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LastPASS – password management made easy

almalino — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:37:45 +0000

As an active internet user I’m a member of ~50+ sites and forums that require registration. Below are just some sites I use:

Every site requires unique login/password combination. In addition passwords must be strong, containing mix of characters and numbers ( like “56hfty78kl9” ) to make it difficult to guess.

Tell me, can you remember 50+ logins and strong passwords? I can’t!

My approach was simple: I used same login to register to all sites plus I used one of 2 strong passwords I remembered. This worked well but this approach has heavy flaws:

If one of the sites I use get hacked and my strong password get stolen it could be used for many other sites where I have a registration.
I configured Firefox internet browser to remember passwords for some often used sites. It is handy but dangerous at the same time. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn’t protect stored passwords well enough and anyone who has access to my computer can get access to all stored passwords.

At some point I decided I want to manage my passwords somehow. Requirements were simple:

all passwords must be strong and different from each other.
login/passwords information must be encrypted so no one can get easy access to it.
I must have secure access to login/passwords from any computers and from mobile phone.
Solution must be free of charge.
No need need to remember all those passwords!

LastPASS – the savior?

I read several reviews of password management tools and decided to try www.lastpass.com . It got good reviews scores. Does it fulfill my requirements?

LastPASS provides an encrypted internet vault where you store all your password protected by one master password. You need to remember only one master password to get access to all stored passwords from any device with internet access. LastPASS means last password to remember. Let’s see whether LastPASS fulfills my requirements.

Requirement 1:

all passwords must be strong and different from each other.

LastPASS can store all kind of strong passwords. It has strong password generator to help generate secure passwords when you register on any websites. GOOD FOR ME!

Requirement 2:

login/passwords information must be encrypted so no one can get easy access to it.

LastPASS stores all passwords on its servers in encrypted format. Passwords can be decrypted only using master password. LastPASS claims it employees have no access to your passwords since they do not know master password needed for vault decryption. GOOD FOR ME!

Requirement 3:

I must have secure access to login/passwords from any computers and from mobile phone.

LastPASS gives you access to the encrypted vault via internet browser using your master password. Additionally it’s provides applications for most popular mobile phones platforms like iPhone, Symbian etc. GOOD FOR ME!

Requirement 4:

Solution must be free of charge.

LastPASS is free to use on any computer. GOOD FOR ME!

How do they make money then? First , you need to pay 1 euro/months to use LastPASS from mobile phone (at the moment when I’m writing this post). I’m more then willing to pay 12 Euro per year to access well managed passwords from mobile phone. Second, I think they also offer LastPASS for companies and I’m not sure is it free for the business. May be not.

Requirement 5:

No need need to remember all those passwords.

You need to remember only one master password to LastPASS vault. All other passwords LastPASS remember for you. GOOD FOR ME!

LastPASS fulfills all my requirements. Good ?! There is one huge concern I have regarding storing all passwords in one place.

Concern: What if your master password got stolen?

If this happens hacker:

gets access to your LastPASS secure vault
gets list of all sites where you have a registration
gets all login/passwords for those sites

Defining the way I use LastPASS I took this concern into account. May be I’m too paranoiac?

LastPASS – my approach

After 1 months usage - I'm absolutely IN LOVE with LastPASS! It is a great tool for password management !

I split my passwords into 2 categories – Important passwords and Whatever passwords taking into account my concern above:

Important – if I loose these passwords I will loose money or expensive assets.
- Gmail.com
- PayPal.com
- bluehost.com

Whatever – if I loose these passwords I will not loose money or expensive assets.
- facebook.com
- odnoklassniki.ru
- dpreview.com
- linkedin.com
- eBay.com
- + other 40 sites where I have registration

I have 3 Important vs. 45+ Whatever sites. MY APPROACH: I use LastPass to generate, store and manage passwords for 45+ Whatever sites. It is 45+ different strong passwords less to remember! Cool! For 3 Important sites I still remember passwords myself and do not store them in LastPASS.

LastPASS – everyday use

Upon installation LastPASS will collect all password internet browsers stored on your computer and will store them into secure vault. You will be surprised how unsecure your passwords have been before. Trust me! Then you need to decide on master password to access LastPASS passwords vault. This is the only password you will need to remember to access sites stored in the vault! This is how LastPASS vault looks like:

I installed LastPASS plug-in for Firefox that automatically log me in into all sites I have stored in the secure password vault. So, I do not need to check vault every time i need a password for the site. Plug-in does it for me. Below are several LastPASS use cases:

Use Case 1: You need to register to a new site

When you open registration form LastPASS proposes you to generate random strong password using combination of characters, numbers etc. When it is done LastPASS automatically fill out sites password fields with generated password. After registration LastPASS offers you to store this site into you password vault.

