Password Tracking Mobile Style
Password Safe has been my password keeper of choice for well over a year now. I keep it on my USB key and it helps my weak memory. It is pretty simple to use, loads quick and has nice features that help it keep itself secure. I keep it on a USB key for easy access.
Sucks when I forget my USB key at work though. I’m at home, trying to remember a password with little success. Frustrating.
While pondering that very scenario earlier tonight, I happened to glance at my cell phone. Ah look, a Windows Mobile 6 device that goes everywhere I do… seems like maybe I should consider looking for applications to run on it instead of a key. I mean seriously, I don’t leave home without it (same cannot be said for my inactive American Express card!).
The app would, ideally, be able to sync to a PC. Or, at a minimum, at least sync the data even if there isn’t a PC client. I used to run one many moons ago on my Pocket PC’s. Can’t recall the name, but it was slick.
In fact, the more I think about it, a PC client is a high priority. Password Safe has a nice feature: Double-click the item in the “safe” and the password is dropped into the clipboard, ready to paste. To be honest, for some sites I no longer have a clue what the password is. I just launch the safe, double-click, alt-v and hit enter. I like that. And yes, it clears the clipboard after the paste.
Lots of choices, some silly pricing, but I may have a quest to embark on. Stay tuned for more — and if you have ideas (especially cheap or free) I’m all ears. Open source? Yeah, that would rock but I’m not holding my breath.
MojoPac Goes Free
Back in April of this year I spent some time trying out MojoPac [My Mojo Experience]. In general I liked it, but after the 30 day trial I just couldn’t rationalize the $50 price tag.
By way of a reminder:
MojoPac is a technology that transforms your iPod or USB Hard Drive or Flash drive into a portable and private PC. Just install MojoPac on any USB 2.0 compliant storage device, upload your applications and files, modify your user settings and environment preferences, and take it with you everywhere
My price concerns have now changed a bit with the advent of MojoPac Freedom. Follow that link to see a chart comparing the various MojoPac flavors. The “Freedom” version doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but I suspect for the casual user it’ll work out just fine. And Free is good.
I’ve been playing with it a bit the last couple of nights and am having fun setting up a portable development environment. Of course I’m installing some of my favorite “toolkit” apps too — but full versions, not portable versions.
What should you be aware of? While this has been working great for me in my limited testing, it currently only works on 32bit XP machines — with Admin privileges. Future Vista support is promised and, in looking at the System Requirements page, it appears that there may be alternatives to needing admin privs as well.
Worth a look if you have a reasonably fast and large enough USB drive.
[via jkOnTheRun]
What’s on Your USB Key — That You Actually Use?
Peter and I had a brief IM chat about this the other night.
Mike Gunderloy touched on it in an article today.
You probably have a USB key full of “stuff” — but of all that stuff, what do you actually use on a regular basis?
I’ll start. I have a page here titled The Toolkit -v2.0. It lists a lot of software that I found (and still find!) useful to keep around in my day to day adventures. I assembled this list at a time when my laptop wasn’t working well and I wasn’t carrying it around very much.
At that time, I used a lot of the programs in my Toolkit frequently. Now? Not so much. I still frequently use Filezilla Portable and Password Safe and, of course, PStart. The rest of the stuff on there? Unless I’m out of town, I probably have it installed on one of my nearby machines.
How about you? Do you have tons of stuff on the key you hardly use? Only a few things that you use constantly? Somewhere in between? What is something you just have to have on a USB key?
Hardware Failure
Remember that USB drive I mentioned in last night’s post about backups?
It died!
Toolkit Page updated
I updated the Toolkit Page last night (now labeled as v2.0).
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