Every new system we encounter ask us to choose a password. There is always a ruleset attached that it must be a minimum amount of characters, capitalized and non-capitalized characters, numbers and sometimes even special characters as explamaition marks, dots and commas. Most of us see this as something very frightening and looking at a seaming random password as W1cmp;7ac5h! we feel there is no way we could ever remember something as complex.

There are a few techniques we can use in situations like this and I would to share with you my favourite way of chosing and remembering complex passwords. This is a technique I daily use when I need to create passwords and since I started I have not yet needed to create yet another password like qwerty1234 or 123qwerty. Instead I can keep passwords of ten characters or more with mixed capitalization, numbers and special characters.

This is how I do it.

It all start with a sentance which can be connected to the password I am to create to simplify my way of remembering it. If I was to create a password for my Facebook account for example I could use a sentance like:

The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

We now have created our source of randomness which we then can use to create an actual password. By attaching a ruleset to this sentance we can make it look more complex but still for ourselves completely logical.
First of all we can try to find all numericals which we can exchange with numbers. The word “twice” can be changed to a singe letter “2″. By using only the leading characters in all words together with the number two we now have created a password with upper- and lowercase letters, special characters and numbers!

The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

become

TpwIgtmAaB;2pd!

More information/Disclaimer

• This is a commonly used technique which you can find more information about it in many places but I do recommend an article by Microsoft which I found to be very useful.

At first you might think that it is hard to remember a full sentance instead of just a few characters but I was amazed how much easier it was for me to do it this way. Next time you are to login to your Facebook account all you have to do is to remember what Facebook is all about – The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

I got my hands on an 16Gb Wifi iPad a couple of weeks ago when I was on vacation in New York. Not only did I get my iPad, I got the opportunity to visit the wonderful store located just next to central park, the glass cube, which made my creative mind jump because of the stunning architecture. Almost make me drool a bit even now when I think about it. But, enough about that, let’s jump straight into the usage of the device.

The reason I bought the iPad was to use it as a casual device to use at my couch when watching TV in the evenings together with a portable movie player for when I travel. The idea of reading magazines and books on the device also tickled my imagination and I wondered whether or not I would like this over a good old book. The reason I did not buy the Amazon Kindle a year ago was that I feel that it was a bit to locked down and the ways it could be used seemed very limited. Since I’ve used the App Store for my iPhone for quite some time now I knew that this would not be the case with the iPad. I find new ways of usage for my iPhone every day thanks to it and the feeling is exactly the same with the iPad.

The screen is bright and have a high amount of detail, I never feel that it is blurry on text or on moving media so I can without any problems read text on it without any tired eyes. The touchscreen features is just as quick as one would want it and the response I get when using it is wonderful. Books with black text on white background is rendered very smooth but also colorful magazines (I use an app called Zinio to get magazines, recommended) is rendered very nice and vivid and the move, pan and zoom is working in a natural way. There still exist a few things I do miss on the device, some things might seem like small things while other are bigger. First of all the home button on the device is not lit in any way. When using the iPad at night in the dark I often find myself to spin the device around every time I put it away for some reason which leads to that every time I need to press the home button, I do not know on which side of the screen it is and I have to start fumble about to find it. Small thing, but I think of it every time. Lack of Flash need to be mentioned since it has been a very hot topic in media ever since the release. I personally have not really missed Flash-support during the time I have used the iPad so in my personal opinion, no loss. The battery is drained faster then I’d like it to but still I know that I have been using the device heavy. I have been watching a few movies on it in a row without any problems and that’s about what I need.

So, what is it that I actually use my iPad for today?

More information

• For more information about the Apple iPad, App Store or iBooks, visit apple.com.
• For more information about Zinio, visit zinio.com
• For more information about WordPress, visit wordpress.com

I must agree that I have played quite a few games on it since I got it in my hands. Just as I did when I got my iPhone. But part from the gaming I have also found myself to use it for most part of all random surf I do when I’m home. I no longer find a reason to start my desktop machine if there isn’t something special I need to use it for. I’ve been using it for movies and TV series also, the ability to watch what I want where ever I am is just great. And last but not in any way least, papers and magazines is made for the iPad. For quite some time I have been wondering how the media would look like to get me to see the benefit of digital editions of paper magazines, and this is it. Good size and wonderful screen makes reading and watching great. Of course the iBooks application makes it easier then ever to find something to actually read as well.

I do love the iPad more then I thought I would and I find myself using it more and more every day passing. My desktop computer is feeling ever more alone as I find out that I can do almost everything I need on the iPad instead.

Oh and by the way, I wrote this article on my iPad using the WordPress application available from the App Store.