Use Case 2: You want to login to site where you already registered

If site is not stored in the LastPASS password vault upon firs log in LastPASS will offer you to store site into the vault.
If site is in the vault already LastPASS will offer you automatic login into the site.

Use Case 3: You want to change password on the site

LastPASS will offer you to fill previous password and to generate new password automatically. When it is done LastPASS will automatically store new password information in you password vault.

Conclusion:

LastPASS is a solid tool for password management. Now it has one more happy user – me :) There are many other handy features LastPASS offers for you like automatic forms filling etc. Try it out – you will not regret.

Cheers, Alexei

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Formats war: JPEG vs. RAW

almalino — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:42:31 +0000

Every picture your digital camera produces is stored as a file in the camera memory or on memory card inserted to you camera. File (Wikipedia) is an ordered sequence of 0 and 1 with a name assigned to it.

Every time you copy picture from your camera to computer hard drive you are, actually, copying the file to your hard drive that contain encoded picture information inside (0s and 1s inside the picture file). The thing is that in most cameras you can control what is stored inside the picture file depending on your preferences.

Most popular formats nowadays

Modern digital cameras often offer a configuration option to store files in JPEG or RAW formats. It is important to choose most suitable format for your needs based on considerations below.

To be absolutely correct, JPEG is not a file format but a name of the image compression algorithm. However, it just happened that one of the most popular picture formats also called JPEG due to it uses JPEG compression algorithm inside. In this article, whenever I mention JPEG file format, I mean picture compressed using JPEG compression algorithm into file with extension .jpg or .jpeg.

Both JPEG and RAW have strengths and weaknesses. Both formats are suitable for post processing.

Which format should you select?

ePhotoTIPS.com recommendation

If you prefer to save memory space and snap as many pictures as possible in exchange to reduced image quality and less flexibility in post processing JPEG is your best choice.

If you prefer best image quality and maximum flexibility in post processing in exchange to less pictures fitting to memory and more hassle in converting pictures to other formats then you should select RAW.

My personal preference is to use RAW format always. It gives me a lot of flexibility in image post processing and better picture quality although requires more space to store pictures.

The final choice is still yours!

RAW vs. JPEG in details

JPEG is a standardized, versatile and widely supported format. It is very popular among amateur photographers who don’t yet consider serious image post processing. RAW format is more popular among professional photographers who spend a lot of time post-processing pictures to get best selling results. There are several aspects you need to consider to select the format most suitable for your needs.

File size (JPEG wins)

JPEG format was originally designed to compress digital pictures to occupy as little space as possible. JPEG does it very well. RAW format in contrast does not compress pictures or uses lossless compression that is not very effective on images. Therefore, picture in JPEG format will be much smaller than the same picture in RAW format.

For example let’s take imaginary 10 megapixel digital camera with 4 GB memory card. The average 10 megapixel JPEG file is about 4 megabytes in size. You would be able to fit 1000 pictures on 4GB memory card. At the same time RAW file size would be about 13 megabytes that leads to maximum 300 pictures on the same card. 4 GB Memory Card = 300 RAW or 1000 JPEG images

JPEG wins hands down in this competition!

Processing speed (JPEG wins)

RAW files are huge as we studied in previous paragraph. It takes a bit more time for your camera to store RAW file to memory card every time you snap a picture than JPEG file. Your computer might struggle to process RAW files if it doesn’t have enough memory or slow processor. If you notice any of such slowdowns while processing RAW files then you need to invest into faster memory cards and faster computer.

JPEG wins again!

Compatibility (JPEG wins)

JPEG is supported almost everywhere be it digital camera, computer, web browser, image editor, image viewer or other relevant modern device or application. If you send JPEG picture over e-mail you can be pretty sure receiver will be able to open and view it. In most cases JPEG files have .jpg or .jpeg extension so you can easily identify the format.

RAW is a different beast. There is no single RAW standard accepted by all camera manufactures. Almost every camera brand stores images in its very own RAW format. RAW file from camera Brand A usually is not compatible with RAW file from camera Brand B. RAW files from different brands have different extensions like .x3f, .nef etc. If you want to share RAW pictures with your friends or publish them in internet first you need to convert them into more general format like JPEG using camera specific software. JPEG wins over RAW format again!

