not free

Okay, okay, I know I say I don’t write about programs that cost big bucks, but this one is important, and security is something that some amount of money is well spent on. In this case we are talking about $48.44 (including tax) for all of your computers, and your iPhone or Palm. In return, you get some decent password management and strong encryption (whatever that is). 1Password may be old news to many of you out there in password hell, but not until I read this debate on Slashdot: Poor Passwords A Worse Problem Than Poor Antivirus, that I even knew that I had an option.

I thought that scribbling down passwords and credit card pass codes on little scraps of paper and hiding them in my wallet or wherever was the way to go. Or for the online stuff, just making all my passwords and userids the same - just so I could remember them – was not a half bad idea considering the alternative: hundreds of passwords to remember. After all, how secure a feeling do you get when you try to log into a site and realize that you have forgotten the password, as well as the name of your first schoolteacher or pet goldfish, as well as the email that you used to create the account?

I now realize that the entire situation is just too insane for the human mind to deal with (I was making up CIA-like cryptograms for my slips of paper, of all things). But using something like software to deal with something so sensitive as a database of my account info (PayPal, Online Banking, Credit Cards, etc.) also sounded nuts. I know software...and it’s not something I really expect to be there when I really need it. But after a month with 1Password, I'm sold on letting my personal version of a Skynet botnet take full control over all of my sensitive info, and thus get all that password, ID, and PIN stuff out of my hair. In other words, resistance proved futile in the long run.

So now I have everything sensitive tucked away in 1Password, all organized and cataloged just like I have my video and audio files tucked away in CatDV. Makes perfect sense now, and that exercise cost less then 50 bucks.



If I open an account on a forum board or e-commerce site, the userid and password is automatically stored in something more secure then Firefox, and much more portable, as that account is added to my 1Password database and then synced with my iPhone and laptop for when I am on the road. The license for 1Password is per person, so I can sync as many devices as I want with all my sensitive info. The interface is dead simple to use, and there is browser integration with both Safari and FF. You can import your sensitive stuff from other sources, like FireFox, and then add things to your “virtual wallet,” like credit card numbers and bank accounts. You can also create secure notes to yourself, containing anything that normally would be typed in plain text and then left in the wild. Also nice is the feature to create full blown identities that can be recycled into new account info, for example when you sign on to a new blog or shoe store site.

For passwords, the program works like this: you create one master password that you will have to remember, as it will be needed to open the program and to do anything else. Then, you can use 1Password’s nifty password generator to create super uncrackable strings of letters, numbers, and symbols that can then be applied to any userid or account name. You even get a display of how good (strong) the password is. That was the fun part...creating unbreakable passwords for all my accounts - take that you dirty horsehair hackers!

But I have no idea how safe any of this really is, as my only knowledge of encryption is what I’ve read about in spy novels, but I do feel more secure knowing that if someone figured out my password for say this website, that they would not also have the password to my all my email accounts as well as all my other forum accounts. I feel pretty secure that I won’t forget the master password, short of having heaven forbid a stroke or complete mental collapse. Even if I don’t understand the technology, I feel better thinking it’s all OK. And since I am such a simpleton when it comes to remembering anything, 1Password is the one for me.

1Password Website: http://agilewebsolutions.com/

I don’t usually write about MS products, but this one deserves a few lines: Win7. I had been using (if you could call it that) Vista Ultimate in a Fusion virtual box for some time, and just upgraded to Win7 Ultimate by going through the upgrade process and not a fresh install.

To my huge surprise, almost everything worked without a hitch. The only major problem was with VMWare, and not Windows, as to upgrade you need to have about 12gig free in the virtual partition, and to expand that partition you can’t have any snapshots stored. So it took several hours to delete those and then resize/clean the partition, but after that, the install went smooth.



The only minor problem I had was that I had to do a repair install for MS Project 2007, not that I use it outside of teaching classes on it’s use. But all my other windows programs worked fine after the upgrade. I did loose my saved settings on the taskbar and start menu, but that’s not a biggie considering what could have gone wrong.

Performance is notably zipper and the eye and ear candy is welcome...the Windows box now fits in better with my overall Snow Leopard user experience. My one PC game that I own, Men of Valor, runs much smoother on Win7 over Vista, and there are no longer any annoying nag screens...well, not as many as there was before.

