Some sort of password management software seemed to be in order. My requirements were pretty simple:

• It had to run on a windows PC (Mac/Linux/PDA would be a bonus).
• It had to generate strong passwords.
• It had to auto-fill log in forms.
• Free is best, but I’d settle for inexpensive.

After a bit of searching I came across KeePass. KeePass is pretty straight forward. It creates an encrypted database with AES and you can access all the id’s/passwords in that database by simply supplying a single (hopefully strong) password. The way that I have things setup KeyPass starts when my machine boots and I enter the password to unlock the KeyPass database. After that, all the magic begins.

Getting things going with KeyPass is pretty straight forward. It uses a basic tree structure of groups and sub-groups. You don’t have to setup any groups (there is a general group by default) but it’s probably a good idea to set some up to help keep things organized.

Organization is nice but I’d really like to use the passwords stored in Keepass. KeePass has a wonderful auto-fill in facility. By default you would use Ctl+Alt+A to Auto-fill. If you don’t like that sequence you can change it by selecting Settings, Advanced tab and then “Auto-type” (it’s near the bottom). You can also customize what KeePass will auto-type. By default it’s “{USERNAME}{TAB}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}” but you can customize that also. A really nice feature is that you can customize the auto-type on a per entry basis. Simply add the appropriate text to any entries “Notes” field and it will use that instead of the default (for example Amazon needs two tabs between the username and password so that ends up being “{USERNAME}{TAB}{TAB}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}“).

KeyPass isn’t perfect at guessing which site your on (and therefore which password to use). There are a couple of ways to fix this. Because I primarily use FireFox, the fix was to install a FireFox plugin (Hostname in title Bar be exact). If your not a FireFox user then check out the KeyPass Plugins page. There are many options there that extend KeyPass past it’s out-of-box setup.

If for some reason you can’t use the auto-type feature your not totally out of luck (it just requires a couple of extra keystrokes). You’ll just have to open the entry you need in KeyPass. By default KeePass masks the passwords with asterisk’s but you can simply click the button to the right of the password (the icon is 3 blue dots) and the password will display in clear text.

KeePass also had a couple of “bonus” feature (at least for me). First, you can run KeePass directly from a USB key. This is a perfect solution for me as I tend to work on several different machines and I don’t want to deal with synchronizing the database. The USB version runs directly from the USB key and leaves no footprint on the PC you were using. Secondly there is a BlackBerry version. I have not had a chance to test the Blackberry version but that’s next on my (very long) to-do list.

What is Xobni?

Xobni is a free plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, so if your not an Outlook user, it’s time to move on (sorry). More importantly here is what Xobni does:

• Search you email (really fast)
• Get analysis about your emails
• Get contact information
• Quickly find attachments
• It’s FREE!

Everyday I get dozens and dozens of emails that I have to save from vendors, clients etc. I do my best to both automatically and manually file these into Outlook folders but sometimes even that is not enough. I “know” I filed that email but I still could not find it. Outlooks built in search (at least in Outlook 2003) is OK, but it’s really slow. With Xobni I can simply start to type a few letters of what I’m searching for and “poof” search result start to come up. You can also easily search for anything. It could be a persons last name, a part number, etc.

Once you have completed your search the real magic of Xobni starts. Xobni will return the search results in five sections. The first part of the search results is the analysis. It will show you a histogram of when you receive emails from this contact. While this may just seem “cute” at first knowing when you receive email from someone may help you know when the best time to reply to them (and they will read it). Next to the histogram Xobni will display the contacts picture from their Linkedin profile (if they have one). I deal with a lot of people only by email or phone so it’s kind of nice to have a “face” to go with the voice/name.

The second section in the search results are contact information. Xobni will automatically parse the signatures of incoming emails and extract telephone numbers and other contact information. I’ve totally stopped updating my “contacts” information in Outlook and I totally rely on the information from Xobin. If I need to call someone and I dont’ know their telephone number I just use the search feature to quickly retrieve it.

“Network” is the third section of search results. I have absolutely no idea how it comes up with this list but the results are sometimes pretty amazing. The network contains a list of contact that you have in common with this contact. I’m assuming this is extracted from CC’s on the emails but the results are still pretty amazing.

The last two sections of search results are the real bread and butter of Xobni. The contain conversations and files exchanged. The conversations contains email threads that you’ve had with this contact sorted by date. This lets me easily find a particular email (or thread of emails) from this contact. Once you’ve found the email or thread that you are looking for you can click on it and you’ll get a summary of all the messages in the thread. From there you can open the mail, reply to it or forward it.

Files exchanged is similar to the conversations except it shows you all the attachments that you have exchanged with this contact. I use this feature when I know someone sent me an attachment but I can’t remember when. Once you have searched for the contact you can easily scroll through the list of attachments and find it.

Xobni is not going to solve all of your problems. It does not organize or file your mail. It doesn’t make your coffee or clean windows. What it does (and I think it does it very well) is help you find what your looking for in the (admin it) huge stash of email that your collecting every day.