To make this list as easy as possible to over-look I tried to categorize them for usage: Everyday tools, GTD, Graphical and Development.

Everyday tools

Launchy

Application launcher so that you don’t need to have manus organized or tidy. Hit a shortcut and write the name of the application you would likt to launch and press enter – done! Takes a litle time to get use to but when you have, you wont be able to work without it.

Miranda IM

Instant Messaging-client which can be used for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo etc.

Chrome / FireFox

Personally I use Chrome as my favourite browser nowadays but I would recomend both Chrome and Firefox, they do deliver so much more then Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari currently does to mention a few.

Related:
Chrome instead of Firefox

Spotify

For all countries where Spotify have been allowed to operate, the service has opened the door to music for the people.

Total Commander

Better controll over files and folders, integrated ftp-client etc.

Dropbox

A network-based service where you get 2GB of space for free at a remote server to store your files. Secure and swift!

TrueCrypt

For times you want to remotly store documents which are personal at places which can be in-secure you can encrypt them in a “vault” to increse security.

Putty

THE SSH and telnet client for windows.

Filezilla

Sftp and ftp client.

Open Office

Replacement for Microsft Office, free if course.

uTorrent

When it comes to torrents, this is the most minimalistic client I’ve found.

WriteMonkey

Zenware for writing which let you focus on the task of writing and nothing else.

GTD (Getting things done)

Remember the Milk

Task-manager which can remind you on the thing you should do.

Evernote

Take notes of everything! Text, photos, sound or files.

Graphical work

GIMP (GimPhoto)

GIMP is the open source alternative to the comercial Photoshop. By many said to be a complete alternative. Anapplication called GimPhoto also exist which is more specialized on photo editing (based on GIMP).

Inkscape

Vector-drawing and illustration-tool. This is a good alternative for Illustrator for the happy amateur.

Related:
Inkscape 0.47 released

Development

Notepad++

Minimalistic editor with syntax highlighting for multiple languages and support for addons.

Eclipse

A full development-studio with packages for almost all languages.

Cygwin

Get you favourite *nix-tools on the windows platform by using this console in a box.

Most of us have a situation at work or in school where assignments, discussions and notifications is sent out to us. An e-mail is the old letter made up by ones and zeros. If I am to send a mail to two friends it will be duplicated and each copy of the mail will be distributed to both friends mailboxes. Now by doing this digitally one might think that this is not that big of a deal, not like we’re going to fill up the wires that builds the Internet anyhow, right? But the fact is, the enormous amount of mails that are being sent around the world pushes the mail servers all over to have to work in overdrive to deliver everything. This in the end makes allot mails cost allot of money.

Early on in the days of Internet forums made an appearance and even before that using bulletin boards which one had to call up with a regular phone which was then connected to a computer which could interpret the squeaks and beeps. Just like the not boards downtown where anyone which knew of the board had the ability to post a note there for anyone to see the digitalised forums was a meeting place for information. The problem that the forums did face was that to let someone read what you had written they had to have access to that specific forum. But then, along came e-mail with global servers which did handle the distribution of mails to all corners of the world which was attached to the same network.

Mail has since then become the bread and butter to send and receive information. The big problem with mail as of today is the fact that every mail being duplicated each time it is being sent which cause it to branch each time. If a mail is sent to three persons and two of these answer the first person must then forward the answers to all recipients again to give them all information. So a simple mail sent to three persons has in very short time multiplied into eight new unique mails. So what would be the better solution then? Well, if all recipients was able to see the same instance of the mail and comment on it, no duplication was needed. And this is what forums once solved, and what Google Wave today try to re-invent.

The fact to remain though, Google Wave is yet another forum in a fancy pair of pants. Sure there is functionality to embed this and that into ones waves but the main strength of it is the fact that each recipient will see the same instance of information as everybody else reducing the traffic of our networks.

So, to sum up. Is there anything in Google Wave which can not be done using a simple forum or for that matter, FirstClass or solution as it?

Up until this day, I must say no. Even though it can be solved using a simple forum, I stil quite like Google Wave. And I will continue to follow it to see where the development will take it.

I still longing for a re-work of the overall graphical user interface of the application though. If they would like to get it to an enterprise-level they need to get it more user friendly for the start. For reference I’d like to point out the launcher which can be found for Photoshop Elements which is a polite way of trying to help the user without pushing help in their face (office-paper-clip, I’m looking at you).

All in all Inkscape still is the best alternative when it comes to drawing vector graphics for all us people not really in the mood for throwing dollars for the big suits. And to be completely honest here, the more I use it the more I feel that it covers all I need with flying colors.

