When I started this blog, the goal was to demonstrate some of my programming and design work.  Part of that comes from my portfolio, but I also wanted to work on some small projects and host them on this site.

This is the first such project.  I recently decided that I need to mix up the passwords I use online but I really struggle remembering that type of thing.  There are already tools out there to securely store passwords online, but this seemed like as good a project as any, so I decided to build a tool myself.

So here's the deal.  Anyone with an account on this here website has access to their own "Password Bank".  You can create an account if you want to check it out (just click "Sign Up" at the top of the page).  Basically you can store username/password combos or any other type of sensitive information you want.  This is encrypted and stored securely and then you can log back in and see it whenever you want.  I don't really expect anyone to use this, but you can go play around with it if you're curious.

How it works

I want to go over how this works.  If you're computer science inclined, let me know what you would have done differently.  If you're not computer science inclined, this will be boring.

The main focus here obviously has to be security.  I needed to make sure that if someone can get their hands on all my passwords and data, they still won't be able to see any of your sensitive information.

So the first level of security is obviously the main password when you set up the account.  This will potentially be used to access all kinds of different applications, so I want a more secure password for the password bank.  Because of this, I have each user enter a Master Password when they first go into their password bank.  A hashed version of the master password is stored, but this is only for account validation and it can't be used access any data.

When a user first enters the password bank, they type in their master password.  This is first hashed and matched with what I saved in the database to make sure this this is the correct password.  Then the master password is hashed using a different algorithm  (so it doesn't match the password I store in the database) and this is used as the key for all future encryption and decryption.  The idea here is that I can validate the master password without ever actually storing anything useful in the database.

Once the master password is entered, the user can enter as many username/password/notes combinations as they want.  This is all encrypted using a pretty standard 2-way algorithm with the hashed version of the master password as the key.  You see a list of all the information you've entered without any of the sensitive stuff displayed by default.  you can click a link to show the sensitive info for each specific entry.

I'm working on getting an SSL certificate for this site but GoDaddy is (of course) tripping over their own feet and causing me much distress.  For now I'll only be accessing this from networks I trust (work and home).

So yeah, hopefully this made sense to at least a couple of you.  It was a very simple project, but it's a nice way to start the tylerking.net random application platform.  Let me know your thoughts.

I don't want to get in the habit of using this blog to give updates on my life.  After all, I have at least 5 readers and since only 2 of them are my parents, I'd be alienating three fifths of my reader base.  Today is a little different though.

This afternoon we officially launched the new Zane Benefits corporate page.  This site uses the new logo, color scheme and design that I came up with (with tons of feedback and suggestions from friends and co-workers).  Last Friday we launched a new reseller section using the same design.

We still have several live sites that are using a hybrid of old design and new design (old colors, new logo for example), but those will change over the next couple of months to use this new look and feel.

We also officially settled on some new business card designs today.  Basically, between Friday and this afternoon the company completely re-branded itself.  This is pretty exciting for me because this is the first time I've been involved in every aspect of this process and I'm really happy with the way things turned out.

I mentioned a couple days ago how I don't like planning too far ahead which means that this site is still a work in progress.  I'd love to hear what you guys think about it (I can handle a little criticism)  Also, for those of you interested in Zane Benefits (Tom), check out the new reseller section.

Ok, sorry about not having a point to this post.  I'll try to keep posts like this few and far between.

Vector tuts+ is now one of my favorite sites.  They have hundreds of awesome design tutorials.  I've been thinking about taking a graphic design class in Salt Lake, but this site seems even better than a class.

I just ran through this tutorial and learned how to draw a cup of coffee.  One thing I like about the styles of these past two tutorials is that they look realistic enough that it's obvious what I drew, but they also have a fun web 2.0 feel.

I was planning on going through the logo tutorials from the Smashing Magazine post, but I might just keep searching Vector tuts+.

Stay tuned

Smashing Magazine just listed a ton of great logo design tutorials.  This is great timing because there are a couple of different logos I need to design and I really don't have much experience with that sort of thing.

I'm probably going to spend the weekend directly following the instructions from the tutorials that look particularly interesting.  As you can see, I already tried the vectortuts one out.  Now I know what to do if some eco-friendly company comes knocking on my door.

The point here is to pick up some tips and tricks.  With this tutorial I learned about the split, union and intersect path tools in fireworks (or illustrator).

Once I get the hang of things, I'll make a logo or two for myself.  If I come up with anything good, I'm going to post a tutorial on this blog.

Here we go...