You know you should be using strong passwords for every account, but how are you supposed to remember them? And even if you did remember a strong password, would it be secure if you used it for every account?

It’s time to stop thinking that managing strong, secure passwords is something you’ll get around to. Do it now before you get hacked. It’s so dang easy, and you’ll get a few added benefits too.

If you’re a client of ours, you’ve probably been faced with one of the two scenarios:

1. I’ve set up an account password for you that looks something like this:  DPMwT4i]dFs:H8}cm
2. I’ve mentioned many times about an application called 1Password

In the first scenario is what’s called a strong password. Note that it doesn’t contain your dog or child’s name (with a 1 replacing an l). It’s ugly and it’s impossible to remember. But that’s ok. It’s great actually (and it’s not ugly – it’s beautiful). You don’t have to remember, if you’re using 1Password.

Why you need to use 1Password

• Generate strong passwords for every site/log in you have
• Easy log in to every account
• iPhone, iPad, and Android apps – take your passwords with you everywhere

Those are just the three biggest reasons to use it. There are many other features that I use every day (Secure Notes, Software Licenses, Accounts), but these three should be enough to send you sprinting to the App Store for 1Password. Or to Agilebits.com for the Windows version.

Because if you’re using the same easy, weak password everywhere – you’re putting yourself at risk. 1Password is an application that will change your life. You’ll become better looking and more confident. Go get it.

Get 1Password now:

Spigot Design

Overall, I really like Apple’s iCloud service. Moving back to Apple after dropping MobileMe back in late 2009 has been relatively painless; The setup was simple, the service is automatic, and it’s free.

The two items I dig the most are iCal and Address Book syncing, both of which have worked flawlessly. Safari Bookmark syncing comes in a pretty close third, but getting them to sync cleanly has been somewhat of a bumpy road. In the last week, bookmarks have come and gone, been duplicated, deleted, returned, and finally gone away all together.

I’m sure Apple will create an easy way to manually flush bookmarks, but until then here’s how I got everything back in order by forcing a reset of iCloud:

1. Turn off Xmarks

I’ve used Xmarks since dropping MobileMe, and while I don’t know for sure, it’s possible that Xmarks could be the root cause. While it would be nice to keep syncing between Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, it’s more important for me to sync to an iPad and iPhone, so bye bye Xmarks. If you don’t use Xmarks then you can skip this step, of course.

2. Turn off iCloud bookmark sync on all devices

On every Mac, iPhone, iPad, iWhatever – I opened up iCloud preferences and turned off Bookmark Syncing. On the iPad and iPhone, the device asked to keep or delete bookmarks; I clicked delete.

3. Find the best bookmark backup you have

Safari bookmarks are all stored in a file called Bookmarks.plist, which is located at User/Library/Safari/. If you don’t see the Library folder check out the article Permanently Show Library Folder in OS X Lion for an easy way to show it.

Using Time Machine I went back a few weeks to when my bookmarks were in somewhat decent shape and replaced the current Bookmarks.plist file with the older (better) one. If you don’t use Time Machine or other backup system then you’re SOL and will have to fix you bookmarks without this head start.

4. Correct bookmarks on your Mac and make a backup

If you’re lucky, your backup version of Bookmarks.plist will have gotten you most of the way to bookmark bliss. Make what ever changes you’d like in Safari, then make a backup. I did this by dragging the Bookmarks.plist file to the desktop. This will force Safari to create a new Bookmarks.plist file upon restart.

5. Delete bookmarks on all devices

Delete all bookmarks on every computer. iPhone and iPad bookmarks should have been deleted in step 2. If this seems counterintuitive, just remember, you’ve got a backup. Right?

6. Turn on iCloud Bookmark Syncing on your Mac

Once you enable Bookmark Syncing on your Mac, you’ll be prompted to ‘merge’ bookmarks with iCloud. This should flush the iCloud system. Or that’s the hope.

7. Restore bookmark backup file

Shut down Safari, and drag the good Bookmarks.plist backup file from the desktop back into User/Library/Safari/ and restart Safari. In a minute or two iCloud should be updated with the latest bookmarks.

8. Turn on bookmark syncing on all devices

Restore syncing to each device, and wait for iCloud to update.

Issues you may run into

Going through these steps I ran into a few issues, and you may experience the same:

Deleting bookmarks would sometimes crash Safari

I had a ton of old bookmarks imported from systems past that seemed to hang Safari when I tried to delete them. I had to force quit and restart numerous times. All the old bookmark cruft is gone though!

Restoring bookmarks to all devices took some time and a little prodding

Once I turned syncing back on each device remained blank for quite some time. I’m not sure why but I was able to prod the system along by adding a fake bookmark on another device. This seemed to kick everything into gear and I was able to delete that fake bookmark on different device – which eventually deleted it across all devices.

References

I didn’t stumble across this info on my own, here’s a couple of articles that I used to pull my method together:

• http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/29090/how-can-i-reset-the-safari-bookmarks-in-icloud
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3375297

Spigot Design

There’s a lot of ways to test and benchmark your website, but few are as fun as Nibbler. And it’s free!

What does Nibbler do?

Nibbler will go through 5 pages of which ever site you specify and test them on a range of relevant criteria. Once it’s finished you’ll get a nice, visual report – scoring on each criteria and giving you an overall score. The report includes tips and ideas on improving your score – which should also improve your overall web presence.

What criteria does it test?

Here’s a list of what they test on, in no particular order:

Grain of Salt

Nibbler is not meant to be the holy grail of website testing, so take the results you get only as a suggestion, or starting point. Some of the results you simply can’t fix. For example, when testing spigotdesign.com I get errors on things like Facebook Sharing, Incoming links, and Social media. I don’t spend enough time on Facebook to get anyone to like this site – so for me it’s nothing to worry about.

If you get errors with Semantic HTML, or URL format, then you’ve definitely got something to work on.

Beyond Nibbler

For those who desire more robust, professional website testing there’s SiteRay. It’s made by the same folks who make Nibbler and has the same easy to use testing tools but goes quite a bit farther. You can even give it a test drive for free.

If you enjoy tinkering with your website in the hopes of making it ‘better’ – Nibbler is a fun way to do it. At the very least it’ll be a great reminder to add metadata to each and every post.

Spigot Design

Microsoft: ‘Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6′

Designers and developers have been saying it for years, and now even Microsoft are throwing their own stones:

We recommend that Internet Explorer 6 users upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer for a safer browsing experience.Microsoft

Of course they’re recommending that the upgrade be to Internet Explorer 9 – but there other options that I prefer available as well. I’ve been using the Firefox 4 Beta a lot lately, and loving it.

Find out more here: www.ie6countdown.com. There’s even some tips for migrating Corporate Users.

Spigot Design