1Password: get your online security under control

Note: I‘m re-running this article/review for 1Password. It’s a new year and if you’ve resolved at all to get your online security and password information sorted out then you need 1Password. Some new features have been added since I originally wrote this. 1Password is now available for Windows and Andriod. Dropbox syncing has also been added for synching between your computer and mobile device. I highly recommend 1Password which I continually use on a daily basis between my Mac, iPad and iPhone. You can check it all out here: 1Password Overview

I’ve spent many frustrated hours attempting to remember the various user names and logins that I had created for the myriad of websites that I frequent. Trouble was I could never keep straight which specific combinations I used for each site. I tried to be security savvy by not always using the same passwords and mixing them up. Well, all it ever really did was mix me up. I always worried too that I wasn’t being security conscious by never changing passwords for some important account. I knew that some day it would come back to haunt me (which it fortunately hadn’t)…

Recently I began using 1Password 3, a really great password application that did all the work for me. It works like this: Once you enter your individual accounts all you have to remember is, well, one password.

My favorite feature of 1Password is its full integration into Safari (or other browsers). 1Password installs a 1P button on your browser toolbar. When you visit a secured site you then select “Fill” under that sites name and 1Password fills in the login and password. It will prompt you for your 1Password, once you enter it your logged in. This is especially good because it enables you to create an individual password for each site to keep things good and secure across the net. You can create your own easier to remember passwords our you can use the handy strong password generator to keep things uber secure. That was an option I chose on the most sensitive accounts like banking, etc.

One draw back to creating these strong, random, passwords is remembering them if needed while your away from your Mac. 1Password has an answer for that too. A fully synch-able iPhone App.

Download/install the iPhone App and it will auto secure sync to iPassword Mac (after secret code set-up). Both just have to be connected to the same wi-fi network, yup no cable required. The iPhone App isn’t quite as integrated as the Mac App. You either have to copy and paste those hard to remember password between 1Password and Mobile Safari or you can use the integrated browser to go directly to the site within 1Password.

Of note: 1Password has many other features like software license organization, auto identity fill-in, wallet, secure notes and more.

If you’re looking to gain control of your passwords/login security and want an easy to use solution that has many other helpful features give 1Password 3 a try. Best of all 1Password 3 can be downloaded and demoed for free for 1 month. After that initial month it will cost you $29.95. The iPhone App is $4.99. It’s worth every penny.

1Password 3 link
1Password iPhone App link

It’s about the details – iOS or Android

Recently I made this comment in a forum I frequent regarding Android in comparison to iOS:

“As a side note I personally have issues with Google’s design approach as a whole it’s too fussy for my taste. Apple has a much cleaner design approach, which some find too spartan. The thing Apple does like no other however is attention to detail. They really have a knack for obsessing about the little things and that’s what I believe other systems like Android lack.”

The very next day I read this in Joshua Topolsky’s Nexus S Review on Engadget:

“Well, let’s be clear — Google still has major issues with text selection and editing on Android devices. The first striking problem is that there is not a consistent method of selecting text on the device. None. At all. In the browser, you long press on text to bring up your anchors, then drag and tap the center of your selection — boom, copied text. In text editing fields, however, in order to select a word you must long press on the word, wait for a contextual menu to pop up, and then select “select word” — a completely counterintuitive process. In the message app you can long press to select only the entire message, and in Google Reader? You can’t select any text at all. Even worse, Gmail has a different method for selecting text from an email you’re reading, and it’s far more obnoxious than any of the others. There, selecting text goes from being mildly annoying to downright silly. Want to grab some text out of an email? Here’s your process: hit the menu key, hit “more,” hit “select text,” and then finally drag your anchors out. Funnily enough, a little cursor appears when you start selecting — a holdover from Linux? To have this many options and discrepancies over something as simple as copy and paste should be embarrassing to Google. What it mostly is, however, is a pain to the end user.”

In all fairness the Nexus S was reviewed quite favorably, Topolsky even names it the best Andriod phone to date. I’m not an Android hater by all means. I do however believe that “sweating the finer details” is where Apple has always succeeded, it’s evident throughout Apple’s hardware and software design. Two small examples: The MagSafe power connector on the MacBook line (hardware) and iOS’s consistency and ease for selection, copy and paste (software.)

