For years, I was serious about my compression software. (Anyone else remember a wonderful utility from the 1990s called ZipMagic?) In recent years, however, I’ve pretty much slipped into using the rudimentary compression and decompression features built into both Windows and OS X.

But I like Smith Micro’s StuffIt Deluxe 2011, the latest version of one of the most venerable Mac compression utilities. The new version includes a toolbar called StuffIt Destinations that automates the normally two-step process of compressing a file and then doing something useful with it–such as e-mailing it, uploading it to an FTP server, burning it to DVD, or using Smith Micro’s SendStuffNow (a YouSendIt competitor) to let other folks download large files which would choke their e-mail.

Dragging a file from the OS X finder onto a Destinations tile starts the specified process; you can choose to get an on-screen or e-mailed alert when it’s finished. The program supports both its own StuffIt X compression format and the much more universal Zip, and includes various other compression- and decompression-related features such as the ability to create DMG virtual disks and to decompress files in a bevy of formats. (I just used it with a file compressed with RAR, a format which OS X can’t handle by itself.)

You can also create your own Destinations tiles with different combinations of compression format, destination, and settings, or tweak the built-in ones.

StuffIt Deluxe 2011 is $49.99, which gets you a nicely flexible three-computer license (you listening, Microsoft?) which covers both Macs and Windows PCs. (The Windows version of the program, however, is the 2010 edition, without Destinations–Smith Micro hasn’t updated it yet.) The price also includes three months of SendStuffNow Pro, which permits transfer of files up to 2GB.

BumpTop substitutes its own desktop for the standard one you get in OS X or Windows, and the most instantly striking thing about it is that it’s in 3D: You can drag (or just toss) icons off the “floor” in the center of the screen onto a wall, or even knock them into each other like pool balls. I’m instinctively skeptical about 3D interfaces–software companies have tried them for years without proving they’re more than a gimmick that saps resources. BumpTop’s version isn’t bad, though–at worst, it’s inoffensive, and at best it’s a cool effect that might help you tidy up your desktop by letting you place different sorts of files on each wall.

More important, the 3D stuff is only part of what makes BumpTop interesting. It also lets you auto-stack similar files (such as JPG images) to clear up desktop space. You can shrink and grow icons individually, letting you make important items humongous and minor ones teeny-tiny. BumpTop Pro, which goes for $29 also lets you flip through stacks of items, use multitouch gestures to perform tasks such as resizing icons, create unlimited sticky notes, and find files by typing their names.

The basic version of BumpTop is a free download–and if it sounds at all intriguing, it’s worth your time. The desktops of my computers tend to be appalling messes–a trait they share with my real desks. So I’m attracted to anything that might help me keep them in some semblance of order, and I’m keeping BumpTop on my Mac and planning to try out the Windows version.

If you give either or both of ‘em a try, let us know what you think.

Geek Alert: Tune Up Your LCD

Listen, you know why the subtitle is geek alert? It’s because you need to like to take computing risks and you need some semblance of knowledge about LCDs. So before you read about Nicomsoft’s free Display Tuner, I want you to know that you can’t write me to complain the tool turned your LCD into one side of a 21-inch bookstand. (Or formatted your drive, or caused your spouse to leave you, for that matter.) Monitors are weird and even the program’s author has a stern warning for you. Got it? Okay, cool, carry on.

I never seem to get either of my ViewSonic LCDs tuned just right. And I really don’t like fiddling with those silly, hard-to-use buttons on the front of the monitor. Display Tuner lets you do those adjustments — such as geometry, color, and brightness — from within Windows. You can also set profiles for different viewing situations, say, watching videos, or reading text. That’s terrific. There are two limitations: If you have a dual monitor display, Display Tuner will support just one monitor and ignore the second one. And the tool works only with monitors that can be managed by software (they must support DDC commands). That leaves my ViewSonic LCDs out in the cold.

Xinorbis Analyzes Your Hard Drive

Is your hard drive stuffed? Chances are good you don’t know half of the junk you have stored in some of the folders. Xinorbis analyzes your hard drive and shows you the contents, the structure, and how the files are distributed. It’ll look at local, removable, and networked drives.