Google Translate just got real time! For people which received an invite for Google Wave might have seen this feature already together with the translation-bot used there. The same functionality has now been moved into the regular translation-service as well.

The change from submitting a whole sentence to the service to what it is today when it use some nifty push-technology to translate more or less in segments instead (I guess it push queries on a timely basis AJAX-style) is perhaps not the greatest. But the change here is really more of an architectural change in how services evolve today. We move more and more from static services into dynamic real time solutions where as much as possible is to be executed when the user want it.

Now we all just wait to get this functionality to be incorporated into our social networks so that we finally got that Babelfish of which Douglas Adams once wrote about.

Google translate on the fly

So last weekend I were down at one of the local video-rentals and rented a movie to be seen at home – in 3D! The movie was “The journey to the center of the earth“, the re-make which included glasses for all who were to see it. I remembered these bad glasses in paper from my childhood and though that I would get something better. But when I opened up the case they met my eyes once again. Those lousy paper-goggles was there and mocked my enthusiasm as if they knew I had high hopes.

After my first disappointment I started to watch the movie. And *BAM* there was the second disappointment right in my face. The actual color of the glasses in the box was not balanced at all and the green one (for my left eye) was really do strong which made everything in the entire movie to come out in a green soft light. Everything. Green.

About two hours later the movie ended and my eyes was totally destroyed by the colors and I didn’t manage to see a complete color scale until the day after. So, there you have it – my first experience with movies in 3D. If if had not been for the really bad glasses I think it would be really neat. But as of now, they did ruin it all by shipping the movie with the worst kind of budget solution in a long time.

I think I have to see a movie at the cinema before I can really bury this entire idea because the effect of things flying against you is really interesting and if there exist glasses which makes the colors come out flawless I really do think it will be great. So to sum up I must say that movies in 3D will be awesome, if they do fix the really bad glasses once and for all.

Face taged in photo and also a small list of persons above the tags in the lower right part.

Face-taging in Flickr is just as simple as adding a regular tag, and to be completly honest they are almost the same thing. What do differ a face-tag from a regular tag is that faces are beeing organized and linked to profiles which makes it possible to also list pictures of specific people. You will also be notified when someone tag your face in a photo and you have the ability to remove all tags for yourself in all photos at Flickr if you identify that they are beeing missused. It is also configurable wheter it should be possible to tag your face in photos and who should be able to do so.

Adding a face-tag is just as adding a regular tag.

All in all this was a nice new feature which is not very new or inovative but still good to have in a otherwise very good photo-sharing site. Keep the good things coming Flickr!

Resources:
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/21/people-in-photos/
http://www.flickr.com/help/people/

As you may already guessed people gave their information away without a thought on why. And the most disturbing part of it all was that two minutes later (after they just gave their information) whether they would give their information up to a complete stranger most of them said no. And I think that the real problem resides just there. People know that the problem exist but they refuse to see that it might happen to them.

To steal an identity today might cause even more pain and distress then to do an actual burglary. If someone was to hijack your electronic profile they can both get you into very hard financial problems as well as destroying your social life. By spreading propaganda or other abusive information they can hurt the image of you for a very long time ahead. This is a hard fact which we can not discard. But instead of just being scared and avoid or abandon you electronic identity you can always instead do your best to keep it safe.

Just some week ago there was 10’000 user passwords that leaked from Hotmail and it was first mentioned as a security breach but later revised. As it was explained later was that the passwords had been sent by the users themselves answering a phony mail asking them to send in their passwords. Once again, most people know that they should never ever send a password to anyone asking for it – but nothing will happen to me.

Out of the 10’000 passwords leaked from Hotmail-users the most used password was ’123456′. Second most used was ’123456789′. If you have anyone of these as a password to anything at all, you better go and change it right now. Choose passwords which you can remember and try to make them more complex then just numbers or just letters. Use the opportunity to be creative!

And while your at it, never use the same password for everything you can find. It is even better to keep different passwords and storing them in a log at home or somewhere you feel is ‘safe’ if you were to forget any passwords.

Resources:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/caught-on-video-brits-handing-their-identities-to-complete-strangers-643548?src=rss&attr=all

http://www.acunetix.com/blog/websecuritynews/statistics-from-10000-leaked-hotmail-passwords/

http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk/

The iPhone didn’t go away without a price though. ‘Phone of the year’ was awarded the now highly awarded smartphone together with the readers choice for ‘Gadget of the year’.

From my perspective I have  to say that I still like both phones but had some problems just the last days with the push-sync in my Hero. I did fiddle a bit with the network-settings last week to cut down on roaming though so it might be that I am all to blame myself.

Reference

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1217723/HTC-Hero-smartphone-judged-best-gadget-2009.html