In line with this, Google has come up with a few reminders of obvious-but-often-overlooked practices in keeping your online accounts secure by choosing smart passwords.

Michael Santerre, Google’s consumer operations associate, posted a list of common problems and their solutions in the official Gmail blog. Take a look and see if you have been doing any of these.

Problem 1: Re-using passwords across websites

Solution: Use unique passwords for every account such as selecting a phrase and using the first letter of every world in the phrase. You can also try swapping out letters for symbols.

Problem 2: Using common passwords or words found in the dictionary

Solution: Use a password with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. You can also choose two random words and put them together along with symbols.

Problem 3: Using passwords based on personal data

Solution: Your personal data can be easily found in the web social networking sites. Avoid using names of pets or children, birthdays, phone numbers and addresses.

Problem 4: Writing down your password and storing it in an unsecured place.

Solution: Don’t make it easier for others to hack your accounts. That list of complex and hard-to-guess passwords you came up would be useless if someone else found that slip of paper lying beside you computer.

Problem 5: Recalling your password.

Solution: Make sure your password recovery options are up-to-date and secure.

Again, please take the time in making sure your online accounts are safe. Just this week, thousands of Hotmail accounts were exposed through what authorities believe as phishing. Other reports say some Gmail and Yahoo accounts were also exposed. Don’t wait until yours become public too.

Source: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/choosing-smart-password.html

To help sort out apps you might want to take a look at, PC World compiled a list of the top five apps that’ll help you find – yep, apps. Here’s what they came up:

App Miner

This app does what its name says: it mines for app treasures. And by app treasures, we mean those that’ll help you save a few bucks by keeping tabs on apps that are currently in bargain price in a master list. The App Miner lets you filter the list into free and paid apps, making it easier for those who doesn’t want to shell out some dough.

App Gems

App Gems helps users decide what app to get by providing user reviews for each app. Its provides a capsulated description and recommendations for the app, allowing you to somehow get the feel of what the app is all about.

App Sniper

AppSniper is similar to the App Miner, providing users with a list of apps whose prices have been dropped. The difference is that this app costs $1. To make up for the price though, the AppSniper is faster and has a more sophisticated-looking interface than the latter.

Fluke

If you have absolutely no idea what app you’d want to download and you just want to leave the choosing to the er – hands of faith, then Fluke is the app for you.

This is a free app that shows you a random app at a time, perhaps making it more exciting by finding out apps you’ve never even thought to exist. If you want a bit more direction to your random search though, you can also choose to filter it by free or paid and by category.

The App Store

The last but uhm, not the least, is the App Store. According to the PCWorld, this is still the fastest way to search directly for apps, especially with the new Genius function that helps users find apps that are similar or related to the ones they’ve got.

Peace out!

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/172880/5_apps_for_finding_iphone_apps.html