good old friend Google.
So...if you need a software licence, just google for "Belarc Advisor Current Profile" (quotes included) and see a computer report with everything that computer has installed and the serials for those softwares.
Here's an example (somewhere on the bottom of the page you can find the serial keys for office and windows and others)
If you want to be more specific, add the software name in the google search: "Windows XP Professional" "Belarc Advisor Current Profile"
Install Windows XP on your Asus Eee PC using a USB flash drive
This method of running and installing a Windows from a USB flash drive works on all computers not just Asus Eee PC's.
To complete this tutorial you'll need:
- a 32bit version of Windows XP or Windows Vista installed on your computer
- PeToUSB
- Bootsect
- a Windows XP instalation CD or image
Extract all the zip archives, copy the PeToUSB content into the USB_prep8 folder. Inside the USB_prep8 folder double click the executable named usb_prep8.cmd
The window that opens will look like this:
Press any key to continue.
Your next window will look like this:
These settings are preconfigured for you and all you need to do now is click the Start button.
Once the format is complete, DO NOT close the window. Just leave everything as it is and open a new command prompt from your start menu (type cmd in the Run box)
Inside the command window, go to the directory you have bootsect.exe extracted and type (see note bellow first)
bootsect.exe /nt52 R:
Note: R: is the drive of my USB stick. Open Windows Explorer and see what letters yours is assigned to and change the command accordingly. When running the bootsect.exe command, you must close all windows/programs that are displaying/using the content of the USB stick to allow the boot sector writer to lock the device and write the sector correctly.
This part writes the correct boot sector to your USB stick and allows the pc to boot from the stick. Without this noting works. If all went well with the command, you should see "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes"
Now you can close this command prompt and the PeToUSB window (but make sure not to close the usb_prep8 one by mistake)
The window you see now should look like this:
Now you need to enter the correct information for number 1, 2 and 3
- Press 1 and then enter. A folder browse window will open for you to browse for the location of your XP setup files (cd rom drive, mounted image or a folder somewhere on your system)
- Press 2 and enter a letter not curently assigned to a drive on your PC (try x or someting at the end of the alfabet)
- Press 3 and enter the drive letter of your USB stick
- And finally, press 4 to start the process
The script will ask you if its okay to format the virtual tempdrive (the one at step 2). This is just a temp drive the program creates and mounts to cache the windows installation files. You can safely press Y to continue
Once it's done formating, press enter to continue again, you can now see the program copying files to the temp drive it created. This will take a while (browse other articles from my blog till then ) but once this is done, press enter to continue again.
Next you will see a box pop up asking you to copy the files to USB drive (yes/no options). You want to click yes here.
Once the script has completed once again a shit long copying process, another window asking if you would like the USB drive to be preferred boot dive U:. select Yes on this window too.
Now select yes to unmount the virtual drive.
Ok we are done the hard part, close the usbprep8 window.
Now make sure your EEE pc is configured with USB as the primary boot device.
Insert your USB drive and boot up the EEE.
On the startup menu you have two options, select option number 2 for text mode setup.
From this point on it is just like any other windows XP installation delete/recreate the primary partition on your EEE pc and format it using NTFS. Make sure you delete ALL partitions and recreate a single partition or you will get the hal.dll error message.
Once the text mode portion of setup is complete it will boot into the GUI mode (you can press enter after the reboot if your too excited to wait the 30 seconds)
Once the GUI portion of setup is complete you will again have to boot into GUI mode this will complete the XP installation and you will end up at you XP desktop. It is very important that you DO NOT REMOVE THE USB STICK before this point. Once you can see your start menu it is safe to remove the usb stick and reboot your pc to make sure everything worked.
This method has advantages over all current no cdrom methods of installing XP to the EEE. You do not have to copy setup files in DOS to the SSD and install from there. It gives you access to the recovery console by booting into text mode setup, and it gives you the ability to run repair installations of XP if you have problems later on.
I hope this worked out for you and please post feedback to the comments section.
View hidden files with a keyboard shortcut
HowToGeek has come up with an absolutely marvelous solution to quickly toggle the display of hidden files on your Windows computer. Often you have to view hidden files when making changes to system files or configuration files of softwares. Enabling the "show hidden files" option in Windows is a long process. The author of HowToGeek has coded a simple application in AutoHotkey script that runs in the background and toggles the status of the "show hidden files" option with a shortcut key combination - Win+H. There is no user interface to keep memory usage at a minimum, but you can customize with by editing the script which is provided on the site.
Once the application is running, all you have to do is hit the Win+H shortcut key.
And immediately any hidden files will become visible. Hit the same shortcut key and the folders become hidden again.
To make this application auto start, copy it to your startup folder C:\Documents and Settings\%username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Since there is no GUI, the only way to close the application is by killing the process through the task manager.
This application is going to make my life a lot easier. I wish it was available earlier. Download ToggleHiddenFiles.