Switchers' Blog

Using Quick Silver to Manage iCal

I just finished watching this interesting video by David Chartier on how to use Quick Silver to add events and todos to your iCal calendar.

Very interesting stuff!

Roustem and I have added Quick Silver integration to 1Passwd; it should be available as a prerelease in a week or two.

New 1Passwd Icon

We have hired a very talented designer to create a new icon for 1Passwd. Tom Woodhams created the Democracy Player icon and disk image background; Roustem and I liked what we saw so we collaborated with Tom to see what he could do with 1Passwd.

We asked Tom for an icon that would set 1Passwd apart from the other Mac password managers. Other password manager icons symbolize the fact that they are secure. Security is obvious when you use the OS X Keychain, so we wanted something that would let people know we use the keychain, but most importantly, show that 1Passwd makes it easy to use your data.

In short, we asked a lot from Tom; we told him the icon had to:

1. Contain a key to represent the OS X Keychain.
2. Resemble a browser icon to reinforce the fact 1Passwd integrates into most browsers.
3. Allow ‘locked’ and ‘unlocked’ states to reflect the Keychain’s status.
4. And most importantly: Look so nice that users feel compelled to drag it onto their Dock

1Passwd 2.0 Now Available! Free Leopard Update Too :)

Today Roustem and I completed putting the finishing touches on 1Passwd version 2.0. Thanks to all the users who helped us test the prerelease and made this possible!

Version 2.0 is a major update of the 1Passwd Password Manager and Form Filler, and is available free to all existing customers. You can download the version or perform a Check for Update (recommended).

There have been a lot of internal changes to the 1Passwd code base, and some major new features. Here are the most visible changes:

Pixel - A Photoshop Alternative

I have to say that I am not a Photoshop expert. Occasionally I need to crop and resize images, change the colors, etc. I tried to use Photoshop and found it to be very slow and very expensive. For a long time I was looking for an alternative and yesterday I found Pixel image editor created by Pavel Kanzelsberger.

Taking Control of Passwords

TidBITS released a new book in their Take Control series: Take Control of Passwords in Mac OS X, written by Mac veteran Joe Kissell.

I contacted Joe way back in the summer asking him for his feedback on 1Passwd 1.0, and asked if he would be interested in reviewing 1Passwd on TidBITS. I was ecstatic when he said he had already heard of 1Passwd and planned on including it in his upcoming book. Take Control of Passwords covers the entire spectrum of password management on Mac OS X. There is a chapter about third-party Mac password managers and includes a discount coupon for 1Passwd.

Easily Get More Disk Space With Monolingual

With 250GB disk on my iMac I rarely complain about the disk space. However I know some poor Mac users running out of space with a measly 80GB on their laptops.

OmniWeb Support Now Available in Prerelease

We released a new prerelease tonight with OmniWeb support. DEVONagent support has been included as a bonus!

1Passwd Adds OmniWeb Integration!

I mentioned in the last post that Roustem and I have taken a few days off to recover from the hard work we’ve been pouring into 1Passwd 2.0.

You may have thought I was a little odd for writing some security articles during my time off, but what do you think Roustem has been up to?

Keylogger and Phishing Defenses

Over the last week Roustem and I have been taking some time off from all code we’ve been slugging out improving 1Passwd.

During my break I thought it would be fun to write some informational websites about Keylogger and Phishing attacks and how to protect yourself from them.

1. Mac Phishing Protection
2. Mac Keylogger Protection

Both of these sites explain the techniques used by criminals to steal your information, and provide some Mac-centric defenses for you to use.

Most security discussions cause people to glaze over, so I tried to make the sites as fun as possible. I reference Stephen Colbert and even have a cute little Lego criminal performing a “stickup” :)

Firefox 2.0 'Tips of the Hat' and 'Wags of the Finger'

I’ve been using Firefox 2.0 for a few weeks now and have seen some good things and some not-so-good things. With the recent RC 3 release we are likely very close to the final release the public will see.

In honour of Stephen Colbert, I thought I’d ‘Tip My Hat’ to the Firefox engineers, but sadly I need to ‘Wag My Finger’ too.

Tip Of My Hat: TextArea Spell Checking

It was so nice writing a blog comment today and seeing that I fat-fingered the word “submit”. Up until recently, I have been copying all my comments into TextMate just to see if everything was spelt correctly.