Shaun Groves
Ben Stewart (who will soon have a blog) books me these days. I’ll tell you more about him soon, but for now, all you need to know is that this guy changed my life this morning.
He introduced me to 1Password. I had to share it with you other unorganized over-cluttered folks. It does lots of stuff (he’ll have to teach me) but what I’ll use it for first is keeping track of all my passwords. All I have to do is enter them ONCE into 1Password’s handy dandy form and from then on all I have to remember is ONE “master password.” ONE PASSWORD FOR ALL THE SIGHTS I USE! Unbelievable.
No more e-mailing Kat asking for the password I lost to open my on-line store stuff, or the one that opens my site’s statistics, or the one I use to post to my blog, or see my photos, or access my server, or log-in to facebook, or the other half dozen passwords that make my work life possible. No more!
Ben has changed my life today. And yours.
What techno-tricks do you know? Pass ‘em on.
Sean w/o an H says:
Not that it’s a huge deal, but…
Quicksilver—if you’re a Mac user, it’ll change your life. Like Spotlight, but fast, all I have to do is type the first three letters of an app’s name and hit enter, and voila! The program launches.
You’ll never have to dig through your application folder (or overclutter your dock) again.
Free at …
http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver
wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(software)
Sean w/o an H says:
P to the S: it has a keyboard command like spotlight… mine’s command-space (reassigned Spotlight’s command). Sorry, just wanted to clarify.
Kat says:
I must agree with Sean w/o an H. Quicksilver is a huge reason why I love my Mac so much.
It’s far beyond an app launcher. I can send an email, append a text file, ftp an image, look up an address or surf my iTunes library without opening any apps or leaving the screen that I’m currently on.
benstewart says:
That part of the beauty of owning a Mac. Software developers who use Macs make all these cool little apps that just make thing so much easier (or at least cooler).
I never had all these fun toys on my PC.
OK… I’ll get off my Mac-fanboy soapbox now.
cool dad says:
This isn’t a techno-trick, but I just posted about how I’m slowly turning my whole Internet life over to Google. They own my searches, email, blogging, and now shopping. It should be scary, but that colorful happy logo is just so darn inviting.
Sean w/o an H says:
Kat – Yeah, and the sad thing is I still haven’t learned how to make QS do all that yet… it’s good enough just as an app launcher for now. I may have to dig into that over Christmas break.
Also, there’s a handful of fun apps for sale at mupromo.com right now… $50 for seven apps (could cap out at ten)…. just another little thing I like about Macs…
Chris Morris says:
For website passwords, if you use Firefox, get the free PasswordMaker plugin to do the same thing.
benstewart says:
Personally, I don’t trust FireFox’s “security” with my internet passwords like I trust 1Password. I’m probably just paranoid, but whatever. Also, I would rather have all of my sensitive information organized in one place (web forms, identities, misc things) as long as I can access that information easily when I need it (which 1Password does well). And finally, 1Password automatically installs plugins for FireFox, Safari, and whatever other browser you might prefer.