“I want to put a ding in the universe.”

Considered it dinged.

Starting today, the focus of this site will shift away from the personal stuff as I transition it to a site that discusses the use of technology in the accounting firm environment. That’s a wide net to cast, so a better definition is in order. The problem is, I don’t have a better definition.

I can tell you what I’m likely to write about specific to the accounting industry:

• Use of mobile computing (iPhone, iPad, etc)
• Use of web based technology
• Critique the accounting software industry on their ineffective adoption of web-based technology.

What I probably won’t write about enterprise accounting software or other specialized software used by the industry. I’m more interested in taking about the implementation of mobile and web-based technology into my workflow because that’s where the future is.

It’s amazing that somewhere on the web is a screen shot of my website from 2002. I am pretty sure that I don’t have this screenshot anywhere in my archives (I do now, thanks, Dan). I remember this design. It’s a favorite of mine that I called Foo Dogs.

This screenshot was two full years before I converted to Mac. The CMS was MoveableType. The computer: a Toshiba Satellite notebook. It was hosted on a doan.ws which I no longer own.

You need a dedicated password management system, pure and simple. There is just not another practical and secure way of dealing with it in the current day.

He recommends using 1Password to manage all of your passwords. I do too. I’ve been using 1Password for a while on my Mac and when the iPhone and iPad versions came out, I bought those too. Earlier this week I purchased the Windows version.

Even though I’ve used 1Password for a while, I was using it to manage my unsecured pattern-based passwords. Many of the passwords were “strong enough” but not ridiculously strong. I’m slowing converting all my passwords to ridiculously strong passwrods – some of which are 28 random characters and symbols – all of which I simply cannot remember because they look something like this:

q7[393R37Ve#[8>Y=4X?q.&][94g

(via The Brooks Review)

By this spring, some 340 Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges were using small, largely unknown auditing U.S. firms, who in turn may have been contracting the work back out to local Chinese firms, according to the SEC’s chief accountant.

More is coming. “The SEC has certainly been focusing on it,” says Greg Scates, deputy chief auditor at the PCAOB. “Some work papers are in Chinese and the U.S. auditors can’t even read them. And so there is no way that the auditor can conduct a review or perform appropriate supervision of staff.”