I never say anything good about MS software, but this time I have to admit, Win7 appears to be a fine OS.

Well they have been talking about "the cloud" ever since I can remember, even back during my IBM days when they were all excited about IBM/370 applications being in the cloud, and everyone was using monochrome terminals with green blinking cursers to find it. Only back then, the cloud was more like an isolated thunderstorm confined to single set of mainframes the size of a small house. Things have not really progressed much, as proven by my recent sign up to Apple’s MobileMe Cloud program.



You probably have noticed, I am frugal with my software budget so I don’t go out and frivolously buy anything, but I do experiment with everything if there is a free trial. MobileMe is no exception, and from the get go I was irritated that I could not just try it out for a few days without putting in my credit card number. That tactic always reminds me of trials of “free” dating services or porn sites, not that I have experiences with any of those:-)

But after my initial irritation was overcome – and sticker shock wore off – 99$ a year! - it just turned into downright anger at Apple’s lame attempt to make everything look like my Mac, but actually work like a PC gone wild. The interface is great looking, with the System preference pane giving one the illusion they were about to experience another fine Apple app, even though it was up in the sky somewhere.

The first problem that I can see for newbies not familiar with the concept of cloud (or even oldbies like myself who knew the concept but as something else) is the lack of any meaningful documentation or online help clicks. There are no real help balloons for the choices for isync or idisk, which is the bulk of the product, but there are some lame video tutorials and lots of marketing hype on the apple website about the two.

So for users needing to understand what’s going on, off you go to log into the Apple support forums (discussions they call them) to sift through that nightmare of complaints and problems. And for idisk, you will not be disappointed in that regard (over 100,000 posts). The forums there are broken down into the major areas of MobileMe, and subdivided by how you are using the product, with your iPhone/ipod touch, with your mac, ur PC (?), or when you are in the cloud (www.me.com). The major components of MobileMe are, in a nutshell:
• Sync (** stars)
• Mail (**** stars)
• Gallery (** starts)
• iDisk (-10 stars)
• Back to My Mac (unknown stars)
• Find My iPhone (***** stars)
• iWeb (**** stars)

I won’t go into all of these in any detail, other then to give them a rating, as this blog post is already at 500 words and I haven’t said anything all that useful yet, but suffice to say that Mail is better then Google Gmail, as it’s interface is uncluttered like any other apple interface. Perhaps for some mobile travellers, that may be worth the 99$ alone - to avoid the gmail/hotmail/yayhoomail hell!

iDisk is total write off, or rip off, depending on how you want to look at it, but perhaps that’s because Apple is still working on getting the kinks out of the abominably slow performance when using it. Apple posters in the forums describe the performance as “less then glacial.” Personally, I would not trust this app from the number of cryptic error messages received while it’s sending files to and from the cloud, and for the mere fact it took 3 days to transfer 300 megs of my 10 gig trial allotment. At this rate I won’t be able to fill it up before my 60-day trial runs out.

Gallery worked fairly well, but lacks many of the cool features that say Flickr or Picasso does, and in this case the bland uncluttered consistency of the Apple GUI works against Gallery. We wanna have some fun with photos! There is no fun to be found in Gallery, as well as no clear way to share (embed) an individual file in a forum board or a blog post (unless you are using iPhoto and iWeb). Here is a sample, so go see for your self:
http://gallery.me.com/studiosphoenix

Sync is a mixed bag, as it does work, but took over 3 days to get all my stuff synced (bookmarks, calendars, contacts, dashboard widgets, dock items, keychains, mail accounts, mail rules, notes, preferences, etc.). I was testing between an iMac and a MacbookPro that I have configured to be near identical, and I could not test on my iPhone as that’s “in the mail.” But assuming everything works the same with the iPhone, this is the real meat of the MobileMe product. The only problems I noticed so far, besides it’s slow time syncing, is that for things like dashboard widgets and preferences - it flat out does not work - or makes such a mess of it that it’s not worth the long wait.

Back to My Mac I just don’t understand this app as an ARD (apple remote desktop) user. I suppose if you don’t have ARD, then this would make sense, but I dunno. You tell me. If it allowed you to control / screenshare / fileshare between your mac and your iphone, now that would be cool, but I don’t think it does.

