Entries Tagged 'Software' ↓

photo credit: bradleygeeThe Urinal Test is an advertainment game for the iPhone. The object is to pick the correct urinal to pee in when presented with a group of urinals, some populated with dudes.

Amusing to play once or twice. Doesn’t warrant a permanent place on my phone.

Card Star is an application that keeps track of your loyalty cards.
I was one of the thousands of people that helped propel this application into the top slots in the iTunes store. It was featured in an Apple ad and I grabbed it.

The point is that you never have to remember your loyalty cards, enter the data and when you go to a store, recall it, and the merchant can scan you iPhone screen. Neat idea. I don’t have enough loyalty cards that I care to go through the hassle of entering them.

Another in the series of articles on iPhone apps I’ve used.

This is the official AIM client from AOL. The latest version adds push capabilities. If you only use AOL for IM this is a great application. For me though, I’m on about three different networks. I’m looking for a better IM client. Any good recommendations list them here.

In this first of a continuing series of articles of iPhone Apps I’ve tried. I’m doing a quick write-up of Faces. Faces gives you one button access to a list of favorite phone numbers. It’s called faces because the buttons in the user interface can consist of pictures of the people you want to call.

This is my goto dial application. I don’t use the iPhone Phone app directly for most of my calling. All of my friends and family are in Faces.

Over the next few posts, you’re going to see a bunch of lame-o reviews of iPhone applications. This is not so much to wow the reader with my ability to concisely summarize my experience with these applications. It’s mainly so I remember which apps I’ve tried and which, quite frankly, suck.

When you create an website account and give someone your password you are entering into an unwritten agreement with them that says they will keep your password safe and their network secure. This includes encrypting the password in their database so that if a breach occurs, the passwords are still protected. With the most recent examples of poor security on commercial websites I decided it was time to revisit my password scheme.

I treat passwords differently depending on the website I’m using. Some passwords are for websites that I don’t necessarily care about, others like banking and financial sites I use a stock set of unguessable passwords. The throwaway passwords are fairly unique but follow the same algorithm so once someone guessed one it wouldn’t be difficult for them to go around to other sites, guessing others. The important passwords I generated years ago and only are used on sites where it’s critical for me to keep my private information safe. The problem with my super secret passwords is I only have a few I can remember. If their is a security breach on a website than these passwords I am opening myself to potential theft.

The key for me was finding a way to creating unique secure passwords. I googled and came across three great tools for helping me with this.

The first, SuperGenPass, is a password generator that works inside your browser via a bookmarket. With it, you only have to remember one password. It will use that one password to generate unique passwords on each website you visit. It uses a mathematical formula to generate the password. However, it’s one-way so that someone can’t apply an inverse equation to get your original password. I’ve tested this on the three major browser (IE, Firefox, Safari) and it works great.

The second, Passpack, is an online password manager. Sometimes it is necessary to generate passwords that SuperGenPass can’t handle such as PC logins, bank PINs, etc. Passpack allows you to store them safely in an online vault so that you can retreive them from any PC.

Finally, the third is not so much of a tool as a methodology. You must have a great unguessable password in order to protect your identity. Most people can’t create their own unique password. Using computer based random password generators are ineffective because computers are deterministic and can’t really generate true random numbers. Diceware is a website that shows you a process to follow to create truly unique passwords.

All of these tools will help you get a handle on securing your digital identity. At a minimum, a combination of SuperPassGen and a password generated via Diceware will offer more protection than most people have.

I’ve used a few different project management programs, my current favorite is Basecamp. However, Basecamp wants to treat everything as a project and gets in your way if you want to track time spent on tasks that are not bound to a specific project.

Today, for example, I need to track some time spent on a one-off task for a client. It’s pretty close-ended, I’ll do the work, send the hours spent to accounting and I’m done. Creating a Basecamp project for this would be overkill.

As a software nerd, the thought of just using a stop watch seems sacrilegious so I opted to search for an appropriate piece of software that would allow me to time unbounded tasks.

Enter SlimTimer. SlimTimer is a web application which allows you to quickly create time bounded tasks. Sign-up is quick and (as near as I can tell) free.

Once you create an account, you can begin creating tasks in a tiny (think Slim) pop-up window. When tasks are activated, a timer starts. Close the window, the timer stops. So far this seems to do exactly what I need.

If that was all the application could do then all I did was find a web 2.0 stop watch. The really cool thing is the reporting. SlimTimer allows you to generate invoices, timesheets or more generic reports showing the time spent on a series of tasks.

You can then take these reports, and print them or export them to CSV, handy if you need to send this to someone else.

If you need a quick way to time tasks, give SlimTimer a test drive.

Technorati Tags: productivity, project management, web2.0

I recently was looking for a way to get files off of my home PC from my office when I came across Hamachi. Hamachi is a “zero-config” VPN which when installed, allows you to link computers across the internet in a secure, virtual local area network.

I installed the client on my home PC and office PCs. Their claim of zero config is spot on. I merely had to give the PCs my account name and they found each other on the internet.

Once connected, I could do everything to my home machine that I could do on my house local area network. Browse shares, access my Subversion server, even use the Windows remote desktop to operate my home machine from my office.

VPNs used to be the realm of IT departments and businesses looking for a way to connect their road warriors. It was difficult to install and slow. Hamachi has leveled the playing field making it available for consumers.