Safari books upgrade + contest

The library now subscribes to the entire collection of Safari Books Online. The collection contains over 8,000 computer science and technical books, with new publications added continually.

The Safari online database has a limit of 5 concurrent users, so if you can't access a book, please try again after a few minutes.

Safari is currently running a Dynamite Coding Skills contest, where you can win a personal 3 month Safari subscription and an invitation to join Tim O'Reilly at an event next year. More information is available here: http://safaribooksonline.com/Corporate/DynamiteCodingSkills/.

Creating the Perfect Password

Some of us here at the library were just discussing (read: complaining about) websites' rules for creating a password. It seems that every time we create an account somewhere new, there is a longer list of requirements... For example, I recently visited a site that required your password to be a minimum of 8 characters, containing at least 2 numbers (which could not be at the beginning or end) and at least one capital letter. It just seemed a bit ridiculous and overly-complicated, until I came across this article.

As more and more personal information goes online, this serves as a good little reminder that though we may be becoming more comfortable putting ourselves out there into the virtual world, we still need to remember to proceed with some caution.