MacFevre

Fad or Future?

by Wayne Lefevre

The folks over at Agile Web Solutions have recently started to implement a new license verification feature, and not without some controversy. Their star product, 1Passwd, as well as 1Passwd Reader for Palm and AllBookMarks are all using this new verification. Instead of receiving a long, long cryptic number to type in, you can now receive via e-mail a very smart looking image of a card. A card akin to a credit card or identification card, complete with your name, program and even a holographic image to complete the look. I will use their sample as an image, because I’m not quite sure yet, (meaning I haven’t looked it up yet,) the procedure for stripping the personal information from the cards.

Simply taking the card image and dragging it from your e-mail into the Agile Web Solution’s application, a window pops up verifying the copy and registration.

I really don’t have a problem personally on this type of verification, it definitely has that Mac graphical use and feel, not to mention it’s really cool. The first time I tried it, it worked flawlessly. Even copying the image into a folder and then using the image worked fine, for there are those who are worried about having or needing a backup. Also, this way, the ones who happen to enjoy “sharing” their new application might think twice, considering their personal information including name and company is contained in the image as well as highly visible on the front. If the card is altered, say you open it up in Photoshop and blur out your personal information on the front of the card, when you re-save the image, all licensing information is stripped leaving it useless anyway.

The naysayers of this technology do have some valid points of their own. Some people, myself included, have a nice print out of all application names, which e-mail it’s connected to, and the actual license number. I use the program Yojimbo to track all of my licenses. This system has worked so far, and Yojimbo’s F8 key command is a lifesaver. You do have to jump through a few hoops to print them all off to have a hard copy. That’s not to say that this is the perfect system, either. Just because key codes have been used for years doesn’t mean that there can’t be a better system implemented as we go into the future. I have found it’s just as easy to keep track of these graphic cards in Yojimbo, dragging them into a Note file instead of a Serial Number file.

Arguments against this technology include not being able to have a printed backup copy, the fear of losing the image or having it wiped out with a hard drive crash, and the space created by backing up an image instead of a few lines of text. All valid, I suppose, but really, in this day and age there is no excuse for not keeping backups. For you can easily not only keep a folder of these images in a regular backup routine, but also just as easily save thousands of images to a CD. If you did have a drive crash, how much easier would it be to drag images into programs than having to cut and paste all that information?

There will always be those who don’t like or trust change. They think this graphics stuff is just a fad. Matter of fact, when I had the choice of getting a card with 16K of memory on it, or the fancy new 4 color graphics card for the original IBM 8086 PC, I chose the memory. Figured it would be nice to be able to load all of Zork into memory to play it quicker than some graphics fad that nothing used. Yet.

David Teare, one of the programmers at Agile Web Solutions had this to say;

“I’m not sure if the new license cards will “catch on” or not; we’re not interested in making money off of these cards, but rather wanted to “raise the bar” when it comes to registration. You’ll see all the code for these cards open-sourced soon.

The reason we changed was because I don’t think anyone would ever use the word “natural” when speaking about entering hexcodes. However, “natural” and “Mac-like” are often applied to graphics and drag-and-drop. Hence the reason we used them both. (BTW — natural can be applied to using links in emails like 1passwd://registration. We tried that, and while it did work well, the number of CS complaints about “broken links” was untenable).

While I personally love the new licenses, and most paying customers have given us wonderful applause, there have been many people who said they prefer text based registration codes. That’s cool. We won’t be forcing anyone to use the graphics; they can use the text-based ‘backup’ mechanism that is already available in 1Passwd, and will be expanded in the next version.

It’s all about giving users the best experience possible. I wonder, is that the definition of Mac?”

‘Nuff said.