You’ll say OMG once you see how many video files you’ve got stashed away.

Quick, I Need My Screensaver

Picture this: You’re playing a computer game, or maybe a sensitive spreadsheet (or worse, a sensitive video) is on screen. In walks the head of HR. In my case, it’s Popcorn, my 12-year old terrier, and nothing offends or surprises her. But you might want to get your screen saver running, like, pronto. Use Saver Starter to hover your cursor over a hot spot on your screen and instantly pop open the screen saver. While you’re on the developer’s site, check out Juggle Saver, a nifty screen saver.

Hey, I’m Offline!

There are lots of reasons it can happen; I talked about some fixes in Help — I Can’t Get Online! One tool I didn’t mention in that newsletter is the Internet Connection Repair Utility. It fixes invalid Registry settings, checks and repairs Winsock settings, and helps you figure out exactly what’s wrong.

Have a Messy Link? Let URLRun Clean It Up

You ever get a long link in e-mail? Sure you do, and when it spans a couple of lines, it doesn’t always work when you click it. So what do you do? You copy and paste it into your browser and hope it works. The problem is you take along detritus — spaces or maybe an angle bracket character or two. Try using URLRun, a tiny tool that strips all the junk from a link and automatically pastes it into your browser. Even though the site (which, in computing terms, is ancient) only works with Internet Explorer, URLRun will work in your default browser; it works for my in Firefox.

URLRun needs no installation. Download and unzip it right onto the Desktop. You can leave it there, but it’s much better to right-click it and drag it to the Quick Launch portion of your task bar. Then just highlight any URL, press Control-C to copy it, and click on the URLRun icon. The cleaned-up link is in the clipboard and URLRun whisks it into your browser’s Address field. Make the magic work right in Microsoft Outlook using the URLRun add-in.

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* Hard Drive Inspector is a handy tool to monitor your drives for spin rate, seek time, and almost 20 other potential problem spots. The program also supplies specs–including drive model, firmware version, and serial number, all perfect when calling for warranty support.

The drive’s temperature is displayed in the system tray; if the drive gets too toasty (I have mine set for 120 degrees Fahrenheit), you can get an e-mail alert, or better, automatically put the computer in Standby mode. You can view a summary health report that’s enough for most of us; the S.M.A.R.T. report has the details. Hard Drive Inspector costs $30, but you can download a 15-day trial version to give you a feel for the tool; the trial is fully functional, though limited to one drive. Nonetheless, it’ll tell you everything you’ll need to know about your drive.

Note: At press time (an antiquated phrase if I ever heard one), the Hard Drive Inspector’s site is temporarily down. You can read about the product by looking at a Google cache.

* It’s not as comprehensive as Hard Drive Inspector, but if you’d prefer a freebie (of course you would!), download CrystalDiskInfo. The tool will show you the number of hours logged on your hard drive and give you its health status. If you see caution or bad, cancel all your appointments and replace the drive, like, immediately, even if you don’t hear any weird sounds from the drive.

* If you listen to your hard drive, all you should hear is a soothing, comforting hum. Yet drives often make weird sounds–thuds, screeches, knocking, or whining — and determining if a sound means trouble can be, well, troubling.

DataCent, a data-recovery company, has an extraordinarily helpful site that plays the actual sounds of flaky hard drives: stuck spindles, bad or unstable heads, bad bearings, and bad media, to name a few. You can listen to your specific drive brand, too. Even better, the data recovery company lists typical drive failures by manufacturer. Listen to a Seagate drive with bad heads making a clicking and knocking sound.

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System Restore is a recovery tool built into Windows that backs up and restores the Registry. System Restore takes a snapshot of your computer — called a restore point — once a day, as well as before you perform certain tasks, such as installing a new program. If all goes well, you can use a restore point later on to bring your PC back to the state it was in when the snapshot was taken. But remember, we’re talking about computers.