Find My iPhone would be even better if would let you know why DHL is taking so long in getting one back from AppleCare. But for any owner of iPhone who plans on leaving it in a coffee café or airport terminal, this is a must have.

iWeb 09 and MobileMe was one of the things that actually interested me the most. Heck, you get web hosting and integration with all your mac-based tools, so the marketing blurbs said. And for the most part that’s true. I created a blog in minutes using one of the nicely designed themes that come with iWeb, and the publish to MobileMe is a no brainer. The tight integration to iPhoto, iWeb, iTunes, and the iTunes Store is pretty amazing, and I am planning on getting my podcasts there soon using this interface. Here is a sample of a site that just took minutes to whap together:
http://web.me.com/studiosphoenix/Blog/index.html

My only criticism here is, again, the poor performance. For web serving, the web.me.com servers are painfully slow when displaying the pages.

So then to end this, I give MobileMe an overall rating as follows:
*** Stars for features and functionality
* Star for performance and reliability
**** Stars for looking good, except for the reverse case of Gallery, and
** Stars for overall value for the money, although a user may find just one feature worth the entire price, but I did not.

Final Comment: MobileMe actually works well syncing simple things like Contacts, Email, and Calender. The Calender is actually quite elegant online, much nicer to look at then iCal. But considering I used to be able to do this a decade ago with a palm pilot, one would expect these tasks to work flawlessly by now. However, if you throw in Microsoft's Entourage into the mix, you get nothing but trouble. Some things never change.

UPDATE: Four days later and it seems that iDisk is now working, albeit errors on files that seem to be there. Are they there all there and ok? How would one know without checking all the time? But I have to give iDisk another star for at least outwardly completing the task. The concept is very cool, and has potential for road warriors who want to travel light, with just an iPhone let's say. But only when Apple provides an iPhone app! Here is a quote from Geek.com from early July: "... the company remains mum on iDisk app for the iPhone, simply repeating that it’s “coming soon.”



UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: The iPhone iDisk app is out, and on the store for free. I have not tried yet, as my 3Gs is on the slow yak train to Nepal as I write this. But as soon as I get my hands on it, I will try it, but hold out little hope for iDisk, as even on Leopard 10.5.8, it's even slower then the yak train.

“Free” is what I am all about these days, whether its looking for freedom on the open road atop a Royal Enfield, or free as in no charge for software. So for two years I was pretty much happy using Linotypes FontExplorer X as a font manager for a small fleet of new shiny Macs in the studio. But when it came time to update this nice low-cost feature rich manager for CS4 and other new font-intensive software, I found out from the company that the free version had changed to a fee version and that any updates would require hard cash. Nothing pisses me off more then that.

So I looked at the alternatives and was not so shocked to find something very cool, after all, if you are paying for something that really should be included as part of a world-class OS, it should be very cool yes? Well, Fontcase by www.bohemiancoding.com has done something very cool with font management, and that’s made it look and feel like music management ala an iTune’s styled interface, that even includes ratings and library sharing over your lan.

What I like about Fontcase:

• The interface, as mentioned, it’s just like iTunes, which I love.
• The library sharing across machines on our lan - no longer do I worry about having the right font on the right machine at the right time, all the time!
• The conversion process from Linotype’s FontExplorer X to Fontcase - that was painless and seamless. All my settings were preserved. U just have to remember to clear the font cache after removing FontExplorer.

What I don’t like about Fontcase:

• Performance, for both the import and ongoing use is a lot slower then with FontExplorer X. It’s not that the performance is bad, it’s just that you see the beachball at times, and that’s something I don’t like to see at all on my tuned iMacs and MBPs.
• There seems to be a problem with duplicates showing up within font family groupings, as illustrated below in the screenshot. I don’t understand this, but perhaps it’s a user error as I have not read the manual and don’t intend to. A cool font manager should not need one!

Well, my 15-day free trial period is almost over now, and I am seriously considering shelling out the $92 for the family pac. That’s far from free for something that should be theoretically included in OSX, but you get what you pay for as they say, so I should just shut up eh?