Password security can no longer be ignored. Even by the technically semi-literate. Or the technically advanced, such as myself. Truth be told I did not practice what I have preached for years. I have always told people not to use the same password on multiple sites. I have been using the same password everywhere for years. I have gotten away with it for years because it was long, obscure, and complex. More lengthy and complex than most corporate policies dictate.
That kind of thing just does not fly any longer, period. Just about anything that is short enough and simple enough for you to remember is hackable. It is only a matter of time. With the proliferation of online activity and the ability to track people from site to site, a single password for all is a disaster waiting to happen. Yes, I had a WoW (World of Warcraft) account hacked and my secondary gmail account hacked. That was a sign for the laziness to end.
Along comes password management to the rescue. I have looked a a few options and partly because of a recommendation from Steve Gibson , I looked at LastPass. If you are a fan of SpinRite or Shields UP!!, you are already familiar with his site grc.com. LastPass may or may not be the best at what it does and just about any management system is better than using the same password everywhere, LastPass has solid functionality and works on my Android phone, my Chrome OS netbook, and my Windows 7 desktop. I created a master pass phrase that is very long and I can only remember because of the substitution cypher I keep in my head. I've used LastPass to generate and track new passwords for every site that I use and so far, except for online games, it works like a charm. A thing of beauty.
No more excuses, take charge of your digital security.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
But What Do I Know
If I had to make a guess, I would say it almost seems like Palm wasn't really serious about returning to the smart-phone market. A market that they held a 30+ percent share of in mid 2006. They came out last year with a phone that could have made some gains, the Palm Pre. At first blush it looked pretty cool, very slick, nice interface and such. But Palm , for some reason, refused to open up an SDK for developers on a large scale. Okay, yes they released the Pixi or whatever the hell that thing was called but then they released what was dubbed a creepy commercial. After looking at the events I would say that palm was looking for someone to come along and offer a buyout at a premium and now that no offer has materialized they don't know what to do. But what do I know.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Murdoch Touch
Is Rupert Murdoch to old to understand this "internet stuff"? I don't think charging for access to his newscorp sites is a genius move. There are way too many alternatives available for that kind of strategy to work. Then I looked at Myspace traffic numbers after hearing that the CEO had been canned. Myspace has seen a pretty dramatic drop in traffic over the last two years, according to Alexa estimates. It's hard to know, without more research, what really caused this to happen. My first thought? Murdoch just doesn't get it. Second? Facebook has been hugely successful over the past few years, Myspace couldn't help but feel that as a drain. Lastly I thought it's probably a bit of both. Facebook has been huge but if Myspace were backed by someone that put real time and effort into innovating that product then it may well have fared differently.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The 500 Dollar Question
The question for me is moot. I do not have $500 to spend on anything much less a gadget that doesn’t fit into the “need” category. Please understand that I see a definitive line between “need” and “want”. I want an iPad very much. Similar to how I want a new desktop, a Nexus One, a 50” plasma TV and so on. None of these products is in my immediate future however the pricing of the iPad presents a very interesting question in my mind. If I had $500 to spend on a device, what would I buy?
The choices are many. For many people the $500 question is preceded by some thought of what they are missing or “need” in a new device. I won’t delve into all the possible needs of people who might want a MID (mobile internet device), there are many considerations based upon career, personal situation, travel frequency and on and on. I can best formulate a generic question that works for my situation and possibly for others as well, by asking,” What would fit best for me based on how I tend to use technology?” Simple enough I suppose but then I thought about it for a few minutes. That particular price point presents a diversity of options that, although not unique, could well apply to many, many people.
My first thought was that the iPad and Nexus One cost almost the exact same. I say Nexus One because that is the most recent device released that I really wanted. So I started to think about which one would fit my needs best and then it dawned on me that for $500 there are a number of options available. The obvious ones I have mentioned already but add to those two, netbooks (with a few $ left over), low end laptops, low end desktops, iPods, cameras would be an option although they are a bit outside the class of device I am looking at here, and unsubsidized cell phones.
