Who knew?
(via xkcd: Password Strength)
Want to dig deeper?
Read this article: How to Set Up a Strong Password by James Crace on Cloudwards.net
Square – Card Case
These guys—Square—are making it way too easy fun scary-easy to spend money.
Where is this heading? Near Field Communication technology, according to Wired.com.*
What’s that? Basically, you’ll leave your credit cards at home and simply pay with your NFC-chip enabled smartphone. (coming soon)
Which is no where near as creepy as meat grown in a lab, but close from an economics standpoint.
*5/26 Update: Hot on the heals of this post, Google announced Google Wallet today. Featuring… NFC technology.
Photosynth…
Sneaky Microsoft released an iPhone app recently called Photosynth that’s pretty amazing. Super simple to use, just: launch it, “tap to start” shooting pics, and pan around the room while it automatically grabs the images it needs to stitch together panoramas that are easy to share on their Photosynth.net website.
Want better quality and higher resolution? Use your DSLR and their free Image Composite Editor (Windows app) to generate the panos. To get it looking just right requires “aligning the nodal point” of the camera. A little bracket like this would come in handy.
You could also go whole hog and pick up a GigaPan. But these were shot with my iPhone 4 on a recent hike…
[8 June update: swapped out boring panos with more interesting ones.]
To SharePoint or Not to SharePoint…
To be fair, the discussion of whether or not to SharePoint has long since been concluded. SharePoint won. Why? Simple. It offers pretty much everything a Microsoft-based business needs to share files securely.
And it does tons more besides that, if you have the cash.
After packing 35 hours of training into 4.5 days last week taking Course 10741 (Configuring and Administering MS SharePoint 2010) with instructor Richard Oertle, I’m still reeling from the experience.
It was one of those I-thought-I-had-a-handle-on-it-until-I-found-out-just-how-much-there-is-to-know situations.
Now I just need to get my hands on a copy of Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server and SharePoint 2010 Server for my VirtualBox test machine… (or maybe just shoot me now before Darth Gates has finished the assimilation process.)
OS X turns X
Not to overshadow my Dad’s 60-something birthday that is also today, but I feel compelled to give a happy birthday nod to Mac OS X.
[singlepic id=31 w=200 float=right] I know my life has been positively affected by Apple’s move to a system based on FreeBSD 10 years ago. Wonder if Lion’s roar will signal the end of the X decade. Seems like a well-scripted possibility to me.
Now I better go call my Dad.