Here's my Vidoop "Password"

by phil on Thursday Mar 5, 2009 11:38 AM
observant about technological minutia

Okay, I'm giving away my "password" for Vidoop for the sake of illustrating a point.

This was so strange when I encountered it:

My password on that is OUT. Can you figure out the mnemonic?

That's right, "Planes. Trains. and Automobiles."

I haven't decided whether I like this password system. The way the vidoop ImageShield works is you select three categories of images for your password. But it seems like you would forget whatever group you pick. Anyway, I have a new mnemonic now.

I encountered vidoop when creating an OpenID login for Twitterfeed.

Comments

Benjamin Stover said on March 5, 2009 2:05 PM:

Hello,

Full disclaimer: I'm a developer at Vidoop. Thanks for checking us out :)

I know, it's annoying to have to remember another "password," but your image password does have a few nice properties: key logging is almost useless and logging in is hard for a program to do. Besides, a hacker would need access to your email or mobile phone to even see the imageshield.

Still, it is another thing to remember. And I have too many passwords already. Personally, I use myVidoop as an openid provider whenever I can (so I don't need another password) and I use our plugin so that I don't have to remember how to log in to my GMail or Facebook accounts. myVidoop is something new and different, and the experience isn't perfect, but it solves a real problem for me today.

I hope that it might end up the same for you. If not, you have a choice. You can always switch over to another OpenID provider (since Yahoo and AOL are OpenID providers, you could skip the "something new to remember" step altogether with Twitterfeed).

Have a good one,
Ben

Chris Messina said on March 5, 2009 11:07 PM:

So, like Ben, I work at Vidoop, part-time. I saw your tweet and thought I'd stop by.

You make a good point about remember image categories. Here's a tip: tell a story with your categories.

With the categories you picked before you might say "I love flying in planes, and usually drive an automobile to the airport where I take a train to get to the terminal." Or something like that. It becomes much easier to remember your set if you can visualize a story.

At least, that works better for me!

Philip Dhingra said on March 6, 2009 9:57 AM:

good corporate response from Vidoop.

Good tip on the story mnemonic.

My password is lifted from this movie title.