One way is to use some kind of password scheme such as combining a standard secret code with a code derived from the site name to form the password for that site.  But again this is not totally secure as one password being compromised gives the attacker the secret part that is in all your other passwords and simplifies figuring out your scheme.

Another way; and the one I use is to use a password database application such as KeePass Password Safe to both manage your credentials.  I do this; allowing KeePass to generate passwords for me and automatically enter my credentials into login forms at the press of a hotkey.  This works very well and I have hundreds of passwords stored, most of which I’ve never even seen.  Not only are these passwords automatically generated but the fact that I don’t need to remember them means I can use nice secure passwords like “y. I&DSe%b”.

This is where problems arise with the mobile web.  Yesterday I was out and wanted to tweet from my phone so I opened Slandr in Opera Mini only to see the login page; must have been too long since I last used Slandr and the cookie expired.  So I was stuffed, being out and nowhere near my computer or access to my KeePass database to look up the password.  Even if I had a password database on my phone it would be tricky to type in a cryptic password without copy and paste.  So what’s the alternative?  Dumb down my password scheme again to the point where I can memorise passwords for entry on my phone?  I’m not keen on that.

Photograph courtesy of Tom Hensel.

You would think that with all the organisation it takes to draw up schedules, and advertise them; that they would also keep on top of updating their web site.

The other new feature that has been added is a search that you can use to search all your subscriptions. I know many have been asking for this and it should prove most useful.

A little while ago I was catching up on one of my Flickr photo feeds when I came across a reference to a competition with a Leica M7 as first prize. I’d love to earn one of those so of course I visited the link. Turns out it is a promo for uber.com, a new photography site, apparently started by Chris Weeks, a photographer whose work I am familiar with from Flickr.

Having been through this kind of thing once or twice I immediately checked the rules to see if I was eligible and found that I wasn’t, as they say “Leica M7 Sweepstakes (the “Sweepstakes”) is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are at least sixteen (16) years old at the time of entry.” I don’t really have a problem with this as there are physical prizes involved, and with the cost of foreign shipping and other, possibly legal factors to consider, it is not unusual for web sites to restrict competition eligibility to the country of origin. Being a sucker for photographic web sites I decided to join anyway so clicked the link and got the registration form, which has a Zip Code field. Most of the world outside the US has postal codes, not zip codes, but web sites typically accept them along with US zip codes. Not this site though; when I submitted I got back a message saying “Please enter a valid US zip code”, and this is why I’m writing this post.

What is the deal with sites like this? Are the owners or designers ignorant and not realise they are excluding most of the world’s population? Do they deliberately exclude those outside the US for some reason? In which case why not go that little bit further and analyse visitor’s IP addresses so that they can block us from accessing the site completely, perhaps with a nice polite(?) “FOREIGNERS NOT WELCOME” message. I prefer to think that it is not malicious and in the case of uber.com, I still want to join, so thanks to Aaron Spelling for giving us Beverley Hills 90210, which not only provided us with entertainment but also provides foreigners with easy access to a US zip code that can be used to circumvent silly blocks like these.

Chris, if you should happen to read this post, I don’t really live in Beverley Hills, but in Cape Town, South Africa, where foreigners are welcome.

How they made that match I’d love to know. I have sometimes seen where a title search doesn’t find something but an author or artist search reveals that they do in fact have the very title their search couldn’t find. Perhaps they should consider looking into this.