Personal Blog of Mike Bowden

This week I’m going to cover four different applications; Streamtime, Studiometry, 1Password and KeePassX and a few different topics on password security, management and protection. The two studio management applications have gone through a number of tests with us in our studio. I’ll be sharing our results with both applications this week.

The other two applications I’d like to touch on this week are password management applications which also have a good bit of password security and protection rolled in. Currently I’m using both applications together with good results. But I’ll most likely decide on one or the other, just to make things more simple. I do not like to complicate things if I can help it and would prefer to use just one application, instead of two or three that practically do the same thing.

Studio Management Reviews

I’ll start the week off with my final review of the two studio management applications that we’ve been utilitizing over the past two weeks, Streamtime and Studiometry. I will be going in-depth on both of these applications, the pros and cons and a few of the cool features that we enjoyed while using them. I’ll also be making my final choice as to which one we will be going with in the near future for our own studio management needs.

I do plan however to write some tutorials for both applications. I feel that both Streamtime and Studiometry are great applications, they each have basically the same features and functions with a few extra over here and there, some missing here and there, you get the idea. I understand that some may prefer one over the other, so I’ll try to cover both of them equally.

Password Security, Management and Protection

Password security hasn’t been something on my mind at all, until recently. Zach and I have been doing a lot of security related programming for clients in the past months and in the coming. So we’ve learned a lot about cryptography, encryption and security within applications, web sites and the like. After learning what we have, I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf and take my own personal security as seriously as I do my clients security and privacy.

So we’ll be taking a look at a few different applications that will aid in this, make things easier to keep up with, generate very secure passwords and make them unique for each user-name and password we need. This will eliminate the need for remembering different passwords and user-names for different services or web sites. As well as falling into the very bad habit of using the same user-name and password over and over again. It would be less catastrophic to loose a little bit of data if someone compromised one account, than allowing them to be able to access them all!

We’ll also be taking a look at different types of passwords, there amount of security, how long it takes to break them and how to make them stronger. This information was gathered for our clients during research for projects, but we’ll be passing some of this information on to make others aware and hopefully help protect our data and accounts just a little bit more.

VMWare Fusion Beta Notes and Thoughts

I’ve been using VMWare Fusion for quite some time now and have absolutely loved it. I looked at free alternatives in the past and even other paid Virtual Machine applications. But I decided upon VMWare and have stuck with it since. Eventually I’d like to go back and revisit the other applications I demoed and possibly any new ones that have hit the market since.

Back to VMWare however, I was recently emailed by VMWare to inform me that I was accepted into their beta program.

As soon as I received the email, I immediately downloaded the beta version and started to tinker with it. This week I’m going to put it through its paces and see what its really made of. So far with the few hours that I have had to spend with it, I’m impressed. Some of the issues I’ve had before have been corrected and there are a good deal of new features worth a look. I’ll be taking a look at all of this and reporting back here with my findings.

This week is going to be busy, not just because of the above, so keep an eye out. I may be releasing entries at odd times of the day. Such as this one, which didn’t make by Monday. I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on what this week will bring, so feel free to post comments. If you’d like me to pay particular attention to a feature or another piece of software, let me know. I’m always interested in researching other applications and I want to know what my readers use, especially if I like it better than what I’m currently using.