American Express Login
The login experience for American Express is nuts.
First, they don’t allow passwords longer than 8 characters. A financial site limiting password length? Smart. Not to worry, there’s sound reasoning for that:
The length of the password is limited to 8 characters to reduce keyboard contact. Some softwares can decipher a password based on the information of “most common keys pressed”.
Therefore, lesser keys punched in a given frame of time lessen the possibility of the password being cracked.
Phew! I was worried for a minute, there. Sounds like they’ve got some smart folks coding this stuff up.
The worst part, though, is how they enforce that unnecessary length-limit. While they could have set the maxlength property on the password field to 8 characters and called it a day, they instead left it set at an appropriate 32 characters and implemented the following obnoxious javascript check:
An Admirable Attitude
When I saw the demo of Apple’s new iBooks application, I thought it looked just like Delicious Library, but I figured Apple must have struck a deal with Delicious Monster’s Wil Shipley in order to make that happen.
Alas, they did not.. But Shipley isn’t terribly upset about it.
As a creator, part of what I seek is recognition, immortality. I don’t work for Apple, or Google (I’ve been offered jobs & buyouts) because I want the fame myself. It’s my shot at immortality. My designs are my children. So it stinks when I feel like Steve might get the fame for my innovation. I lose my children, as it were.
But your children aren’t really yours. They have lives of their own. So when your designs do change the world, you have to accept it. You have to say, ‘Ok, this was such a good idea, other people took it and ran with it. I win.’”
Now that’s an attitude worthy of admiration.