Sometimes System Restore doesn’t work. You click a restore point and Windows has a hearty, gleeful laugh. The problem is that each restore point is linked to previous points; if one is corrupt or missing, you’re out of luck: System Restore won’t work. (Learn more about the ins and outs of System Restore in Bert Kinney’s smart and thorough FAQ.)

My Love Affair with ERUNT

For the last year, I’ve been using the Emergency Recovery Utility NT. Affectionately known as ERUNT, it’s a free tool that automatically backs up your Registry and allows you to restore it. And despite its name, it works with Windows XP and Vista, including 64-bit editions.

The tremendous advantage of ERUNT is that each restore point is independent of the other points. If one goes kaflooey, the others will still work. It’s also nice to be able to back up a restore point to an external drive or stick it onto an online storage site.

I let ERUNT do its backup thing each morning; when you install it, that’s the default. The program saves a week of restore points (plenty, in my opinion) and automatically deletes older ones. You can set a restore point manually at any time, too.

The downside is ERUNT doesn’t automatically set a restore point if you do something that has the potential to hose your Registry, by, say, installing a driver. You can rectify that by remembering to run ERUNT just before you do the deed.

ERUNT backs up your Registry automatically.

If you have a fiddling gene, there are a bunch of command-line switches to play with. For instance, /dir=”x:\folder name” will override the default directory name. With that gene in mind, I’m guessing you’ll enjoy Peter Bromberg’s right-on-the-money Practice “Safe Computer” with regular automated Registry Backups article.

My advice? Keep Windows System Restore enabled for a couple of months until you become confident that ERUNT is as dependable as I say it is. When you’re ready, disable System Restore. From the Control Panel, click System, choose the System Restore tab, and select the “Turn off System Restore on all drives” check box. Click OK, and then click Yes to turn off System Restore.

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But there’s still a problem.

Web pages aren’t designed for reading, and that’s one of my pleasures: Reading product and movie reviews, for instance, or devouring John McPhee’s lengthy pieces in The New Yorker, or James Fallows (read his old, but still valuable What Was I Thinking? in The Atlantic).

Up until now, I’d click the Print button if the site offered one. Then I discovered Readability, a site that reformats any page of text to conform to your reading style. Set up Readability by choosing a style, font size, and margin width, and then drag the Readability bookmarklet to your browser’s toolbar. The next time you’re on a Web page you want to read, click the Readability link and the transformation happens immediately. (You can get a better idea by watching the video.)

Arc90 calls Readability an experiment. I say it’s a keeper. Get more details at the Readability blog.

Atlantic article before using Readability.

Atlantic article after using Readability.

Reminder Me to Remind You

In a recent newsletter, I wrote about a Web site that calls you with a reminder. Elliot Soloway wrote and said, “Rminder is good, but I don’t want a voice reminder–  want a text message reminder. Anything for me?”

There must be hundreds of text reminding services. They all send text to your cell phone by way of SMS.

Here are some of the reminder services I like. The first three are no-brainers; the last one, ReQall, is a fancier, ersatz secretarial service and demands your cerebral wherewithal.

* TextMemos is quick and easy, but isn’t fancy. Stick in your text reminder, the cell provider, date and time, and away you go.

* BitBomb is similar to TextMemos, but has neater features, such as a calendar to choose the date and time to send a message and a way to set up group messages.

* Call Dial2Do and ask it to send a text message or an e-mail, or post a tweet. Read the FAQ or watch the video for more.

* Get ReQall on the horn to add a To-Do to Outlook or Google’s calendar, get reminders by e-mail or text, or share a reminder with a friend. There are lots more things you can do.

Tool of the Week: Bounce Bully

You say you’re still getting spam? (LOL — dopey question, I know.)

The truth is that bouncing spam back to the creeps who sent it just isn’t worth the trouble. Too often the spammer’s address is bogus–and my guess is they wouldn’t take the time to remove you from their list. (“Oh, my, Steve Bass’s address isn’t working any more. I’ll just spend my time removing it for the dear boy.”)

But what if you have a bozo or two constantly sending you dumber-than-dirt jokes? You know, the kind you didn’t find funny even when you were in the fifth grade.

