Find Your Password within IE, Foxfire & Google Chrome

The thing about letting your browser save your password is that over time, you tend to forget it. There's a way to get your password (as well as your user name), and they are small programs that are very easy to operate. And they're free software!

PasswordFox, IE PassView and
ChromePass download as zip files. Above, see a screenshot of each program and the information it provides...IE is the least friendly, giving you an IP address rather than the name of the site. To me, ChromePass is the friendliest, giving you the create date and time.

If I used my browser to store passwords, I'd download my browser program and get a copy and store it in a safe place. I don't know how browsers are about sharing passwords like they do bookmarks, but it might enable you to transfer to another browser. I use both Firefox & Chrome, and could see how having your passwords in Internet Explorer might hinder you in trying another browser.

A good read-me file accompanies each program, with a command line listing for different formats. You can get these programs at:

http://www.nirsoft.net/password_recovery_tools.html

While you're there, have a look around at other little utilities you might find helpful.

OpenOffice 3.0 - Your New Office Suite

OpenOffice, an open source package of productivity, has been around since 2000. Sun is very involved with it, and the culmination of version 3.0, recently released, finds a suite to be reckoned with, and it's free. It contains software that can read and be read by Microsoft Office 2007, as well as more obscure file formats. The new features in 3.0 are well documented and a welcome upgrade. In fact, the only criticism of OpenOffice I've ever read is that they're interface was boring - the new icons really jazz things up!

The programs you get are word processing (with html & xml capabilities), spreadsheet, database, presentation software (Impress) and draw. There are also extensions you can download and add to your Office. The index appears thorough, and there is help for the many different phases of tasks you will want to perform.

OpenOffice.org is also available for the Mac OS X - you might want to check out Computerworld's article, it provides links for the Mac and more information about Intel machines vs. older machines.

"In Pictures" is a web site that teaches by pictures of the screens, and offers Writer, Calc, Base and Impress tutorials for free - I went through the Base one and learned my way around. While these tutorials are for version 2.x, there's that old adage, "the more things change, the more they remain the same". I bet you can find your way around, and they should come out with version 3 soon. Also available at this site are Microsoft Office programs, both 2003 & 2007.

For further reading, try "PC & Network Support Services Limited" blog, and check out "The Tech's Blog".

I'm enthusiastic about OpenOffice.org version 3.0 and look forward to working with it. A database without the "Access" price!

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop: Are You Ready for a New Email App?

Zimbra is an email, contacts and calendar in one application. It runs on Windows, Mac's and Linux.

When I downloaded Zimbra my first reaction was "such a good-looking screen!". As I've used this for a couple of days I think Zimbra may push Outlook Express and Windows Live aside. At first glance, I was distressed at the short subject column, but soon learned that by hovering my mouse over the subject, I could see way more than I see in Outlook. And I found the information in Windows Live to hook up my hotmail accounts to Zimbra, too. You can also set up AOL, Gmail and Apple email accounts (any POP or IMAP email account) in Zimbra, and have all your email in one place.

In the email section you have flags, priorities (!) and tags to mark your email. You can search your messages by folder, picture, date, person, subject or attachment. You can even save searches as virtual folders, i.e. "Matt's photos". Drag and drop messages into new folders or the trash. Automatically, you can reply with the correct 'from' address when you have multiple email accounts. The amount of storage for your emails is unlimited. And if you're offline, you can compose messages - they'll stay in your outbox until you're online again.

Highlights of the contact section includes storing all the contacts from your accounts in one place. With these contacts you can create groups and tags to organize them. You can add photos to contacts, and import new contacts from other apps as .csv files or export contacts as .csv files for backup.

The calendar is being upgraded, currently you can manage multiple color-coded calendars. You can view in day/week/work week/month/list views. Use drag and drop to change events to a different day or time. And you can import public web calendars (iCal format), like sports schedules, for example.

The new features enable Zimbra to work with Google, Microsoft, Apple, AOL and Mozilla calendars. You will have the ability to set instant messaging or SMS reminders for events and a to-do list. Eventually, Zimbra will automatically sync with Microsoft Outlook and Apple IPhone. The beta will be rolled out later this year - a handful of users got the beta on October 8th.

In all my reading about Zimbra I could not find what "Zimlets" are, but they're another feature of Zimbra. If you're tired of your email program or would like to have more features (many I have not touched on here), I suggest you try Zimbra.