For me the answer is not as complicated as it may be for other people. First of all I see absolutely no purpose in the world for netbooks. In my opinion they are too small and underpowered to be useful beyond getting email and web surfing and I can do that just fine on my phone. I have fat fingers and those little keyboards drive me insane however, I have been using phone keyboards for years (starting on a blackberry) and I guess my thumbs are agile enough to make those even tinier keyboards useful. If you happen to be the netbook type, for $500 you can get a really tricked out netbook.
I would love to have a laptop. I would use it mostly as a desktop replacement computer. There really isn’t much of a need for big tower cases anymore but they are such a part of the computer identity that we still make and use them even if we have no plans of expanding the hardware functionality of the machine. For me to get a laptop it would have to be pretty beefy. I am a gamer but I am not obsessed with getting every high end graphic intensive title that is produced. I don’t travel that much so I don’t really have a need for portable computing power other than the odd trip to visit family that lives out of state. All of this means that a $500 laptop would be a waste for me. I wouldn’t get much use out of it.
A desktop computer is something that could be a real consideration for me at this point. My computer is a few years old and is on the borderline for being able to play HD content. New games need to be scaled back a little on the graphics but all in all it is still useful. However if I had the money it would certainly be nice to have a newer desktop. My only problem is that on a $500 budget I wouldn’t be able to get a PC that was markedly better than the one I already have. It would make more sense to save up a bit more so that I could buy a machine that would last me another 3 to 5 years.
The one device that I have really been wanting for the last three weeks is a Nexus One. That is one sweet phone. I already have T-Mobile and am moving to the no-contract service. So an unlocked phone is right up my alley. I may be in the minority in this but I use my desktop for entertainment. I watch movies, listen to music, play games, look at photos and play around with the odd video. I use my phone as the communication device (shocking I know), which means voice, text messaging, IM, twitter, Facebook, etc. Sometimes I watch YouTube on my phone or answer the odd email on my desktop but those are rare instances. My current phone is a G1 and I still like it however it is getting increasingly difficult to run the messaging apps I want and use the phone without the device being irritatingly slow. I would benefit from a new phone that is faster and has better capacity to multi-task.
The question mark in much of this is the iPad. On the surface it is not a new, magical, earth shattering device like Steve Jobs would have us all believe. It is a really big iPod Touch. Sure Steve says it could replace a TV for casual viewing but I don’t watch TV. I watch everything on my computer. All I would get is a smaller screen. Steve says it’s a gaming device like no other. I am paraphrasing all this by the way. I play games on my desktop and Xbox 360. I don’t play arcade games. I play MMORPG’s and shooters. This little pad isn’t going to run an MMORPG much less do it better. The intriguing thing to me is what the iPad could be but isn’t right now.
I would change my mind about buying one in a heartbeat if it did some of the following, which is not impossible in my estimation. Imagine if it could also be a secondary screen for a desktop, laptop whatever. Imagine if you could replace your keyboard and mouse with this thing. If you are an artist, imagine if you could use it as a drawing tablet for digital painting or sketching. Imagine if it ran an app that linked to home security/automation and it was all presented in an augmented reality fashion with 3d views and iconic representation of devices in your house that you could interact with and oh, yea your entertainment system to. I’m sure that people smarter than me will come up with some real game changing ideas for this product. The problem is they don’t exist yet. For me this would be an item of pure luxury and I can’t afford that. Luckily I am not among Apple’s target audience for this product. Otherwise the innovation that could come along based on this device might never see the light of day.
The choices are many. For many people the $500 question is preceded by some thought of what they are missing or “need” in a new device. I won’t delve into all the possible needs of people who might want a MID (mobile internet device), there are many considerations based upon career, personal situation, travel frequency and on and on. I can best formulate a generic question that works for my situation and possibly for others as well, by asking,” What would fit best for me based on how I tend to use technology?” Simple enough I suppose but then I thought about it for a few minutes. That particular price point presents a diversity of options that, although not unique, could well apply to many, many people.
My first thought was that the iPad and Nexus One cost almost the exact same. I say Nexus One because that is the most recent device released that I really wanted. So I started to think about which one would fit my needs best and then it dawned on me that for $500 there are a number of options available. The obvious ones I have mentioned already but add to those two, netbooks (with a few $ left over), low end laptops, low end desktops, iPods, cameras would be an option although they are a bit outside the class of device I am looking at here, and unsubsidized cell phones.