You could politely ask to be removed from their list. I usually say I use my computer primarily for work; my boss (hey, that’s me!) snoops in my e-mail, and I don’t want to get into trouble.

More fun, though, is to use a program that bounces e-mail back to the putz, showing that your e-mail address no longer exists. And guess what: You can do it with BounceBully. It’s a freebie that takes the e-mail you receive and fires it back with all the right language — saying, essentially, that your e-mail address is no more.

Try it out by sending yourself a test e-mail — copy and paste the mail into BounceBully, hit Send , and see what happens. [Thanks to Brian D.]

Paste the entire message in BounceBully and send it back.

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Greased Lightning Finds

I want you to download and try the Everything search tool. It installs in a minute, and indexes your drive in another minute — and the speed of its finds will blow you away. No, really, this is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen.

My friend Darryl said, “Everything’s search engine only searches file names and folders — it doesn’t index file contents like Windows Desktop Search does. Instead, it indexes the entire hard drive by using the hard disk’s existing USN Change Journal. The result is a tiny program that uses very little resources, is deadly simple to use, and is astonishingly fast. You can find any file virtually instantly.” The question is why Microsoft didn’t use the USN functionality in the Search function built into XP and Vista. (Don’t you love these rhetorical questions for Microsoft?)

About the only downside is that Everything won’t run on a drive using a FAT32 file system. (What, you don’t know the difference? Read this: FAT32 vs. NTFS and then consider the painless conversion to NTFS.)

Everything is a good tool, but there are two other search tools you could use. Play around with Agent Ransack. It’s slower than Everything, yet it’s a versatile, dweeby kind of program that lets you search within files using complex rules. You might like Copernic Desktop Search, too, because it not only does smart searches of file contents, it also lets you launch the program associated with the file. The downside? It’s ad sponsored. Of course, I’ll get a ton of e-mail if I don’t mention Google Desktop, even though I don’t like the way it displays search results in a browser.

“Everything” is fast, even on your creaky, old ’486

Wizmo — Steve Gibson’s Nifty Tool

Steve Gibson is famous for small, free, smart tools. One that I’m using is Wizmo — Steve’s Windows Gizmo — and it does things some of you can use. For instance, Wizmo gives you a quick one-click way to blank the screen or put it into low power mode; lock the workstation; or set the PC in any one of several states, including standby, hibernate, log off, reboot, or shutdown.

Wizmo isn’t difficult to use, but it could be an adventure for beginners. That’s because the tool doesn’t have an installation program: You’ll have to create a desktop shortcut and modify the shortcut’s Properties. However, the instructions are clear and easy to follow. And while you’re looking at Wizmo, poke around Gibson’s site — it’s a marvelous jaunt into technology.

Quick aside: My buddy Leo uses Wizmo to put his monitor in low power mode Since moving to Vista Business x64 from XP, using “wizmo.exe monoff” on his two-monitor system has given him trouble. Both monitors went into sleep mode, but only the secondary analog monitor would wake up with the mouse; the primary LCD would stay asleep, and he needed to power off the desktop to recover. He used Monoff 4 to fix the problem.

Use Wizmo for quick one-click commands

Capture and Record any Sound

In last week’s story, I talked about ripping the music from YouTube videos. This week I’ve got two powerful tools with a wide array of features for grabbing and manipulating sounds you hear on your PC, including MP3s.

Audacity is free and easy to use. Just click the red button to start recording and the orange one to stop it. Then from Files, choose Export as MP3. Plenty of editing tools are built in, so you can, say, remove silence. One drawback: It also records PC sounds, so if you’re not careful, you’ll hear error sounds and new-message “dings.” For that, download SoundOff, a freebie that temporarily turns system sounds off and on with a quick right-click.

I also like Total Recorder, which has some useful features Audacity doesn’t have. For instance, it lets you set up multiple daily and weekly recording schedules. The standard edition is $18, and the $36 Pro version has extra goodies, such as automating everything — it opens the browser to a designated URL, starts and stops recording, saves the file, and closes the browser. And yes, the program is smart enough to not record system sounds.

