Is anyone interesting in helping alpha test and/or do some QA on a side project I'm working on? It's a fairly simple Web application that should be relevant to pretty much everyone, but it will obviously be more useful to some people than to others. (How's that for specifics?)

If you want to take a look and give some feedback, either leave a comment below or e-mail me at cfinke@gmail.com, and I'll send you the URL.

Kevin Rose's latest project, Pownce, has a glaring security problem on its front page. The JavaScript that Pownce uses in its login form can reveal your password in plain text on the screen. Here are the steps to reproduce the problem in Firefox:

1. Login to Pownce via http://www.pownce.com/. Allow Firefox to save your login information for next time, and then log out.

   

2. Navigate to http://www.pownce.com/ and type the first part of your username in the "Enter username..." box. Firefox will supply all of the matching usernames it remembers for this site. (So far, so good.)

   

3. Select your username and press return to have the browser autofill the rest of your information. Oh look, there's your Pownce password in plain view! I hope no one in the room was watching you login...

   

The method that Pownce is using to show the "Enter password..." prompt in the password field is the reason for this malfunction; browsers force all text in password fields to be hidden with asterisks, so if you want to show normal text in a password field like Pownce has chosen to, you have to do so in a non-standard way.

This bug affects Firefox and Netscape users who have JavaScript enabled, but it doesn't affect Safari users.

People have been mispronouncing my last name (Finke, pronounced fink-ee) my whole life. Usually, they make the mistake of dropping the "e" (Fink); I don't really mind or even notice this anymore, since "Fink" was an obvious nickname bestowed upon me all through elementary and high school, but occasionally there's a creative soul who goes with a long "i" and says "Fienk" (rhymes with, uh, nothing, but has the same i-sound as "bike"). Since most of my interaction with other people is on the Web and via e-mail (a notoriously silent medium), I wouldn't doubt it if 95% of the people I communicate with every week aren't sure how to pronounce my name.

Mike Cassano, a guy I met at the University of Minnesota during the Chipmark project, has come up with a fun solution to this pronunciation problem, and it's called "Name Out Loud." Basically, you go to their website, hit "Record" on a little flash app, say your (ahem) name out loud, and their app saves your recording so that your Internet friends can hear exactly how you pronounce your name.

Here's how to pronounce my name, Christopher Finke.

It's a neat idea, and it definitely would have saved this guy some trouble.