Wired

Thirty most popular stolen passwords

A few months back, I wrote an article about how to develop secure passwords. It amazes me still that people create such simple and hack-able passwords to use for their online accounts. An info-graphic by Rapid7 was posted this week showing the most commonly hacked passwords online. Now I expected it to be passwords such as "password," or "12345," and it was, but to my surprise there were many passwords that in my opinion would be very difficult to figure out. This just goes to show how shifty hackers are. Creating weak passwords was something I personally was very guilty of when I started using the Internet. All of my accounts online had the same password; I did this so I could remember what they were easily. After my Facebook account got hacked, I smartened up, created an Excel document and created unique passwords for each account. If you haven't done so yet, I'd highly recommend you have different and number-filled passwords so your personal information will not be jeopardized.

The iPhone 5 complete mock-ups

It's been almost officially announced that we are going to see the iPhone 5 released in late summer. This past week, images have been everywhere showing the designs of what the new iPhone may look like. The most common mock-up shows the iPhone having a much larger screen, 10.3 centimetres (4.06 inches) to be exact. Another hot rumour is the iPhone will have an eight-megapixel camera. All of these rumours sound fantastic right? Something I really hope for in the new iPhone is a stronger screen. I have cracked mine and had my iPhone replaced four times now. It's annoying, and certainly expensive because it costs $130 every time. What I can tell from these images is it looks as if the bezel is going to be black, and I quite like that. The black MacBook, my first Mac, in my opinion was the nicest-looking laptop Apple has every produced. Black technology hardware in my opinion just looks extremely sleek. Anyways, let me know what you think of these iPhone 5 mock-ups on Twitter: @thedavidbell.

Sync by 50 wireless headphones review

Rapper and entrepreneur 50 Cent released a headphone company in the past couple of months. He released three products, earbuds, around-ear headphones and a product called Sync. The sync headphones are wireless headphones that utilize Kleer technology. 50 wanted his headphones to have the best sound around. He talked about how wireless headphones that connect via Bluetooth do not have perfect sound quality, yet with his technology Kleer, he says you can get studio sound without the cord. The headphones are priced at $400, which is identical to the Studio Beats by Dre. The headphones are very stylish, a lot of stainless steel, and shiny material (bling bling). Without question, they are the best-looking headphones around. They are a very big around-ear headphone but are lightweight at the same time, which makes them very comfortable. Something these headphones do better than the beats is they have great durability. Beats are renowned for breaking. 50 made it very clear his headphones aren't going to be breakable, and they aren't. The sound quality is good, but they aren't on the same level as my Bose noise-cancelling headphones. They may not be as good because they are wireless. To conclude, the SMS Sync headphones are a fashion-statement product. The sound quality is good, but you are really wearing them because they look cool as hell. I give these headphones a score of 8.4/10.

Kijiji iPhone app review

Kijiji has an iPhone app that I feel a lot of people do not know about. The application is free, and acts as a facilitator for the website. You can search items, change cities, view products and contact the seller right from the app. I like the application better than the website itself because it's a lot smoother. The application is primarily for search, but you can also post items as well right from the app. You can also add items to a watch list, which is a tab at the bottom. The application is great for browsing local classifieds. Go get it!

David Bell (@thedavidbell) is a young entrepreneur in Winnipeg. He specializes in emerging technology and online aspects of business, including web and social-media consulting. Access his company online at iBXMediaGroup.ca . He is an active member of the YouTube community (http://www.ibellix.com), with more than two million views and 5,000 subscribers. He was also a Dragons' Den contestant. Email: thedavidbell@me.com .

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 10, 2012 ??65526