Brett Robinson’s Blog

The other day I was trying to tweak my homescreen on my SDA. I’m not fond of how it is setup and would prefer to have different items on the screen and in a different order. One thing that I was really looking for was a way to add another clock with a different time zone to my homescreen (and not have to buy a component for it). So, this had me poking around on a way to do it and I found a way to re-arrange the homescreen layout by building images and defining the x and y coordinates on where smartphone components would go. The thing is that you can place items wherever on the screen, but they HAVE to be defined as an element already in the smartphone OS. So, in order to get the clock, you specify and give it attributes for year, date, etc. But, that’s all you can do with the clock element. So I thought - there’s all these pc desktop widgets around, yahoo has them and microsoft has them…now, why can’t a smartphone have a similar system that you can supply widget code that fits a particular format that will run on the homescreen? You can write a homescreen element in c++, but the guy who had coded it up on the internet said it was a pain to work with. So it is possible to do it but it seems like it will be very time consuming - and I would rather have some sort of “widget engine” on the smartphone that you can plug in custom pieces that people write. Maybe I should start a codeplex project? Does this sound like a good idea to anyone?

Here’s some images I prototyped:

    

Recently I went to flickr and attempted to login and didn’t remember my password. Flickr then prompted me to enter in information that would help me remember my password (birthplace, first car, etc). When I register with sites, I usually put in almost garbage for every field. Then when it asks me to enter in “hints” that I left when I registered, I can’t remember. Another problem is that every site has their own idea of what a strong password and they make you change your most frequenly used password to fit their standard. Also if a site decides to have your login be a user name instead of email, your preferred user name could be taken already, so what you end up with is a lot of usernames and passwords to manage. So, after getting my account locked twice at Flickr, I decided to write a little application that would store my passwords. I finally had some time over the holidays and I wanted to refresh my C++ skills, so I wrote this application in managed C++ (I’ll attempt the native C++ version at a later time). There might already be a program that does this on the internet that’s available to download, but I didn’t look and just wanted to tackle it myself.

The basics of the program is a tree that has your websites listed and gives you a field entry for site name, username, and password. In the password field you can put a hint, or whatever you want to help you remember. Then when you save the file, it encrypts it and saves off the file. The only password you will NEED to remember is the one to open and unlock the application file so that it can be decrypted.

Now I just have this one encrypted file with all my sites, usernames, and passwords in it! I think I’m up to around 20 sites in my file, and find myself constantly opening it to find information.

Here’s a screen shot:

and the encrypted file opened in textpad:

I will never see your passwords, and there is nothing in this program that goes to any other web service or anything. (you can use reflector if you are still unsure).

As of 7/12/07 I have 44 entries stored in mine! Holy cow - it seems like every site makes you register now.

Use at your own discretion. Downloads as a zip file, and then run Setup.exe.
Download here: Store My Information [ 552 Downloads ]

Manage your passwords for free!