Michael Valverde's Blog

When I first started writing programs in C/C++ way back in the mid-90s, I immediately took interest in computer graphics. Well, after school and working as a software developer on database applications, I just never kept up with learning more about graphics and game programming in general. Well, a friend of mine who also went to college with me sent me a link the other day. The Allegro game programming library found here is still alive and well! We used this library on our trusty 486 DX2 PC's running Window 3.11 and Windows 95. This really brought me back to the past! If I can find the time, I plan to do more with this and see how things have changed since those good ole days!

Well, I was introduced to a new way of doing Security for web hosted applications. It seems, with current state of IT security (or lack of - just ask Sony) and hacking attacks across the web, simple username/password isn't enough anymore. This is were two factor security comes into play. Basically, two-factor means there is more than one (at least two) to validate the user. The most common is username/password and then a challenge question(s). That is how my bank does it... but there is even cooler way. That is were Phone Factor comes in to play. With Phone Factor you can easily setup your application to actually call and request a pin number from a user before allowing them entry. I've worked with their SDK and it takes about 5 minutes to get working! Check them out!