Pet Peeves #5: Plain-text passwords in emails

Passwords, as essential as they are to our online security, should never appear in plain-text. It is the worst way to store a password, and compromises the essential security function of a password. Unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous web services out there that do exactly that. Too many times I have clicked the “Forgot your password?” button on a site, and …

Messing around with Audacity

While Audacity is mostly designed as recording and editing software, there are a variety of interesting features embedded within it. One of my favorites is the Chirp generator. By playing an Audacity chirp on loop, it’s possible to simulate a variety of alarms. What you’ll need for this exploration: Audacity (see Step 1 for download link) Speakers or headphones.

Top 18 spin-offs of Google

Google is undoubtedly the largest and most popular website on the Internet. Every day, over 4 billion searches are performed. That’s about 3 searches for every 7 people. It’s so popular, that not only was it coined a verb in 2009, but that many people have made spin-offs of the popular search engine. I’m not talking about Bing or Yahoo, …

Happy New Year!

New Year’s resolutions sure are popular, aren’t they? My friend Darren once posted on his blog (now defunct), “what’s your New Year’s resolution? Mine is 1920×1080”. I don’t remember if his screen res was exactly that, but I still chuckle every time I think of that post. And by the way, my New Year’s Resolution is 1600 by 900. You can find …