Portable App Development

Hi,

Was just reading lifehacker, and found this nugget talking about a bit of software that allows you to install in a virtual layer that captures registry calls etc...

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/installation/hack-attack-safely-insta...

Maybe this could be used for portabalising apps?

I'm nearing completion on both my U3 and PortableApps versions.
Are there any licensing issues with any of the tools used? For example, do I contaminate my shareware license by using any of these open-source tools? I'm using NSIS to build a simple launcher, compressing with UPX and 7-Zip/SFX, and and have hacked the resulting .paf.exe with ResourceHack, inserting my own info.
Any problems here?

Is there a graphic library for those who would like to customize our installers to include the cute little (circle/arrow) PortableApps logo?
Is it permitted?
I would like to overlay the circle/arrow graphic onto my program's icon, to signify "My app's Installer".
I would expect that would be allowed, as it would help promote the PortableApps brand, while keeping mine intact. Is this ok, and are graphic files available?

Also, is there much point in going the extra mile here for the 7zip installers, with the new NSIS installers coming, or is that far enough in the future?
Thanks,

Newbie here,
I'm finalizing my U3 version, and figured I'd do PortableApps too. I'm not yet writing my script, but wanted to build the hooks into the main app first. With U3, I'm able to use Environment Strings to find path info, such as:
IShouldStoreMyDataHere := GetEnvironmentVariable('U3_APP_DATA_PATH');

Can I do this with NSIS? Or do I need it in conjunction with something else? Let me know if there is a sample app that does this. I looked through several, but maybe I didn't know what to look for.

I have written something for my company to help them secure documents on a USB stick. I'm getting on in years now, and never really progressed from the days of DOS batch scripts, so this is what I end up using, its not elegant, not clever, but it just about does what they want.

Today I found Portable Apps, and wondered if its something that I could use because its so much better than anything I'm likely to be able to create.

Does anyone have any suggestions or sites that I could use to learn NSIS?
Thanks
Ben

Is it possible to make parts of the registry portable? The most evil part of windows is the registry!!

Sorry that I'm always the guy posting about Apps leaving files...
But
The Backuptool is leaving a folder called
nsr37.tmp (or something like that)
and a
registry.dll
inside.
So its the NSIS registry plugin.

Why does my Portable NSIS always makes an error with John's
"RequestExecutionLevel user" ?
Do I have an old version of NSIS?

Is it possible to make a shareware product a "Portable App"? What are the steps?
Thanks for any reply.