For me the answer is not as complicated as it may be for other people. First of all I see absolutely no purpose in the world for netbooks. In my opinion they are too small and underpowered to be useful beyond getting email and web surfing and I can do that just fine on my phone. I have fat fingers and those little keyboards drive me insane however, I have been using phone keyboards for years (starting on a blackberry) and I guess my thumbs are agile enough to make those even tinier keyboards useful. If you happen to be the netbook type, for $500 you can get a really tricked out netbook.
I would love to have a laptop. I would use it mostly as a desktop replacement computer. There really isn’t much of a need for big tower cases anymore but they are such a part of the computer identity that we still make and use them even if we have no plans of expanding the hardware functionality of the machine. For me to get a laptop it would have to be pretty beefy. I am a gamer but I am not obsessed with getting every high end graphic intensive title that is produced. I don’t travel that much so I don’t really have a need for portable computing power other than the odd trip to visit family that lives out of state. All of this means that a $500 laptop would be a waste for me. I wouldn’t get much use out of it.
A desktop computer is something that could be a real consideration for me at this point. My computer is a few years old and is on the borderline for being able to play HD content. New games need to be scaled back a little on the graphics but all in all it is still useful. However if I had the money it would certainly be nice to have a newer desktop. My only problem is that on a $500 budget I wouldn’t be able to get a PC that was markedly better than the one I already have. It would make more sense to save up a bit more so that I could buy a machine that would last me another 3 to 5 years.
The one device that I have really been wanting for the last three weeks is a Nexus One. That is one sweet phone. I already have T-Mobile and am moving to the no-contract service. So an unlocked phone is right up my alley. I may be in the minority in this but I use my desktop for entertainment. I watch movies, listen to music, play games, look at photos and play around with the odd video. I use my phone as the communication device (shocking I know), which means voice, text messaging, IM, twitter, Facebook, etc. Sometimes I watch YouTube on my phone or answer the odd email on my desktop but those are rare instances. My current phone is a G1 and I still like it however it is getting increasingly difficult to run the messaging apps I want and use the phone without the device being irritatingly slow. I would benefit from a new phone that is faster and has better capacity to multi-task.
The question mark in much of this is the iPad. On the surface it is not a new, magical, earth shattering device like Steve Jobs would have us all believe. It is a really big iPod Touch. Sure Steve says it could replace a TV for casual viewing but I don’t watch TV. I watch everything on my computer. All I would get is a smaller screen. Steve says it’s a gaming device like no other. I am paraphrasing all this by the way. I play games on my desktop and Xbox 360. I don’t play arcade games. I play MMORPG’s and shooters. This little pad isn’t going to run an MMORPG much less do it better. The intriguing thing to me is what the iPad could be but isn’t right now.
I would change my mind about buying one in a heartbeat if it did some of the following, which is not impossible in my estimation. Imagine if it could also be a secondary screen for a desktop, laptop whatever. Imagine if you could replace your keyboard and mouse with this thing. If you are an artist, imagine if you could use it as a drawing tablet for digital painting or sketching. Imagine if it ran an app that linked to home security/automation and it was all presented in an augmented reality fashion with 3d views and iconic representation of devices in your house that you could interact with and oh, yea your entertainment system to. I’m sure that people smarter than me will come up with some real game changing ideas for this product. The problem is they don’t exist yet. For me this would be an item of pure luxury and I can’t afford that. Luckily I am not among Apple’s target audience for this product. Otherwise the innovation that could come along based on this device might never see the light of day.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
News Flash (not really)
Google announces that they know everything about everyone and will keep that information forever.
In other news Google berates Chinese Government for questionable practices and the rest of the world breathes easier knowing that Google is looking out for us.
That is all.
In other news Google berates Chinese Government for questionable practices and the rest of the world breathes easier knowing that Google is looking out for us.
That is all.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
AAA gets you a T-Mobile discount
t-mobile? aaa? switching to one of the new plans on t-mobile, let them know you are aaa member and they will wave the activation fee.
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