From Password Hell to Password Heaven

Jon Udell is a technology writer whose weblog consistently enlightens and challenges me. His mix of technology and common sense is terrific. He regularly throws a unique light on new technology and the way we can use it. In his latest article for Infoworld about the impact on collaboration, he wrote:

Lightweight single sign-on is one reason why. Nic Wolff’s clever bookmarklet-based solution has been a life-changer. Managing yet another password was the main obstacle in the way of adopting disposable services on the Web. Now a single pass phrase generates unique and strong passwords, no secrets are stored locally, and the master secret never travels over the wire. As a result, new services seem frictionless.

As it turns out, a few folks hit on the same idea. This is the one Jon originally wrote about, another is at onepassword.com. I just installed the latter, it works great in Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.

Blow me down! How could I possibly have missed that until now? A secure single sign-on across as many sites as I like? How had I missed an item with so much potential to make my life easier? Well... I was on an extended sailing break when he wrote it. I'll never do that again (ahem)!
[Update: It looks like Jon agrees that this idea needs broader exposure, he just did a screencast of the bookmarklet version]