Screens Around Town: Google, Adobe, Flickr, IE Matt 10 Apr 2006

19 comments Latest by mattbg

Password Strength

Password Strength

As you type, Google analyzes your password’s uniqueness and tells you if your odds are weak or strong.

CD# Breakdown

CD# Breakdown

Adobe install status gives you status of which install CD you’re on and how many more you have to go.

Color Me Good

Color Me Good

Flickr offers an inline chart to help you select colors for your Flickr badge.

Now That’s a Toolbar

[In Crocodile Dundee voice] “You call that a toolbar?” “Now that’s a toolbar.” But hey, it could be worse.

Got an interesting screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Send the image and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

19 comments so far (Jump to latest)

Zak 10 Apr 06

I’ve seen Hotmail doing the password strength test as you type for a while. Great little tool, but too bad Windows doesn’t have something like this. At least to protect your network from fellow co-workers using the name of their dog or car.

Sam 10 Apr 06

@Dan Boland

ha! that’s pretty recursive there.

Kingsley 10 Apr 06

Back in the bad ole days, (‘94?) Borland C++ came on 18 floppy disks. As you installed it, it would show you a freeway which will moove in jerks and stops, displaying helpful advertising for other Borland products. It would also show you which floppy you were in. If the installation got messed up though, you’d have to start again from the beginning.

dave rau 10 Apr 06

Why isn’t CS2 on DVD already?

Tarek 10 Apr 06

OS X has the same functionality as the google password doohickey in its password assistant, which I just found out about.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tips/password13.html

Hubris Sonic 10 Apr 06

Dan Boland, to make that art somebody should photoshop the button to say ‘update’

Chris Saad 10 Apr 06

That toolbar thing is crazy. When compared side-by-side it really shows that these companies really spend very little time thinking about delivering real value and end up just repeating the same old garbage.

Kevin Navia 11 Apr 06

Well, i like the CS2 install for multiple discs… still the activation is a boon. (ok, thats another discussion)

I know that M$’s Hotmail has the password strength meter.

Rick 11 Apr 06

Dont use any of that sissy password meter junk.
If you in a *nix just…
head -c 8 /dev/random | uuencode -

in your favourite shell.

Greg 11 Apr 06

This isn’t even tangentially relevent, but I think it bears pointing out that every time I hear “Ruby on Rails”, I hear it in my head sung to the tune of The Clash “Rudy Can’t Fail”.

It’s really starting to freak me out.

Gordon 11 Apr 06

The Adobe updater message is a well known example of letting developers write UI messages. Us Tech Authors despair when we see things like that, we really do.

Patrick Taylor 11 Apr 06

Dan Boland, to make that art somebody should photoshop the button to say �update�

Only as long as they change the ‘Quit’ button to ‘Update Later’.

Hubris Sonic 11 Apr 06

or ‘Don’t Update’

mattbg 13 Apr 06

It seems that, when applications came on floppy disks, they often told you what disk you were on and how many you had left to go.

That went away when applications started to come on CDs, but it looks like many may have forgotten to add it back when applications began to exceed the confines of a single CD :)