Multi Monitor Mouse

You have two or more monitors and you’re tired of moving your mouse from one monitor to the last one in the array? You’ll like Multi Monitor Mouse, because it gooses your mouse cursor so it makes the jump across monitors without scrolling. The tool is especially valuable if your monitors aren’t the same size or resolution, if you’re using, say, a 23-incher and a notebook. You’ll need to be geek-savvy as this freebie doesn’t come with documentation.

Multi-Mouse lets your cursor jump across monitors

Monitor arrays at Bass International

Tech Tip of the Week: Stop Errors

Pop quiz: It’s fast, it’s blue, and it stops your computer cold. I get one every so often — a blue screen loaded with dire warnings, a list of letters and numbers, and an obscure stop error. (see one here.) Actually, the stop error codes offer valuable info about what caused your system to come to a complete halt. The message might let you know your RAM is on its last legs, a driver is missing, or a hard drive is infected with spyware or damaged. Microsoft has a list of stop errors, along with an explanation and details that are written in somewhat readable English.

Resolving a stop error can be an enjoyable weekend project (ha!). My favorite stop (sorry) for help is UpdateXP, run by Microsoft Windows MVP Marc Liron. The site has the most commonly seen stop errors with possible resolutions.

Seen one of these lately? It’s a stop error that’s likely to ruin your entire day.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

Dump the Dupes

You think you might have a couple of duplicate files on your system? (Don’t be silly — of course you do.) Easy Duplicate File Finder (see image) is a handy freebie that will dig around and show you where they’re lurking. I like being able to choose specific folders, use a mask to find only certain files, and either rename or move dupes.

Be careful: Deleting the wrong file is risky. Here’s are a few rules from Bass International Labs because I don’t want to hear, “Hey Bass, I ran that duplicate finder and deleted a lot of stuff, and that’s great, but now my machine won’t boot. Why didn’t you tell me to backup my system first?

• No program has the decision-making skills to determine what’s safe to delete or not. Make that decision based on your knowledge and experience. If you’re in doubt, don’t delete the file.
• If one of the two duplicate files is located in the Windows folder or its subfolders, leave it alone. Really.
• If you try deleting a file and see “Cannot read from the source file or disk,” it’s because the file’s being used by a program. Leave it alone.

Duplicate File Tip: I’m too impatient to wade through 50,000 duplicate files, so I look for the monsters, those over-30MB hard drive wasters. There’s a good chance they’re long-forgotten duplicate videos.

The Bane of MP3 Duplicates

At last count, I counted 3 million MP3s on my PC, many from the Napster days, and I just know half are dupes. Easy Duplicate File Finder spots the exact duplicates based on file size, but that’s not good enough for me. The best tool — and I mean the very best–is Audio Comparer. (See image.) It listens to MP3, WMA, and OGG files, finds dupes, and actually shows you the percentage of duplication. It’s $30, but if you have scads of MP3s, and the moolah, this puppy’s a perfect tool. Grab a trial that does everything–except let you move or delete files.

Nifty Selective Web Printing Tool

A few weeks ago I told you about Lexmark’s Toolbar for smarter printing. TechBite reader “Cal Tjader Lady” found something even smarter: PrintWhatYouLike, an online tool that lets you easily block out items on a Web page that you don’t want to print. It’s a neat idea, and it works most of the time. But if the page you’re printing requires JavaScript to be enabled, it might not work perfectly. Play around with the tool and lemme know what you think.

Zap Jammed Print Jobs

You say you used PrintWhatYouLike and now have a stack of jobs stuck in the print queue? It occasionally happens to me and I don’t know why — probably just to be annoying. When it does, I whip out the Stalled Printer Repair tool. Sure I could clear out the print queue myself; the program’s just going to the Spool folder and deleting the wedged files–but it’s so handy and satisfying to use. I can’t wait for my next stalled print job.

Follow-up: Passwords and Paranoia

Last week you heard my horror story about how someone got hold of my PayPal password. Here’s some follow-up from TechBite subscribers.

