22 « August « 2008 « Irfan’s Corner on the Web

22Aug/080

Why I think strong password generators are a bad idea

Recently in twit.tv's MacBreak Weekly, they advised about a simple technique to get secure passwords, by using openssl, then in another episode they talked about 1Password.

The advise was to generate a strong password and have your keychain manager remember it! Now, if you do follow that advise, and set up complex passwords, and have your keychain manager remember it, what happens if your keychain becomes corrupted due to any reason (or your hard disk crashes and you don't have a backup), you would be completely locked out of your accounts, because the password was too complex to remember. Or imagine your traveling and get your laptop stolen (happened to a friend recently), there is no way you can login into any service, because you don't remember the passwords any more. So are strong random passwords really a good idea??

I rather think, that phrases, you remember are better as passwords. Or if possible try to use openssl keys for identification. The best methods I've seen so far, and I think its pretty secure from keyloggers as well, is method used by my bank.

The site does not prompt for the entire password, rather, you have to type in certain characters in the password, for instance:

And every time you login the character a different set of characters is asked. This method is secure from keyloggers for sure, because no one will have an idea what character was asked.

Filed under: Uncategorized, internet, security No Comments

22Aug/081

Zinio makes Magazines accessible!

Don't you love to read magazines in your field? I love to read MacWorld, PC Magazine, PC World it helps me keep up to date and provides a good way to pass my leisure time. However before today I did not want to subscribe to magazines independently and have them pile up in my room.

Today I ordered a Digital subscription of MacWorld, in order to be environmentally friendly, preemptively remove a lot of mess in my room and make the content searchable. The MacWorld site took me to Zinio, where I discovered what a treasure trove it is.

Zinio makes a lot of magazines accessible to the casual reader. It offers a wide range of popular magazines from MacWorld to Playboy to Jane's Defense Weekly. Subscription are cheap. For a whole year subscription like costs $20 for a single magazine.

The only downside of ZInio is the DRM'd format in which the digital magazines are delivered. The content is not indexable by spotlight. I have to use their own search utility to search through the magazines. They have a client for Mac, which downloads new magazines available to you.

Filed under: Uncategorized, internet 1 Comment

22Aug/080

Create desktop client easily for web applications

I love to use tada lists, however I hate to open a browser and go to the URL and login. I would love to have a desktop client for tada lists. Similarly there are various web applications which I love to use, however I dont want to browse to the site. If you face these problems, enter Fluid.

Fluid allows you to create a 'desktop type' application of any web applications, for example, I used it to create desktop client applications for tada lists, my mail, facebook and some other sites.

Fluid can also support various client application modes. For example

This is a standard client application of tada lists.