RoboForm: Keep Your Passwords, and Your Sanity

Finally, a perfect job for the robots: managing your online work identity.

In these troubling economic times, one of the best ways a business owner can cut office costs is to migrate shop to one of the many -- and I mean many -- online business process management tools out there.

The major software players such as Microsoft (MSFT Quote), Google (GOOG Quote) and Adobe (ADBE Quote) make such systems. And there are many small ones, too: Zoho.com, ajaxWrite, FlySuite.com, Nevrocode, Peepel.com and theopendoc.com to just name a few.

Make no mistake, these tools are powerful. The online software allows employees to collaborate on documents, projects and spreadsheets in real time and harness huge savings -- many of these products are free or have low annual subscription rates. But they all have a serious Achilles heel: managing the online identities you need to use them. No matter which product you choose, accessing it requires online logins and passwords that can become dizzyingly complex.

Here in Blum world, we run a completely virtual digital business, and password management is about the biggest headache. My people, and they are a pretty tech-savvy bunch or they couldn't do their jobs, struggle to remember where to go on the Web to find what they need to be working on at a given time. Documents are at Web site X and need password A. Email is at Web site Y, which requires password B. Calendars are at Web site Z ... no wait! Now they are at site Q because we longer use Z and what password is that? So any tool that streamlines all these locations and passwords in a secure Web experience is a product worth consideration.