– I’ve been wondering if the PayPal breach was an inside job. A buddy of mine wrote: “I had the same experience with PayPal last May. They refunded my money so quickly, that I am somewhat suspicious that they are trying to cover up an internal problem of some sort. Do you get the same feeling, or do you think YOU screwed up?” -JK

Well, I’m so scrupulously scrupulous when watching out for spoofing, it ain’t funny. I don’t think I was phished or spoofed. But how do you prove that it’s an inside job…?

– Tom C. railed against sites that wouldn’t let him use a long password, or symbols, or differentiate between upper- and lowercase characters. I try to avoid doing business with sites too loopy to let me have a strong password.

– Dozens of people told me about Password Safe, a freebie you might want to try. My tech editor Carey Holzman just wrote and said he recommends LastPass.

– CloakPass is a smart, free utility that resides in your System tray and automatically transforms your easy-to-remember password into a difficult-to-hack one. So for example I type stevebass and CloakPass changes it to Zf12#$6KYb8, the real password. I tried the free version (get it here); paid versions provide extra features, such as @#%* symbols. Read the CloakPass Getting Started page and FAQ to get a better idea how the program works.

– I made the news. Check out InfoWorld’s When Paranoia isn’t Enough and cNET’s Are Passwords Our Best Security Option?

– If you don’t want any of your passwords stored on your PC, and won’t resort to a paper list, try the Logio Secure Password Organizer. For $30 you can store and retrieve all your passwords; it’s super secure because it doesn’t connect to your PC. Be aware, though, that it takes some time to enter data using the multi-tap character input method.

– Michael M. said that he clicked on the Microsoft’s Password Checker link in last week’s story, “which really did look exactly like Microsoft’s website.” He tried his online banking password and the site said his password was very strong. “Ten minutes later,” he said, “when I checked my bank balance, it was ZERO.”

True, Michael, because the Microsoft link was a spoof I created–and I picked up about 200 fresh passwords I’ll be trying shortly… [kidding and ducking]

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

The trouble was that when I logged on to PayPal, I really did have a $400 withdrawal. It was clear that someone had my password.

Quick Password Tips

Some of you may skim through this story, so here are the three essential things you need to know about password security:

• Use a password generator, a program that will create a long, complicated password.
• Don’t ever use dictionary words, even if you stick in symbols, like bill$gate$. They’re very easy to break using simple hacker programs. (LOL — Thanks, Rod.)
• Use a different password for every important site. Using the same password on every site, especially critical ones, such as banking, is risky. Imagine using your one password on an unsavory, and possibly unscrupulous site. With that golden password, and a few guesses on your login name — stevebass, steve_bass, sbass — and they’re in like Flynn.

Who’s Got My Password?

I contacted PayPal (888/221-1161), supplied the details, and they opened up a case. My account is frozen and I don’t doubt PayPal will credit me for the loss. (As I started editing this article, they reversed the charges.) PayPal is investigating, but I don’t think they’ll ever find out how someone got into my account, though it was clear the person had my password. The rep said I probably fell for a well-crafted e-mail spoof.

That’s a blow to my ego. I see myself as suspicious–verging on paranoid — when it comes to phishing e-mails. What better prize than bragging rights to hacking a PC World guy, right? So I’m as vigilant as my dog is when I try to get her to take a pill wrapped in peanut butter. (Hey, you can’t fool me, pal, she probably thinks…)

If an e-mail — suspicious or not — refers to any of my important accounts and provides a link to click, I ignore the offer. It’s safer to manually type the URL into my browser’s address field. And yes, I’ll cover phishing hassles — and ways to guard against it — in a future newsletter.

Password: z24x680uBS4!44

I’m also careful with my passwords and, at least until now, thought they were super stealthy. For example, on PayPal I used four numbers, a symbol, and three letters. According to Microsoft’s Password Checker, my standard password pattern–1600%wtf — is strong. But it could be better.

Microsoft says that the most effective passwords are 14 characters and have a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and a symbol or two. For example, z24x680uBS4!44 is strong enough for them to call it “best.”