Heck, even Apple’s packaging has better design, engineering and stirs emotions more then some full fledged products.

“I’m totally serious when I say that the Macbook box is probably one of the most beautiful things that exist. It doesn’t have any exotic shape, there’s not much details, but its finishing is absolutely stunning.” – PauloGabriel’s blog post: The Joy of Opening Apple Packaging

“And you open the gorgeous black box and lift the white cardboard inside flap, itself adorned with clean offset typeface declaring “Designed by Apple in California,” and you are confronted with what is quite possible the most thoughtfully designed and pleasing packaging you’ve ever seen, not like you care about this stuff and hey it’s all just Styrofoam and garbage anyway, but still.” Revelant History post: Apple packaging

Here’s another example of what you’d never see with an Apple product:

Android Hardware button comparison

“Here’s a picture that handily illustrates the biggest problem Android faces: fragmentation. Not only are the phone makers modding the interfaces willy-nilly, and carriers adding in unremovable crapware, but even the hardware buttons can’t seem to stay in the same order.” – Charlie Sorrel @ Wired’s Gadget Lab

Now this isn’t specifically an Andriod issue because the phones are from different manufacturers but come on, you’d think they’d at least strive for a little consistency for the users sake. Even Microsoft has learned from past mistakes and has implemented button consistency with Windows Phone 7.

Concerning Flash on the Tab – Walt Mossberg

“I found the Web browser to be a bit jerky in zooming into text and scrolling through long pages. I tested several Adobe Flash videos and websites written in Flash. Sometimes they played and sometimes they didn’t. In all cases, they slowed the browser down. On one site written in Flash, I got a warning saying I might want to “abort” lest the computer become “unresponsive.” In another case, the Tab crashed. So I conclude that while the Tab does play Flash, it needs work on that score.”

[Full review @ All Things Digital]

Wow. After all the hyperbole of the Tab being able to run Flash it’s apparent that Flash still isn’t ready for prime mobile device time. I really don’t get it. Adobe has had months, if not years, to make Flash stable for mobile. Adobe should have knocked this one out of the park and done every thing they could to prove to Apple that Flash belongs on mobile, yet they haven’t. Considering that the Tab is the first “real iPad contender” this is just sad. For now it looks as if Steve Jobs has made the right decision by banning Flash on iOS devices.

Gizmodo’s ‘Samsung Galaxy Tab’ review – Ouch

My favorite bit:

“This thing is just a mess. It’s like a tablet drunkenly hooked up with a phone, and then took the fetus swimming in a Superfund cleanup site. The browser is miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad. When better browsing is half the reason to go for a larger screen, that’s insanity.”

[Full Review @ Gizmodo]

Openness is dead, long live openness

Don’t miss this excellent article from TechCrunch’s MG Siegler on Android & Openness.

“It’s too bad, but there is now a very real risk that the carriers are going to exploit the open system Google set up in order to create a new version of the bulls**t proprietary ecosystems that they had before the iPhone came along and turned the market on its side.

And it’s not just Verizon, it’s all the carriers. One of the great features of Android is that you can install apps without going through an app store, right? Well, not if you have an a Motorola Backflip or a HTC Aria running on AT&T — they’ve locked this feature down. How? Thanks to the open Android OS.

Oh, and how about tethering? It’s one of the truly great features of Android 2.2, right? Well, not if you have a carrier that doesn’t want to support it. Google has to defer to them to enable their own native OS feature. It’s such an awesome feature — in the hands of Google. Once the carriers get their hands on it — not so much.”

Point is a truly open mobile device is a fallacy at this point. Apple’s may be “closed” but at least you know what you’re getting. Yes, which at times seems to include screwed by AT&T (yep, still bitter about the data plan changes and the extra fee to tether my iPhone) I digress… My biggest issue with Android OS is that, thanks to the manufacturers and the carriers, there are way too many flavors of Android out there. It’s confusing to consumers who aren’t tech savvy. I agree that Android as a pure OS is fine. Unfortunately you’ll never see a pure version unless you have the knowledge to root it yourself. Apple is always being knocked as the “hype machine” well this is just a reminder that if you’re interested in an Android device because of its “openness” the hype goes both ways.