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May 11, 2009

ClubSmalltalk & PasswordsPro Promotion

PasswordsPro is a tool designed to help you manage your passwords and private data securely. It stores all your passwords and text notes in a single file locked with one master password. That one password is all you need to access all your private data.
PasswordsPro is developed in Dolphin Smalltalk and it had been presented in ESUG 2008. User feedback has been extremely positive.
Given the strong reviews, ClubSmalltalk and PasswordPro are announcing a fantastic promotional deal. The purchase of a license for the special edition of ClubSmalltalk gives you PasswordsPro, which normally sells at $29, for the outstanding price of $15. A third of the cash will go toward ClubSmalltalk. And that's not all: The buyer will get two discount coupons to purchase another license that can be gifted.

PasswordsPro's developer explains the product

To get more information on PasswordsPro, Germán Arduino, an independent software developer and the principal architect of Password Pro, answered some questions.

Germán, what inspired you to make this kind of software? And why did you choose Dolphin Smalltalk to develop it? 

I was searching some cool idea to develop a desktop product to market as Micro ISV and Daniel Pierini, a friend of mine and now my partner at PasswordsPro, got the idea. Daniel is the owner of an important Web hosting company (Solo10.com) and needed a password manager. The whole idea for the product comes from him.
I was immediately enthused and started coding. Of course, being a Smalltalker myself, the idea I was searching was to develop this software with Dolphin Smalltalk Professional. There several reasons for this. First, I've owned a Pro Edition of Dolphin for some years, but I've only used it to make some custom products. I never designed any software for the mass market. I became very interested in trying to develop in a commercial way. I tried before with Promoter, a product using Web UI, but Squeak came up with it. I wanted to try to built a true desktop product.
The choice to use Dolphin was one of functionality. Dolphin fit perfectly for the development of PasswordsPro. It allows you to generate compact Windows exes that don't need lengthy runtimes (This was one of Daniel's original goals). Such exes also run smoothly under Wine on Linux and ever on a pen drive connected to a Windows machine.
Dolphin is really an excellent implementation of Smalltalk and can be used to develop any sort of software. This idea also originated out of need. I realy needed a password manager. 

Sensitive information like bank passwords, credit card information and other data is always at risk. How does PasswordsPro address this issue?  

The lack of security was one of the main motivations behind PasswordsPro. Many computer owners have several passwords, usernames and ATM pins, among other things, and it is difficult to remember all this crucial access info. 
In addition to passwords, most of us have files that contain text that also need to be stored in a safe way. like e-mails, work documents, etc. The goal of PasswordsPro is for the user to have this private information locked in a secure file that is encrypted with a master password. 
Inside the product we have some interesting features. For example:
  • The program doesn't store the master password on the files, avoiding reverse-engineered attacks. It has a feature called Inactivity Protection. It automatically closes an open passwords file after a configurable number of minutes without activity.
  • The program may be executed from a pen drive. That means that you can an have all your passwords everywhere you go. 
  • The pendrive with your data and the program is all you need. And if your pendrive is loss or stolen, don't worry: Nobody can read your private data.
Have you enjoyed developing of this product?

Definitely. I have been interested in security topics and security programming (encryption algorithms) from years, from when I developed a Gmail-like complete mail system in a mainframe environment. At the same time, I'm a Smalltalker who enjoys developing anything with Smalltalk. So this project, which fused security and encryption with Smalltalk, was really cool to me. I hope continue working on it.

What's next for PasswordsPro?

Future plans depend primarily on the sales of the current product. But if all goes well, we are considering several possibilities. Some are:
  • PasswordsPro Mobile (To iPhone and other phone cells)
  • PasswordsPro Corporate (A special version focused on big IT staffs that need to administer/manage many passwords in its datacenters)
  • Integration with devices such as Yubikey

Get the Promotion!