Test your passwords on Microsoft’s site and see how well they stand up. Then browse Microsoft’s excellent Strong passwords: How to Create and Use Them. I promise you’ll learn something.

Generating Strong Passwords

Creating a strong password is easy, provided you don’t try to think one up on your own. There are dozens of Web sites that’ll create passwords, but I don’t use any of them. The last thing I’ll do is trust someone online watching me create new passwords. Instead, download Password Generator, a freebie, and crank out all sorts of 14-character passwords.

Keeping Track of Your Passwords

I just looked and counted roughly 220 sites I use that require a password.

Some site passwords, however, are immaterial. For instance, I use a simple-to-remember word for spots I rarely visit, places such as newspapers that force you to register and log in just to read articles, or tech sites with forum messages.

However, ever since the PayPal fiasco, I’ve changed every significant password on my system to a 14-digit gorilla.

Remembering all those passwords is a PITA, so you ought to consider using a password management tool. There are lots available. Many people like KeePass, a freebie; others swear by LargeSoft’s $30 Password Manager. I anticipate easily 100 e-mails — no make that 200 — kvetching that I haven’t mentioned your favorite. But as far as I’m concerned, RoboForm is the best one around, and I’ve used it since it was first introduced.

RoboForm, The Master at Passwords

RoboForm is a $30 program with more features for password management, privacy, and password identification than any other program I know. You provide RoboForm with all the vitals you might need to complete a site’s form–name, address, phone numbers, and even credit card numbers. When you click the Fill Forms button, the program does just that. I’ve created multiple identities, each with different info. For instance, I have one with MasterCard info, another with VISA accounts. I have another identify I call “anonymous” that I use to fill in forms on sites that I’ll never visit again.

Click a Web site from the RoboForm Passcard screen, and RoboForm transports your Web browser to the site, logging you in if necessary. Need an industrial-strength password? RoboForm will generate one for you. And don’t worry about security: RoboForm is itself password-protected. The program will also safely send an encrypted password through e-mail to another RoboForm user. (I was recently discussing with my wife the fact that neither of us can function without it.)

BTW, RoboForm foils keyloggers (programs that watch keystrokes) because instead of typing, it inserts characters into form fields.

Here’s a summary of RoboForm’s features, a comprehensive FAQ with answers to your most technical RoboForm questions and a way to compare the free and Pro versions.

If you need portability, RoboForm2Go gives you the same protection when you carry your passwords on a flash drive and use it outside the office. Both the RoboForm program and your password files reside on a USB key, so you can take them from one computer to another. The tool costs $40, but if you buy it at the same time you get RoboForm, the price drops to $20. If you dig around, you’ll occasionally find discounts. (Google RoboForm discount.)

Siber Systems offers a 30-day trial of both products. They work in all versions of Windows and support IE and Firefox, but not Google Chrome, Opera, or a few other browsers. Take a look at the compatibility list.

There’s lots more to say about password management, but I’m almost out of space. So while you’re hot on the topic, read Bitmill’s smart series of Password Security 101 articles. They’re less basic than you might imagine.

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It’s a $50 cable that lets you connect two Macs–or a Mac and a Windows PC, or two Windows PCs–and shuttle files between them. One end of the cable has a lump (see above), and the lump contains Mac and Windows software that shows the folders on both computers and allows you to drag and drop folders and files:

Since the software’s in the cable, there’s no need to install anything (you just launch it directly from the cable). And unlike Target Disk Mode, you don’t need to reboot one computer and put it in a mode that doesn’t let you do anything else. If you’ve been using computers as long as I have, the whole experience will remind you of using Laplink.

I haven’t done any speed comparisons between this cable and Target Disk Mode–lemme know if you’re curious, and if there’s enough demand, I’ll try to do some.

Not everybody needs this cable–if your computers are both on a network, you can move files between them without any additional cost–but it does what it does nicely, and might be worth the investment–especially if you’ve got multiple Macs and Windows PCs.

I do think that Apple will eventually make Target Disk Mode work with USB connections; I make no predictions about when that may happen, though…