I guess you have already started to wonder why RAW format is needed at all.

Picture quality (RAW wins)

JPEG and RAW formats are using different methods to compress and store pictures. JPEG uses lossy (Wikipedia) compression algorithm meaning that some original picture information is lost and cannot be recovered thus affecting final image quality. JPEG doesn’t store information about each individual pixel and instead uses pretty complex mathematical algorithm to store information about pixel groups. Since JPEG is loosing some information about the picture it is not good for multiple picture edits/stores. Every time you edit and store picture some pixels information is lost and picture quality decreases.

Look at the examples below. Firs crop is from RAW picture and second crop is from JPEG picture with highest compression I could choose in image editor. Do you see the difference? Right image has clearly visible artifacts and not as sharp as left one.

RAW stores all information about every pixel on the picture. In case RAW format utilize a compression algorithm it is a lossless compression meaning no information about the picture is lost. RAW format wins if you choose best picture quality and flexibility in post-processing. RAW is especially useful to recover shadow details of the picture. So, if your pictures are full of dark shadows RAW might suit better for you.

Make no mistake , JPEG format is also very good for pictures, but RAW is just better for post processing and overall image quality.

You must choose what is most important for you

	JPEG	RAW
File size	WIN	LOSE
Compatibility	WIN	LOSE
Processing speed	WIN	LOSE
Picture quality& Post processing	LOSE	WIN

JPEG and RAW formats are both suitable for post processing. You need to understand advantages and disadvantages of both and select the one most suitable for you. Since you are reading this article you consider processing you pictures on computer. I will not advice you what format is best. You must try both and decide which one is better for you.

Configure your camera

As a last step in formats selection you must configure your camera to shoot in selected format. Usually format selection is done via in-camera user interface. Each camera interface is different so it is not possible to give exact instructions in this article. You must consult camera user guide to check which formats are supported and how to select desired format. It might happen that you want to shoot RAW format but your camera doesn’t support it. In this case you must stick to the format provided by your camera and it is usually JPEG.

For example in my digital camera Sigma DP1 format selection looks like on the picture below: First 3 options Fine, Norm, Basic are for JPEG format quality and last one is the best quality RAW file. I choose RAW always.

Cheers, Alexei

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Understanding Pixels

almalino — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:10:08 +0000

As I’m writing a book that will give you 4 very simple but effective and fast steps to improve your images I want to share several already written book chapters on this blog for you. This time it is about pixels. It is important to understand the construction of digital images if you seriously looking into improving your own digital images. And here is a short introduction into pixels. As a side note, text in the final book might still be changed and be different from a text posted in this blog post below.

Any digital picture consist of pixels. Pixels have no fixed physical size. For example when you look at modern digital picture so that it fits in computer screen pixels are so small you cannot distinguish them from each other and picture looks continuous. However, if you start magnifying the picture you will start noticing individual pixels that usually appear as adjacent colored squares.

Each pixel has one and only one color assigned to it. This color has been produced by composition of 3 primary color components: Red, Green, Blue or RGB. Each primary color can have brightness values from 0 to 255 if picture has 24 bits color depth that is very common format nowadays. In this case 0 represents pure black color and 255 represents brightest possible RED, GREEN and BLUE colors.

This picture demonstrate the way color of pixel P is produced by composition of 3 primary colors and their brightness levels RGB (245,165,154).

Out of curiosity, let's calculate how many colors can be created using composition of 3 primary colors with 256 brightness levels each. It would be 256x256x256=16.8 million colors. That amazing number of colors is also called “True color”. More information about RGB you can find in this Wikipedia article - RGB Color Model.

Let's look at three important colors for image post processing and how they are constructed using combination of primary color components.

Pure White color is produced by combining brightest possible Red, Green and Blue color components. RGB (255,255,255).

All shades of Grey color are produced by combining Red, Green and Blue components with the same brightness level. In this case I combined components with brightness level 127 and got Grey color. RGB (127,127,127)

Finally to get a Pure Black color you need to combine color components with brightness level 0. RGB (0,0,0)

That was pretty short introduction to pixels and RGB model. If you enjoyed the reading and would like to follow up on future articles and the book please SUBSCRIBE.
Cheers, Alexei

Future Articles plan:

- Book Chapter: “Understanding Histogram Types”

If you have any other ideas about future articles please leave your suggestions as a comments or send them to me via CONTACT page.