With in the increasing number of web based applications that have become essential to everyday life, keeping track of logins and passwords has become a losing battle for the technologically inclined. In years past it was manageable to keep track of two, perhaps 3 logins: email, the bank, a forum perhaps. Today though? Blogs, flickr, social networking: fragments of our online existence are scattered among databases far and wide.

Neccessity dictates that we find a more robust way to catalog the information we use to prove we are indeed ourselves to the many services we now hold dear. There are a variety of offerings out there, and I’d like to give a shout out to a little OSX app I’ve discovered called Pastor. Password protected, RC4 encrypted, and blatently free, Pastor allows the user to store their login information in a fashion that not only ensure you’ll be able to find it again, but that no one will be able to stumble upon your password to the “Saved by the Bell” fan fiction archive.

1. Ratatat - Ratatat
2. Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
3. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
4. Iron Horse - Pickin’ On Modest Mouse
5. Beck - Guero

Justin suggested we start posting top 5 lists of cool trends, gadgets, and general zeitgeist phenomenon we’re seeing at any given time, and I couldn’t agree more. I’m getting the ball rolling with this list of the essential albums that are accompanying my work days, as I toil with hammer and steel at the mighty anvil of the Interweb.

What music is keeping you company?

Edit: Dropped The White Stripes in favor of Boards of Canada.

1. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
2. Gauntlet
3. Smash TV
4. Bejeweled II
5. Zuma
6. Bankshot Billiards
7. Outpost Kaloki
8. Mutant Storm Reloaded
9. Joust
10. Wik: Fable of Souls

This week Joystiq managed to snag a list of the top ten Xbox Live Arcade games by sales. It’s no surprise that Geometry Wars took first place, as the console ships with a trial version of that one, and of course the game’s tripped out visuals and frantic gameplay are delicious. What I like though, is seeing Gauntlet and Smash TV right up there in the number 2 and 3 spots. It’s hilarious seeing a state of the art piece of computer technology bringing these withered and ancient stacks of binary back to life. What better juxtaposition than to see the sleek Xbox dashboard sound and graphics replaced by pixelated sprites moving with 2 frames of animation and 4-bit digitized voices imploring you to help the wizard, who needs food badly. On top of that Microsoft covertly upped the ante, adding multiplayer support and full voice communication via live.

The Crashaus has already tested these offerings, and we had a genuinly great time rocking some 3 player gauntlet with the 360 streaming a custom soundtrack from our MP3 server. When you’re talking about killing dozens of pixelated ghosts to the theme of Beck’s “Nicotine & Gravy”, you know you’re money.

Thanks Joystiq!

More revisions and tweaks to the pod last weekend. This time I focused on the forums, both bringing them into line with the current style of the site, as well as resolving the login issues once again plaguing our discussion engine.

I wish I could take credit for the more polished and modern look of the forums, but while designing a skin for Wordpress is a lengthy process, creating a new aesthetic for phpbb is nothing less than a goddamn crusade. Granted phpbb has never made any claims that the phpbb group is a W3C supporter or an advocate of good practices in markup, but damn: we’re talking the definition of tag-soup.

The credit for our new look goes to Macthink.net, a spanish-language site that apparently specializes in Apple-styled icons and themes. They really nailed the aqua feel in my eye: but be aware that at this point large images will break the layout, resulting in decidedly funktified behavior. There are plugins to limit image size, but so far they seem to be questionable at best. I’ll get it ironed out at some point.

For the time being though, get posting!